I actually have 30 active, participating students between adult, women’s and youth classes.
8 Youth
4 Women’s
18 Adult (including 3 women)
Congrats Oso!
Congrats!
Congrats again, because my post-fu is weaker than your kung fu.
cool, that should cover your rent and facilities. Now you need anoter 30 so you can draw some sort of pay outta this.
Thanks guys. I still need 5 more to break even but this is a heck of a lot closer than 2 months ago.
You want a few more students, advertise that you have Fitness Pole Dancing at your school. Chaching and shwing!
Just make sure it isn’t this Pole Dancing.
LOL…just when i think i’ve seen everything. Training for strippers…
coincidentally, when we were in the rec center we used to follow a ‘garland dancing’ group on wednesday nights. a bunch of women walking in circles w/ hoops over their heads.
congrats man, im about to break 50 soon. when i do it will be nice.
[QUOTE=Oso;735082]LOL…just when i think i’ve seen everything. Training for strippers…[/QUOTE]
Think about it Stripper Pole Training…
Burns lots of calories
Tone your abs
Define your arms and shoulders
Tone Legs
Makes you more flexible
Teaches you to Dance
Builds confidence and self- esteem
You will be the envy of EVERYONE
Its so enjoyable and fun!!
Will pull every lonely Bruce Lee wanna be living in his mother basement right into your school.
Just make sure you get them to sign long term contracts before they find out that there is no Stripper Pole Training at your school.
SL: Thanks and congrats on hitting 50. Once I hit 35 and stop paying out of pocket, i’ll be much much happier.
{just shakes his head at rogue}
right, and then the next level will be my own specialized Parkour training where we go up on the roof and I throw you off and you see how well you can land…
I know you mean well, but I’d rather practice putting dollar bills in g-strings at the stripper pole class.
****in nice dude.
you’re still doin a 9-5 for the time being right? if so maybe that could change in the next 2 years.
thanks
yea, still doing that.
i’m going to try not to hope too much that that can change but it would be nice
Congratulations! I know from building a business that the first few are the hardest, then they give a little momentum, then the small growth leads to faster momentum, and so on. I believe you’ll be surprised later how fast 50 gets here.
[QUOTE=Oso;735122]SL: Thanks and congrats on hitting 50. Once I hit 35 and stop paying out of pocket, i’ll be much much happier.
{just shakes his head at rogue}
right, and then the next level will be my own specialized Parkour training where we go up on the roof and I throw you off and you see how well you can land…[/QUOTE]
35 will come soon man. just keep up the good work.
So what was your plan on getting to 30? What worked? What didn’t? How are you attracting new students now?
Just curious. And congratulations!
Yes, I am curious too. I will be starting up a class soon in an art studio (A really cool place). They want a Tai Chi class. I am trying to do what I am calling a “Primordial Tai Chi” class, so I can teach Tai Tzu Changquan. I figure calling it that keeps it honest, gives them the Tai Chi buzz word for the marketing, and I get to work my basics in a really cool setting once a week year round.
I cannot do any self defense stuff though 
just the form. But once a week of doing the core form really slow and soft will refine my mechanics quite a bit I think.
Good luck OSO. I just got ahold of an old classmate of mine. He has a school in Rockford IL., - great martial artist. But he’s part-time too with a commercial location. A hard row to hoe. He’s asked me for advice, but other than some obvious stuff, I’m not sure HOW to grow a part-time thing. - I’ve always run classes, but never with that kind of overhead & expenses.
Best of luck to you. It’s a real challenge.
i’m not really sure there is an answer to what has worked and what hasn’t.
‘old school-no pain no gain-pain is just weakness leaving the body’ has definitely not worked. It’s been very tough recognizing that a commercial school in this town isn’t going to be based on a ‘fighting’ format.
the funny thing is, i don’t know where anyone is going who wants to train for fighting, sport or otherwise, is going. There’s a BJJ school about 45 minutes away but from what I understand, they don’t do any stand up training. Other than that, there is no ‘mma’ type thing going on anywhere unless it’s underground/basement/backyard.
I went ahead and dropped class time from 2 hours to 1 hour. So, beginners are 6:30-7:30 monday~thursday. Most students say that it works better for them. Driving in this town sucks considering it’s relative size. So, a 2 hour class really meant a 3 hour commitment. If they are really gung ho, they can come to 4 classes a week plus a 5 hour run on saturdays.
The saturday schedule has definitely seemed popular with the newest students, mostly male college guys.
10am Strength/Conditioning
11am Open Floor
12noon Weapons
1pm-3pm Sparring
so, there are 4 days that are not real demanding in duration and 1 day a week that the gung ho students can get a long session in.
and finally, I made the curriculum less demanding. which is essentially ‘watering it down.’ but, to get into the specifics of that would mostly be a debate on a) how many forms does a ‘black sash’ need b) how many throws… c) how many kicks… d) how much chin na…
one of the things that people had the hardest time with was the ba shi. the whole set was on the first level along with the first two roads of tan tui (as pong lai does them, with a ling side). so, now they just start with ‘er shi’: horse and hill climbing. I add in the others once they have those two down. in one way it makes sense to have them spend more overall time on just the two basic stances but, you know, I didn’t really think it should be all that hard to get the 8 down.
I’ve also stopped teaching the ling side of the forms on the same sash level. Only a couple of them are ‘folded’ so learning the ling side was just like learning a second entire form…and I had like 16 forms on the list for black sash, including weapons. I took weapons out altogether and cut the list down to 8 empty hand sets.
so…basically, made it easier to ‘succeed faster’:rolleyes:
what I’ve told the couple of guys that have stated an interest in fighting is that the conditioning and sparring time on saturdays should not be missed. the rest of it will set a foundation for body awareness and then they need to work hard at getting better conditioned and be willing to get hit during sparring.
so, basically, the plan is to keep working on creating a class during the week where the people in love with ‘kung fu’ can learn forms and drills and basic application so they don’t look too shabby at a demo…and gradually build up the group of folks that want to learn to fight…so I don’t go nuts in the process.
one thing that is happening now that I have 12+ people on the floor during the main class time and on saturdays is that people walking by will stop and look longer because it looks like more is happening. No matter how hard 3-6 people are working it just doesn’t look like much in a 20x60 room.
I wish you luck, running a school seems to be a pretty hard business.
I only know of two in my neck of the woods which make any serious cash.
The first is a massive mcdojo in Carol Stream which my 9 year old niece of all things belongs to. $100 a month to start on a two year contract, then they raked my stupid as dirt sister in law into something called the black belt club which tacks on another $100 a month to that total for a nine year old.
Now they are asking her to put the kid in a weapons class which is guess what…another $100 a month.:rolleyes:
The second is a JKD Concepts school which charges pretty high rates, no contract commitment, but and I give the guy credit for this, he is a excellent marketing man. Just gets out on feet and hussles for business.