The Business of Martial Arts

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Northern Praying Mantis
41

TCB,

your comments are something I’m dealing with now as I look to open my own school after 3 years of teaching in a gym and a rec center.

At the gym my student’s paid $40 a month and when I relocated to the rec center I went up to $50 because I was able to offer more class hours per week.

Now as I look at being able to offer virtually unlimited class hours I am finally looking to see what everyone else in town is charging and am finding that the range is $74.99 ~ $90.00 per month.

So, now I’m debating where to place myself in that range. The guy charging $90 is going to be within a half mile or so of my location. So, I’m debating whether to match him or come in under him.

42

Oso

Greetings..

I have just debated my fees with my partners.. i offer 18 hours of standard class time a month, they offer 12.. i ask for fees that are $10.00 lower per month than theirs (65 vs. 75 on a 6 month committment).. My theory is that i am more competitive at these rates with local guys, and.. if i do a good job, word-of-mouth is a great marketing tool, the more people happy with the school, the more they will tell and the more new students will sign-up.. pricing must be fair, get a fair price for your investment but don’t price yourself out of the market.. i had a Sifu tell me he was getting $90 per month for his students (all 4 of them).. i’ll take 15-20 happy students over 4-5 “rich kids”..

Look at your overhead and space available, figure how many students you can reasonably expect to comfortably accomodate, then divide the number of students into your overhead, add 15% for growth capital and unexpected expenses, then add 15% for actual profit.. if you come in less than your competitor, good.. if you come in way less, add some profit for future expansion and enhancements.. if you come higher than your competition i know some guys that can help (just kidding)..

The general range of fees is simply what the market will bear, but.. i know of several Sifu’s that have built impressive and very functional facilities that can get more than $125.00 a month.. but, the students are paying for the amenities (ie: nice showers, kitchen, meditation areas, on site TCM/Massage, competition ring, video analysis of performances, etc.. )..

Good luck with it, it can be as rewarding as it is frustrating.. but, in the end, what you sell is yourself, your knowledge and the ability to pass it on.. do that well and the rest will naturally follow..

Be well..

43

Dear Hua,

Part of the reason why us WL brothers and sisters in Kentucky aren’t having trouble in the building is because a good number of us are putting in other time to help out outside of class. I’m not sure if this wasn’t the case for you, but we go out in public a lot for Sifu to do advertising. But we are still caught in the throes of the advertising world. It’s a harsh reality that in America - everything revolves around money so we’re always trying to get new advertising ideas.

What we do to get new students is pretty similar to the likes of TCB. Word of mouth is big. On warmer days some of my brothers head to the parks in the area passing out kid program flyers for the summer. We are also trying to get some way of setting up a demo team to perform in a public place to get more exposure. For the most part these days - it’s about the kids programs. Parents want to see their kids going to a safe environment while “learning more responsibility” and learning to fight off bullys. People with health problems come in all the time wanting to do Tai Chi as well.

An idea I’m borrowing from someone else is that you could also go around to local businesses and offer them a deal - They let you put your brochures there and for every person that signs up that brings a brochure from that business, the business gets a kickback of say 15… 20 bucks. Put Tai Chi ones up in Beauty Salons, Kung Fu at health supplement stores, etc. It’s a team effort to stay alive in the business world these days.

Best Wishes,
Aaron

44

Greetings..

And.. market Taiji to the parents of the kids class.. they seem to like the involvment..

Be well..

45

i’m no longer in it for the money but i see a future in home-schooled kids. as schools move ****her towards academics equaling state money, more and more parents are turning to home-school. in most areas there is a home school associations that put together activities to broaden the kids horizons, physically, socially, etc. these associations are made up of the parents themselves.
and i’ve said this before and i’ll say it once again. i’ve had the opportunity to view kf from the outside after i lost interest in the school thing. the one thing that really loses interest to most non-martial artists before they ever give it a chance is the image overall. on a general scope and one that few if any here can really change are things like magazine covers with faces that look, well, like a case of explosive diarhea, and of course the movie stuff that makes people think that the skills of a qualified/skilled teacher are…mediocre at best-
the image of the school itself though is something i feel needs refinement. for those “inside” the arts, shaolin boots, shaved heads, etc. look cool. to the outsider they appear foolish. even a bunch of black outfits, i think, quickly puts out a negative image to someone stepping into a school for the first time
there was a time in wl when there were many different shirts and colors being worn, but it was changed for a reason i am unsure of, i assume it was to create a cohesiveness. but i think the variety was more appealing to a newb

46

insightful post, flem.

even a bunch of black outfits, i think, quickly puts out a negative image to someone stepping into a school for the first time

amen, black on black is overdone.

when creating my website, my web designer and overall graphic designer worked on ‘branding’ “Asheville Martial Arts”. When I got t-shirts made (our only official uniform) I found a t-shirt color that was close to the website colors. The one sign I’ve had made is also based on the web colors. any paperwork I do: hand outs, newletters is done on a similar color. The point is to get my color scheme into the stream of consciousness so that w/o even reading “Asheville Martial Arts” someone (at least IN Asheville) will know who they are looking at.

magazine covers with faces that look, well, like a case of explosive diarhea,

one of the sport guys made a comment a year or more ago that has stuck with me. He pointed out that TMA guy’s pictures will often show the posed ‘fierceness’ of the practitioner but if you looked at pics of sport/mma guys, they are all smiling.

sometimes I think that TMA/Kung Fu guys have lost an original point to martial arts and that is the day to day competitiveness that is present in sport martial arts where you regularly pit your skills against someone you don’t know. You can spar as hard as you want against your school brothers and sisters and it doesn’t come close to crossing hands with someone you don’t know in a win or lose situation, even if it’s just a sport match.

I’ve seen a lot of TMA/kung fu guys that need to get over their ‘mad skilz’ and fight.

oops, sorry, ranting…

47

faces that look, well, like a case of explosive diarhea

ROTFLMAO!!!

I literally just last night through away a stack of KF mags that had just that look!!!

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

48

Funny thing about putting brochures in area stores and businesses. I thought the same thing and hit all the ‘health’ related places first. Turns out that the ones I put in health food store were still there week after week but I couldn’t keep enough in the pizza parlors.

Guess it really was a bad area because many parents (of kids next door in cheerleading, I didn’t have any kids) I talked to were ‘too old’ for Kung Fu. When I suggested Tai Chi they usually had some injury that prevented them from joining.

Personally I think I intimidated them by my ability. They couldn’t relate to it at all so they didn’t care to try. Grown ups don’t jump around like that. It was culture shock.

49

yes hua lin you are right. i personally know of many people some of which have no idea that i have any involvment or knowledge won’t give it a try simply because they “know” they can’t do this or that. but the culture shock goes even further i believe, there’s no definitive saying, but remember keanu’s reaction to becoming a surfer in the movie “point break”? “thats for little rubber people…”. the same goes for ma. there’s a feeling everyone has that they want excel, not just participate, whether it is kf, or line dancing. go out and demo 3-section, a bunch of hurricanes in a circle, etc. and you’ll get a few, like us, but you don’t interest the mainstream. tae bo, girls and guys in familiar training attire, some muscular and ripped, some not, then you have the perception that what you see is attainable. kf needs the subway guy, whatever his name is, an image of results by the avg. joe, not the dedicated few with extraordinary ability, and especially not wierdo’s with incense burns on their heads

50

This is why curriculum is so important. To demonstrate to students of all ages that the martial arts has something to offer to them regardless of age. It has to be structured so a 5 year old and a 30 could do it.

The other thing is. this is why new students should be seen by appointment only 1-1 with a martial arts instructor that has been certified to teach. You should structure something like a basic lesson for all new students to do before they join your school.

51

Hua,

That is very odd indeed. I guess you have to plan for the attitudes of the people. We get people who think just the stuff we do is cool and they want to learn how. They’re willing to at least put forth the effort and try to do it, for the most part. But I can see how it can be hard to open up a school where you did.

Best Wishes,
Aaron

52

Business of Martial Arts

I have been training with Shelly Huang since 1988 without any lapse of time, so I can talk from experience about schools. We have been training at Tropical Park in Miami well over 10 years now, and we charge nothing. Why you may ask??.

Well by not charging anything we bypass alot of rules and requirements needed by Miami-Dade County. The funny thing about it is you would think by being free there would be alot of people. Well actually it’s the opposite. When you don’t have to pay and you have nothing to lose, you won’t come as often. Now if you are paying 60.00 a month, you bet your a** you will show up to class because you are making a monetary investment.

I teach most of the classes and we have a hard core group of about 3-4. Thats it. We have classes on Mon-Wed-Sat-Sun and alot of times only 3 people show up to my sat class. Who are they?? usually me, myself, and I.

How are Japanese and Korean systems so successful?. Easy they run it as a business. If you don’t make monthly payments as required you are in violation of your contract and are subject to a collection agency just like LA Fitness or Golds Gym. You have to learn there is a fine line between “friend” and “student”. If you let that line blur, you will go down the drain. You have to collect your monthly payments and take no excuses.

Hua Lin Laoshi, I sympathize for you, but as a Wah Lum brother, I feel you opened you school in haste and did not do enough research for your target area. The old "if you build it they will come"proverb does not work for martial art schools.

Khalio and myself have been trying to open a school for a
loooooong time and have yet to do it. Master Chan keeps asking everytime we go up, “when you open school?”. Our standard reply is we are still researching for a good location.

I am a County Officer and also have a real estate license so I can access the MLS for commercial units/properties. It is very expensive to open anything bigger than a closet plus the County code requirements are incredible. You have to have enough saved up to run fully covered 6 months without a student.

Bottom line…Tae Kwon Do has a foot hold that is hard to break in all areas. Everywhere I travel I check the phone books like everybody else on the forum and 80% of all listing are
tae kwon do.

SCHOOLS OPEN WITH MONEY, NOT DREAMS OR WISHES!!

Sorry for the length of the post.

Hua Lin Laoshi- Myself, Shelly and Khalio will be at the Temple June 26/27 for training. I hope to see you then.:slight_smile: :smiley: :cool: :stuck_out_tongue:

53

Just some thoughts:

About putting flyers in health food/ related stores. Same experience here: flyers are still there or got thrown away.

In my experience you have to determine who your market will be:
Kids, young adults, old adults, forms people, sparring people…
Once you find who you want (types of people that is) in your school then you can better pick where you want to advertise and how. Of course Word of Mouth is the best but aside from that.

Kids these days are so busy along with everyone else. I don’t advertise at the Boy/girl scouts because those kids are already involved in something.
Flem, I agree, homeschool is going to be a huge market coming up.

About advertising: Most people sifu’s/black belts are only Novices/Whitebelt when it comes to marketing. We got to educate ourselves continuously in this area to be successful.
Case in point: The diarreaha faced pictures.
No mom is going to sign her kid up so he or she can look either like they got the runs or are constipated.

Service is the key: What Can I do for You Mr./Mrs. Client?
Hey, if you can’t offer something, refer them somewhere else. They’ll remember that you went out of your way to help them find what they were looking for.

Sorry about the rant.

54

I agree with JM, just because someone has a high level of MA skill does not make them a successfull business person. You are running a business, you have to be a MArtist and a salesperson. If someone calls you or comes into your school they have just shown you some kind of interest, it is your job to sell your school or program to them. ASK QUESTIONS!
Are you interested in the health aspect or the martial aspect of kung fu?
-Health:: great we do a variety of stetching and breathing excercises as well as various body strengthening movements. You can do our tai chi program that has slower movements or if you would prefer the kung fu with faster and stronger movements?

Martial Aspect:: great we teach mantis which is known for its fighting techniques, we teach the forms as well as the applications with a variety of 2 person drills and forms along with weapons.
Would you be interested in fighting in competitions or in doing forms competition?

You ask the questions and slowly guide them into joining by providing them with what they are interested in.
Show them a kung fu uniform, let them try the top on or hold a weapon, you have to spark something in them to join.
When you have their interest get them to commit to joining then while they are feeling good about your school. If you let them walk away they will think about it and probably eventually think themselves out of it.
Why are womens magazines at the check out at the grocery store?
They start to read it waiting to cash out, get interested in an article and then buy it.

Studies show it can take someone 6 or more times of seeing something before they decide on it. Keep your flyers everyplace you can, it is in your face advertisements, always on your mind.
You are running a business, then teach kung fu, your not teaching kung fu and trying to run a business.
Do an ad with another local business, co-op the advertisement fees, how many Blimpie stores are in gas stations now? Pizza hut in Wal-mart, co-op the cost, it helps both parties out.
Go get books written by successfull salepeople, it is an art, just like your kung fu, some will be great and some will not.
I know everyone wants a hard core group of people, it is out of the numbers that you will eventually have that group.

PRICING:IMHO, KEEP IT AFFORDABLE!!!
Would you rather have 4 students paying $110 a month or 15 paying $75?
If you have 4 and 2 can’t make it for a month or so your dead, if you have 15 and 2 can’t make it for a month your okay. It is just like a retirement plan, don’t keep all your money in one basket, diversify your portfolio by having it in many places. There is power and strength in numbers. Your students will train harder when they feed off the energy of 20 people in the room as compared to showing up to class and there is 3 people there.
If someone comes to watch class they will feel the energy of 20 but not 3. That is why tae kwon do is so successfull, not because it is a better art. They keep it affordable and they have lots of students.
If it comes down to joining a school for $100 or more a month or putting braces on your kid or putting them in soccer etc, little johny will win.
Are there more toyota and hondas on the road or jaguars? I would rather have $50 bucks in my hand than nothing.
It is better to have a small percentage of many then a big percentage of a few.
Go take business classes, learn to be a good salesperson, don’t expect to get your students just because your kung fu is good.

Ok, sorry for rambling on, just some thoughts to hopefully help some of you guys out

55

“Hey, if you can’t offer something, refer them somewhere else. They’ll remember that you went out of your way to help them find what they were looking for.”

when i had a traditional school i once had a referal from a local karate guy, the people wanted to learn weaponry which he did not offer. that was something i never forgot and i recommend anyone interested in his style of the arts to him