Posted by Mike Massie on March 5, 2010
Facing Down Hard Times In Your School?
If you're facing hard times in your martial art school, you're not alone. Here are some tips to help you make it through until things improve.
Facing down hard times? You’re not alone. I’ve heard from more than a few school owners who are feeling the crunch during this recession.
Here are some tips for those of you who may be struggling to keep your school open in the down economy.
The Mental Side – Survival Strategies
First off, focus on the positives – it’s the only way you’ll get through. Just keep doing that – your attitude is what will bring people into your school.
People are attracted to upbeat personalities. If you’re happy and energetic, it will really make you stand out and people will be drawn to it. Remember, your energy drives your school.
The Financial Side – Making It Through
First off, cut back on everything EXCEPT your marketing budget. Anything you don’t need to operate or survive should be cut from your budget.
However, it is imperative that you step-up your marketing activities, rather than slow them down. Those school owners that I coach who are growing in this economy are not doing so because they are lucky, located in “good” areas, or because they are martial arts superstars…
They are growing because they spend 80% of their work hours outside of class on their marketing – and they do this consistently, every single month.
Even so, you still need to make sure you’re spending your marketing dollars wisely. So, go through your marketing expenditures with a fine-tooth comb. If any marketing method is costing you more than it’s bringing in, cancel it and shift those funds to something that is actually giving you a good return on your investment.
A good rule of thumb here is that every dollar you spend on marketing should return $1 in revenue during the same marketing cycle (in out industry, 30 days).
However, I like to get $2 back on every dollar I spend within a 30-day time frame. You need those fast profits and high rates of return on your marketing dollars, because a martial arts school relies on cash flow for survival. So, your every marketing promotion should bring back a return of 200% within 30 days of running it.
Focus your efforts and resources only on those promotions that meet that criteria. And if you’re broke, focus on low-cost and high-return marketing activities like online marketing and door-to-door flier distribution. They take more time to implement, but they’re cheap and effective when done properly.
Keep Your Head In The Game
Finally, be present! If you check out on your school and students because things are not going so well, guess what? They’ll sense it and you’ll only be making the situation worse.
Remain fully invested in your students, regardless of what happens. Loyalty breeds loyalty, and you’ll be surprised at how many of them will be cheering for you and will stick with you, even if things don’t work out…
The Longview – What If Things Don’t Work Out?
“A mistake is a future benefit, the full value of which is yet to be realized.”
- Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera
First off, it’s not the end of the world if you have to go back to teaching part-time. So, don’t be ashamed of finding a part-time teaching location, ending your lease, and moving your classes somewhere without all the overhead and high rent.
Also, know when to call it quits on having a full-time location. Is it worth it to force yourself into major debt or bankruptcy, just so you don’t feel like a failure?
Well, guess what? All entrepreneurs fail at some point in their careers as business owners. It’s part and parcel for the game. Don’t feel bad if things don’t work out this time around. Just roll with it, regroup, and the next time around you’ll be wiser for your experience.
Remember, there’s ALWAYS another opportunity waiting just around the corner. The past is just a memory, and come tomorrow today will be the past.
You will recover and you will be able to start over again. So, stay positive and just keep looking for those opportunities as you move forward.
Posted by Mike Massie on February 10, 2010
Setting A Marketing Budget When You’re Just Starting Out…
You probably don't have a lot of money to throw at your marketing... but that doesn't mean you shouldn't set a reasonable marketing budget.
Early on (when I taught part-time), I spent all my profit on advertising. ALL of it.
I just figured if I wanted to be a full-time school owner, I had to act like one.
So, if I profited $500 or $800 in a month, I spent it on ads (and later, on equipment and saving to move into a full-time location).
Once I hit the point where I was getting enough students and leads, and I knew what it took to get those leads each month, I budgeted that amount.
No Hard And Fast Rule On What To Spend On Your Marketing Budget
There’s no hard and fast rule for what to allot to your marketing budget. The 10% figure I give in Small Dojo Big Profits is just a guideline. And, I actually had someone from another industry giving me a hard time about that figure at one point.
My response was that if you don’t set a guideline, you’ll either overspend or underspend. Then again, 10% is a good figure once you’re up and running, but 10% of nothing, or 10% of a few hundred bucks is not enough to get your business off the ground and make it grow.
Just Make Sure You Spend It On What Works
Just remember, a lot of what you spend on advertising early on will be to find out what works and what doesn’t in your area. To save you some money, things that are working well for instructors right now are:
- Internet/SEO
- signage (permanent/building, snipe signs, banners, vehicles)
- door-to-door fliers and door hangers
- direct mail (postcards are cheapest – but this takes a sharp marketer to do right)
- social media marketing
And remember, getting press coverage is free. Hire someone to write your press releases if writing isn’t your forte, or trade service for service.
Posted by Mike Massie on January 29, 2010
Matt Stover preparing to place another one through the uprights. Photo courtesy Colts.com
So my old buddy Matt Stover is going to the Super Bowl again.
And, he’ll have the distinction of being the oldest NFL player ever to play in a Super Bowl game.
To be truthful, Matt and I haven’t spoken in years.
But, in the off-seasons prior to his 1999 and 2000 seasons with the Ravens, I had the privilege of helping Matt train his off leg for greater balance and increased kicking precision.
Those two seasons were break out seasons for Matt and the Ravens.
I’d like to believe I had a small role in that. Matt thought I did, and said so. I don’t take much credit though – there are a whole slew of professionals who work with pro athletes, and each one does their share to help out.
And, Matt’s the guy who did all the hard work, and the one with the golden leg. 
But the crazy thing is, I’d have never thought in a million years that I’d have *anything* to do with an NFL player going to the Super Bowl.
And it would have never happened if I’d listened to all the people who told me I was wasting my time with my dream of being a full-time martial arts instructor and school owner.
I thank God that He made me resilient (thank you, God).
And, when I’m watching the Colts play in the Super Bowl this year, I’ll be thinking to myself that I at least had a tiny little part in making that happen.
Have a great weekend, and go live your dreams.
Until next time,
Michael D. Massie
P.S.: Small Dojo Big Profits explains how I did it… in spite of all the people who said I couldn’t. Check it out if you need some guidance or inspiration.
Posted by Mike Massie on July 13, 2009
Since I released “Small Dojo, Big Profits”, I’ve often been asked for advice and assistance on martial arts school marketing. In fact, I’d say if you got 100 martial arts school owners together and asked them all what their biggest concern was, they’d all say, “How to get more students.”
The Desire For A “Simple” Marketing Solution
It’s a universal issue… yet when I’m asked by school owners for assistance on this topic, I often get the feeling from some inexperienced school owners (and those who are ignorant of good marketing practices) that they’re expecting a “simple” solution.
Sort of like they are expecting me to pull out a bag of magic marketing beans and dump them in their hand (you know, a “just add water and get students” solution).
Unfortunately, there aren’t any “magic marketing beans” that allow you to grow new leads and students like Chia pets.
But the good news is that there are new marketing methods that come close. Let me explain…
Online Marketing Provides A Huge Payoff For The Innovators And Early Adopters…
Ever since the demise of the yellow pages ad and the local news ad, martial arts school owners have been scrambling to find a new marketing method to replace those old standbys.
Savvy school owners realized that the internet was where it was going to happen in the future. These folks didn’t listen to the nay-sayers who said it was a “flash in the pan,” and instead started marketing their schools online at the advent of the internet boom (I started in 1997 after I saw how one of my clients and his partners sold a website to Yahoo for several hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Those who got in early ended up owning established, valuable internet presences for their schools (these days, having a strong internet presence is like owning a prime real estate location in your town). And, those school owners who took the risk early on are still currently reaping the benefits of making an early entry into online marketing.
Yep, It’s Like Magic Marketing Beans… If Can To Learn How To Be A Gardener – Or If You Can Afford To Hire One
So, where does that leave the school owners who are new, or who are unsure of where to start in creating an online marketing campaign?
Well, even if you missed the bus early on, it doesn’t change the fact that the internet is where consumers are making buying decisions.
Did you know?
- 97% of people with online access will research products and services online before they purchase -
- 35% of all searches are done with an intent to buy -
- 55% of all local searches are done with an intent to buy -
- Of all local searches, 8 out of 10 call or visit a store and 60% of those result in a purchase of some kind -
Even so, I know it’s confusing as heck when you’re coming in late to the game – especially if you’re a non-techie. And up until this point, martial arts school owners only had three choices when it came to getting their schools online:
- Go the cheap route with one of those “free” website services. Well, there ain’t nothing in life that’s free, and in business free usually cost you more than you save… and in the case of free marketing websites, the cost is typically paid in all the students you don’t enroll because your site is set up wrong.
- Go the DIY route. This can work if you have the time, patience, and inclination to spend 50-100 hours learning all the various intricacies of online marketing. First, you have to learn how to build a site using a programming language (hard), a website editor (still a learning curve), or a website builder (easiest, but generally will look like cow dookie). Then, there’s the uphill ice-skating race of getting your site ranked high in Google – but you can always go the paid route and just pay for clicks. But then again, that’s an art and a science unto itself… and it takes time to learn to do all this stuff. It’s frustrating, often as costly as hiring someone to do it for you (mistakes are money), and while you’re figuring it out you still aren’t getting any students.
- Hire an expert to handle it for you. We all know what keeps most school owners from doing this – MONEY! It’s expensive to hire a good web designer, copywriter, or search engine marketing specialist. I know, because I am one of the rare few who can do ALL of the above. And, it was only after spending 10 years learning this stuff that I felt confident enough in my abilities to offer them to the public. But, most school owners aren’t willing to spend $2,000 hiring me to build a site for them. I’m not going to preach to you on how “you can’t NOT afford it!” because I know what it’s like running a school. You may have the money, but you feel like it’s a lot to gamble… what if it doesn’t work? Believe me, I know and I’ve been there.
Well, time rolls on and technology improves… often at a breakneck pace. And, thankfully there are some very well-financed technology companies who have thrown a lot of time, expertise, and money at the above problems in an effort to solve them for small business owners like you.
Recent Innovations = A Simple, Inexpensive, Effective Alternative
And, although there still aren’t any magic marketing beans, there are simpler online marketing solutions available these days. The best part is, they allow us to reach the local market – local online marketing being the holy grail of internet marketing for small business owners.
Recent innovations in online marketing have brought us a simple, all-in-one online marketing solution for small businesses… one that combines all the various aspects of local online marketing into a single package that is extremely affordable (much less than the last yellow pages ad I ran - and that was over a decade ago).
I know that you folks would like to find out about such a service, so I’ve arranged for a special webinar for you this Thursday with one of the founders of the new technology company that developed it.
During the webinar, we’ll be discussing why local online marketing is so important to you as a school owner, how the service works, what kind of results small business owners are getting with the service, and what you need to do to become one of the first in your area to take advantage of the service.
Learn How To Reach Your Local Market Online – Effectively and Inexpensively
Here are the details on the webinar, including the link where you can register to reserve a seat:
Webinar Time: Thursday, Jul 16, 2009 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CDT
Registration Link: Click here to register and reserve your seat
Please be aware that we expect this webinar to fill up quickly, as this service is brand new and many school owners are going to want to be the first in their areas to take advantage of it.
Note: This is only available in the U.S. right now… but I’ll let you know as soon as it becomes available in other countries. – MM
Now, I know a lot of you are going to ask if it will be recorded. The answer is, “Probably, but you should try to make it so you learn about this before your competitors do.”
In an information society, the faster you can adopt new ideas and innovations, the greater your market advantage over your competitors. That’s why you should at least give yourself the opportunity to evaluate this service before your competition has the opportunity to take advantage of it.
So, make sure you register right away, and also be sure to login to the online conference room ten minutes early to ensure you get into the conference.
See you at the webinar on Thursday!
Sincerely,
Michael D. Massie
Blog: http://martialartsbusinessdaily.com/
Social Network: http://www.masainetwork.com/
Business Manual: http://www.small-dojo-big-profits.com/
Resources: http://www.starting-a-martial-arts-school.com/
Posted by Mike Massie on June 29, 2009
Starting-A-Martial-Arts-School.com and MASAInetwork.com member Don O’Neal posted an excellent article on his MASAInetwork.com blog explaining how you can get your program into a YMCA or rec center:
http://www.masainetwork.com/profiles/blogs/getting-in-a-ymca-or-rec
(Hint: Be sure to register when you hit the site – it’s free!)
The martial arts social networking site for instructors.
This is an excellent primer on how to get your foot in the door by presenting yourself in a professional manner.
I’d have to say that the #1 reason instructors aren’t offered spots at YMCAs and rec centers has to do with not being taken seriously due to not presenting their program in a professional manner.
Check out the article – it’ll help you avoid making that mistake. Oh, and be sure to message Don to thank him for contributing the article on the MASAInetwork.com site.
Until next time,
Michael D. Massie
Blog: http://martialartsbusinessdaily.com/
Social Network: http://www.masainetwork.com/
Business Manual: http://www.small-dojo-big-profits.com/
Resources: http://www.starting-a-martial-arts-school.com/
Summer Camp Manual: http://startingasummerdaycamp.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/michael.massie1
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mabizdaily
Performance Nutrition: http://truth.mymaxsystem.com/athletes.php
P.S.: Here’s some recent feedback on our business materials…
“I think your stuff is great, it is almost to good to share
but I am going to anyway. Thanks.”
Sensei Robert Taylor
Sidekick Karate
China Grove, NC
P.S.S: Still a few spots left for the August seminar:
http://martialartsbusinessdaily.com/event-registration
