Martial Arts Business Daily

Fitness and the Business of Martial Arts

The Question of Integrity and Making a Buck in Your Martial Arts Business

Since I announced in my email newsletter a few years ago that I was teaching fitness boot camps in my martial art school, it seems that every martial arts school is offering boot camps.

While I think this is great, the problem I see with this is that most of the schools that are doing this are implementing fitness programs the same way they implement any new program in their studios…

That is, they change their sign and make it up as they go along.

We saw this with ninjitsu in the 80′s, with kickboxing in the 90′s, and with grappling and mixed martial arts in the 2000′s. And, as we all know, this ends up ultimately working against the studio owner who decides that they don’t need to acquire any additional training in order to teach another program in their martial art school.

I can tell you for a fact, the local fitness trainers love it when martial art school owners with zero fitness education or certifications start boot camps in their studios. The reason? Because they know your clients will soon become their clients, once they figure out you’re a sham.

The same thing goes for legitimate jiu-jitsu instructors and MMA coaches. They know that, sooner or later, all those students who are suddenly taking grappling and mixed martial arts from their karate, tae kwon do, or kung fu teacher are going to wise up and go looking for a qualified instructor who can teach them those skills.

Is It Worth It To Get Trained to Teach Fitness Classes?

Absolutely. The trend at this time is for fitness facilities to add any and every program they think will add revenue to their facility. This means many of the big box gyms are experimenting with adding programs like MMA, combat fitness classes, and children’s martial arts.

Yes, you read that right – your local Globo Gym could soon be adding kid’s martial arts to their class line-up. And if you don’t understand and have the skills to compete with them, you’re sunk.

I’ve always had a fitness program running in my studios, because it’s a great income stream and I enjoy teaching those classes. But, what I discovered over the years is that many people actually choose my programs over those taught at their local Giganto Gym, and for a very specific reason.

How I Compete With Globo Gym

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the way to survive is not to try to become a Globo Gym. Uh-uh. Instead, it’s in embracing the boutique nature of the Small Dojo Big Profits school.

See, where the big box gyms (and ginormous martial arts schools) tend to drop the ball is in building customer relationships and in creating a positive and welcoming culture. It’s simply too hard to control those two elements when you build a business on a large scale.

Sure, you can make your place look like a Starbucks and put your staff in cute little embroidered golf shirts and matching sweat pants, but it’s impossible to create relationships between your staff and your clients. That’s something only a small business owner who is on the front lines serving and greeting customers daily can do.

In short, it’s where small martial art school owners like us shine. Unfortunately, your relationship with your clients is only as good as the trust they place in you. That means you absolutely positively must meet and exceed their expectations in every way.

Now, what do you think happens when you hold yourself out to be a fitness expert, and your clients find out the extent of your fitness training and education is doing push-ups with your martial arts students? Do you think they’re going to start having trust issues with you?

The Visual Incongruity of Being a “Fat Master”

You’re darn straight they will. I know this for a fact. Back in the 90′s and early 2000′s when everyone was copying Billy Blanks, I was going to fitness industry seminars and finding out what they were doing that we weren’t. And, you know what I found out?

They were actively pursuing education on a regular basis, and also living what they taught. And while you and I routinely see fat martial arts “masters” touting the benefits of good health to their students, you will never see a fat personal trainer trying to tell other people how to eat or lose weight.

That’s because the standards of the fitness industry are actually much higher when it comes to fitness and health than they are in the martial arts industry. What you have to realize is that, when presented with a choice between you and the local trainer, if you don’t look the part and have the knowledge to go with it potential clients are going to pass you right by and go to Globo Gym.

Moreover, your ideal clients aren’t stupid. And, I believe most people understand on a molecular level that there’s something that smacks of a scam about a person who claims to be a master of martial arts, but who isn’t even a master of their own body.

So, How Do You Get There?

As I said before, there are a plethora of programs being taught out there. All of them claim to teach you how to introduce fitness programs into your martial art school.

The question is, how many of those programs were created by someone who has been successfully teaching fitness programs in a working martial arts studio for well over 15 years?

I’d hazard a guess to say, “None of them” outside of my Fighting Fit Boot Camp instructor certification and training program. And, I’m fairly certain we have the only program with a track record of success in showing martial arts instructors how to become successful fitness professionals, and also showing them how to add a solid revenue stream to their martial art studios.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how you can add a solid and permanent fitness revenue stream to your studio in a manner that’s ethically sound, click this link to visit the Fighting Fit Boot Camp instructor certification website.

When Martial Arts Become Mainstream…

When Your Market Is Small, You Had Better Understand What Makes Them Tick…

The fact is, the practice of martial arts is not a mainstream practice.

At most, the market reach for the typical martial arts school is roughly between 1 and 3 percent of their local population.

And despite the fact that MMA has achieved a huge fan following amongst the mainstream, the actual practice of MMA still remains within the boundaries of these numbers.

Why Mainstreaming Only Serves To Alienate Our Market

Yet, many martial art school owners seem to want to “mainstream” their martial arts programs in an effort to increase their enrollments. Typically, this involves taking out certain elements of “traditional” martial arts practice that are often deemed to be off-putting to the mainstream market.

Unfortunately, this nearly always yields a net negative result for their studios, because by “mainstreaming” their programs, they are in fact removing those positive elements that attract our admittedly narrow market in the first place.

Let me make something clear – I am not referring to the self-defense market here. People who want self-defense training more often than not do not fall into the same category as those seeking martial arts instruction.

The reason is that people seeking self-defense are usually only looking for short-term instruction, while people seeking martial arts are looking for something that can potentially become a more permanent part of their lives.

While many instructors may disagree with this statement, I have found this to be the rule rather than the exception over two decades of teaching both martial arts and self-defense classes.

Identifying Your REAL Market

Instead, I am referring to the market that includes:

• Persons wanting to train in a traditional martial art for recreational reasons -
• Parents wanting to enroll their children in martial arts to learn life skills, or as a recreational activity -
• Persons wanting to train in martial arts for fitness reasons -

In each of the above instances, we need to examine the reasons why the prospective student is seeking out martial arts instruction versus some other activity. In the case of someone seeking recreation, why are they not taking dance lessons, or joining a bowling league, or taking up golf?

In the case of the parent enrolling a child, why are they choosing martial arts instead of soccer, dance, gymnastics, cheerleading, hockey, tennis, or some other team or individual sports activity?

And in the case of the person seeking martial arts instruction as a fitness activity, why aren’t they joining a gym or seeking the services of a personal trainer?

What Really Makes Your Market Tick

It is because, in every instance, martial arts training and instruction offers the individual something those other activities do not. This “something” is what makes martial arts training unique and distinct among all the other activities I mentioned above.

In a nutshell, it is the unique culture inherent to traditional martial arts training. In traditional martial arts practice, ours is a culture that values honor, respect, courtesy, discipline, self-control, humility, courage, harmony, and civic duty. Especially in today’s modern world, ours is a culture that is unparalleled among sports and recreational activities.

In addition, ours is a culture that, for better or for worse, is greatly based on martial values. This value system is, by its very nature, based on a pragmatic power structure of the type necessary to any martial culture or organization. Just as an army is led by a chain of command, thus our studios follow a similar rank and file system or organizational power structure.

Yet, it is greatly an egalitarian system. Anyone can walk into a martial arts school and, based on their own hard work and dedication, move up through the ranks and achieve status and merit within the power structure.

Unique Cultural Aspects Of Traditional Martial Arts That Appeal To Our Market

These unique cultural aspects appeal to our market on an almost molecular level, for three very important reasons:

1. Clear Values – In a modern culture where moral relativism and ethical ambiguity has replaced moral certitude and a common understanding of right and wrong, cultures with clearly defined values are increasingly attractive to people who share similar values.
2. Acceptance – In a modern world where people often feel disconnected and isolated, our market wants to belong to a group of like-minded individuals who are connected by similar beliefs, values, and interests.
3. Recognition – Let’s face it, most people feel “held back” by their careers, social groups, educational system, etc. Therefore, the very idea that anyone can walk into a martial arts studio and gain prestige and peer recognition based purely on the merits of their own hard work and skill is a highly attractive proposition.

Now, based on what I’ve pointed out in the preceding paragraphs, what do you think happens when you take out the elements of training from your traditional programs that make them unique to our culture?

That’s right – you take out the very thing that attracts our market to us in the first place.

Granted, our market may not be very big when compared to other “sports”. But, it’s a market that tends to produce fans for life. And that, my friends, is the real key to creating long-term business success for any martial arts studio owner.

What The Heck is Permission Based Email Marketing?

Permission Based Email Marketing, And Why You Need It

Permission based marketing – (def.) Marketing centered around obtaining customer consent to receive information from a company.

(Source: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/permission_marketing/)

I get the majority of my leads from internet marketing, which is the case for most successful martial arts schools these days.

However, most of those leads are generated through having my own permission based email marketing system set up on my websites.

In case you’re not familiar with the term, it was coined and made popular by Seth Godin. “Permission marketing”, as he describes it, is the opposite of interruption marketing. It basically amounts to asking the consumer for permission to contact them with useful information and offers.

If you have a print newsletter for your school, you’re using permission based marketing. Yet, there are much more efficient and less costly methods of using this powerful marketing approach, and the best one I know of is email.

Why do you need it? Three reasons:

1. It relies on the power of relationships to market, which has become increasingly important in today’s hectic world -
2. You can implement it using automated technologies, very inexpensively, that will handle your lead collection and follow-up automatically (less work, more leads – sounds like a good deal to me) -
3. It’s a great tool to use for increasing retention and improving customer relations -

How can you beat that?

How To Start Using Permission Based Email Marketing

Permission based email marketing used to take a lot of technical know-how to set up and use, but now it’s easier than ever. And, when you discover how to use and implement that technology, you can literally turn your websites into full-time lead generation machines.

All it take is a little know-how and someone showing you which software to use and how to use it. There are a ton of shortcuts to doing this that I’ve learned over the years, all of which are revealed in my latest $10 report, The Permission Based Email Marketing Guide.

In it, you’ll find out which email marketing software service is the best (in my opinion), and you’ll discover tips and tricks to setting up your permission marketing system in as little as 60 minutes.

I’ve released this report at an introductory price of $10 so all my readers and subscribers can benefit from it.

But, I will eventually increase the price, since the information is easily worth double that (heck, I made an extra $4,000.00 in two months just by marketing my services to my email contact list!)

So, be sure to pick it up right away so you get it at the absolute lowest price possible.

Click this link to find out more and order

Martial Arts Websites

Martial Arts Websites on the First Page of Google? Check!

One of the questions I get asked a lot is…

“Are you still building martial arts websites for schools?” And the short answer is, YES!

In fact, I love doing SEO and web marketing for studio owners. The reason?

Because I know it’s the ONE THING that gets real results for school owners – if they hire me to do their entire site and Google ranking campaign, soup to nuts.

Why I Prefer Doing Martial Arts Websites Soup to Nuts

The reason it works best when I do their entire site is because you can have traffic with a crummy site, and still get no leads.

And, you can have a great looking site, and get no traffic because it’s not optimized, and still get no leads or business from it.

So, I prefer to handle both for my clients. Sure, it costs a little more, but let’s look at the numbers:

• Site #1 sits on the third or fourth page of Google, gets 30 visitors a month, converts 2 or 3 to leads, leading to just one enrollment…
• Site #2 (my site) is in the top five spots in Google, gets hundreds of visitors a month on average, converts 20 or more to leads, and results in netting 10 or more new enrollments a month!

Want To Learn “Psychic Karate”?

Why Everything Counts in Martial Arts Marketing

Hey, want to learn “psychic karate”?

Just the other day, I got an email from my brother with this subject line:

“How to know every one of your karate opponents moves…before they strike!!!”

Naturally, I wanted to see this deadly new martial arts style, so I opened the email to find this picture attached…

He apparently snapped this off at a location near his work.

Of course, I’ve changed the phone number since I don’t want this poor person running this school to get inundated with prank calls asking for “psychic karate” lessons.

(Although, with the shrubbery blocking the phone number from view, it probably wasn’t necessary.)

My brother and I both got a good laugh out of it…

However, I think this image provides the perfect opportunity to discuss a topic that is near and dear to my heart when it comes to the business of running a martial art school.

And, that is, marketing and the image you project to your community at large.

The Scene of the Crime…

Let’s examine this image for a minute. For starters, you’ve got a karate school in the same shopping center as a pawn shop. Now, I know not everyone can afford to open their studio in world class digs when they launch, but honestly you have to consider your neighbors when choosing a location.

My last studio was located pretty close to a liquor store, which sort of gave me pause. However, the owner was a no-nonsense person who kept the store clean and the clientele on their best behavior… and we were next door to the police station. Otherwise, this would have been a no-go.

Anything next-door to any businesses of dubious repute is a no-go for the most part. Speaking of which, let’s discuss the psychic thing.

By all appearances, it looks as though the psychic and the karate school are sharing the sign, from which we may also infer they are sharing the space. Could they be the same business?

Maybe, maybe not. But, from a consumer’s standpoint if your advertisement is ambiguous as to the nature of your business you’ve committed the cardinal sin of marketing, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Some potential questions that might be going through a prospect’s mind when they see this sign:

• Do they teach karate or give palm readings, or both?
• Is this school going to be one of those “new age” things?
• Is this a cult?

And so on. That “cardinal sin of marketing” being committed here is to confuse your marketing message. Your marketing should always be crystal clear as to the following:

1. Who you are…
2. What is is you’re selling or giving away…
3. Which benefits you provide to the consumer…
4. Why they need to respond, now…
5. Where they need to go to respond to the offer
6. And, How they do exactly that.

See a pattern here? It’s sort of like answering the “5 W’s” in journalism. Your marketing, whatever it is, should always tell a story that makes it dead simple for the prospect to understand what you’re selling, why they need it, and how to get it.

“KARATE” is crystal clear. And I’d say “PSYCHIC” is also pretty much self-evident. But, “Psychic Karate”, whether intended or not, is about as confusing and ambiguous as it gets.

Bottom Line… Everything Counts!

Everything counts in your business, because your image IS your business in the mind of the consumer. For the karate school owner this sign belongs to, this may be an unfortunate result of a lazy or cheap landlord. Maybe they didn’t want to pay for a better sign, or they were too lazy to do it right.

In any case, if this were my sign you can be sure I’d be pitching fits and bugging the heck out of the responsible party until it got fixed. And, this is just one aspect of this person’s marketing.

Today, I want you to go through your marketing and start examining it with a critical eye. Look at everything from your website, to your business cards, to your fliers and handouts, to your signage.

See anything that looks dated, amateurish, or that needs replaced? Find any ad copy or layouts that might leave the prospect wondering what your ad or offer is all about?

Fix it!

The last thing you want is for your advertising and marketing to be working against you, instead of for you… as is clearly the case for the “psychic karate” school.

Schools are shutting down right now, simply because the owners didn’t care enough to do everything in their power to make their studios successful. And, in this economic environment, you simply cannot afford to be lazy or do things halfway… the consequences are too dire to risk.

Next Page »