133 – Should You Have Prices Listed On Your Martial Arts Website? (Round 2)

Here’s my attempt to end the age-old debate about the pros and cons of having your club fees listed on your martial arts website.


IN THIS EPISODE:

  • The honesty vs dishonesty debate about prices on martial arts websites
  • The pros and cons of listing prices on your martial arts website
  • Getting the best results from your martial arts website
  • How an irresistible martial arts offer boosts your conversions
  • When is it actually a good idea to list prices on your martial arts website?
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I'm going to revise one of my first podcast episodes discussing, should you have your prices listed on your martial arts website? 

Should you have your club fees listed? If you don't, what should you have listed? And if you do, how does that impact your sales and your conversions? And if you don't, are you just hiding stuff and being all weird? 

All right. Let's dive in. Make sure you stick to the end, and I'll share with you a cool resource that you can have on your website that boosts your conversions and helps you sign up more students. All right. Let's dive in.

Having your prices listed on your martial arts website, should you do it or shouldn't you do it? I see this topic come up often, and I just dug through the archives of the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast, and I actually covered this on episode number four, my fourth podcast. It was 2016. And I wanted to have a look if my stance has changed on it. And I could say, “No, it hasn't,” but I want to give some context to what that stance was and where the exceptions to the rules are.

First up, short answer, is it a good idea to have your prices listed on your website? No, it's not a good idea. Now, what I've been noticing over the years is people get really weird when you say that. People go the whole honesty and dishonesty route. 

People get really angry about this, that if you don't put your prices on your website, you're hiding stuff, and you're not being ethical, and you're being sleazy. And it gets really nasty, which I find really odd and weird. 

I want to explain the psychology of why it's actually not a good idea to have your prices listed on your website, and it's actually the reverse. If you don't have your prices on your website, you are serving your potential prospects way better. You are able to establish way more value around what it is that you provide.

Let's dive into a few scenarios. As a recap of what is discussed in episode four, in the younger version, I had no beard and maybe the camera's a bit better. Hopefully, I've got this podcast thing a bit smoother, more relaxed, and better after a couple of years down. 

All right, let's just cover one scenario. You've got a mom sitting in front of her computer. She's thinking about enrolling her child in martial arts. In context, she's never done martial arts before, she doesn't understand it, somebody might have told her it's a good idea, somebody might have mentioned it and said, “The benefits are X, Y, Z,” or she's done some Googling and researching, or maybe she's got a child that's being bullied. She's kind of figured out that martial arts could be a good thing for her child, but she knows nothing about it.

All right. She knows nothing about it, so she starts searching and she finds a couple of websites. Maybe she finds you and she finds another school. You know the other school, you know that you provide a way better service, provide a way better martial arts than the other school does, and this person is searching and all that they can compare with is price. Right?

Because let's face it, no matter how good your website copy is and whether you've done a really good job of conveying what your message is, your values, et cetera, when somebody doesn't know what they're looking for, there's one thing that they do understand and that's dollars.

So, they're going to revert to the dollars and think, “Well, if that club's this and that club's this, well, martial arts is martial arts. They don't know any better.” Potentially they're going to go for the cheaper option. Right? Because there's no value attached to this figure. The price of a martial arts class, how do you justify that? 

So, because your price was listed on your website, you might have missed the chance to have the actual conversation with that person, because they just looked at it, and said, “Well, it was expensive. That's not what I want to pay.” And rightfully so. They don't want to pay that because they don't have any value attached to that price. They just see a price and a number, and they think they don't want to spend it.

Now, what if that person sat in front of you, and you showed them around your school, and you showed them the impact that you have on your students, and the value that they get, and your environment, and the club, and the quality, and the level of the instructors, and they got to experience that. Would they change their mind on the pricing? If they see, “well, this club is much cheaper, but you provide all this service.” 

Would they have gone with you? Probably, yes. Right? Because they got to experience the surrounding, but also they got the opportunity to build a relationship with you. Right? So, this is where it's way better to not have a price on your website because the price is not what should be discussed.

Let's face it, the cost of martial arts classes, people could say it's expensive, but compared to what? Because people pay way more for a car or way more on a night out. People spend so much more money on things compared to martial arts. So, saying it's expensive is, well, against what? Because they're spending more money on other things. You have got to think of the value that you can attach to your martial arts classes.

So, what do you have instead? Well, you should be looking at, well, where can you have a conversation? Where can you have a conversation with your prospect? So, your website should rather be optimized for conversions and conversations. Can they make an online inquiry, enter their name, detail, number, and email, and inquire online? Or maybe you have a chat icon on your website. Or your number is visible and they can contact you directly, or you can have an irresistible offer. 

What is an irresistible offer? You can download it on this page. Martialartsmedia.com/133, the number 133, and you can download our template, irresistible martial arts offer, the PDF worksheet, and we'll give you all the options of which numbers to use and how you can create an irresistible offer to promote your martial arts school.

Now, why would you want an irresistible offer instead of your club fees? Because the person that is just looking at the martial arts school, and they've never done martial arts before, and they might be nervous to give it a shot, but if they see an offer that’s irresistible, and there's value in it, and it feels risk-free because remember, this person is not… they're not sold on martial arts, potentially. Very few would be. Right? But more than likely, they would not be sold on martial arts hook, line, and sinker, so they're probably going to be hesitant. Right? 

So, we want to give them something that's of value, that they can try out, and what do we know? We know that if they try it out, and they're going to walk in, and they're going to experience it, then yeah, that person that was skeptical or was looking, has now completely changed to a person that's engaged and sold on the idea of martial arts, almost all martial arts school owners will tell me we've got no problem signing people up once they're through the door. Right? Because that's where the experience changes. 

So, why would you want to put obstacles in the way of them getting through the door? Makes sense. Right? I hope it does.

Now again, I've seen people get a bit weird about this. And I've seen well-respected martial arts school owners and coaches get really weird and hung up about this. Maybe because they were annoyed with a certain group that maybe appeared like they were unethical and spammy and they promoted not having prices on the website, and then they just deemed the idea as how those people approach the business world. And I can understand that. 

But what's important is to just take a step back and think, “Well, if I'm trying to serve my potential students the best, and I know I provide the best service, and the best martial arts, and create the biggest impact on my students, then I've got to do everything humanly possible to make sure that happens,” and that you can sign them up and change their lives, because you're really doing them a disservice if you don't sign them up. It's really in their best interest.

Now, what I didn't cover the first time I covered this topic was exceptions to the rule. Where would it maybe be a good idea to have your prices listed on your website? I want to be funny, but it's probably not funny. I say this tongue in cheek and not. You hate money. You think everybody is a McDojo that is more successful than you and charges more money than you, has more students than you, and you don't want to attract any more students. Right. Maybe true. Maybe not. Let's just take that for a grain of salt.

But here's a real exception to the rule. Right? A real exception to the rule is your brand exceeds the availability of students that you have. You have a huge reputation in the industry and people that… maybe it's an MMA or jiu-jitsu, or you are just seen as a professional martial artist that people typically follow and want to train with. So, your brand and reputation way exceeds the market demand. And you want to let people know that you are the premium martial arts school, and this is what you pay and you don't want time wasted. Now, just be careful about this. 

You obviously got to be in demand to be able to repel the people that you don't want to train with you, and we've got a few clients like that, where the leads are just so many that we structure our irresistible offer in a way that is a few hundred dollars extra, that the average inquiry will probably look at it and say, “No, that's not for me.” It does repel people, and they don't take up the offer. 

So, number one, your demand exceeds your supply. You've got leads coming in, everyone wants to train with you, and you put your price at a premium and you want people to know that. Or you are super famous and you are well known and respected in the space, and you want people to know that you are the premium provider. 

And then number three, you have a martial arts school at a holiday destination or place where people visit often and maybe they just come for two weeks or three weeks, and you've got packages available where people can train. Then that'll be a good idea to have your price listed on your website because then people know when they travel, what is available, and what they can do. Other than that, I still stand by episode number four, the best idea to not have your prices on your website.

What to do next? Well, if you want to know what you can put on your website, the one thing that makes or breaks in the conversation is the irresistible martial arts offer. Now, obviously, there are a few more components. Right? But if somebody has been looking around, and they're comparing clubs, and they're looking around and they get to your website and you provide an irresistible offer that feels like the risk is on you as the martial arts school owner and not on them, it feels like they can try it out. 

We know we don't want them to try it out, but we want to remove the risk of them trying it out. Then head over to this podcast page, martialartsmedia.com/133, and download the irresistible martial arts offer worksheet. And that'll get you started.

Anyway, thanks again for watching. Do go check out episode number four, just for its good value, and just for a laugh, a laugh just because it's super old and probably good to know that I haven't changed my stance on any of the things I discussed a good five years ago. Anyway, thanks again for watching. Thanks for listening. I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.

 

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2. Join the Martial Arts Media™ Academy Membership and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month to get to 100+ students. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, get started with our 7-day risk-free trial – Click Here

3. Work With Me and My Team Privately.

If you would like to work with me and my team to scale your school to the next level, fill out the form and apply HERE … tell me a little about your business and what you would like to work on together and I'll get you all the details – Click Here

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

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90 – Do You Groom ‘A Player’ Martial Arts Instructors, Or Hire the ‘A Players’?

How do you know which path to take when hiring new staff or martial arts instructors?

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • How to groom high-potential martial arts instructors
  • When to let go of an instructor who isn’t a ‘good fit’ for your school
  • Why you can't afford to ignore your employee’s bad behavior 
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

Quick question for you. Do you groom your staff to become A players or do you just make sure that you actually choose the A players?

Hey George here, so a bit of a windy morning in Perth. Hope it doesn't cloud our sound completely. Quick question for you. Do you groom your staff to become A players or do you just make sure that you actually choose the A players?

Two quick stories that I want to share with you. I was talking to one of our Partners members a couple of days ago and he’s really frustrated with his staff member and things not going to plan.

This actual staff member did something quite horrific. It's the things that could land him in jail and he’s doing it under the business name. If things like this had to actually hit the news, it could potentially shut his business down.

How much do you actually tolerate? At what point do you say that's enough? Do you just stick it out? I guess the problem is they are such a valuable asset to the business because they are great instructors, they are teaching, the kids like them and they've formed this bond. 

But now you're in this situation where potentially it's gone to the person's head, or they just don't feel like they want to abide by the rules, or they're a great instructor but when it comes to sticking to rules and some common sense with things that you can or can't do. So what do you do? At what point do you have to pull the plug? 

For me, just in a similar situation where I had a staff member that I probably should have let go of a long time ago, but because they are just such a nice person, shows up on time, and does a lot of things right, it was just really hard to actually make the call. But at the end of the day the question came to, are they an A player or are they not an A player?

Here's the thing, you can try and fix things, you can try and motivate, you can try and enforce some rules, you can try and set up some consequences, but sometimes you just got to reach the point where you actually just got to make the call and pull the plug, not just for you and protecting your business, but also protecting the culture in your business. 

Because if you let things slide that your other staff members can see that this is okay. It's okay to behave like this. It's okay to break rules. It's okay to do stupid things that could land you up in jail or shut the business down. Then what example are you setting for everybody else in the business? If that becomes acceptable behaviour and it's an acceptable practice, not going into details of it, but what are the consequences for your business, but also for your culture and all your other staff members?

At the end of the day, you'd just create this culture of it's okay to suck. It's okay to be average. It's okay to do things your own way and not think of the bigger picture, which is your business.

I'd love to know from you, at what point do you pull the plug and what do you do to actually keep your stuff in line and keep them in check, making sure that everybody's on the same mission, following the same values, and on the same mission to serve your students at the end of the day? Would love to hear from you. Leave me a comment below this video, wherever you're watching it.

I'm going to head back to the office. Have a great week. Speak soon. Cheers.

Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top and smart martial arts school owners, and have a chat about marketing, lead generation, what's working now, or just have a gentle rant about things that are happening in the industry, then I want to invite you to join our Facebook group.

It's a private Facebook group and in there, I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets – the things that are working for us when we help school owners grow and share a couple of video interviews and a bunch of cool extra resources.

So it's called the Martial Arts Media Business Community and an easy way to access it is, if you just go to the domain named martialartsmedia.group, so martialaartsmedia.group, g-r-o-u-p, there's no .Com or anything, martialartsmedia.group. That will take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!

 

Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

If you would like to work with me and my team to scale your school to the next level, then message me with the word ‘private'… tell me a little about your business and what you would like to work on together and I'll get you all the details.

Enjoyed the show? Get more martial arts business tips when you subscribe on iTunes for iPhone or Stitcher Radio for Android devices.

***NEW*** Now available on Spotify!

Podcast Sponsored by Martial Arts Media Partners

89 – The 8 Key Factors Needed For High Performing Martial Arts Websites

Get your martial arts website attracting new students organically with these 8 key performance factors.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

  • Why George shifted from building martial arts websites
  • The 8 key performance areas that you need for a high converting martial arts website
  • Changes to mobile usability that you can’t ignore
  • What Google assesses on your martial arts website for a quality score
  • The one topic rarely considered with martial arts websites and ownership
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

The key thing is that with all that marketing that you're talking about, all that lead generation, you spending money on ads. You don't want that to be going to a website where you're losing money because people are turned off by something on your website or they didn't get the message that needs to be there to get them to buy.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today I have a different guest on board. I'm going to say why, but we're going to be talking about websites. Websites, optimization of websites, conversions and the importance of it. So just a quick introduction, Justin Meadows from TunedWp.

JUSTIN: Thank you for having me on the podcast.

GEORGE: Awesome, you're welcome. Just before we get into what we're going to talk about today. Just a bit of content, depending on how long you've followed my podcast or martialartsmedia.com. You know that a big component of what we've always provided for the industry is websites. Websites, and how to convert your websites. Justin and I have actually been in the same coaching group for only like a good last five, six.

JUSTIN: Yes, at least.

GEORGE: I'll give a good mention to James Schramko who is from superfastbusiness.com, which is a coaching community we've been a part of. And the reason I mentioned that is because we come from the same understanding of websites – the value of owning your own assets and owning your own online properties. The component when I started providing websites for the martial arts space was, at that part in time I couldn't find somebody to do it properly. We were running Google ads and our main focus was lead generation.

The hard part was really getting the mix right of wanting web developers that understand the importance of conversions and the sales copy side and really what goes into actually making a website work – understanding the technicalities of it and throwing a website up that actually works. That got me into the business and started providing websites for the industry.

I reached the point in providing that, but I just thought that it was not a business that I was going to scale moving forward. It took me from the focus of just lead generation and lead generation to doing the websites and juggling. I had an old sales boss that always used to say to me, you can't steer two light bulbs at different sides of the room at the same time.

That your focus is going to go out. It's brought me to a point where I've stopped providing websites but I didn't just want to stop providing websites because the things that we're going to talk about here today I find simply important and it's a big missing component for the most part in the martial arts industry. And I want to make sure that if I'm not going to be providing websites anymore for the industry that I can refer anyone to someone that I trust as a provider.

Somebody that knows exactly what goes into building websites the right way. There are only a handful of people that really understand doing it the right way. What goes into the conversions and so forth. And that person is Justin and his team, again welcome to the call.

JUSTIN: Cheers.

GEORGE: A bit of a background, just if you can give us a quick summary of who is Justin Meadows.

Martial Arts Websites

JUSTIN: Sure, yeah. So I started building the business that I've got now about 10 years ago. I live in a small country town in Victoria, near a ski resort. It's a lovely village up here. I talk to a lot of business clients and that sort of thing. So I built my business in a certain way.

I've built it online and I started out building it in a wholesale set up so that we would provide services to marketing agencies. So we were the backend website development team for design agencies and that sort of thing. And that's how I've grown and now I've got up to a point now where we've released a new brand and we now work directly with business owners.

And I've got quite a large team behind me. We've run a 24/7 support desk and that sort of thing so we've grown over the 10 years to quite a decent-sized business. Over that time we've really had quite a broad range of experiences working with a lot of different business owners, lots of different industries, and working with a lot of different marketing agencies and that sort of thing.

So we really do have quite a broad range of experience in building websites. And so I've really seen what works and what doesn't work. We've done a lot of testing with different types of websites, sort of options and things that people can have on their end.

Yeah, we've really refined out processes. We've distilled down eight key areas that you really need to get right on a website in order to get a good performing website that produces results for your business and helps you grow and that sort of thing. 

The key thing is that with all that marketing that you're talking about, all that lead generation, you're spending money on ads, you don't want that to be going to a website where you're losing money because people are turned off by something on your website. Or they didn't get the message that needs to be there to get them to buy. And so that's really been the core of my services because we've focused just on doing that development side of things.

Actually, when I very first started, we did a lot of SEO consulting and helping people with their SEO but then we needed to make sure the website was structured correctly and set up right so that when they did the SEO work, they were getting results on the actual website itself. So that's been the focus of our website, of our services.

GEORGE: Cool, most of the martial art industry I know, when somebody provides services that are not particularly practising in martial arts with the service, the question always comes up. So how can you help the industry if you're not actually part of the industry? What would you answer to that?

JUSTIN: Yeah, so that's a good one. But the main thing is that we have a very general understanding of what works across the range of different industries. So we know if the different types of businesses, different things are going to work, if you're a locally-based business then something is more important that are very different to if you're a software business or if you're serving information to an international audience or something like that.

So we really know what works for different types of industries and the main thing is that we're also going to work in tandem with you providing the guidance and instructions on what's the best practice for a martial arts business and that sort of thing. But our focus and our focus and our specialty is on the performance of a WordPress website. We don't work with other platforms anymore. We focus on WordPress and providing support and optimizing WordPress to be the best that it can be, to make sure that you're getting results out of your spend.

That's really what we are specialists in and I see my understanding that's exactly why you come and have a chat to me and saying if we could work together because martial arts is your area of expertise but there really is a lot. The more you dig into what works in WordPress and how you improve the performance and speeding up your website, there are rabbit holes that go on forever. You can't have it all basis so our specialty is just in the performance of the WordPress websites and yeah we know how to customize that to suit a martial arts business.

GEORGE: Perfect. I know that was a question just to throw the curveball at Justin but behind the scenes for the last three months or so we had been working one on one on just our clients. We've moved over some support over to Justin and making sure that the core essentials of what's important for martial school owners are taken care of.

That's always from the work that we've done and through our web, well I guess through our learning pages that we still provide in our Partners program. We process close to, the last count was 4,535 paid trials in the system so that's paid trials, not leads.

So with that we've done a lot of assessment of what works, how to shape web pages that it converts. And then obviously the ongoing maintenance its always been really basic. There's always just been change of authors, change of timetables, and different things and so forth. But I want to jump on to you talking about the eight factors, was that correct?

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. We've coded our performance blueprint and its eight key areas of your website that you need to get right to make that performance really come through. And so the first one is making sure that you can be easily found. So that is looking at your SEO, how your website appears when it's shared in social media and making sure that Google understands that your website is a valuable resource for people that are searching for martial arts in your area.

So that's one of the key things, so firstly just that you're found. You're not making most technical mistakes that are very common. I see them a lot on some websites and yeah, that can really hold back your results so that even searching for your own name you might struggle to come up in Google.

What we want especially for martial arts businesses is that your relevant to the suburb that your dojo is in or that your centre is in, wherever you're physically located. You want to make sure that Google is well aware that you are relevant to those surrounding suburbs and where those people are coming to you so that when they search, you're the first one that comes up.

GEORGE: Can you give us an example of how do you spot the mistake and how somebody would go about optimizing?

JUSTIN: With the mistakes, there's a podcast episode in itself. There are a lot of different things that you could be doing wrong, there is a lot to cover. I can't say there is one easy way to do that but there are a lot of ways that you can get your website assessed of the SEO value. Google will give you a rough guide if you go to web dot dev, they give you a very broad overview.

However, it's more on the technical side of things. It doesn't give you guidance as to what your website is optimized for. So it'll just pick up if perhaps you're not using SSL, you're not secure or you're making some other mistakes like not using page title or stuff like that.

So yeah, there is a lot to cover there and it does get quite technical. In terms of what does work for a local business, having pages specifically for the location. So the talking not just about the types of martial art that you provide but also a bit about the suburbs and the area that you're in so that then Google knows that you're relevant to that.

Couple that with optimizing local business listing through my business page and things like that reference your address and make sure that your name, address and phone number are exactly the same all over the internet and connecting you to social media. Doing that is definitely the most important thing for a local business.

GEORGE: Perfect, I'll ask a question on top of that. We were just in our Partners program we run a session called the Local SEO Advantage and the big focus was Google My Business. And it was interesting, one of our members pulled up his stats of more 7000 views of an actual page.

But we were talking about page titles when it comes to location and you've been talking about different locations so you have several martial art locations at a different address. How important is that in the title section of that page. Is that what you really trying to optimize for with different pages, there are different locations etc.?

JUSTIN:  Yeah. If you have several locations, you should have a page for each location. It doesn't necessarily need to have the address especially if that's a bit longer. You want to make sure that you're talking about the types of martial arts words that people will be searching for.

And so, especially when you get a bit into the less common martial art styles and that sort of thing. You might want to make it a bit more general, that page title so that it is the thing that people are going to be searching for, you don't want to get too specific. But you want to make sure that you have at least the suburb name in that page title I would say for each location.

GEORGE: Yeah, perfect. And for any followers listening, I mean the easiest way to do that is just go type martial arts in your area. And then a good trick with Google is always just to scroll to the bottom and you'll see Google bringing up all its related searches. And that will give you a good starting point. But at least jump back on key point number two.

JUSTIN: Yeah, yeah. So number two is loading fast. So after people have found you, you want to make sure that your website appears quickly, and this does actually work back into the ranking factor. Making sure that your website loads fast is becoming more and more important to Google but also to users.

People expect your website to load fast if it is loading slow then people get impatient and they'll hit back especially on mobile devices and that sort of thing. People expect things faster and faster these days.

Yeah you want to make sure that it loads fast. If you have a fast loading website, Google will prefer you over other websites in your search results. It will also decrease the cost that you're spending on Google ads so in your Google ads, Google gives you a quality score. And if your website loads fast, you get a higher quality score and that means that you need to pay less per click for that ad so that it's well worth optimizing your website for speed.

If you find that and I imagine the martial arts you would have a fairly high. I would expect roughly about 60% of your traffic to your website would be from mobile devices. In that case, you want to make sure that your website loads really fast on mobile and a good thing that's very recent. It's only really become prominent this year, is I am paying. It's a mobile version of your website, which is designed specifically to load super-fast.

It’s hosted in Google's caching system. So Google will make sure that it loads fast. Google will give you a higher score again for your only score, and SEO, and your mobile speed score, which is connected to all that. Yeah, so it's a very limited code structure and the means creating it, essentially a copy of your homepage just for mobile but it is worth doing if you have a lot of mobile traffic because it serves at a very fast and gives a good mobile experience.

GEORGE: All right, excellent. Cool, the third factor.

JUSTIN: Number three. Number three is being mobile-friendly. So apart from just loading fast on mobile, you want to make sure that it is easy to use. You quite often the navigation menu might be a bit hard to navigate on mobile, you want to make sure that everything rearranges into a nice easy to read format, you can scroll through it and see everything nicely. Again this feeds into Google's quality score for ads and SEO. They want to serve up ads that are mobile-friendly, easy to use.

For example on your timetable, it should be easy to click through your timetable and see what sessions you have that sort of thing. It's because sometimes table formats can be really ugly when they're squished down in mobile hard to read, so you want to make sure that converts really well on mobile. And your form to get started, you should be able to click through that with your finger.

So there are a few considerations that can make a big difference to how many people are going to sign up, if they're viewing your site from mobile. If it’s too hard to use and they get frustrated they'll give up.

Although they might not even do it intentionally, they might just go, “too hard” and put it down for a second and then they forget about it. So you want to make it as easy as possible, definitely.

GEORGE: 100%. Even if you're not doing Google ads, or SEO, which if you miss the term SEO search engine optimization, which is a free side of Google so you're not paying for ads but just appearing in the organic results. Even if you're running Facebook ads and I don't actually have this as a verified thing but I remember this coming up with Facebook was also doing something with a quality score. Which is a big reason why Facebook really prefers to keep you on Facebook and with all their tools.

But if you are sending people from Facebook, it's also about user experience because they can track how quickly you click and how quickly you get back. And that also qualifies as a bounce rate right, because you're clicking and it's not loading and you're out there. That signals to Facebook that either your content is not relevant or your site is slow, which is more than likely what happens.

JUSTIN: Right, then now the people using Facebook, if they're they're clicking on ads, and they go to pages that don't load, then that's a bad user experience for the Facebook user and they don't want to be doing that so they penalize you by making that ad click more expensive.

GEORGE: Yeah, if I may. Cool, where are we at? Number?

JUSTIN: Five. No, four.

GEORGE: Four, better write that down.

JUSTIN: Four is the first impression. So you've clicked, you've loaded and on top of my bar, you want to make sure that you convey a message very quickly that says who you are and what you have to provide and who that is for. Sometimes, I see a lot of websites that are very airy-fairy and they look pretty in that but you're like, what do these guys actually do.

It's not clear, the thorough process for people going to a website, goes like this. “Who are these guys?” “Is this right for me?” “And then how do I get started?” And you want to make sure that you're messaging and your design on your website clearly answers those three questions very quickly.

You want to show what is that you provide. What type of person that is for, and then how they get started in a very quick impression. Once again people on websites do have a shorter attention span, they'll get frustrated easily if it's not clear and so making it easy and spelling it out and making sure it's very clear and simple just lifts your conversion rate. So you will get more sales if you're doing that right.

GEORGE: What could be your preference, I see and am not a fan of it but I shouldn't say my opinion before I actually ask the question. But Let's say what would be the preference, would it be let's say if you looked at the desktop and there's just one of the videos that play in the background or like there is video. Or a structured headline with a call to action.

JUSTIN: Yeah, I think videos can be distracting. They'll also slow down your load speed, so that's another reason why having a background video isn't a great idea. It does look nice but functionally it doesn't actually help you get the sale. And same thing with sliders, it's very common on websites to have imagine sliders.

But it's been a thing for a while but in the website development space we've known that it’s a bad idea for a long time. Because once again you're slowing down the loading, it takes more time to load up all these big images, the slide across and the animation script and that sort of thing.

So it's a lot better to just have one very good image that conveys the message of who you are and what you provide and the benefits that people can get, so happy people that are looking fit and training and that sort of thing. That's the impression you want to get.

So you want to have a really good image of that and then a clear text message that's static, that gets that message across in button to get started, that sort of thing. That's really the best practice, having those image sliders, apart from slowing things down they also are a bit of a distraction and it's common to have several different messages on them but in reality, most people like probably 8% of people are only going to see the first message.

They'll look at that and they'll scroll down. They're not going to see the other things you've got in there. So it can dilute your message, so you really want to decide on what is your core message and make that stand out front and centre.

GEORGE: All right, perfect. Sounds good, number five.

Martial Arts Websites

JUSTIN: Yeah. So now we are onto building trust. And this is a very important thing on the internet, selling things from websites is that trust barrier. Everyone has an initial apprehension when they're handing over money on a website. So you really want to reassure people who are visiting your website that you are legit.

That there are people who have got results from before, you've built some social proof and they are really good ways to do that are with testimonials. They work really effectively. Having some good testimonials with a photo of the person who made the testimonial adds more legitimacy to it and a good way to do that is, it might be a bit tricky and sometimes in the martial arts especially.

If someone does give you a testimonial, have a look if they've got a Linkedin profile or a public Facebook photo that you can just copy that photo and send it to them and say is it okay if I use this photo rather than asking them to go and take a photo of themselves that they're happy with because that might take weeks or never happen. You want to make it easy for them to provide a photo so you go and see if they have a public photo on the internet that you can use.

A video is fantastic, if someone has really loved the results they've got from your coaching and your training then get your phone out and just 30 seconds video of them saying I started out and I was like this and then through this training, I've now got this result.

A sure click like that can speak volumes and it really does build trust and build rapport with the new visitors to your website. The other things that build trust, logos of associations and that thing that you're part of. If you're a part of any maybe school-related programs or health programs or those things, having logos of that on your website just builds that legitimacy and publishing helpful content.

Publishing videos that help educate people or articles that sort of things. Trying to be as helpful as possible with the content that you're providing on your website helps to reassure people and let them get a feel for who you are and your style and they then know that you're a helpful person. You're not just trying to take their money and give them a bad experience. Those sorts of things help to build trust with website business.

GEORGE: Yeah, totally. It's always been a big focus of mine. I know it's the hardest thing for martial arts school owners to do but there is so much focus on Facebook and getting content out. And this is probably a topic for a whole another episode but the content that you typically put on Facebook is for the most part gone in 24 to 48 hours unless you have a strategy. Like we structured in our Video Ad Authority Builder, we make sure that you create a video that you can actually put some money behind and leverage and build authority online.

But a good thing to really think about and we won't go too much into detail but now is we are creating content. How can you put that on your website and really dig into the keyword research and understanding, what are the questions that people ask because I know for most martial art schools owners their biggest problem is not the conversion. Once people walk through the doors, its cool.

It's how do we get the walking through the doors and think about that as in content. What can actually put in your website that's going to educate people to create the trust as Justin referring to that's going to give them the confidence to take the first step or even just put their hand up or get that inquiry button and get in touch.

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. FAQs are great for that. Answering those questions, because especially for people who've not tried or been a part of any martial arts training in the past, they really don't know what to expect so if you can just map it out clearly how it's going to go, or what the process is going to be when they sign up and they come in and answering any questions that commonly come up when people do sign up. Making those very clear start on your website really does help with getting people to take the first step, yeah.

GEORGE: All right, awesome. So we're at number six?

JUSTIN: Six, yeah. Generating style. So this is where the rubber hits the road. So turning that interested person who's looking at your website into a paying customer. And I know that you've got a really good process there with the trials, having a paid trial, yeah.

GEORGE: Yeah, I guess there are two things. Well I mean this is more than we optimized for but if you look at the sale on the website, for the most part is going to be selling a paid trial – that's the top lead we go for. And the next sale is how do we get somebody to actually inquire and then of course picking up the phone, which is the alternative. Don't know in the big optimization if we're taking sales, sending an email and somebody getting in touch is not a big sale, that's an inquiry. So those are the two things in context that we got going.

JUSTIN: Yeah, and I think that is a good process for martial arts business and making sure that opportunity to opt-in for an inquiry and just say, yes I'm interested. How do I get started, that sort of thing. Making that as easy as possible is very important so having that on top of the home page where they can just fill in the form and get in touch with you.

It is also important that you don't have too many things that are distracting from these primary goals. You want those call to action that try to join the page trial or to inquire about a booking or about classes or whatever that is. Having those things really standing out from everything else on your website, using contrasting buttons and very strong wording like get started now or that sort of thing is very important.

And then as well as having that in your design, having those call to action very easy to use and standing out very clearly. You then also want to make sure that you're tracking who's using your website so having the Google analytics in place you can add Google ads, re-tagging and Facebook pixels so that if people are coming to your website, you have the opportunity to remind them about you.

If they don't become a paying customer, you can show ads to them in Facebook but it's a lot more valuable to show them to people who've already visited your website than to show them to other people who've never heard of you before. It's a lot easier to get people who already know about you to come back and check you out again.

As well as doing that you want to as much as possible when they are filling out that email thing, you want to be building an email database with people who have inquired and separating out whose paid and then you can target some very good email messaging to the people who have inquired but not paid or signed up. And yeah, really help to form a relationship with them, provide more value, and then turn them into a paying customer.

GEORGE: Yeah and so Justin, we're talking about a lot of things about all the website and optimization and things. And I guess it's important to mention, for a lot of people and this has been said to me so often, it's just a website. The value of a website, just like well, I mean so and so could do it for me for 500 bucks, so and so could do it for me for 1000 bucks. Well the reality is and I've done this mess at so many presentations, if you're a lifetime student value is an average. I think the last call I had was $2200 a year. That's $2200 per student.

If your conversion is 2%, which means two out of every 10 people inquire. Let's say two out of every 10 people that come to you, well that's actually a big. Sorry its two of 100. Two out of 100 people come to your website and actually sign up, that's $4400 in that case, if you're a lifetime student value was $4400. Well if your website sucks, which most people do and it's slow, it doesn't build trust, it's not loading properly and people don't know how to contact you.

They don't know how to do this; your conversion rate is going to be awful. Now what if you paid more website but the experience of building this not just in martial arts but in thousands of other industries, and you use this collective knowledge and you're able to buy a website for triple the price. And I’m not saying that's irrelevant but I just want to make sure in context that the value is accurate.

That now you're going to website that converts at 4% and that sounds ridiculous right? Its small, 2% to 4%. Well that's double your value, which means now every 100 people that goes to your website is worth $8800 and not $4400.

In your first 100 visits, you've got money back in your pocket and then some. So it's so important to look at this as your virtual salesman and your asset because that's the first experience. I can tell you how many Facebook ad campaigns we've run and remember the Facebook ad campaigns?

And all of a sudden we just the conversion cost drop on Google, all the time. Which is saying to me that your first interaction is, Facebook I saw the ad, people on their mobile phones in three minutes, which means I saw the ad and I was like, Oh yeah saw some George's martial arts, cool. Could happen to work, what was it George's martial arts, go onto Google, find you and make the purchase.

It's important to look at the whole thing of context and the value of knowing all this stuff. And this doesn't happen just from the school kid, all is factored in that are signing out and are able to drag and drop the website together for you. You're not going to get that value.

You get that value from seeing people's accounts, Google analytics, knowing the stats and knowing hang on this is actually what drives sales. And a bit of rank but I just want to make sure that distinction because it comes up so much in conversations well I could just buy this 500 bucks.

Well you're robbing yourself off five grand, fifty grand down the line very, very quickly.

JUSTIN: Exactly, yeah. And this actually leads very smoothly into my next to the number seven argument, which is building assets. So it's important to look at your website not as an expense but as an asset for your business, and if further down the line, eventually you're going to get to a point where you're going to pass on your school to someone else. You might sell that or whatever happens.

The website that you're building and the assets that you build with your website are saleable assets. So it's not just something that you're spending money on and it's a cost that goes away. You're actually building something, which increases in value. When you sell that website, that's as important as the other parts of your business, your customer database and that sort of thing that you're selling.

So it is an important consideration. You need to look at it from that point of view and it is something that is bringing more money to you. Like you're saying, you can save a lot of money on your ads and by having a website set up really well, that you get a great return on investment.

So the other thing is that your website should be doing is building assets. Apart from the website itself, so on the website itself, it's right to be publishing that helpful content which overtime helps with your good rankings and this in itself an asset that just attracts new students to you. But then also having that email database that you're building from that lead form and having those remarketing tags.

So you have audiences on Facebook and on Google. If you're having a quieter period you can go out and spend more ads on marketing to those people or emailing to those people. That is a very valuable asset for you to have and to build up. And it takes time, it’s a long-term play. It's not something that gets you a short term result necessarily but, yeah. It is definitely worth investing in the long-term of your business.

GEORGE: Yes, I'm going to probably open a can of worms here. When you referred to that, you got the physical asset; you got your domain name. I mean your domain name you always own but then the actual website, what we refer to as content assets, every time you create content that's valuable to somebody taking the first step as we spoke about earlier.

Then if that is done right, something that we cover in our Academy and Partners program. Like how do you create content that you can actually leverage. It's evergreen and it's an asset because it brings in people find that article or video online and then they access your website through that.

Now the can of worms is, and I'm saying this because out of the best intent and it’s not a dig at anyone in the industry as such. I know there are really good providers in our industry that provide martial arts websites under the SAS software model. So I've got all praise for these companies, I know I can see why they do it, it's great, it's easy you pay them a couple of 100 bucks a month.

They take care of your website and you've got this martial arts website in it and it brings you leads and that's awesome. It is awesome until it's not awesome. And when it's not awesome, is when you realize that it's not an asset.

And if you realize that you're paying five grand a year, give or take, maybe more on something that you don't own. And if you stop paying, that means that all those assets that you've built up on this infrastructure are now gone and that is a really, really distinction. As I mentioned I see the value in doing that as a business and I know it's super easy for martial art school owners to have that but if I had to have a true gut check within myself and say, would I do that for my business? Never ever in my life would I do that because I know the value of the asset. And that's the only reason why I've never gone down their track and just don't provide that as a service.

JUSTIN: Absolutely.

GEORGE: And sorry to cut you off but it’s probably if you look at everything online, it's the one asset you've got because Facebook, Instagram, they can all be gone in a heartbeat.

JUSTIN: Yeah, absolutely. The social media platforms come and go and also they change their rules so you might have some really good ad campaigns going on Facebook and then all of a sudden they will change their rules and your ads stop working or they don't do those ads like that anymore and they're banned and you've got to work out something else. And all of a sudden if you're relying on that as the only way you get students, then you're stuck. So it is important to have an asset that you do own and control.

Absolutely, and then you use these other methods of finding leads and bring them into your asset, where you have control and then you can build that email database of those users and talk to them directly. And yeah, having full ownership and control over your website is one of the most important philosophies in the way that I've structured my business as well. That's why we focus on WordPress because WordPress is the most popular website platform out there on the internet. It is very easy. If you're not happy with our service like we build your website and that sort of thing.

It's very easy for you to then take that and move to a different provider and you're not locked in with us. You still own your own website. You can hire someone else to look after it but you still own it. It's still your website, and I think that's very important for all business owners to make sure that you do have that and then you can sell that website and you can hand it over to the new owners and they will take it and it will provide value to them because it's already getting people coming to it and new students being produced from it.

GEORGE: Awesome, yeah. Totally. Number eight I think.

JUSTIN: Number eight, yeah. This one is not so much about attracting new students but staying secure is very important for your website and for your online presence. It can be a bit of a brand disaster and can cause you a lot of strife if you do get into trouble by being unsecured. So if your websites' not secure, and you get hacked and there is malicious malware going out to people who visit your website. There are all sorts of things, unlike people who no longer trust your business.

If they go to your website and says that it got the unsecured thing up in the top of the website browser and Google has a big warning on there saying, warning this website is unsafe, that sort of thing people aren't going to trust you. So that immediately kills that trust barrier sort of thing. You can often have some really unsavoury things. There's malware that gets into your website and then puts on these random messages from unsavoury groups on your website and that sort of stuff that gives a really bad impression to your customers and to your students.

And it makes you look like you're not a very well organized and professional operator. And the other thing is that it causes a lot of cost and expense for years so if you have something like that come in then you've got to spend money to get someone to clean up that software from your website. Clean up the malware and get that infection sorted. And it usually also involves a lot of stress, and you spending a day just trying to fix this problem that's happened and so you've got to also think about the cost of that as well.

So it is very important to look after the security of your website for these reasons, and the other things are, apart from them, if your website is unsecured or does have malicious malware on there, Google will stop running ads to you. It can hold your SEO rankings, and it can have a lot of flaws and effect that will damage your profitability. So with WordPress, once again because it is the most popular platform, it is a target to this malware that will be built to access WordPress because then they can access heaps of websites.

So it's important to keep your website software up to date and that just means that when this malware finds a loophole that they can get into the WordPress software, very quickly the WordPress developers will create an update to the software that blocks that and patches up that loophole. So it's important to make sure that those patches, those software updates are installed on your website.

Sometimes installing those software updates can cause issues with the way that your design works or that sort of thing if it's not structured correctly. So it's important to get a developer to do that. To make sure that if it does cause any design issues they can roll back to back up they've just taken and fix the problem and that sort of thing.

So yeah. It is worth getting someone to look after your website who knows what they're doing and that way you don't have to worry about yourself and you don't have to go through all that stress and the ordeal of having your website hacked. The other things are things like just having that SSL, so HTTPs in your address means that your website data is encrypted. That means it's safe. Google likes that and it shows that your website is secure and the website browser and that sort of thing.

Yeah, and making sure that you have regular backups is also very important. So that if something does happen, worst-case scenario may be the hosting dies and you can't get back on to your website or something like that. You have a backup that you can then restore on some other hosting providers’ website or like their service. So for controlling assets that's important as well.

GEORGE: Perfect so Justin, first thank you for jumping on. I mean if somebody needs with that, somebody needs help with their website, let's say they've got an existing website. Maybe it's one WordPress base hopefully and they need help with all these support stuff, the security, speeding things up, making sure it's secure, all that stuff and then the other component obviously is if somebody wants a new website, a new website that can provide all this. A website that you would own as its upright it would be yours, how can people reach out to you? How can people get in touch?

JUSTIN: For sure. So, my website TunedWp, that's Tuned with a d Wp dot com. And the best way to get in touch is via support at TunedWp dot com. We've got a 24-hour support desk and we'll get back to you within one hour so we have very rapid response time.

So if anything is urgent, just shoot through an email to us and we can do that. We have a number of different levels of service that we can provide so we can just provide that hosting and security element or we can also provide another service where we will optimize the performance of your existing website and do ongoing changes for you.

So you never have to log in to the website yourself as a business owner, it's really not what you should be doing. You should be focusing on your students and growing your business and leaving all the website technical stuff to experts like us. So we provide that service for you and we can also rebuild a new website if you want a new design or if you don't have a website that's set up correctly, we can certainly build that for you. So yeah, feel free to get in touch with the support at TunedWp dot com.

GEORGE: Awesome. And thanks really for jumping in and you've taken great care of all our existing website customers and we're definitely recommending people to you. We've known each other for many years being in the same community and a lot of the things we spoke about today really come from that understanding of really, really knowing how this online world works and worked before Facebook came along.

How do build the online assets, how to structure business that you are safe against things that fluctuate within the business, whether that's in Google or Facebook. That you've got some leverage and ways to get sign up students from multiple avenues and the biggest component of that is having a simpler, secure, awesome website that is the face of your brand. Thanks for that Justin.

JUSTIN: No worries at all. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

GEORGE: Cool. Awesome. Thanks for listening. If you want to connect with other top and smart martial arts school owners, and have a chat about marketing, lead generation, what's working now, or just have a gentle rant about things that are happening in the industry, then I want to invite you to join our Facebook group.

It's a private Facebook group and in there, I share a lot of extra videos and downloads and worksheets – the things that are working for us when we help school owners grow and share a couple of video interviews and a bunch of cool extra resources.

So it's called the Martial Arts Media Business Community and an easy way to access it is, if you just go to the domain named martialartsmedia.group, so martialaartsmedia.group, g-r-o-u-p, there's no .Com or anything, martialartsmedia.group. That will take you straight there. Request to join and I will accept your invitation.

Thanks – I'll speak to you on the next episode – cheers!


Here are 3 ways we can help scale your school right now.

1. Join the Martial Arts Media community.

It's our new Facebook community where martial arts school owners get to ask questions about online marketing and get access to training videos that we don't share elsewhere – Click Here.

2. Join the Martial Arts Media Academy and become a Case Study.

I'm working closely with a group of martial arts school owners this month. If you'd like to work with me to help you grow your martial arts school, message me with the word ‘Case Study'.

3. Work with me and my team privately.

If you would like to work with me and my team to scale your school to the next level, then message me with the word ‘private'… tell me a little about your business and what you would like to work on together and I'll get you all the details.

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67 – And Still… The No.1 Martial Arts Marketing Mistake

How to avoid the biggest marketing mistake that martial arts school owners make when advertising online.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Matching your message for the right platform.
  • If this one thing doesn’t work, your ads won’t work.
  • The ‘kitchen sink’.
  • The real reason why you need to simplify your sales funnel.
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

The first thing that you really, really need to get down to is, how do you structure the offer, how do you get an offer to convert? Because if the offer converts, everything else is going to work.

Hey, this is George. And I quickly want to talk about how to avoid the one biggest marketing mistake that comes up quite often when I speak to martial arts school owners.

So just a bit of context: I'm in New Zealand right now, just on a bit of a family vacation. And we've got this awesome view and the weather’s been up and down, but today it's just such a perfect day on the lake here in Hamilton, so I just wanted to get that on video.

So here's what happens, right? So we've got a program in the Martial Arts Media Academy, where we help school owners with all areas of marketing. When it comes to emailing, Facebook, Google, etc. And where the problem came, was trying to mix too many of the same strategies.

So, here's what happened: one of our members had been trying to get their Facebook ad to really work. And we've got an email structure that sends out… basically, we structure emails that go out to your prospects. They're structured over about two weeks and it basically helps build a relationship with your prospects while you're not there.

And so when doing email, you follow certain…there's certain things you can do, right? There's a certain way you can speak, there's a certain way that you can format your message. And the first message that goes out, we call it ““the kitchen sink,”” because it's everything in the kitchen sink, right? It's telling the prospect everything they need to know about you.

And so where the confusion came in, was trying to actually use this strategy, because our member got such good results with this one email, he decided it would be a good idea to put that on a Facebook ad. But the problem was that the email, it sends people to… it's in a whole different position, right?

The person is already a lead, they're already a prospect, the relationship has already started, and now they get this email that sends them to YouTube, that sends them to everything that they can learn and know about them and then martial arts school, right?

So when you use this on a Facebook ad, of course, that's kind of suicidal, because you're sending people to all these different locations. And by sending them to all these different locations, you’ve got no way to ever know if it works, or not. And my exact answer was, let’s say this ad works – awesome. You get a good result. That would be great, but let’s say you run it again and it doesn't work?

Then there's no way for you to know why, because there were just too many variables, right? People went to YouTube, people went here, people went here, people went here… so that creates a lot of confusion and……not a confusion so much, but there's no way for you to actually scale and improve that type of ad.

So here's what the biggest mistake is: the biggest mistake is trying to do too many things too soon and sending people to too many directions too soon. So when you create an ad and-  it's a very common thing, but just have people do the one, simplest thing that's going to start the conversation with them. How can you make it easy for them to raise their hand and do something?

And sometimes that's just a comment, sometimes that's sending a message. Because here's the thing, right: if you’’ve never run a Facebook ad and you’’ve never gotten anybody to respond, so you never got a conversion on your Facebook ad, then nothing else is going to work, right?

So the first thing that you really, really need to get down to is, how do you structure the offer, how do you get an offer to convert? Because if the offer converts, everything else is going to work. So if the person is going to respond to your offer, then you can start looking at, OK: how do I make this landing page better? How do I make this message better? But on the frontend, you’’ve got to get the offer to convert.

I hope that helps. If it helps in some way, then leave me a comment below, or yeah – I’ll see you in the next video. Cheers!

 

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

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66 – The Hard Way Vs The Easy(re) Way

Every martial arts business has its challenges. If there was one ‘shortcut' to success, this would be it.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The real ‘shortcut’ to martial arts business success
  • The easy and hard ways of marketing your martial arts school
  • Why you should invest in these marketing strategies
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

If you're struggling with something and need help, then why don't you just get help from someone who has done it before, made all the mistakes and shortcut all that learning? All the mistakes that they made, you can bypass that and get the result faster.

Hey, George here. Just walking back from a trip, we were just at Mount Ruapehu, if I've said that right. You can probably see it, it's sort of in the background there. Yeah, the snowy mountains, pretty awesome scenery here in New Zealand. Pretty cold, when you're used to the hot weather in Perth.

I was reminded today, there's the easy way to do things and a hard way. So today was the first day I took up snowboarding and because I’ve surfed before, I always thought, oh, this is going to be so easy. So I thought, you know what, why not give it a shot? Why not I go and try snowboarding, without lessons and just go do it, right? And the outcome was pretty… interesting.

So, yeah, I ate a lot of snow, falling down and, yeah, it was an interesting affair. And it reminded me that there's always the easy way to do things or the hard way. Just like before I started helping martial arts school owners with digital marketing stuff. I took the hard way, I tried to learn everything myself, without any help.

So just going by mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake, spending a lot of money, wasting a lot of money and it's just a long process, which can be really frustrating, right?

If you're trying to learn something and you don’t have any help, then you try everything, you do everything. It doesn't make sense and you think you’re going to save money by not spending money on a  course or trying to get advice or coaching. So you go the long road, the long route.

And you try and fumble through things by yourself. And it can be really frustrating and it can take a long time and I guess that’s why a lot of people also stop doing what it is they were trying to achieve because it's just too hard.

So, yeah, when you go that route, it's always, it just takes a lot longer and it's a lot more frustrating. And I guess that’s just with everything, right? Like, with your marketing, marketing your business with your martial arts, you can try to fumble through things, try and take shortcuts, or just get help.

Get help from someone who’s done it before, who’s tried things, who has invested in some knowledge and gotten good results, obviously. You can’t just follow someone that invested in good marketing, or good coaching or something, because if they didn't get results yet themselves, then how can they teach you to get a result?

So I guess I just thought I’d shoot this video, the real message I want to get across is: if you're struggling with something and need help, then why don't you just get help from someone who has done it before, made all the mistakes and shortcut all that learning. All the mistakes that they made, you can bypass that and get the result faster.

Hope that helps in some way. I’m going to go into that spot over there, which is nice and warm and get myself a nice drink. Cheers!

 

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65 – How To Stop Bullying In Schools With Martial Arts – Terrence Fernandez

The fight against bullying is an ongoing topic in the martial arts community. Terrence Fernandez shares how martial arts helped him go from a bullying victim to Commonwealth Championships and successfully running 6 martial arts schools.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How martial arts can help kids deal with bullying.
  • The anti-bullying efforts in martial arts schools.
  • The psychological and societal effects of bullying.
  • Martial arts vs. team sports.
  • The skills that martial arts teach you.
  • And more.

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

I've been pushed around and grabbed before, but I never did anything. This was the first time I stopped and fought back. So it got to the point where I was in front of the canteen and I got put against the wall and exchanges happened and I don't know any boxing, so pretty much got bashed a bit first. And then I responded with a roundhouse kick to the head. And after that, the fight stopped. The person I was fighting, after the roundhouse kick to the head, stopped. And it was just a big shock, it was a shock to everyone around me, but more importantly, it was a shock to me. It was a shock to me that I finally overcame that choking feeling.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. So I have a guest with me today, Terrence Fernandez and I was at The Main Event in Sydney, just a couple of weeks back and we sparked this conversation about the topic of bullying. And something I really wanted to speak to Terrence about, something he’s really passionate about, something he went through as a child, but then there's also things that I don't want to neglect, as a Martial Arts Media business podcast, that he's got six locations, just opened his first location internationally and opening another three next year.

So there's lots of value to this share on the business side, but we’re probably going to start more and talk about the bullying aspect, a topic that's always hot within the martial arts community. And, yeah, as always, we’re going to see where this conversation goes. So welcome to the show, Terrence.

TERRENCE: Yeah, thank you, thank you for having me.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. So as always, let's just start from the beginning; a bit of background from you, who is Terrence?

TERRENCE: Yeah, I'm from Sydney Australia, and the sport that I do is Taekwondo. And my club is called Martial Arts Spirit, but basically, I was your average martial arts student, I was just trying to find a place to belong. And you know I tried that through group sports, like soccer and basketball and things like that, before I got enrolled into Taekwondo. And I didn’t quite find it in group sports I think, with group sports, there's a bit of pressure involved, and you're expected to perform, to achieve the goal of the team, whether it’s winning a match, or whatnot, winning the season.

And because I already lacked in confidence and I wasn’t really good at any skills or coordination, being put into that team environment, I felt like I was letting the team down. And through that, I experienced some bullying in the team as well. Remember, I was playing for a soccer team, and I didn't know anything about soccer. Don't know the rules, my family doesn't’ know anything about soccer, soccer was just running around a field, kicking a ball. And you know, I think I was probably about 7 or 8 and I still remember the Saturday game, when I was constantly offside and not knowing the rules.

The team were getting really angry with me, and their parents, the parents on the sidelines, were getting really frustrated with me, because I didn't’ know what I was doing and I started getting names. I was the only Asian person on the team. And it got to the point where I’d come to training and just really be outcasted and isolated and I used to get spat on by my own team. As a kid, it's quite a lot to deal with, especially when the first reason of trying to do a sport is to actually find a place to belong. So after that, I just got scarred from team sports and that's when my parents enrolled me into martial arts.

GEORGE: And how old were you when this was happening Terrence?

TERRENCE: About 6 years old, and I got enrolled into martial arts when I was about 7. Yeah, so I think something very, very important that everyone needs to be aware of is, bullying, it doesn’t really matter how small or how big the scale is, the end of it, you know, psychologically, can impact long term. So you know, there are quite a few things that I remember as a kid in primary school and in high school, that I think about constantly.

And even though I'm a completely different person, there are still memories and I still remember the feeling of what it felt like to be in those scenarios. And that's why we’re here today, because there are so many people, so many kids, and so many people in the workforce. Bullying is just a massive thing that isn't slowing down. And I think it’s really important that we get the message out there, as to how to deal with these situations.

GEORGE: For sure, it's kind of counterintuitive right? Because, when you think about it, a team sport is there to build that team camaraderie and unity and everything. But then obviously, there's going to be a point where not everybody is going to be at that unit. So where it’s super beneficial for people that are in the crowd and trying to do that, but I mean, what do you do when that's not your personality perhaps? Or that's not your skillset? So you tried, you might have kids, and especially in a school environment, you’ve got kids that are maybe super passionate about the sport and trying it and here you re, and you're trying to trick your way into this group. And you’ve got this thing, I want to be as cool as them, but then you just get shut out.

TERRENCE: And I think that's the beautiful thing about martial arts as a sport – not being biased at all. But with team sports, you automatically get put into that competition side of the sport, where you're preparing for a competition, the outcome of the competition is to have fun – yes, it is to have fun, but the end result of that competition is to win the game. The point of, say for example, soccer, is to score more goals than the other team. That's the goal and that's what you're trying to achieve as a team, right?

With martial arts, the beautiful thing about martial arts is, there are so many different avenues. For example, Taekwondo – you can come in as a white belt and… you’re… why I related so well to martial arts was, it’s an individual sport, so I can focus on my own pace, building up the skills needed to achieve the next level. I can go at my own pace and I'm not expected to be going as fast as everyone else. All right? You still get the support of a team, which is your club, you build up the social skills, you have support from your other belts at a beginner level, you do it together and the support of your instructor, and as we all know, a martial arts instructor is completely different to a volunteer coach in a sports team, you know?

Martial arts instructor goes well beyond their service of just teaching a kid how to punch or kick. They're a role model, they help them build up that confidence to get through life, you know? And that’s our role as instructors, not just teach martial arts, but to help shape them into a good leader in society. So with martial arts, with Taekwondo, you’ve got that option to just do the traditional side, where you can go at your own pace and focus on building yourself up. And then, if you are that competitive person, like you have in basketball or soccer, where they want to take that next step, all martial arts offer that.

They have their traditional side and they have their sports side, where you go into competitions, whether it’s pattern, or sparring, or XMA – you’ve got that whole side and there something for everyone. So for some kids that like to do sparring, they’ve got that sparring side. For kids that love to just concentrate and have that perfection type of mindset, they’ve got their forms. And for the kids that love to be fancy and really test their body to the limits, you’ve got that XMA. So that's the beautiful thing about martial arts: it covers everything. It covers that personal growth that they might just want to focus on. Or if they really want to challenge themselves, they can go as far as the Olympic Games.

So for me, how that related to me was, I didn't like the pressure from team sports and I just loved the traditional side of martial arts. But then, as I gained more confidence and I started to realize more about myself, learned more about what I sought from, like I actually have skills, I have something in me, some drive. I started pursuing the sport Taekwondo side and tried to represent my country in the commonwealth games. And just wanted to learn more about myself. And through that, through that journey of discovering myself and realizing the drive and motivation I actually have in me, that mindset, that strong mindset that martial arts taught me, then transmitted to business. So, you know, and that's a beautiful thing. The skills that martial arts teach you, the perseverance, the concentration – all of those are transferable into everyday life.

So, I'm not being biased to martial arts, but compared to other sports, martial arts is just awesome, especially for those kids who are really trying to find themselves and that might lack in confidence, because they don't feel like they're up to everyone else’s standard – martial arts is just beautiful for that.

GEORGE: So let's go back to, you were 6-7 years old. Being bullied, I guess we should ask: why do you think people are bullies?

TERRENCE: That's a very good question and something that I think the answer needs to be educated more to parents. So for me, we've been teaching martial arts a lot now and we've also got a program that is implemented in a lot of preschools around New South Wales and South Australia. It's a preschool program where we teach kids martial arts in preschool. The reason why we stared that was because I found that bullying starts as early as preschool. So we see it every day in preschools and the more preschools we started teaching and then talking to my kids that are in primary school and in high school and in the workforce, kind of see similar traits across all ages, as to the bully, why they bully, and the target, why they target it. So before we go on to the target, let’s talk about the bully, OK?

A bully, why do they bully? They bully because they feel that they need to have that superiority over someone that makes them feel safe, makes them feel that they can’t be touched, OK? So the bully, the reason why they bully is because of a lot of insecurities that they may have, which could have been caused through their own life journey. You find a lot of people that used to get bullied; they then become a bully if they're not guided in the right way, OK? For example, if a kid is abused at home and they've got all of this anger and frustration, they need an outlet and they feel that that outlet is to put others down so that they can feel better about themselves. So yeah, they have a lot of insecurities and they want to feel like they belong.

So how they do that is, they try to humiliate someone else to show everyone else that they're tough, that they're powerful. But really, deep down inside, they're actually just trying to belong and trying to make them still feel equal or better than everyone else. And unfortunately, for them to feel that, they need to find a target.

Now, when they look for a target, they look for someone who they know isn't going to challenge them, that they know they can psychologically defeat, to avoid anything physical, so they know that they can defeat them psychologically and they know they're not even going to challenge them physically and it’s someone that they know they can isolate. So someone that they know doesn't have a strong support network around them, so friends for example, who aren't going to stand up for that person. And when they find that target, that's when they pounce.

So you ask why do people get bullied? They get bullied because they get found as a target, they lack in confidence, they don't know how to voice their opinion, they don't have a support network around them, so a good, solemn friendship base, or a network of people. And slowly, as their targeted to get bullied, these low attributes that they have, then start spiraling into other things, like their confidence drops even more, if they didn't know how to express something before, when they get bullied, they dive into a shell and they start holding everything inside even more.

So they don't speak about their problems to their parents, or to their friends, or to their school counselor or anything like that, because they already had that weak attribute to begin with, you know? Of not being able to express themselves. When someone is bullying them, it really kills me inside, because usually the targets that are getting bullied, they're such beautiful people, who don't want to bother people, who don't want to put any burden on other people. And because of this beautiful heart that they have, they take it upon them to hold it to themselves and to just bury it inside. And slowly, slowly, the more that they do this, it kills them. It kills them, slowly, slowly, and then sometimes, unfortunately, it gets too much for them, and they break.

And you know, I know I'm being very straightforward with delivering this message, but, when it comes to bullying, we can’t really just put it under the rug and think that it’s going to go away, like what school teachers or bosses at the workforce do, they think, yeah, it will be alright, they will tell the kid to stop doing it. They say they're sorry, shake hands, and then they forget about it. But it doesn't happen like that. The more that the situation goes on, the target, the more that these problems keep hitting them in the face.

Two things will happen: one, they will either snap and really deal with their problem front on and say, enough is enough, or two, they're just going to keep burying it inside and it will destroy them as a person. And we’ve seen countless times how many people take their life because of bullying. And this is just because they’ve reached the end of their road and they haven’t been able to express themselves and it just built up, built up, built up and because they don't have the knowledge of what to do or they don't have the support network around them, they give up. And this is something that we don't want, for anyone. So that's why we’re here today, to try to educate people more about bullying.

GEORGE: Yes. I've got a few questions, just from that. Firstly, I just want to mention, I've recently gone through, I guess I’m a lot more attentive to it now, because, my son is 12 years old at this point in time. Recently got into the same type of situation, a bullying situation at school. And he’s been doing martial arts for 7 years, he’s a smaller kid, really, as you say, just a beautiful heart, nice kid. And although he can put me down when he wants to, even in a play situation, he can take me down. But in a bullying situation, he was almost crippled. He didn't’ want to defend himself, he got caught in a headlock and he was almost more fearful of the consequences of getting suspended in school, which put me in a bit of a situation and we've got a business group for martial arts school owners on Facebook.

And I posted a question; does martial art really help against bullying? Obviously just, the question was more spurred with frustration, but it did spark a really, really good conversation and martial arts school owners chipping in and really talking about their experiences with it, frustration with the system of how you go about combating the bullying. Because it's almost like the bully is more protected than the victim.

And that's something I said to the teacher as well, hang on, there's a bit of a double standard here. My son is fearful of the fact that, if he had to defend himself, he’’ll get suspended, but you’ve got a bully that's allowed to bully and I'm getting these vague messages, there's consequences. And I'm like, but what are those consequences? Is it a slap on the wrist, because if I had to do this in workspace and if I had to go do this in public, that's a criminal offense. And I’d get charged for that. So how come that's not… where's the consequences in school? Where do you actually combat that at such a high level?

TERRENCE: Yeah well, I can relate to that story really well. In primary school, because of my lack in confidence and not knowing who I am, I had not friends. I was a kid in school, this is around year 8, OK? So picture primary school, walk around the playground trying to kill time, because for lunch, I know my routine, just walk around the school to kill time and the thing about being a victim is, you always care what people think of you. So when I’d walk and be cautious about how I walk, do I look funny when I walk and so on. So I was really outcasted, right?

In high school, I tried to make that change of, I need to make it a point to hang out with the popular kids. And I made it a point to hang out with the popular kids and then, when it came to lunchtime, they would be walking around school, picking on targets to bully. So then when that happened, I was like, no way. This is not me, I can’t be this. So I hanged out, I felt sorry for the kids they were bullying and I told them to back off and leave them alone. And I started hanging out with those kids, which later, I will tell you about later, they were my first students. But yeah, I hanged out with those kids and it made me the biggest target.

So even in high school, I was walking around and my usual high school lunch then became walking around the school again, like it was in primary school. And I became the biggest target. When I say the biggest target, the bullies stopped focusing on anyone else and would just focus on me. And it was things from, come to my locker, my locker is being broken into, or, my books are in the bin, dumb texts on my chair. I was just walking around the school feeling so much anxiety and having to know that, next period I have English. I have this bully, this bully, this bully in the class. As soon as I get out of the class, I've got to find out where they're sitting and think about where I'm going to sit to avoid that situation. It got to the point where you have to really gather up so much energy just to get yourself to school.

So the point I'm trying to make is, I dealt with all of this buildup inside for so long and even though I knew I was a black belt in Taekwondo, because I didn't’ have that confidence it gave them more reason to put it on me, because they knew I wasn't’ going to challenge them. And the reason why I didn't’ challenge is lacking confidence, even though I could just spiral and kick their head and all this type of stuff, you have that choking feeling, when you're confronted outside of your dojo premises. Because in a dojo, you understand the rules of the game, you understand that it’s a safe environment that nothing is going to go wrong.

But then when you take out yourself, and you put yourself in a public environment and you've got everyone looking and challenging you, you're trying to battle with your own insecurities and the pressure again. You know that pressure that I was talking about before? You're then faced with that again in a school environment and thinking of what everyone thinks of you and you’ve just got these bullies in your face and you're constantly having to deal with psychologically, every day, you know? It’s all those different factors that get in your face, you choke. You don't remember what you're taught in the dojo, you don't remember the skills. All you remember are your insecurities. All you remember is how much you just don't want to be there, how you just want to run and how you just want to avoid and that's what it comes back to. And that's what causes the victim to just choke and bury themselves.

And I remember one specific scenario which led to the next turning point in my life, complete turning point in my life, which relates to your question: I went on a music excursion, going to the city. And these bullies were at the back of the bus. And when I came into the bus, there were no seats, except at the back. So I had to sit there and minded my own business. And then, someone had a whole bunch of lollies. And they just started throwing lollies at each other around the bus, right? And then suddenly, I was the target, so six of those guys at the back and they were just all throwing, one by one, lollies at me.

And you know, me being the kid I am, I just tried to pretend that the problem was going to go away and just hope that it’s going to go away, which the victims will think. It didn't’, so that bully behind me had chewing gum and he put chewing gum in my hair without me realizing. I knew he was doing something, but I just didn't’ want to aggravate the situation. So I just left it, but I didn't know it was actual chewing gum he was putting in my hair. And then when I found out, and I touched my hair, I broke down. And as a boy in high school, breaking down, just completely breaking down, tears and everything, it’s destroying, it destroys you, OK? Because you’re trying to hold on to some dignity and at that point, you just know that it just killed you. You're just lost.

So I tried to get it out of my hair when I went back home, but I couldn't. So I had to go to the hairdresser and I had to shave my head. So after that, my brothers were a lot younger, so I had no one to really talk to at that point. And I didn't talk to my parents, they didn't know anything that was happening and it just got too much for me. And that point was breaking point for me. I wanted to end life and I just had no more energy to build up to go to school. I was already facing this thing of having to go to school and face them and now I have to go to school again and everyone laugh at me, because I got my head shaved and they know what happened to me and I just didn't want to face that.

So before I actually executed what I planned, my parents knew that I was acting weird and they came in my room and out of frustration I told them what I wanted to do. And from there, they knew that something was wrong. So they took me to counselors and with counseling, I didn't’ quite get anything out of it, because as I started to speak up, as I got comfortable and spoke up and broke down, I think it was the first time that I realized that my problems weren't just at school; it was at home as well, I had a very negative relationship with my dad and all of that pressure that he was putting on me and psychological damage that I was getting at home as well, was adding a lot to my stress and to my anxiety. So obviously, when I started to open up about that, my dad stopped sending me to the counselor. So that avenue got cut from me and I had to deal with it again.

So about two weeks later, I went back to school and I had the courage to go back to school, and like usual at lunch time, if they found me, they would go at me. And I snapped, it got to the point where I reached the end of my road. I had no more options and I snapped. So I had a physical fight for the first time in my life. You know, I've been pushed around and grabbed before, but I never did anything. This was the first time I stepped and fought back. So it got to the point where I was in front of the canteen and I got put against the wall and exchanges happened and I don't know any boxing so pretty much got bashed a bit first. And then I responded with a roundhouse kick to the head. And after that, the fight stopped. The person I was fighting, after the roundhouse kick to the head, stopped.

And there was just a big shock. It was a shock to everyone around me, but more importantly, it was a shock to me. It was a shock to me that I finally overcame that choking feeling. I finally overcame that feeling of being suppressed, you know? Just the pressure and all the problems just being suppressed and I finally just let go. And my training – I was already representing Australia at that time, all that training just suddenly turned into that environment where I felt relaxed and I felt responsive and I knew the surroundings around me, all that training that you do, that suddenly came into play. After that roundhouse, I was like, hang on a second, this is just like sparring. This is just like the gym; this is just like that game.

And after I kicked him and the fight stopped, funny enough, I got suspended. I got suspended from school and that family tried to charge me with assault. So the good thing was, that I already had a track record at the school. I always reported when I was getting bullied. My parents always stepped in, which didn't help the matter. It made things worse sometimes. But the school had a record; the school had a record of all the times I was being victimized. And when it came to this where I actually did defend myself, because of that record, the parents… they didn't congratulate me, but they were proud of me. And everyone was, I was surprised to come home and my parents were actually proud of me that I kicked someone in the face. Like, and I couldn't understand that, I'm like, I was so scared to come home and tell them that I got suspended. I got in trouble, but they actually high-fived me, not because I kicked someone in the head, but because I was able to face my fears, you know? And overcome that obstacle.

And from that day, from that day onwards, my life changed completely, completely. The next day I went to school and I went from being no one, from walking around the school, trying to avoid people, to people coming up to me and saying, oh, I heard about the fight, what not. And it was just a sign of relief for me that it was all over. From that point on, it was all over. That group, they didn't come after me again, because they knew that I would challenge now, that I will stand my ground and that I had confidence in myself now and I realized the abilities I have. And that if I'm pushed into a corner, I won’t bark, I will bite. So it stopped from there, if one of them started, another one would tease the bully, they would say, oh don, he’ll kick you in the head. So from there, it just changed. It was a domino effect that changed my whole life, that one day.

GEORGE: And how old were you then?

TERRENCE: Where?

GEORGE: At that time, how old were you then, when that incident happened?

TERRENCE: I was in year 8, it was term two in year 8, so probably about 13-14 maybe. So a little bit younger than your own son.

GEORGE: Yeah. So seven years so, that's a fascinating story.

TERRENCE: It takes a long time, it takes a long time. It’s not… the matter can be changed (snaps fingers) like that, the bullying situation can be changed like that, but the journey to get there takes a long time. It’s about finding yourself, it’s about being comfortable with who you are, believing in yourself and in a situation of self-defense, learning the skills on how to defend yourself. And martial art does help against bullying in all those ways. Your confidence gets built up, you as a person, your character and how to deliver your message.

They give you all the skills, they give you the skill of how to defend yourself and they give you all that character development; but, just like a coach would tell their student, they can tell you what to do, but unless they do it for themselves, you don't get the result that you want. And that journey of learning how to believe in yourself and how to defend yourself in that scenario, that's an individual process and depending on the individual, it can take years like it did with me, 7 years, or it could take a month. So it’s just about the individual and how fast that person sees or discovers who they are.

GEORGE: Yeah, it’s so interesting for me, because I'm always about the mind and how the mind works. And things that you said earlier of how things have affected you from being a kid to later, and you sometimes, as you evolve as a person, you start questioning things that you're doing, but I get angry at this, or I get frustrated with this. And when you peel the layers back, it’s belief systems that you've set up, it’s either just out of a habit, or out of fear of a situation and that sort of shapes the way you go through life.

And you know, you're talking about the time it took; I think, something I heard this week on a training, talking about:  motivation runs out, but if you have the habit and the discipline, the discipline will keep you going. No matter, where the motivation is, because you're going to find that training sucks, and you're going to find that this sucks, but if you've got the discipline to push through, then that's what's going to keep you going.

And I think that's so important, because like you've said and like I've seen with my son as well, he's got all the world’s training and he can’t use it. It’s just, it’s crossing that line of, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to be this person. I've got my insecurities about all that, to that point of, I snap and – that's it. I’m not putting up with it anymore, I'm crossing that line.

And that was really what my question was about in the martial arts group. Does martial art really help in bullying, because it gives you all the tools and everything, but then, that real life situation is something you cannot really prepare for. Because, I mean, you can have 5 or 10 of your instructors pin you down in a corner, they're still an element of trust in your mind, whereas, I know my first bullying situation, and growing up in South Africa, it was probably completely different, because I was with a friend on a jetty, fishing and I had an older kid look at me and said, you – and this is the type of people they were, he said, “I'm going to cut your throat and I'm waiting.”

And he stood waiting. And I remember that element of fear like, this is someone that would do it. He would do it, just because he didn't like me or whatever, whatever the case was. But I just remember that element of fear that there's this realness of a situation, where you can’t prepare for that. Because even in the dojo, you can prepare physically, but that mental pressure of, I'm really in danger, like, this is life or death. How do you prepare for that?

TERRENCE: So, it’s interesting that you say that. You use that example of that guy; could you actually try to understand the upbringing person of that kid? I mean, for him to have that type of person, can you imagine what that person has actually gone through to get to that stage? So, I think, with us, if we learn how to deal with that situation right there, if you take a step back and as a parent, or as an instructor, or a friend, you can kind of see a lot of flags before that even happens, you know? How old were you when that happened?

GEORGE: I was probably about… I think I was about 8 years old, 8-9 years old.

TERRENCE: And how old was he?

GEORGE: He was probably in his early teens. The funny thing is, I had… a kid that used to hang out at the jetty, and was probably the scummiest, roughest kid ever. And he looked at me, and he said, don't worry, I've got you. And he walked with me off the jetty, walked past that guy, he got on his bike, and he cycled home with me. It was a big lesson in life, you know, I looked at this one kid that I thought was just the scruffiest, scummiest kid ever and he walked with me and cycled home with me. It was just, now that I think back on it; it was a multifaceted experience in that way.

TERRENCE: Isn't it crazy how you still remember it and how it still damages you psychologically? You still remember that fear, you still remember that isolation, you still remember that choking feeling. And that's what I was talking about before. To go back to your question, if you look at that teenager, it expands what I was saying before, about the need to feel superior, to dominate over someone to make them feel better, and you being old as you are, 8, and him, just a teenager, he knew that you're an easy target. And unfortunately, something like that, it’s a very difficult thing to deal with.

Lucky for you, you weren't alone, so I think you not being alone definitely helped. And your friend, that scruffy friend you were talking about – that's what we want to build in society, people like that. People like that, that will help build that support network, you know? Having that strong link next to you, whether it is yourself that is the strong link, your friend, you know? And that's what we want to build in our martial arts students, to be that leader. To be that leader in society, to create that change. And thankfully, you had one of those leaders next to you that pulled you out of that scenario.

But the actual bully himself, there's a lot of things that could have been done before, that could have helped change that person. And that’s one other attribute that martial arts gives you, which could help prevent someone from being a bully. So when someone has these life experiences that can either change them to doing negative outlets, like putting out the aggression on someone, or stealing, or doing things to cry out that they need help: if martial art is that thing, it will provide a positive outlet. So a positive outlet that they can channel all of their negative energy, which was for me, all of these feeling from home and from school, all of this negativity, and my outlet was training. Just continuous training and it was my serenity, it was my place where I’d come and just belong, by myself. Be peaceful with myself and just focus on myself and just train, you know?

So I think there's many things you can do on, that can avoid these situations altogether. A bully finding a place where they can have a support network, like a martial arts studio and have a good outlet to take out their negativity on. And for your friend, for example or even yourself, building up those characteristics on how to be a good leader. How to stop that scenario from happening. Building that link system, to be the strong link, or to have a strong link with you. And that's a beautiful thing about martial arts, it helps both sides. So in terms of the actual scenario, obviously not being isolated, not being by yourself and finding a safe environment. Finding other people to see.

GEORGE: Awesome. Terrence, I've got one more question for you. I actually have two, but then we might go on a whole new tangent. I might just stick to the one, for now. And it will be a good way to actually wrap up our chat here. With everything you went through with bullying and what happened at school, knowing what you've experienced through martial arts and what you've learned, discipline and everything, what would you say to your 6 year old self, in that situation, in that bullying situation if you had to go back in time?

TERRENCE: That's a good question. I think that, not just my 6-year-old self, but anyone who is dealing with bullying at the moment, no matter what age they are, whether they're an adult, teenager, or in primary school; they need to remember that life is a journey. Life is just a journey, where you’re continuously learning about yourself and in life, you'll always be tested. There will be many tests that come your way, whether it’s financial, whether it’s being bullied, whether it’s relationship crisis, or anything like that. There are many, many challenges in life. OK?

And each challenge is an experience. An experience that you can learn from to better yourself and to make yourself a stronger person. And as life goes on, as you get through each obstacle each day, you learn from it. And by the end, you'll come to a certain point in your life, where through those experiences, you become confident and comfortable with who you are, whether it’s being alone, whether you find it hard to make friends. You gain confidence and you become comfortable with being in that scenario.

So, if you look at all the successful – not all, but most of the successful people in this world, they've all gone through many, many experiences, and often you'll find that they had to defeat it alone. But through that hardship, they're now able to face any obstacle and being independent, being comfortable with who they are and what they can do, and knowing that they can overcome anything, any obstacle on their path, they can overcome it now. And they don't need help, they're so strong, their character is so strong.

So I think anyone who's in this situation needs to understand that it’s a learning experience that will shape you and it’s always important to be mindful of the direction that you're going, whether you're going towards a negative way, realizing that that's a negative path and a negative way about dealing with your situation. And trying to find a positive outlet, a positive way to learn from it, to deal with it and how to turn that negativity into a positive experience that's going to help you in your future, being a better version of yourself.

So for me, that whole bullying experience, it shaped the way I am today, it’s given me everything that I have today. My business, the skills I have of talking with people. I couldn't pick up a friend before or talk to someone. I had that much anxiety. Now you can put me in front of 2000 people and I’ll just talk. Because nothing is going to be as bad as what the past has been. I've overcome everything and it doesn't matter what I get put today, the mindset applies. The same principles apply with, this is a learning experience – what can I learn from this? How is this going to make me a better person in the future? That's it.

GEORGE: Thanks a lot. Terrence, it’s been great speaking to you. And just before we wrap up, it makes me think: everybody fears public speaking; people fear public speaking more than death. And my thinking is, well, maybe you haven't been in a situation where you've got to fear death.

TERRENCE: Yeah.

GEORGE: Because what you're really saying is, perspective, right? Because of perspective and that can almost be the good thing about it. Yes, you had a bad experience and unfortunately, it was horrific and it sucked, but when people are able to navigate through that, you build up this resilience, I guess confidence in life that you can just take on bigger things and better things for the future.

TERRENCE: You just said it there. You were talking about that mindset of resilience and how to use that to tackle the future; in its plainest form, resilience in the martial arts dojo – isn't that what martial art teaches you? Just on a basic level? Not to give up when you're feeling sore, not to give up when you're losing on points or anything like that, to keep pushing through if you can't get a pattern to keep trying and to keep at it. Martial arts instill the platform and then you build off that platform, as to how to apply these principles in your everyday life.

So that's how martial arts and the journey of life really benefit each other. So back to that question you were asking, does martial arts really help with bullying – yes, it does. It’s up to the individual on when they choose to apply it in their everyday life.

GEORGE: That's what we learned.

TERRENCE: Yeah.

GEORGE: Awesome tips. Thank you for your time. Great topic and I'm definitely having you on again for round 2, if we can maybe expand on this topic, or talk about the business side of things. So if anybody wants to get in touch with you, learn more about you, where can they do that?

TERRENCE: I’m actually going to start a YouTube platform pretty shortly. Everything to do with martial arts and topics like this, bullying. I am very, very passionate about the fight against bullying. So you can search us up on YouTube, I believe George has got a link, easy for you to follow.

Otherwise, you can just follow us on Instagram, just coach_terrence and I'm passionate about martial arts, business and the fight against bullying. So if you have any questions, just hit us up and I'm happy to share whatever knowledge I have.

GEORGE: Fantastic. Thanks a lot Terrence, speak to you soon.

TERRENCE: Thank you, see you later.

 

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64 – Google Search Vs. Social Media For Martial Arts Schools (And Goldfish Have Surpassed Us!)

The subtle difference you need to know when creating content for Google search vs social media for martial arts schools.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The difference between search engine marketing and social media marketing for martial arts schools
  • How goldfish have surpassed us
  • Leveraging your content creation
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

 

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, this is George. Just here in Perth City and I was at an event from Google, Google Garage. And pretty basic information but some interesting stats, which was a good refresher on just how things work in the digital world, so I thought I’d share with you something that you could use when you create content for your martial arts school.

Before I get to that, one of the most interesting stats that I thought was interesting was that goldfish have officially surpassed us, meaning attention span. So where goldfish used to have a shorter attention span than human beings, according to their stats, Google stats, we are now… human beings attention span is 8 seconds and goldfish have 9 seconds. So they have the one up.

So here's something that I found interesting, was the difference between your strategy with Google search and social media. So it's one of those things that… When you kind of know it and we’ve been really trying to be deliberate about it, but when you really realize the big difference, it's kind of an aha moment about how you go about it.

So, when you look at social media, social media… a big thing about social media, which is a pet peeve is, the longevity of your content, right?

Because you can create social media posts today and you’ve got about 24-48 hours before they have completely lost their reach, ok? So unless you're doing something else with it, like using it for an ad or something like that, that's going to be the lifespan of the content for you.

So when you look at Google, so again, social media – very positive and generally positive, right? I mean, obviously, when you create content, you want to create positive content. Some people just create complaining posts, right? I mean if that's your thing – awesome, but I wouldn’t recommend it for your martial arts school, right? So that's the one side. You’ve got the social media content that you create.

Now, Google on the flipside, is not so much of a… dare I say it, like a fake facade, right? It's not all “Everybody’s happy” moments; it's people going to Google and really typing in real life problems, ok? Real things that are going on in their life, that they're trying to solve in a martial art school’s case, self-defense, or its activities for the kids and that can also just be the super, the first level of the problem, right? Because it could be a few layers deep.

So that is the real difference, the difference being, one is being created for more of a positive and friendly and happy vibe and at Google, people are typing in real-world problems. And then obviously, finding results for that and that's how you find articles, videos and so forth. So I guess the key thing is always, how do you bridge the gap, right? How can you create content that leverages both platforms?

Because if you're only investing in social media, then it's ongoing and you’ve always got to do it. But if you create the content with the purpose of how can it be leveraged and how can people find it later on your website, then you're playing a whole new different game.

A little tool we use in the Martial Arts Media Academy, which I’m revamping now for our new modules, is a content multiplier. Content duplicator like a cloning type tool. So you create one piece of content and then you model it and clone it for different platforms.

So that's one side of it, but then the really cool thing about it is, how to take one piece of content and then making sure that it's relevant on all platforms. So I won’t go into all the details and that but I want you to really think about it; when you're creating content, how can you create your content so that it could be used, obviously on social media, how can it be used so that it can be found afterwards, so if people are doing a Google search and they can find it on your website. And then even better, how can you use it on social media for an ad and how can you use that to really broaden your audience.

And if you want a few more details on that, I’m happy to shoot another video, perhaps even share the tool that we use for this, but I'll leave that for now.

Speak soon – until the next video. Cheers!

 

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51 – How To Run Your First Facebook Ad For Martial Arts

The one thing to master with your first Facebook ad for your martial arts school.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • The biggest mistake martial arts school owners make with Facebook advertising.
  • How to avoid marketing frustration and simplify.
  • The one thing you need to get right before getting fancy.
  • How conversation leads to conversion.
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and in this video training, I want to share with you a few tips to really consider if you're starting to run paid advertising, especially if you haven't run any paid ads before, particularly I want to base the concept here on Facebook ads.

Now, when it comes to optimizing for things like Google, it can definitely, the logic still applies, but the framework here – I just want to apply this on Facebook ads and the reason this came up is, you know, Martial Arts Media Academy program, we're running a bonus for our members over Christmas and New Years, where we are helping our members structure a campaign, structuring a Facebook ad campaign and structuring campaigns for the New Year. So we're working with our members to really get stuck in and venture into this world of paid advertising.

So, a few things have come up where I see a lot of people are getting stuck, so I wanted to share this training not just with our members, but with everyone because I felt that it’s an obstacle that a lot of people run into and I think if you focus down and you really simplify, then your chances of succeeding is a lot better and the minute you're going to get some results, it’s going to give you some confidence to run more ads and it will keep you going. Because I know when you start running paid advertising, it can be very demotivating, right?

Maybe you're not really tech orientated and you struggle with the technology part and then you don't really know what you're doing, so you're trying to piece all these things together. And it can be really hard, really frustrating and this is why a lot of people just give up and stop trying.

So I want to give you a few simple things to look out for, what you should be doing first, what you should be doing last. Not so much what you should be doing last, but what you should really do first. And then you can go on and get all fancy with everything else, OK? But most people don't get to the fancy part because they're trying to get all fancy in the beginning and then they lose money, their campaigns don't work, they get frustrated and move out.

All right. So we want to turn that around here. I want to show you how you can get your campaigns up and running, get a result fast and then move on and really start scaling your campaign. All right, so let’s see how this works on the iPad, I'm going to draw this out.

So let's typically look at the whole process here, so if we're going to break it down into the simplicity of all this. So we're obviously looking for, we've got a prospect, we'll give him an average male face and ideally obviously, we're working towards a student, let's throw in a little kick there. All right, and a smiley face. Ok, cool.

So the first thing we've really got to get right is, we've got to start with who's the target, so who we are actually looking at, who’s the demographic, who’s going to see this ad. And it’s important to have this linked up because you want to show the right ad to the right person at the right time, obviously as well. Right time for them, that the ad is actually applicable to them. So who's the target?

And then we've got to look at what's going to be the offer, all right? So let's just do that for the offer, OK? So what's going to be the offer? You've got your target, so you've got the right target and then we want to show them an offer that's going to be a message to market match for them, all right? And then what we've got to put in front of them obviously is an ad, OK? So we've got to have some ad copy, OK? Very neglected art skill to learn, writing copy can be a hard thing and the easiest thing to get it going is just using a simple language, don't get fancy, just think of simplicity.

And then, with Facebook obviously, you're also going to have to have a bit of a picture, all right? Maybe we've got our happy students in there doing this thing. I know that's not going to be the best-looking thing but the picture and then we've got a call to action. All right, what do we need these people to do? And the call to action can be many things, right? It can be, they've just got to leave a comment, or try and make somebody that's that's a guy speaking, hurray! Or we've got a message, we can send them a message. And then, obviously you can have your website link, you can maybe use the phone, etc. OK, so you can use whatever to compensate for your call to action. OK?

But here's when I see people really get stuck. They try and get fancy in all these little steps in the funnel, OK? Which means every little step here, every little column has a different obstacle that needs to be optimized that it can work. So what's going to be happening is, you've got a lot of work to do. And your chances of success are going to be so slim because it’s your first time that you're running an ad, then you've got to get your targeting right, you've got to get your offer right, you've got to get the ad copyright, the right image.

And then which call to action? Which call to action are you going to use? Are you going to send them directly to your website? If it’s not congruent with this offer here, then I definitely wouldn't do that. Are you going to send them to a landing page? Awesome. Was your landing page professionally designed, with professional copy, with the right call to action and conversion elements and all that in place? Awesome.

Then you stand a chance, but at the end of the day, you've got to look at what's the lowest form of, what is the easiest thing for people to do and how can you get your result the quickest? And the quickest way you're going to really get the result would be this part over here. Hang on, let me just draw this properly here. It's this section over here, OK? Because if you can get the offer right, then all the hard work is done. Yes, it’s got to go to the right target audience, OK?

Yes, you're going to have to have the right copy. But if you have awesome ad copy and the wrong offer, it’s not going to work. Or you can have the perfect call to action, but the offer is wrong – and it’s not going to work. So yes, your targeting has got to be spot on, but you've got to have an offer that converts. If the offer converts, everything else is going to work, OK?

So what if you break it down and you just think of removing everything else, what can you do to get the student to sign up and put the right offer in front of them and remove everything else? What are all the obstacles that are going to be in place? Because if you don't have an offer that converts, then you can have the best ad copy in the world, you can have the best landing page in the world, you can have all the tools, the call to action, the bots that reply and do all the things for you. But you've never made a sale, but you're trying to implement a bot. So, getting the offer, getting a sale online and making sure that your offer converts and people actually buy it – that's going to be the core part.

So, break it down further, then what can you do to actually facilitate that, right? Well, you've got an offer that converts, now what do they need to do to get it? Well, they need to engage in a conversation. Your easiest way to get there is to start a conversation. Conversation is going to lead to the conversion. So how can you get the conversation started? Because if you can get the conversation started, then you can lead to the conversion.

That means you've got to pick up the phone and talk to them and really get to understand their objections, their needs, their wants and what it is that you were missing in your ad, then do that five or ten times, because I can guarantee, the next time you create an ad, you are actually going to earn, you're going to get results.

All right, I hope that helps. If you need help with your Facebook ad campaigns, or your Google ads, especially if you're running, at the time of recording this, running into sort of the Christmas season, running into January which is the peak time here in Australia and New Zealand and most parts of the world, then leave me a message where you watched this video and we’re happy to help.

All right, thanks a lot, speak soon – cheers!

 

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49 – Martial Arts Websites vs ClickFunnels & Page Builders

ClickFunnels and Page Builders can be great, but is that what you really need instead of your martial arts website? Here's my take.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • Do you need a hole or a drill (and a driller)?
  • The myth about what you need to create a sales funnel
  • Doing the ‘Richard Branson Test’ for your martial arts business
  • What a basic martial arts business sales funnel looks like
  • The difference between an internet marketing funnel and martial arts school funnel
  • The important factors that influence customers’ buying behaviour
  • And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media, and in this video, I'm going to give you my take on websites versus ClickFunnels, or what I'm going to refer to is real martial arts websites, I'll explain why in a minute, versus ClickFunnels, Leadpages, and other page builders. I think there's a bit of confusion in the marketplace about what a funnel actually is, what part of a funnel you actually need, and for what type of business? Do you need the same type of intricate sales funnel structure for a martial arts business versus if you're selling digital products, or you got an e-commerce store or something like that?

There's a bit of confusion, and I was on a webinar yesterday where the guy I was referring to doing a comparison between a website versus a funnel, a sales funnel, and kind of saying, “Look, the website model is dead. You need sales funnel.” But I think that creates confusion because why does it need to be different? It doesn't need to be different. It's the same thing, it just means one website model was developed with an old mindset, with the sales funnel was not. It doesn't have to be different.

Do you need sales funnel? Absolutely. Does it need to be separate to your website? Definitely not. There's a bit of confusion with that, so I'm going to be as diplomatic as possible here, and want to give you my perspective on the difference between ClickFunnels, websites, martial arts websites, really crappy websites, good websites, and other types of page builders. And look, we've used them all, and I'll give full disclosure, martialartsmedia.com, my company, we develop martial arts websites, we help martial arts school owners with online lead generation. That's our focus.

We've used a bit of some page builder tools for some clients, but the majority, we build out our websites on Wordpress, because it's a platform that you own, we don't have to keep your login details, you don't have to pay a monthly fee for it. That's our preferred way but I want to give you both, all the facts, and you can make the decision for yourself because maybe a tool like ClickFunnels is for you, but maybe it's not.

The first thing I want to really look at here is to look at the old situation. Do you need a drill or hole? Well, you need the hole, right? How are you going to get the hole through a drill? Now, what type of drill you need? Maybe you need a certain type of drill? Different brand? Do you need to actually be the driller, or can you actually hire a person that's an expert at drilling the hole, and get that person into drill the hole for you?

My comparison analogy is, are you the right person for the job? Are you the person who should be doing drilling the holes in your business? Should you be building your own website? In 2017, I don't think it's necessary that you need to be touching any tech whatsoever, and a mental model is just to do the Richard Branson test. The question is, would Richard Branson be doing this in his business? I want to ask you that. Are you the right person to be doing drilling the holes, and putting up websites?

You know, my expertise is computer programming, I've adapted to marketing over the last 10 years, but I can put a website together, and I've got a web developer on staff, he's pretty busy with developing websites at the moment. Yesterday I was putting together a report for this actual video, and I'll actually show you, and because he was busy, I didn't want to bother him, so I put together a landing page myself, and for me, I thought, “Hey, this looks pretty cool doesn't it?” So I put this together, and I showed it to my developer, and five minutes later, he brings me this, which looks 10 times better, and I think the danger in a lot of these types of tools is it does what happened to me. It creates false confidence.

Now this is both on Wordpress to a different editor, but it creates false confidence that you think you are actually really good, where maybe you're not, and maybe somebody else could do it much better, do a professional job for you, and you get a better result at the end of the day. Keep that in mind. Are you the right person for the job here? Do you need to be drilling the holes in your business, or should you hire someone else to do that for you? Let's just remove the marketing hype for a minute, and let's look at the actual facts.

I'm going to draw out a sales funnel here for you, just to give you a bit of an idea, but this happened to one of our members in our Martial Arts Media Academy, where we teach martial arts school owners about lead generation, and the member said to me, well we were running through Facebook ads, and the member said to me, “Well, yeah, I'll get the ad up, but I've just got to figure this ClickFunnels thing out.” And I was asking, “Why? What are you going to need to do with ClickFunnels?” “Well, I was told I need ClickFunnels, so I bought this thing.” And I told the person, “Well, you've got a perfect landing page. We developed a landing page for you, it's professionally designed, we interviewed you for the actual copywriting to get your perfect message, to get your values, and put it down in writing into a structured sales message.”

And we'd done all this for the person, and it was ready to go. All that they needed to do was actually commit to the Facebook ads, but instead, they bought ClickFunnels and got sucked in by the tech, and started buying products that they thought they needed, which they didn't need, and that's what I've got a problem with. Not that actual tool, but that the wrong people are buying the tools thinking they need it, where they actually don't.

I want to show you this quickly, and just for, I guess, if you don't know anything about me, just for a bit of credibility for my end, I guess, but our landing pages that we've developed and I pulled this report just before I created the video. Since the last 10 to 11 months, our landing pages have generated 964 paid trial students, so in monetary value that's $30,000, but that's not really what's important.

What the real value is, is the lifetime student value, and from based on our numbers, the average that we normally find is $1,500 is a good lifetime student value. If you calculate it on that, yours might be more or less, that's $1.4 million. $1.455 million worth of students. Look, our landing pages convert. They convert, we create a custom copy from that, we design it, we put it on your website and we don't use ClickFunnels or any fancy page builder, and it gets results.

I want to break that down for you quickly, and let me just fire up my iPad here quickly, and use this as an example. Let's have a look. If we look at a sales funnel. Now, for the most part. Right now, let's do a comparison. In the internet marketing space, and this is sometimes a problem when you buy into internet marketing hype because there's a lot of internet marketing hype out that there. If you look at, let's do this and we looked at internet marketing.

A lot of the models that people follow would be, you've got your page here, and they call it a let's say like a trip wire, and the tripwire might be like a $7 product. You're trying to create this sort of value letter. We try to do the same, but I'll show you a different way in a minute. So, you've got this $7 product that you create, and then that goes to what's called a one-time offer normally. You only see it now, there, never again. You gotta buy it there, and let's say that's $47 or $97. That's the up-sell once you've bought the other one. Then, that page might take you to another one-time offer, OTO, and let's say that was $297. Excuse the handwriting. That's if you said yes, and if you said no, then you might go to a down-sell of, let's say $197. That's sort of an internet marketing model. You've got all these steps that you follow, and you want to bulk up a real funnel of all these different aspects.

Now, let's look at a martial arts school. With a martial arts school, you don't need that much right? You might, look, there can be variations of this, because for some of our clients, Facebook ads, they send them directly to the landing page. Just a straightforward sales page, as is. It could be, let's call that the rate offer. That'll be the paid trial page. People can go there directly, but you might have another page here. This could be the homepage on a website, but it's basically like a, we're going to call it a lead magnet page, or an inquiry page. It's kind of where something free is happening. This could be an online inquiry, it could be downloaded lead magnet, a lead magnet, something of value, for the purpose of getting a lead. It's basically a contact and inquiry page. Your funnel could be something like the free thing, and then people see the paid trial after, and then all that you really need after that is a thank you page.

This is a really, really important page. We don't have time to go into that into detail, but the way we do our Facebook ads is we track each of these elements so that we know how we can advertise to people based on the action that I've taken. That's going a bit off course, so I won't go into that right now, but that is the basic funnel. That is a basic funnel for a martial arts school. Free offer, paid trial offer, and the thank you page.

Do you need a funnel building tool that's $100-$300 a month for that? I don't think so, because why can't your website do the same thing? Your website can do the same thing, and you don't need 20 funnels, or 30 funnels or 40 funnels to do that. If you got one funnel that you optimize and that converts, and I'll show you the ways we go about that in a minute. Again, do you want to get your hands dirty with those types of tools? It's good to have the knowledge, but should you be the person doing it? I think you can do better things in your business, better things in running your martial arts school, in running the classes, running the schools, training your staff, running a better business, and get somebody to do this type of thing for you.

Back to the funnel. This is the basic funnel. If you optimize that one funnel, then you've got a working model. Then you can just drive traffic to that because here's the problem. The problem is this. If you have an awesome funnel, but you're not respecting the customer journey, then what's the point of people seeing your awesome funnel on a Facebook ad? Then when they actually decide to do some research on you. People do that, they go to Google, they check you out, and they land on your website, and your website sucks, and you lose the lead. They click the back button and they go to your competitor.

What does that help you? Does this mean you need to have the funnel, and then you need to have the website, and then you need to have 20 funnels, and multiple pages, multiple websites? I don't think so. If you actually know how to develop a website properly, then you know how to segment the people on that website. That means that your pages are independent. I'll go back to that in a minute because I want to answer something else, just on multiple websites, which I also believe you don't need. We'll cover that in just a minute.

Let me not jump around. Back to the customer journey. Customer journey. What we need to know about our customers is people take 6-8 interactions before they reach a point of conversion. That is the customer journey. 6-8 brand interactions, that's salesforce stat. That can be they check their mobile phone, they drove past their phone, they checked out your website, they saw your Facebook page, they saw a social media post. There's a lot of interactions that can happen before a conversion.

Conversion doesn't need to be a paid trial. It can be just a phone call, it can be just an email. This customer journey is happening, and it's happening at multiple times, different times, different devices. Those are steps that we just got to know that this is what's happening. So, why don't we base our marketing on these facts, and make sure that we got all the conversion points covered? Because I can guarantee you, if you're running 20, 30, 40 funnels, that's going to be really, really hard to optimize, and really, really hard to track people. Unless that is your full-time gig, or you got a very, very deep pocket to cater for that, it's going to take a lot of work.

Let's get back to the website. Does this mean if you're running multiple styles, that you're going to need multiple websites? Look, there's different ways of doing things, and all respect to how everybody does their way of business. The way we try and look at it from the start is leverage. How can you do the least amount of things, for the maximum amount of effort? Because look at this online world, it's crazy right? Do you ever feel that you're getting everything done that you need to get done? Why not just structure things that you work on the core basics, the core fundamentals, and you structure them right that your marketing becomes easier, and you don't have to spend all this time and all this tech, stuff, and everything. Let's get back to, I want to get back to the iPad here.

Let's take a quick look. Here's the thing and this is if you're running multiple styles within your school. If you're running multiple styles, for us, this is how we structure the website. We start off with the homepage. We got the homepage. Then the homepage is really where people land. It's really also just a landing page because people are going to land there, they are at different stages in their buying cycle, something else I will explain in a minute as well. The homepage really serves as a place to put people in the right place to have the right conversation.

What might happen is they are interested in style 1. Not a dollar sign, hang on. Style 1 might be kids' karate, for example, or they are interested in style 2, kickboxing. Or maybe they're interested in style 3, Krav Maga, or something else. These are three different conversations to be had. That's what the homepage is doing, it's acting like a chooser to send people where they need to go. These pages then do the specific copy for the specific audience having this specific conversation. It's no brochure, it's actually understanding the design concept, and knowing your market, and knowing how to segment it properly to send people to the right place.

One thing that we focus on because we do Google advertising, we make sure that all these pages have all the relevant information that you need to make a decision because we advertise them independently. We don't send people to the homepage, ever. People land there because they might be following your brand, or they heard about you. They google you, so the first page they're going to land is that homepage. That happens, but when it comes to the structure, we want to make sure that the homepage is just a chooser to send people to the right place. All these pages have a conversation that was self-targeted.

Do you need multiple web pages for this? No. How many signs do you have in front of your school? Do you have a different sign for each style or page? Do you segment your school like that? If people come for kickboxing, do you hide the kids? You know what I mean? There's always going to be this bit of overlap. You're much better off, in my opinion, and I've had this conversation multiple times in high-level mastermind groups. It's much better to have your one website, one brand, simplify things, and make sure that you're segmenting at the right place. I guess I should say this because segmentation is important.

Being specific is important, but are you doing it at the right place? Do you need to do it on a Facebook level, so that every Facebook page is different? I don't think so. Why don't you keep it under your same brand, and segment at the right place? Because this is where the conversion really is going to happen most of the time, depending on your marketing strategy of course again, is on the website. So why don't you segment people there and have those separate conversations? This can easily be done on one website. When people land on the kids' karate, they don't see the kickboxing, they see kids. They see kids' pictures. They see all that. So you can segment this according to that. I hope that helps.

The way we go about this when we’re creating a website. Look, it does take work, there's no doubt about that. We focus strongly on what's called A/B split testing. That means that one website might have a separate headline to the other one. We're fortunate enough that we develop websites, so we do this on a larger scale, and that way we can track different elements, and we do take it a step further. That is with heat maps.

Heat maps are really, really revealing, because you go based on not what people say they do, but what they actually do. You can see what people are clicking on your website, and the advantage we get from this is invaluable because we can see exactly what people are doing, what they click on, what they do not click on. This takes the A/B split testing to another level because what we gain from the one, we can use on the other. It becomes an invaluable exercise to really check our different websites for what we do for members. So, that's the one thing.

I should talk about the other side. Does this mean that all websites are created equal? Definitely not. This is the other, and this takes the conversation to a whole nother ball game. One thing we can establish, you need a sales funnel. Does it need to be on ClickFunnels or Leadpages or one of these tools? No, it doesn't. You can build that out on your website, preferably get a professional person to do it that understands sales and marketing.

Here's the problem with most web developers. Most web developers don't focus on sales and marketing, and I understand that really clearly, because I started out as a computer programmer, and tech and gadgets was my thing. It was only until I started learning about online marketing, and marketing and sales, that I really started to see how the two actually linked together. The problem is, it's two very, very different skill sets generally. A person that's focused on technology and analytics, or a person that's focused on graphics, is not necessarily focused on sales and marketing. When your development team consists of a technical person and a graphics designer, there's absolutely zero sales strategy on that website. So, you got to watch out.

What I've put together for this video is a report, and you can download that. This will help you. It's called “20 Questions to Ask Your Web Developer Before Investing in a New Martial Arts Website.” This is the top 20 questions that I've pulled together of what you should be asking a web developer. This is very, very quickly going to tell you where their mind is at, and if they're going to deliver with what it is that you need. What do you need from your website? You need leads, and you need paid trials. You need someone with that understanding. If you're watching this video on Facebook, just type 20 in the comments, and we will send that through to you. Otherwise, just check it out on martialartsmedia.com and it will be available for download in the show notes of this episode. Something else for you to consider.

We've covered your website can be your sales funnel. You need someone that actually understand the sales and marketing process to facilitate that for you. A big thing of why we focus on building things on your website, and this will be covered a bit more in the report, is having an asset. When you look at the online world, there's one place where you actually build out an asset, and that is in your domain name. So your .com, .au, .co, .uk, wherever you are located.

Your website address is your one and only asset. The problem that can happen is you own the domain name, but somebody else actually owns your website, so it's kind of like you own the house on a piece of land, but somebody else owns the land. Somebody else can just take the land away from you, and you're just stuck with the house. Or, you own the land but somebody else owns your house, so somebody can just go break the house down if they want. Something to check out for.

So, when you're building out things on the internet, and you're looking at the long term, what's going to last the longest for you? Then it's a wise move to build things out on your website. It's maybe not always the quickest, and maybe not always the easiest, but long term, it's going to benefit you, because all your prime content, and if I say content, videos and articles, that stays on your website.

A few things for you to consider. Now, look, if you're doing things yourself, and you're at the point in your business that you've got to do absolutely everything, then maybe a tool like ClickFunnels or Leadpages can help. But you got to be careful because you might get sucked into a lot of things from top marketers, that'll make you buy things. Probably won't make you, but you'll feel that you need to buy these things, and you don't really need them. It's something for you to consider.

If you are hands-on with the tech, and you feel that you're 100% clued up on all the stuff, and nobody can do a better job, then hey, commit to it, do your thing. It could be good to just sometimes test things and get an offer out quickly. But if you want more specifics, and you want to be a bit more in detail of getting a sales funnel done for you, or website done that's yours on your domain, in your structure, then reach out to a professional, whether that's us or not. Go for it.

All right, I hope that helps. I hope that clarifies a few things. If you want to download that report, go to martialartsmedia.com, or if you're watching this on Facebook, just leave a comment with the word 20, and we'll send that through to you. Thanks, and I'll speak to you soon. Cheers.

 

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4 – Should You Have Your Prices Listed On Your Martial Arts Website?

Is there a benefit having your prices listed on your martial arts website, or how much business is this really costing you?

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

  • What happens when prospects see prices on your martial arts website
  • The war you don't want to create with your prospect
  • The key conversion elements to have on your website

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.


TRANSCRIPTION

In this video, I'm going to talk about whether or not it's a good idea to have your prices, your club prices, listed on your martial arts website. And if it's not, what else should you be doing instead of that.

Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and today, I'm going to talk about whether you should have your prices listed on your martial arts website, or not. And if not, what can you do instead. So, the short answer – no. You should not have your prices listed on your website. Now, let's get the longer answer. The longer answer is that, if you list your prices on your website – now, let's take one step back. Your prospect is sitting in front of their computer, or their mobile phone.

And they're looking for a martial arts program. They know nothing about you, nothing about your school, nothing about the benefits. They've got this idea in the back of their mind, that they want to start training martial arts. Or it's a mom, sitting and looking for a school, after school program, for her kid. So, there's no relationship in this – not even a transaction yet. It's simply somebody that's searching for more information about your school.

Now they find your website and as people, do they see a link that says price. So what is the first thing they're going to do? Of course, they click on the price. And now they've got their point of reference. Their point of reference on how they're going to be comparing your club to other clubs, to other schools.

a (78)And that's going to be their point of differentiation. Now, bear in mind: this person has never spoken to you, never met you, never walked into your environment and felt what that experience is like, the culture, was it warm and friendly, did they like the instructors -there's none of that, there's no relationship whatsoever. So you've now completely kind of ruined your chances, and I guess you've gone down to the point of, you're playing the price war, right? You are playing the price war with everybody else, and a war against price is the price of course, to the bottom. So, never a good idea to have your prices on your website.

What about specials? Well, that's a completely different story, because if you've got a very attractive special, something that people can buy, without inquiring much, without having to find out much information, something that they can try before they commit, then yes, why not? Have something that people can take, which has got a good restriction on the timeframe. So, put a special in a place that's attractive and appealing, but that has a deadline, OK?

Deadlines are key. Now, if you want to go down this whole price track, most websites are just not constructed in a way that is driving people to a form of action. And your website might be great; it might tell great information about you, but it's more. Most websites are structured with information. Information about the club, who the club is and who the people are. And unless your copy – your copy, I'm referring to the words on your website, has been designed by somebody professionally, that actually has structured it for the prospect, all their paying points, and their desires and what they want to achieve and what's really bugging them, why they're actually searching for a martial arts program, then it's best to avoid that whole price scenario and so forth.

quotescover-JPG-63But I'm jumping around, so I want to move along: what should you be doing instead? So what you should be doing instead is focus on conversion elements. At the end of the day, you want to get a prospect through the door, into your dojo, into your school, on the mat, and you want them training. So you want to remove as much barrier there is to entry, but also, you want to make that first connection. You want to be able to get them in the door, and be able to make that face to face connection, speak to them, build that relationship and then get them into training.

So on your website, the most powerful way to get in touch with someone is, once they've obviously made a connection, the phone would always be better – well, that of course, second to face to face would be a phone, and then online inquiry, if you have to. But of course, the quicker you can talk to them live, whether that's over the phone or face to face, there's going to be a bit of a relationship forming right there. So what should you have on your website? You should have your phone number, very visible, right on the top. If you have multiple locations, then maybe have a drop down or something, that people can select the location and call from the website basically. Also, if you look at mobile searches, most people are searching on mobile lately, I think statistically it's about 60%, so you wanna have a clickable phone number, for the person that's on their mobile device, they're on Google, they find you, they click, and they make that call.

All right. Second would be an online inquiry form. So also, above the fold – when we say above the fold, it means that people don't have to scroll down, so everything is visible at the top. This is not always possible, but if you've got a sort of way to test this kind of things, which I know a lot of people don't, but preferably, it's always a good idea to test what's working best on your website. But having that online inquiry form, where people can type in their name, number and e-mail address and get in touch with you right there, that's advisable.

And in the last bit, if people aren't committed to that yet, it's good to have a free give away. Something like the seven best strategies, seven best things to consider before choosing a martial arts school. Something of a free giveaway, that's going to educate your buyer – educate your prospect rather, to what it is that you offer with martial arts and that way, you're going to be building a bit of trust, and building that relationship before you get to speak to them.

All right, so that's it. I hope you got benefits from these tips. If you want to learn anything more, go to our website martialartsmedia.com, and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers!

 

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The testimonials are never intended to make claims that our products and/or services can be used to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate or prevent any disease. Any such claims, implicit or explicit, in any shape or form, have not been clinically tested or evaluated.

How Do We Protect Your Information and Secure Information Transmissions?

Email is not recognized as a secure medium of communication. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email. However, doing so is allowed, but at your own risk. Some of the information you may enter on our website may be transmitted securely via a secure medium known as Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL. Credit Card information and other sensitive information is never transmitted via email.

may use software programs to create summary statistics, which are used for such purposes as assessing the number of visitors to the different sections of our site, what information is of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas.

For site security purposes and to ensure that this service remains available to all users, uses software programs to monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized attempts to upload or change information, or otherwise cause damage.

Disclaimer and Limitation of Liability

makes no representations, warranties, or assurances as to the accuracy, currency or completeness of the content contain on this website or any sites linked to this site.

All the materials on this site are provided “as is” without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of merchantability, noninfringement of intellectual property or fitness for any particular purpose. In no event shall or its agents or associates be liable for any damages whatsoever (including, without limitation, damages for loss of profits, business interruption, loss of information, injury or death) arising out of the use of or inability to use the materials, even if has been advised of the possibility of such loss or damages.

Policy Changes

We reserve the right to amend this privacy policy at any time with or without notice. However, please be assured that if the privacy policy changes in the future, we will not use the personal information you have submitted to us under this privacy policy in a manner that is materially inconsistent with this privacy policy, without your prior consent.

We are committed to conducting our business in accordance with these principles in order to ensure that the confidentiality of personal information is protected and maintained.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding this policy, or your dealings with our website, please contact us here:

Martial Arts Media™
Suite 218
5/115 Grand Boulevard
Joondalup WA
6027
Australia

Email: team (at) martialartsmedia dot com

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