MASuccess Magazine

by Christopher Rappold

Recently, a friend shared with me an experience about going to see a chiropractor. The person was highly recommended and had a mystique about him. Over the years, he’d worked with many pro athletes, and he wasn’t shy about showing it on his website and in his lobby.

When my friend met with the doctor, he was treated more like the next number in a factory line of patients rather than a person seeking healing. The chiropractor poked and prodded my friend in all his injured and inflamed areas, creating enough pain to cause him to nearly fall off the treatment table.

As I listened to his story, I was thinking about many similar experiences I’ve witnessed in the martial arts. Here’s one example: A student takes a seminar conducted by someone he admires. He’s picked to go to the front of the class for a demonstration and surrenders his arm to the instructor. The subsequent application of force is so painful that the student has a massive physical reaction. Whenev...

With many school owners in the industry seeing record enrollment months this year post-pandemic, it’s making for a very exciting Back to School Season.

The kids are going back to school, the masks are coming off, and people are ready to be back to their regularly scheduled programming.

While some kids go back to school after Labor Day, many states and counties go back to school in August, so we figured it’s perfect timing to break down 5 simple steps so you can have an EPIC back to school season.

Simplicity scales.

With there being so many things you CAN do during the back to school season, it’s imperative that you choose the RIGHT things to do.

Let’s break down the game-plan.

Step 1 - Schedule Important Dates
Jim Rohn said it best, “Plan your work. Work your plan.”

School owners who sit down and take time to plan out their Back 2 School efforts will be the ones who find the most success.

Fuzzy targets don’t get hit, so we need to get really clear on what we're doing and what ou...

by Justin Lee Ford

Back in 2019, George Smiley, an IT executive, wanted to do something new, so he decided to invest in a franchise. Having coached his son’s soccer team in his younger years, he knew that athletic activities can be great for communities and families, as well as worthy endeavors in which to invest money. Although he’d never trained in the martial arts, his search for a franchise and his interest in improving the community through athletic activity eventually took him to Premier Martial Arts.

If case you haven’t heard, Premier Martial Arts is a franchise with more than 100 locations. Founded in 1998 by Black Belt Hall of Famer Barry Van Over, Premier has grown rapidly in recent years and now spans the United States and Canada and extends into England.

When Smiley met with Premier Martial Arts, he saw it as an opportunity not only to invest in a successful franchise but also to spread the benefits of enhanced focus, improved self-confidence while fostering self-defe...

by Cris Rodriguez, Mike Metzger and Shane Tassoul

At the macro level, you have to implement just three systems to achieve success in your martial arts academy. If you’re thinking that sounds too easy to be true, know that Tony Robbins teaches something similar in his business-coaching programs. He says a business must do these three things to grow:

1 Get customers.

2 Get those customers to pay more.

3 Get those customers to pay more, more often.

At the Martial Arts Industry Association, our recipe for success focuses on the three R’s: recruitment, retention and revenue. In this article, three of the industry’s leading consultants — Cris Rodriguez, Mike Metzger and Shane Tassoul — will explain how this simple strategy can help you take your school to the next level in 2021.

Recruitment • Cris Rodriguez, MAIA Consultant

One year on vacation in Hawaii, I was relaxing at the beach when a fisherman, obviously a local, drove up in his pickup truck. He got out with a dozen fishin...

by Perry William Kelly

As a society, we’re fascinated by people who can contort and maneuver their bodies in extreme ways. One example of this comes from the Olympic Games. Every four years, we’re enthralled by the gymnastics competition. Our fascination with this one sport has resulted in more than 5 million of our kids enrolling in gymnastics programs every year.

Another example comes from cinema. We flock to theaters to watch martial arts/action heroes like Daniel Craig (James Bond), Keanu Reeves (John Wick) and Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies) leap from building to building and flip vehicles end over end while kicking butt and taking names.

Our last example — and the most important one for this story — comes from a television series called American Ninja Warrior. On average, 7 million of us tune in every week to watch competitors push their bodies to the limit on obstacle courses that challenge them in aerobic and anerobic ways.

It was the popularity...

by John Bussard

Whenever I meet aspiring multi-school owners and they find out that I have 14 schools, the questions start to fly: Where do you find the staff to run that many schools? How do you manage them? How much do you pay your instructors?

In most cases, they’re really asking me how to better scale up their own martial arts business for growth. The answer is to that question is, it’s not easy. However, there are certain strategies that can help you prepare for growth, sustain growth and continue growth if you’re so inclined.

Let’s begin with a few simple strategies that can help all school owners, regardless of whether they have one facility or many.

No. 1: Strive to teach great classes that are safe, exciting and impactful.

Obviously, accidents and injuries can and will happen occasionally. Your job as a full-time instructor should be to teach with a safety-first mentality during all training activities.

Make sure your classes are exciting, as well. The more fun ...

by Richard Blaine

It’s not easy to have a large, successful franchise of martial arts schools run entirely by your own students, doubly so if you’re having those schools maintain a fairly traditional curriculum. But Professional Karate Schools of America, or PKSA, has managed to buck the odds and do just that thanks largely to the vision of its founder, Richard Collins Jr.

Collins, along with his father, started training in the Korean art of tang soo do back in 1969. After several years, they began running their own class in the basement of their house. The “school” became a very well-attended, if not prosperous, enterprise for them. Although they never advertised, classes were always packed thanks to word of mouth. The younger Collins was still working a regular job as an aircraft mechanic when a Korean master named C.S. Kim suggested he try teaching martial arts full-time.

“I had a passion to teach, so I decided to take the leap,” Collins said. “I quit my job and said, ‘Let’s try ...

Project Dojo is a nonprofit community outreach program in Pueblo, Colorado, that works with at-risk children. Through the power of martial arts, Project Dojo seeks to inspire and motivate kids within a safe environment, while continuing to teach the traditions of martial arts. This is the story of Project Dojo co-founder Michelle Hodnett’s experiences in her martial arts journey.

When you work with children, parents want to know you care about safety. Specifically with children in martial arts, there are three things parents look for when they first walk in:

1. A First Aid Kit. It is always advisable to have a first-aid kit on hand, preferably somewhere in plain view. It goes a long way in reassuring parents. And if you teach or have kids, you probably already know the seemingly instant healing effect a Band-Aid can have on minor injuries.
2. Posted Rules. Parents want to know what the expectations for their own children are, and for the other children in the class. Posting rules say
...

by Richard Blaine

Many martial artists dream of earning a living doing what they love. But when that dream meets the harsh reality of running a business, it can feel like being woken with a bucket of ice water to the face. Declining enrollments, departing students, the never-ending search for quality staff members, and turning just enough of a profit to pay bills and eat, then repeating this process month after grueling month — these things can turn that dream into a nightmare.

Yet a few school owners are running businesses that not only survive but also succeed beyond all expectations. At the top of that list of success stories is Premier Martial Arts.

With more than 100 schools in the United States, as well as branches in Canada and Great Britain, PMA stands as one of the world’s largest and most successful chains of franchised martial arts schools. And in a market saturated with everything from cardio-kickboxing gyms to Brazilian jiu-jitsu academies, every PMA school — with th...

Want to enroll more new members? Learn how with this handy list of 20 ways today. And sign up for your first month of MAIA Edge for 50% off . Use Promo Code: EDGE50.

By: Mike Metzger, Lead MAIA Elite Consultant

The most common question I get asked when it comes to owning a martial arts school is how can I get more new students. I mean, it’s the most common question by far.

School owners of all sizes are looking for new members and it doesn’t matter what time of year it is — spring, summer, fall, winter — they’re always looking for new recruits.

And even though new students are not the end-all, be-all to growing your school, I recognize that they are the lifeblood of our business and necessary for growth.

So today, I thought it’d be handy to give you a list of 20 ideas to pick up 20 new students for your school.

Some of these ideas will be simple. Some of them a little complex. Some will cost you nothing. Others, maybe a little time or money.

But, every one of these ideas h...