MASuccess Magazine

As a school owner or instructor, you’re considered a community leader. Whether or not you think about it, owning a business helps your local community. You’re teaching children, teens and adults, and possibly employing others. You are a leader. People look up to you. Kids especially will notice how you treat others, when you give back, and how you help those in need.

The holidays tend to be when everyone starts planning ways they can give back. But really, it’s something we should focus on year-round. I encourage you to review your 2019 calendar and start planning what community activities you could get involved with throughout the year. Find things you can get your students thoroughly involved in, too.

Participating in community events is not just a good way to teach your students about helping others, but it’s also an excellent way to get your name out there in public. You can create positive buzz about your school. If you’re consistent...

Whether we like it or not, every time one of my staff members are in public they are representing not only Kovar's Martial Arts but also the martial arts industry. When we choose to become martial arts instructors, we also choose to become public figure. We stand in front of the class and lead our students in reciting the student creed. We challenge them not only to improve their martial arts skills but their mental attitude, focus, discipline and respect, too.

In essence, we become their success coaches, role models and more. To our students, we become a combination of teacher, parent, minister and motivational speaker, who also, in their eyes, has the awesome power of “death

and destruction.” This gives us a unique and powerful “presence” or sphere of influence.

After all, how many teachers, parents, ministers or motivational speakers can do a jump-spinning kick? Or can, in the blink of an eye, strike multiple times where it hurts the most?...

I have mentioned in the past that my wife and I volunteer between 20-25 hours per week at a South Florida-based, not-for-profit pet rescue. It started as a way for me to regain strength after chemotherapy, but became a labor of love for us to help protect the unwanted and abandoned animals in our “pet-disposable” society. Last year, the organization I volunteer with successfully completed the adoption of more than 350 pets into forever homes.

A national controversy has arisen over the last several years regarding where and under what circumstances an animal may accompany its owners. Many people believe that if they purchase a “service animal” vest on the Internet and strap it on their pet, they can take this animal with them wherever they go with impunity. This is patently incorrect and clearly creates confusion for small businesses, perhaps including your school.

There are very strict federal and state laws regarding the use of animals for...

Every martial arts school can teach punches and kicks. But, to create mentally strong students that can change the world, your school must change at its core. By embracing setbacks, struggles and failures, one small dojo sought the answer to one simple question — and it changed everything. Follow the journey this little New Hampshire school traveled, answer your own question, transform your school and create a culture of determination.

By David Badurina

Everybody has a unique story filled with countless decisions, failures and successes. As a martial artist, a teacher or a business owner, you are very familiar with opportunity. Whether it’s the opportunity to own and run your own school, to find a bigger, better space or to do something you’ve always wanted to do. 

Think about it. Your day is filled with countless opportunities, some tiny and some huge.

What about the opportunity to be a change-maker? I’m not talking about teaching some...

With the release of our new product, The Holiday Mini-Course, Mike Metzger has a special announcement to make about the coinciding 2-day Mastermind with it.

Learn how to set up, prepare and host a Holiday Event at your school with the new 2-day Mastermind and online course.

Check out the video above and sign up for the new Holiday Mini-Course today. https://www.maiahub.com/p/holiday-mini-course

By: Glenn Moses

Editor’s Note: Our industry is replete with instructors and school owners who teach bully-prevention techniques and programs, especially to their young students. They do so because they sincerely care about their students’ welfare. Others, particularly those instructors who were victims of bullies themselves earlier in their lives, place even more emphasis on such training at their schools.
But few in our field go as far as Arizona’s Johnny Williamson. For him it’s a serious passion. So powerful is his commitment he’s more akin to an anti-bullying crusader or deeply engaged activist.
Consider this: When we made first contact with him about doing this major feature article you’re now reading, he was somewhere over on the East Coast attending an anti-bullying event. We told him half the article would focus on his bully-prevention activities, in association with October being National Bully Prevention Month. The other half would be...

Bobby and Charlene Lawrence operate Utah's largest chain of karate schools — 19 locations teaching more than 2,200 active students. Their four children and 20 grandchildren have grown up in the martial arts business. Read how their fascinating, family-oriented approach has built a martial arts empire and influenced tens of thousands of students in the Beehive State.

By: Keith D. Yates

Once, Bobby Lawrence was a public school teacher, athletic coach and attorney. While he was busy working in the corporate world, his wife, Charlene, turned their martial arts hobby into a one-school business. Today, they run the largest chain of karate schools in the entire state of Utah, encompassing 19 different locations. They are all Bobby Lawrence Karate Schools, some of them licensed. But the husband-and-wife team, who’ve been in the martial arts business since the 1980s, oversee the chain’s operations.

And it isn’t just the two of them. Their sons and even...

Dwight Trower has dedicated his time and skill to teaching kids and adults with Down Syndrome at his Family Martial Art Academy in St. Louis, MO. These special-needs martial artists never pay for a lesson. It's a labor of love for Trower that comes back tenfold with every kick and punch thrown by his students in this unique class.

By: Terry Wilson

Dwight Trower was in a trade school learning how to be an auto mechanic and, at the time, saw it as his clear-cut future. That is, until he took his first karate class. From that moment forward, he was propelled on a path that would eventually forever change his life and the lives of untold numbers of special-needs students.

“Even as a blue belt, I was an assistant teacher,” Trower says today. “My instructor told me that I had a gift for teaching, especially working with kids.

“With a class full of students, there were usually one or two of them that were on the autism spectrum or had Down syndrome. So,...

I recently got a call from a member who needed help with their school. Specifically, they wanted to get some different ideas on how they could help their school grow. After one suggestion from me, the first words out of their mouth were, “That didn’t work for me the last time I tried it.”

This response reminded me of the theme of the book “The Science of Getting Rich:” you must do things in a “Certain Way.” To explain what this means, I’ll use the analogy of baking a cake.

Suppose I’m known for making the best cakes. If you ask me to teach you how to  make them, I will show you my method that I use. If you bake a cake in the “Certain Way” that I showed you, you will be successful. Remember, success leaves clues.

But, let’s say you have a different idea for your cake and want to change the method. If you change the...