Every martial arts school business should have a scope (a defined target market) based on specific demographics. Who do you want to target? What’s the primary age group? What’s the socio-economic status? Who is your customer?
Unfortunately, too many martial arts schools answer those questions with, “all of the above.” That’s an inclusive response. Well, Jim, we want to include everyone because excluding people means we’re excluding revenue.
While that conclusion seems like it would be common sense, it’s a dangerously naïve model and a potential brand-killer. But before we get into that, let’s look at demographics a bit more.
If your school is targeting children ages 7 to 12 who like sports and have time to dedicate to long-term activities, who have upper middle class parents, and who are willing to do the work required to make the rank of Black Belt, you’d think you would have your defined target market narrowed down enough.
But you can–and should–go further. Does your scope include students who lack discipline to a point that they disrupt the class? Does your scope include students who are on a laundry list of medications and have diagnosed behavior disorders?
And what if they fit most, but not all the desired factors? What if an 8 year child with wealthy parents who has nothing but free time on her hands is apathetic? What if there’s a 12-year-old who is crazy in love with martial arts, wants to attend class every day, has laser-like focus and drive, but he doesn’t fit in your socio-economic model?
The inclusive studio owner says, “I want them all” because to them having all types of students means, “We get all the revenue.” But there’s a huge problem with running an inclusive martial arts school business….
Your brand is boring, sporadic, annoying, and really hard to love.
An inclusive model tempts your brand into being everything to everyone. You’ll hear inclusive people talk about “volume” and excluding potential students in terms of excluding revenue. But the opposite is actually true. Here’s just a few comparisons of inclusive and exclusive models (keep in mind there are many more):
Boring: Where inclusive businesses are boring, exclusive businesses are unique. It’s simply the model at work. If being everything to everyone is your goal, blandness is your recipe. Anything unique, out of the box, over the line, or edgy risks alienating some group. The exclusive brand, however, thrives on its ability to say no to one group of people to make another group of people go crazy about them. Saying no means you’re willing to do something that’s not (initially) accepted by the masses.
Sporadic: Inclusive businesses are sporadic. Exclusive businesses are highly focused. Trying to please everyone means putting out a lot of fires (and not starting fires in the first place: see boring above). The brand has to run from one thing to another until it reaches a level of acceptance that they’re comfortable with. Usually, this means taking an idea and dumbing it down over several iterations until it appeals to everyone. The downside to this is that when you make something appealing to everybody, it usually becomes appealing to nobody. This forces the company to compete on price, speed, and service instead of product. The inclusive business almost always becomes a commodity business.
Annoying: As discussed above, the process of appealing to everyone ends up annoying almost everyone. Even exclusive brands have a hard time avoiding this trap.
Recently, Apple ditched its Final Cut Pro product and is receiving widespread backlash because the new version is actually a stripped down version. But the backlash should have come when the product became convoluted as Apple tried to appeal to a market that the product was not originally designed for: Hollywood. Instead of it being affordable and easy to use for indie filmmakers as originally planned, the price inflated by hundreds of percentage points as engineers incorporated ideas from “professionals.” Now Apple has had to reassess its strategy for that product and thank God they had the cojones to pull the plug and start over.
As you can imagine, the process is annoying. It’s annoying when features are added or subtracted for people outside the target group. It’s annoying when prices, availability, design, personality, and a host of other details change for the same reason.
Really Hard to Love: Where inclusive businesses are hard to love, exclusive businesses create raving fans. When you stand for something, honor a set of values and principles, and can focus on serving a core group of people (and not pleasing everyone), that core group of people loves you. And that core group of people forms a tribe that serves as your brand evangelists. Look around you at great companies and you will see this at work.
A secondary byproduct of an exclusive brand is the exclusivity itself. When other people are excluded, those who are included feel special. That’s the tribal aspect. That feeling of being part of something goes a long way toward your brand infecting larger groups.
And then there’s the profit.
One of the most important implications of all this is that inclusive businesses almost always have lower profit margins and go from thinking volume is the answer for all business models to needing volume to pay the bills (self-fulfilling prophecy). And when eating at night depends on volume, you’re tempted to get even more inclusive. And the more inclusive you get, the worse the financials get as you have to compete more on price. It’s a vicious cycle.
There’s more to this story, but I think you get the point: exclusivity is engaging and thus profitable. If you’re having trouble gaining market share, getting noticed, and increasing your profit margin, your defined target market is probably a little too inclusive. Figure out what you want to say yes to, what you want to say no to, and then start doing that with no exceptions. Have an opinion about things (that doesn’t attempt to take both sides), and be real.
Why do certain kids always get picked last in gym class?
So guess what? We’re going to have a student photo day for all the Karate USA students! We’ve done this in the past, but what’s new this year is that I’m the photographer!
They’re so serious all the time.
