Martial Arts Teaching and Business

Pick Yourself

December 15, 2011 in Business, Forward Thinking, On The Job, Training with 2 Comments

Pick Yourself Why do certain kids always get picked last in gym class?

Why do certain employees always get skipped over for promotion?

Why does life seem to present opportunities to some while it appears to ignore others?

My analysis is that it’s because those individuals would never pick themselves. If you’re not willing to pick yourself, neither are your peers. Doors close. Opportunities slip away. You’re last again.

If you want a spot on the team, if you want the job or the promotion, and if you want the once in a lifetime opportunities you have to be willing to pick yourself. Completely. Without a doubt.

Are you willing to pick yourself? Be honest.

11 Major Martial Arts Advertising Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

November 16, 2011 in Business, Marketing & Advertising with 2 Comments

most advertising doesn't work

I’m worried about martial arts school owners and how they’re marketing and advertising themselves these days. I live in Georgia but I’m confident that if I moved to Washington state, at the opposite corner of the country, and opened a local circulation I’d see an ad for a martial arts school that looks identical to a non-affiliated school back in Georgia (and probably equally as ineffective). That’s shameful.

To be clear, it’s important that everyone understands that advertising and marketing are not the same thing (here’s a good, short Quora answer on the difference). Martial arts schools typically use print ads and websites for advertising, so that’s mostly what I’m referring to here.

If you want to be successful, avoid the following 11 mistakes:

Throwing too many darts at the demographic map.
If you’re lucky enough to get someone to stop and look at your print ad, can they clearly comprehend what demographic you’re targeting? And if it’s them, do they feel it? Many martial arts schools offer programs for young children, older children, teens, adults, and kickboxing for moms. If your print ad is trying to speak to all of those groups simultaneously, the prospect isn’t getting the message you need them to get and your response rate is going to suffer. Only target one group with each ad.
Providing too much information in each ad.
Your ad can’t double as a sales rep. Your prospects can’t ask it questions and you don’t have enough room or enough of your prospect’s time to educate them to a sale in a single ad. Stop trying. Instead, focus your ad around one single concept with a great headline, your top competitive advantage, social proof (e.g. testimonial), your CTA (call to action), and any absolutely pertinent information someone would need to respond to your CTA. Leave everything else out.
Failing to tie each advertisement into an integrated marketing strategy.
Ads that attempt to stand alone will fail alone. Think of an ad as a single piece in a larger marketing puzzle. It needs supporting pieces to click into or the prospect is never going to see the big picture. For example: If my end goal is to get the prospect to sign up for a 2 week trial I won’t sell the 2 week trial in the ad. That’s too difficult and messy. Instead, the ad’s sole job will be to send the prospect to a landing page online that will sell the two-week trial more interactively and hopefully more effectively. And I’ll use the landing page traffic analysis to measure my advertisement ROI and effective reach.
Using low-quality or generic stock photos.
Do not, I repeat, do not use a photograph that any of your competitors could also find and use or buy and use. The photographs you use in your advertising campaigns need to be custom and should be your real students or staff. It needs to bleed your brand and you need complete control over the look and feel. The photographs also need to be similar in style and processing to create a consistent look. If you don’t know any students, parents, or staff who can do quality photography for you then another option is to ask whoever does your school’s annual student photo day to give you a CD of all the photos. If you have to pay extra, pay extra. A photo is truly worth 1000 words and you can’t afford to miss out on that.
Failing to use consistent design, colors, style, and typography.
Just as you can’t skimp on photography, you can’t skimp on design. Consistency is key. When it takes up to seven impressions for a prospect to act on an advertisement, you can’t afford for them to not be able to align all those instances with your brand. If all of your ads look completely different with no consistent style or type then it’s very possible you’ll fly below the radar. Use the same designer for all of your ads and find a couple of fonts and colors that align with your brand and use the same two or three every time.
DIY amateur hour.
You can do a lot of this stuff yourself, but the key to success is knowing when you need to outsource. I’ve seen far too many DIY ad projects that looked like the owner outsourced the design to their Little Ninjas class. That’s unacceptable. If you take your business seriously and want your prospects and customers to take your business seriously then you need to put forth a consistent image of professionalism.
Being boring – Using the same copy, format, and offer everyone else in the industry is using.
Tell the truth, does your latest ad feature any of the following words: respect, discipline, focus, family, degree/dan, sq. ft. facility, master instructor, or self-defense? Those are just a few of the words I see in nearly every single martial arts ad I come across. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s that they’re meaningless because they’re overused. What are you doing differently? What story do you want to tell? What are you doing that’s important?
Failing to decide what you want the prospect’s action step to be.
The purpose of an advertisement is to get the viewer to take a specific action. Unfortunately, we often fail to make that desired action clear to the viewer. Do you want them to visit a website and fill out a form? Do you want them to call you? Do you want them to stop in and see you? Do you want them to tell a friend? What do you want? Choose a very specific action that you want the viewer to take and make it painfully obvious to them.
Racing to the bottom with your offer.
The easiest way to get people in the door is by letting them try your school for themselves. They may not believe all the marketing hype but if you can get them in the door on a short, no-obligation trial program and they experience your greatness first-hand that goes a long way toward making them a full-time member. But take care when designing the trial program. If the trial is too cheap you’ll attract all the budget prospects who can’t afford your regular tuition. If you make it too expensive, you might turn away prime prospects who just don’t want to take that much risk. If the trial is too short they may feel like they’ll waste the money because they won’t get a good feel for your program and if you make it too long you’ll lose too much money. I follow the principle of refusing to race to the bottom. I don’t engage in price wars with the competition and I don’t try to undercut anybody; I offer a fair and honest trial program that makes me a little money and allows the prospect to try my school. And I never discount my tuition. I know what a spot in the program is worth and I demand that amount.
Selling without teaching or storytelling. – Use your ad to sell the next step and use the next step to sell your service.
Sales is not about telling the prospect all the great services you offer and expecting them to fork over their hard-earned cash. Sales is about problem solving, understanding the prospect, and telling them a story they can relate to that’s also honest and reflects what your services can offer them. Stop using your ad space to list all of your services and talk about how amazing you are. If you’ve properly identified your target demographic, you can teach them what you want them to know or tell them a story that they can relate to. Ideally, you want to simply get their attention and then send them to an extra step where they will be willing to listen deeper to your offerings. Use your ad to sell the next step and use the next step to sell your program.
Failing to test and refine.
Some ideas work where others fail miserably. Some colors work better than others. Some calls to action garner upwards of 80% response rates where others fail to even get 2%. Headlines are important and you have to figure out which ones capture attention the best. Which words are working and which aren’t? Which publications/circulations are working and which aren’t? There is always something you can test and re-test; do it religiously so you can spend your advertising dollars more efficiently and cut down on waste. In today’s world, testing is simple using tools on the internet before an ad ever goes out to the public. I’ll touch on that in a future article. If you don’t want to miss it, make sure you subscribe now!
Bonus: Not having anything special to advertise.
The fact is that you can’t market chicken shit as chicken salad for very long. Even if you’re “just as good as” the guy down the street, that’s a failing position. And don’t just pursue being better, pursue different. Pursue drastically different. In a world where martial arts schools are popping up as often as McDonalds, the only way to attract attention and create a buzz is to offer something that nobody else is offering or offering the typical in a way nobody else is offering it. When the school down the street zigs, it’s time to zag.

Have you made any of these mistakes? If so, the good news is that you can fix it immediately. Sit down with your team and outline a broad-based marketing strategy and then figure out how you’re going to use different advertising components to make that marketing strategy successful while following the above guidelines.

And start thinking differently. You’re not just a martial arts instructor, you’re a business owner. You can’t afford to ignore the important side of business and marketing. While you might not care about getting rich, there’s never a good reason to throw money down the drain on poorly executed advertising campaigns. Respect your business and respect yourself; promote responsibly!

Free Your Feet

November 14, 2011 in Forward Thinking, My Life, PSAs, Training with 0 Comments

If you didn’t already know, I’m anti-shoe. It’s not some hippie OWS thing, it’s a don’t-enjoy-needless-injuries thing. I take showers, I promise.

I’ve talked a bit about why I don’t like shoes, but nothing explains it quite as well as a well-made infographic. This, in a nutshell, is why I am waging a strike against shoes and why you should join me:

Courtesy X Ray Technician Schools

Do you have knee pain? Hip pain? Lower back pain? Other lower body joint discomfort? It’s almost certainly your shoes!

Martial Arts & ADHD: A 90 Day Experiment for Success (and info for non-ADD students too!)

November 3, 2011 in ADD & ADHD, Discipline, Nutrition, Teaching, Tips for Parents with 2 Comments

Many of my students suffer from ADD symptoms and many are officially diagnosed. A large percentage of my ADD students came to me because their doctor recommended martial arts training to help them with structure, focus, self-control, and so on. After all, martial arts is branded as a perfect program that can help children in those areas.

Even if your child doesn’t have ADD, keep reading because this information will help all students.

Unfortunately, martial arts doesn’t cure ADD. Martial arts alone may not even improve it. It all depends on what the student and family are willing to do beyond martial arts training. There’s a secret weapon I recommend to all parents who seek my advice in this area. And no, doc, it’s not medication.

The medical community trains (and often rewards) doctors to prescribe medication as the first approach. I’ve taught tens of thousands of children over a decade in a dynamic physical and social environment. I also worked for half a decade as a pharmacy tech and got to talk to pharmacists who know the exact short and long-term effects of different medications on the human body. Those two experiences lead me to suggest that parents avoid medication as a first line of defense as there are alternatives that can be far more effective and less costly that you should try first.

So what’s the secret weapon?

Before your jump to medicate your child, please consider revamping their nutritional habits and see what effect it has on them. Don’t write me off, it’ll cost you nothing to do the following experiment and it may save you thousands of dollars in health care costs and may save your children years of not solving the core issue.

The fact is that the typical American diet is poisonous to long-term health. For developing children, it presents a road block to brain development and wreaks havoc on their physical, mental, social, and emotional well-being. When children fail to consume the core nutrients they need and instead consume empty, anti-nutritious fillers, chemicals, and poisons they become confined to a constant state of malnutrition and toxic response that–depending on the child–can manifest itself as a lack of focus, a surplus of energy, poor behavior, bad attitude, and so on.

When presented with those symptoms, doctors do two things: prescribe medication and suggest the parents bring the child to me. The fact is that unless we resolve the underlying issue, there’s little I can do. Medication alters the child’s behavior, but does nothing to quell the war his body is waging to fight against the constant assault from the toxins and anti-nutrients the child is consuming throughout the day. Even if the child doesn’t present ADD symptoms, poor nutrition negatively affects brain development, learning, and behavior. Revamping their nutrition can only promote improvement.

So what’s the experiment?

I want you to experiment with the following information for 90 days. If your child is already on medication, I cannot suggest you take them off, but will instead leave that decision up to you. If you’re thinking about putting your child on medication, try this experiment first. If your child doesn’t have ADD, try the experiment anyway and see what happens: there’s never a reason to knowingly give your child poison and that could very well be what you’re doing day in and day out.

I don’t have the room necessary to give you every detail and all the background information for every step in the experiment. It would make the post too long and you probably wouldn’t read it all anyway. Just try the experiment and then if you want more information you can email me.

Do this for 90 days…

Cut out all grain-based foods from your child’s diet. This is bread, pasta, rice, corn, wheat, etc. Grains are highly processed, toxic to animals, and full of anti-nutrients called Lectins and Phytates and a poison called Gluten.
Do not feed your child Gluten. It’s a poison designed to prevent animals from eating the grain it protects. It’s in a bunch of stuff; cutting out grains will help you avoid 98% of it but you should still proceed with caution.
Do not drink calories: no soda and no juice. Not even natural juice. One glass of orange juice has almost as much sugar as a can of Coke and more fructose than your child should consume in an entire day. Drink water only.
No sports drinks. They’re coke with different marketing. No fake sports drinks either (e.g. Powerade Zero), they’re full of chemicals. Again, water only.
Do not consume dairy. Even people who aren’t lactose intolerant can suffer negative side effects from dairy consumption. You have to cut it out to find out if it’s a problem. After 90 days, you can add it back in (but pasteurized dairy lacks nutrition anyway) slowly but keep an eye out for any strange symptoms.
Limit carbohydrate consumption to less than 150 grams per day. Most carb consumption should come from vegetables. If you remember ANYTHING, remember this: carb consumption = insulin = fat.
Limit sugar as much as possible. If you’re eating right, sugar is naturally limited as an issue unless you’re chowing down high-sugar fruits all day long. Even natural sugar is bad in excess. Your job is to limit insulin spikes (caused by too much of ANY kind of sugar intake).
Consume only high quality animal products. Steak, chicken, pork, eggs, bacon, etc. is all fine. If you want to go the extra mile, only consume grass-fed & finished beef and free range organic versions of the other animal products.
Limit your cooking oils to real butter (not margarine), avocado, or coconut oil. No hydrogenated oils. (Definitive guide to oils)
No caffeine.
Make sure your child gets at least 8 hours of sleep each night.
Let them play outside every chance they get.
Attend martial arts training at least three days per week.
Give them an Omega-3 supplement such as Barleans Fish Oil supplement (tastes amazing). The body cannot produce Omega 3 or 6 by itself, so it is essential that humans consume these fatty acids. It’s real brain food because Omega 3 is found primarily in the brain and the brain depends on it for cognitive and behavioral function. The typical American diet is very high in Omega 6 and very low in Omega 3. It’s important to balance that out.
Pack your child’s lunch every day. School cafeteria food is a nutritional disaster. It’s amazing how schools will feed kids dog food and then suggest that parents medicate the side effects.
If all that’s hard to remember, just print out this food pyramid and tape it to the fridge.

I know the experiment is difficult, it’s frustrating, and it’s a general PITA, but it’s absolutely worth it. With Thanksgiving and Christmas approaching, the task is even more difficult. But this isn’t about you, it’s about your child and their well-being. It’s time to take charge, do the uncomfortable thing, and force change.

Remember, you can always go back to chemicals, medications, and food ingredients that you can’t pronounce should you feel the need. But at the very least, give it a shot for 90 days of your life and see what happens. Oh, and if you actually do the experiment please email me with your results!!!

Where Am I?

October 24, 2011 in Forward Thinking with 0 Comments

Obviously the post rate has slowed down here, but it’s for good reason. I’m writing my manifesto for the martial arts industry called No More Mediocrity. My goal is to have it wrapped up by the end of December, but that will mean less posting frequency on the blog.

No More Mediocrity is a manifesto that I’ve been contemplating for some time now. It’s a project that has stopped and started over the last year. Parts of it are controversial and challenge both the industry as well as my immediate teaching and business situation. For that reason, I have stalled a few times while writing it, unsure of whether I should actually make my thoughts public.

I’ve firmly decided that I must be true to my beliefs and share them. The martial arts industry needs to shift directions or it will cease to exist as a legitimate industry and I care too much about my students and my future to stand by and watch that happen without stepping up and trying to influence a different outcome.

So please stand by while I finish this project. I will still post articles sporadically, but understand that volume will be severely affected while I focus on shipping this important collection of ideas. Thanks for being a reader and thanks for supporting me!

Zengu: The New Kid on the Block For Wholesale Martial Arts Supply

October 7, 2011 in Business with 0 Comments

There’s a lot of competition in wholesale martial arts supply, so when I heard Zengu.com was launching I was almost as excited as I was last weekend when I found out that another bank was being built down the street from me. What could they offer that I can’t already get from my wholesale experience with Century or Macho?

Being that I dedicate a good portion of my blog content to school owners and instructors, I had to check them out just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. After I signed up for a free account, I immediately started looking for a competitive advantage or some tangible difference between them and the competition. Here’s what I found:

They have personality

The corporate octopus has suffocated the big suppliers. They have a large selection and they’re reliable, but they no longer feel human. Zengu feels human and I like doing business with humans.

They make repetitive orders easy

Ordering more uniforms is boring and for some reason the big supply warehouses haven’t figured out that I have better things to do than manually add the same uniform order to my cart week after week. Zengu uses a list feature that allows you to place repetitive orders without playing a mindless game of patty cake with their shopping cart. You can even adjust the quantities of the items on the list so that it’s repetitive yet still customizable. Nice!

You can make notes about items or see what other people think!

I hate sizing on some martial arts items. A size from one manufacturer is often totally different from another. I’ll use rash guards as an example: an adult small from one manufacturer might fit a student perfectly while an adult small from another manufacturer makes my student look like they got in a grappling match with a parachute. Zengu lets me write notes on items so that I can easily remember details about each item to help me cut down on costly mistakes.

If I’ve never tried an item before, I can consult “The Wall”, which has opinions from other school owners about the item I’m thinking about purchasing. That’s good insight that will lead me to make better decisions the first time around.

Try them out!

Zengu has a great selection of items, some of which I can’t even get at the larger suppliers and they’ve done a great job of building a community while adding some helpful features that separate them from other suppliers. School owners can get a free account and they make it easy to complete the process of being approved for wholesale. Check ‘em out!

Being Intentional

October 5, 2011 in Discipline, Forward Thinking, Growth, Success, Training with 0 Comments

The sign of a great fighter is her ability to be intentional. Every technique, every transition, every feint and fake, every counter, and every action in the ring is deliberate. She controls the opponent by controlling the ring, by adjusting the distance, and by pacing the match. What she does she does on purpose; nothing, including her victory, is accidental. That is the level of composure and calculation it takes to become a champion.

Athletes become intentional through thousands of hours of practice and dedication. Through intense and prolonged training the athlete’s focus becomes razor-sharp and the depth of her understanding of each part of the game gets harder to quantify. This, along with her patience, her spirit, and her will to win are what set her apart.

Every martial artist should strive to be intentional, but the concept of being intentional is not just applicable to fighting. Being intentional is also the mark of a great human being. What can you do going forward to be an intentional friend, an intentional business person, an intentional husband or wife, an intentional teacher, and an intentional son or daughter?

This is what we mean when we talk about taking martial arts off of the mat and into the world. This is what the application of martial arts practice to our lives looks like. This type of thought should be the foundation for 21st century martial arts pedagogy.

Martial Arts Teachers — Come Share Ideas and Grow Your School!

October 3, 2011 in Business, Forward Thinking, Success, Teaching with 0 Comments

Are you a martial arts teacher or school owner? I want to invite you to join me on Google+ for weekly “hangouts.” We’ll be discussing curriculum, marketing, pedagogy, growth, HR, and more! It’s free and it can help you grow your school.

What’s Google+?

Google+ is like a mix between Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. It’s a powerful social network and people are finding different ways to take advantage of its features. Google will soon be releasing business pages for Google+ which will potentially change the face of social network marketing for your school, which is another reason you need to be on Google+ and be involved in the group we’re starting over there.

What’s a hangout?

A “hangout” is Google’s term for a group video chat. You invite people on Google+ to a “hangout” and the technology allows you to have an online video meeting with up to 10 people. Pretty cool right?

How do I get invited to the next hangout?

If you want to receive an invitation to the next hangout, just follow the steps below:

That’s it! As soon as we schedule the next hangout you’ll be the first to know about it!

The Worst Thing We Can Do To Students

September 27, 2011 in Discipline, Growth, On The Job, PSAs, Success, Teaching, Tips for Parents, Training with 2 Comments

Photo by Adrian Sommerling

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it. ~ Lou Holtz

Sometimes the most well-meaning efforts have the biggest negative impact. One of the worst things we can do to students as parents, teachers, and coaches is to save them from failure, save them from the real consequences of their actions, and to save them from feeling pain or disappointment. I have seen the product that is the eternally rescued child and it’s not pretty.

Students who are constantly rescued, saved from failure, guarded from consequences, and shielded from pain and disappointment fail to acquire the necessary tools required to deal with the ups and downs of life. They become entitled blamers, victims of the world, unable to cope with the law of reaping and sowing.

Maturity is when we stop demanding that life meet our demands and begin to meet the demands of life.

Marital arts and countless other sports and activities that children take part in are moving toward a no-fail mindset. Martial arts schools are good at pretending that students are challenged and “put to the test”, but are they really? Look around: they’re removing obstacles that used to stand in the way of success; they’re preparing the path for the child and smoothing out all the rough spots. Less sparring, less board breaking, easier techniques, and less time in between belts are a few examples of this. In many schools, the sole requirement for the next rank is that you have a checking account and a pulse.

But by pretending that every child is succeeding, we’re actually failing all of them. By guarding them from frustration and consequences, we’re missing valuable coaching moments that could be used to develop strong-willed leaders who won’t take no for an answer. Instead, we’re breeding an army of future husbands, wives, friends, neighbors, workers, and parents who expect life to bend around them, to lay down at their presence, and to submit to their will.

What we must do as coaches, teachers, and parents is to show students how to leap the hurdles presented to them by life. Life is full of hurdles and you can either jump them or you can’t. But expecting our children and our students to be Olympic hurdlers in their teens and adult life when we’ve removed all of their opportunities to practice jumping as a child is irrational and irresponsible. If you save them from failure now, you set them up for failure later. And failure later is generally far more painful.

Last week I wrote about the secret recipe for being a great coach. The second half of that recipe says that successful coaching depends on the coach’s willingness to tell the truth. Our students and children need us to tell them the truth about life so they have every opportunity to build the tools required to cope with that truth. It’s important to understand that the truth will find them one way or the other; let’s tell them the truth now and help them navigate it so it doesn’t kick them in the teeth later (martial artists should take that literally).

The Secret Recipe to Being a Great Coach

September 21, 2011 in Competition, On The Job, Teaching with 0 Comments

I was watching an “inside training camp” special that gave you an inside look at college football training camps. It was interesting to me because the producers put a lot of focus on the coaching staff. There was a lot of yelling, a lot of emotion, and a lot of what you’d probably expect to see at a college football practice. I think coaches are tough on their athletes because that’s what they think gets results or because that’s what they think the people watching want to see.

There’s no doubt these coaches get results, but at what cost to the athletes? In my mind, there’s only two questions you can ask a coach after a victory is achieved:

What was invested in the athlete to get this victory?
What did this victory cost the athlete?

I never want anyone to ask the second question of me after it’s all said and done. All of the emotion and disorder coming from a coaching staff is good for the cameras, but what if you can meet the same outcome–victory–through different means? Sure, there are times when you need to ride people and when you need to step up and be more serious with a group of athletes, but that’s not when the best work gets done.

In my experience, the secret to being a truly great coach and producing athletes that constantly improve and reach the top is providing grace and truth consistently over time.

Grace in coaching is kindness and favor. It’s empathy with the place the athlete is in and the situations they’re faced with in training and competition. It’s understanding the difficulty inherent in executing the concepts. When you have grace–not domination–you build trust and cultivate an atmosphere where people can poke the box, communicate, understand and be understood.

Truth in coaching is the unwillingness to let athletes believe anything aside from reality. It separates confidence from cockiness. It’s humility. It’s telling them exactly what they need to know when they need to know it to make the biggest improvements. It’s the opposite of being their yes-man. Truth makes it easy for athletes to live and work within their level of talent and ability while striving to reach new heights, something they can’t do when they have an inflated or deflated sense of their ability.

“…let’s not forget that the goal of coaching and the general development of athletes is not for the victory, but for what the victory represents: continual improvement (physical, mental, social, emotional) of the person.”

Yelling, screaming, and throwing things may get people to focus and work harder over the short-term, but nobody has convinced me of its long-term merits (besides being bad for your health!). And let’s not forget that the goal of coaching and the general development of athletes is not for the victory, but for what the victory represents: continual improvement (physical, mental, social, emotional) of the person. The end can’t justify the means in this situation or you’ve failed as a coach. If you break someone’s spirit in any way, shape, or form while leading them to a “win”, you’ve lost.

The only method I’ve found to fill an athlete’s emotional tank and invest in their future during training is to give consistent doses of grace and truth. That’s it. And I think I’ve proved that it works and I’m continuing to prove that it works. If you’re a coach (or a teacher or parent), I invite you to give it a shot.

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