Martial Arts Business Daily

Learning, Success, and Suffering Fools in Your Business

Do You Suffer Fools Lightly?

I don’t. You’ve likely heard Einstein’s definition of insanity (“Doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results.”)

Here’s my definition of foolishness: “Shooting yourself in the foot, then blaming the gun.”

And, the only thing worse than a fool is a dishonest fool; a dishonest fool will shoot himself in the foot, blame the gun, and then sue the gun manufacturer.

But, this isn’t a rant about legal activism among gun control pundits; it’s a cautionary post on allowing others to dictate the terms of engagement in your business.

Exhibit A: Taking Success Advice From Fools

Some of you are prone to do this by allowing your peer groups to dictate how you run your studio.

Instead of seeking advice from successful martial arts studio owners you instead turn to your peers, who are often struggling financially, seeking their approval. You do this out of fear for what your peer group will think if you change your marketing approach or the way you teach your classes.

The truth is, this is a non-issue. Nothing I teach requires anyone to change the quality or substance of their classes. I never did; if anything, I’ve been much harder on my students and more reluctant to promote than many of my peers. Yet, still I have been more successful financially than they.

If you take advice from people who are in no position to give it, you’re suffering fools who don’t know what they don’t know.

Exhibit B: Child-Centered Parenting As An Approach to Management

Others of you cluster at the opposite end of the spectrum. You cater to the every request of your staff, students and clients, and then wonder why they don’t respect you, or leave to train with other instructors.

What you’ve failed to realize is that by letting your staff and students run your school, you are violating the basic principles of proper relational positioning with your subordinates.

Show me any child-centered household, and I will show you ill-mannered, disrespectful, and poorly adjusted children. The simple reason is that, when the inmates run the asylum, chaos prevails.

If you allow your staff and students to run your school, you’re suffering fools that think they know better then you do how to teach martial arts and run a successful business. Or, you’re catering to the whims of people who are putting their own priorities ahead of your own.

Either is a recipe for disaster.

Exhibit C: The Shotgun Approach That Results In A Cluster, With A 100% Probability Of Failure

There are also those of you who attempt to compile information from everyone and everywhere, cobbling together a “system” that is anything but.

Maybe Chip Foose can take pieces of different cars and engines and build a virtual masterpiece of engineering and ingenuity; however, your average mechanic is not going to produce those results (remember Monster Garage?)

Likewise, most people simply do not have the capacity to take disparate and separate sources of business information and blend them together into a cohesive whole.

That’s why you see instructors who attend every seminar, every convention, and who buy every martial arts business product on the planet, yet they are still running schools with less than 100 students.

By doing this, you’re fooling yourself into believing the marketing lie that there’s a “secret shortcut” to success.

Let me save you some time and disappointment; the “secret shortcut” is finding someone who is already successful that shares your values and business ideals, and then proceeding to copy what they did to succeed.

That’s it. Anything else is an exercise in self-flagellation.

Exhibit D: Continuing To Visit The Doctor Who Has Failed To Find A Cure

Finally, there are many of you out there who remain loyal to “gurus” who have yet to provide a solution to your struggles. This is akin to continuing to visit a doctor who has failed to find a cure for you.

Any physician with a conscience knows that if they can’t find a cure for what ails you, it’s time to refer you out to someone who can. Only con artists and snake oil salesman prolong your pain to make a buck.

Never suffer the fool who will prolong your pain so they can keep their hand on your wallet.

A Bitter Medicine Often Gets The Fastest Results

Thankfully, there’s a cure for the issues I’ve described here – but you may not like it.

Over the last seven years I’ve come to realize that the cure for what ails people is often a bitter medicine that can be difficult to swallow.

And just as you have little patience for a white belt who never listens in class, I have little patience for people who refuse to take the bitter pill.

The Fast Track To Massive Business Success: One-on-One Coaching

However, few things bring me more satisfaction than coaching the teachable and willing to success in their martial arts studios.

I can take anyone who is willing and teachable from a sub-50-student enrollment to 200 students in under 24 months, so long as they follow my coaching and instruction.

At this time I am opening my coaching program to just 3 instructors who are teachable and willing to take action.

If you’re eager to experience a massive increase in your business over the next 6 to 12 months, visit my contact page and send me a message with your complete contact info and the subject line, “Please Coach Me to Massive Success!”

I’ll then contact you with details on how to get started.

You’re In Business To Serve Your Clients… And To Make A Profit

Only Businesses That Turn A Profit Stay In Business, And Martial Arts Business Is No Different

It always makes me laugh when I see someone criticize a business owner for having a profit motive.

Or, as one entrepreneur put it, “A business that’s about making money? What a shocker!”

Yet, that mentality pervades much of our popular culture, as well as much of the martial art world. Many times we may even subconsciously internalize this mindset, which in turn can lead to self-sabotage in our business.

If your internal dialogue is telling you that making money is bad, or that getting paid well to teach martial arts is bad, or that rich people are greedy, or that successful people got where they are by cheating people…

I could go on and on in this vein, but you see what I’m getting at.

So, if this sort of thinking is running through your skull while you’re trying to build a successful school, guess what? You are going to be tripping yourself up at every step.

This is especially true when it comes time to ask for money. If you feel guilty about getting paid for your time and effort, you are going to hesitate, to trip over your words, or just plain avoid asking for a check.

What a shame.

But, if you struggle with this issue, let’s look at it from a different perspective and see if it helps you improve your outlook toward making money…

I assume you go to work everyday, right?

Let me ask you this:

If your boss suddenly walked up to you and said, “You know, since you appear to love your job so much, we’ve decided that you should do it for half the money you’re currently getting paid. So, starting tomorrow, your pay and benefits will be cut in half, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’re working here because you love your job, and not for the money.”

So, how long would you stick around at that job after that little conversation went down? Not very long, I’m sure.

Well, YOU are your own boss in your business, and that’s the exact internal dialogue you’re having when you allow yourself to feel guilty about charging a decent fee and getting paid well to share your hard-earned knowledge with others.

So, how do you feel now about raising your rates to the national averages? (Note: They’re about $150 a month in larger cities, and $130 a month in smaller towns, based on the feedback I’ve been getting from school owners across the country.)

Stop feeling guilty about making money, and stop letting others make you feel guilty about it. Good clients expect to pay you a reasonable fee for your time and expertise – so let them!

Then, you can have the satisfaction of doing what you love, helping people improve their lives, and getting paid well for it to boot.

How To Add $72K In Profit By Next Fall…

How Starting A Summer Camp Can Add $72,000 A Year In Profit To Your School

What a lot of people don’t know about running summer camps and after-school camps keeps them from making loads of money with them.

That’s why I wrote, recorded, and released my “Starting A Summer Day Camp” and “After-School Karate Program System” courses – to help instructors properly realize income from this extremely lucrative niche market.

Yet, many instructors have no idea how lucrative this market can be. I realized this the first year we ran a full-time summer camp in my karate school – we made over $30,000 in just a few short months that summer. It was amazing!

The thing is, when you know how to run summer camps and after-school camps effectively, you can reap the rewards of this extremely stable income-generator all year long.

How?

Well, one program feeds the other. Summer camp students become after-school camp students, and vice-versa. One program fills the enrollment in the other program, since most of these clients need these services all year long.

Start a summer camp this year, and you can easily have enough cash on hand by mid-summer to make a tidy down payment on some new vehicles to use for transportation for your after-school karate camps.

The Numbers

So, how does this shake out from a financial perspective? Let’s see…

• 20 after-school karate students @ $300 per month (yes, that’s how much they pay) x 9 months of the year = $54,000.00 per year gross income (yes, with just 20 students)
• 20 summer camp students @ $500 per month (not a typo) x 3 months of the year = $30,000.00 per year gross income
• Subtract about $1,000.00 per month in overhead costs (yes, your overhead costs will be high – this is something no one else will tell you about running karate camps, which is a good reason to read my manuals and courses)
• And you end up with $72,000.00 per year in profit from just 20 students.

For most martial art school owners, that’s some serious extra cash to put in you pocket. Granted, these numbers shake out this way if you’re doing most of the work yourself. If you hire more staff, expect it to be around $60,000.00 a year or so (I explain how to do this in the courses).

Can You Do It?

Yes, you can with proper planning. However, you should know that the time to start planning and advertising is right now (early March to mid-April) for summer camps, and in late May or early June for summer camps.

So, if you don’t know a thing about running summer camp or after-school karate camps, you should get my materials and start going through them right now. Planning ahead and advertising early is the best way to fill your camps. I know this from over a decade of experience in running these programs.

Yes it’s work… but then again so is going to a “day job” every day. I look at my after-school camps and summer camps like the “ultimate day job substitute”! I get to teach martial arts, play all day long, and ultimately I am in control of my financial destiny with my camps – not some corporate bean counter who might decide to cut my job at a whim.

Oh, and did I mention that parents need these services even more when the economy goes sour? Yep… both parents go to work, and guess what? They need after-school camps for their kids.

That means job security for you, and combined with a great income and the autonomy of self-employment, and you can’t go wrong with starting a summer day camp and then leveraging it into an after-school karate camp.

Hustle

Hustle And The Martial Arts Business Entrepreneur

Hustle.

Some have it, some don’t.

But just what is “hustle”?

After being self-employed most of my adult life, I’ve come to define hustle as that quality that separates the men and women from the boys and girls in business.

It’s the quality that makes a person get up earlier than their competition each day and go to bed later each night.

It’s what makes them work harder than everyone else, without complaint or even hesitation. It’s that drive that makes a person obsessed with things like marketing and profit margins.

It’s something within a person that makes them a natural entrepreneur, an indefinable edge that causes them to do the thing that others will not do… and do it with a smile on their face.

It’s what turns “work” into play, every single day.

The fact is, some folks just don’t have hustle. They’re the ones that choose recreation over working weekends, who can’t deal with deferred gratification, who complain because they have to go to a day job and then go teach classes until eight or nine pm.

Boo-hoo.

I have zero sympathy for people who don’t have hustle, because having it is a choice from day one of becoming a business owner. You have to decide deep down that you’re in it to win it, and make a DNA-deep commitment that you’ll do whatever it takes to be holding the prize at the end of the day.

And, I have even less sympathy for martial art school owners who lack hustle.

Why?

Because martial arts at the deepest level is about applying lessons on the mat to lessons in life.

Every good black belt should understand that and it should evidence itself in their daily life. It takes hustle to become a black belt, and if you can’t apply that lesson to your business, maybe you shouldn’t even be in business in the first place.

There’s no shame in it, just go back to teaching part-time at the rec center or helping out at your instructor’s school. Some folks just aren’t cut out to be in business.

I know, it sounds harsh, but then again reality is harsh.  And the truth is, business is a lot like combat in the sense that it’s deadly serious, the stakes are extremely high, and laziness is a luxury you simply cannot afford.

Call it hustle, discipline, or drive, but one thing’s for sure.

You must have it to succeed in your martial arts business.

Do you have it? Only you can know for sure. But if you don’t, don’t make a big deal out of it. Just do the thing that others won’t, every single day.

Before long, hustle will become a habit, and that habit will lead you to success.

Why You Need To Market Your Summer Karate Camps Now!

Here’s the deal with summer activities…

Parents start planning ahead and signing kids up NOW – not when summer arrives!

Why? Because they want to make sure they get their kids into an activity before it fills up.

Case in point – my friend Doris, who recently waited six hours in line to get her kid in summer swimming.

She got beat by a mom who got in line the night before at 11 PM – is that crazy, or what?

Parents are serious about getting their kids into summer activities – very serious…

That means YOU need to be marketing your summer camps NOW, not two months from now.

If you do, you’ll have a summer camp that’s full all summer long, and you’ll be free from the “summer drop-out” worries, too.

Don’t know a thing about running summer camps?

I’ve got you covered…

Click the link to learn from over a decade of experience running massively successful summer camps:

Learn How To Start A Summer Day Camp

Pssstt…

Guess what? Full summer camps can EASILY turn into FULL after-school karate programs.

Then, you have stable income year-round!

Get my Summer Camp manual AND my After-School Karate Program at the link below, and save $47.00!

Mike Massie’s After-School Karate Program System

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