MASuccess Magazine

by Kurt Klingenmeyer, MAIA Consultant

As the Small School Specialist for the Martial Arts Industry Association, my job is to help school owners make the transition from part-time instructor to full-time business owner. Key to that transition is recruiting more students. Although the task can seem daunting or even impossible, especially during the era of COVID, there are some strategies that will help you reach this goal without spending your hard-earned dollars on advertising. Listed below are five.

Buddy Days

The first strategy provides a great opportunity for your current students to share their passion with their friends. When those friends — adults and youths, alike — are brought to class, have them engage in themed drills with the person who invited them. Those can include self-defense drills, focus-mitt speed challenges, partner drills — anything that has the newcomer punching, kicking or grappling with his or her buddy is a win. Collect the...

With COVID, and the less-than-stable return to school situation in some states, it’s understandable if your youngest martial arts students are a little stressed right now. On top of that, Halloween is right around the corner and many places are cancelling Trick-or-Treating, parades, and other holiday celebrations. Halloween is widely anticipated and beloved by youngsters, and is something they look forward to all year. To be fair, now probably isn’t the best time for communal candy touched by who-knows-how-many hands – but it still looks like we’re in for a dark and gloomy October.

Martial arts schools to the rescue! You can light up your young students’ Halloween – literally and figuratively – by offering an awesome Glo-Chuck seminar! These training events were popularized by MAIA and our very own Frank Silverman, and have been successful student retention and revenue-boosting events for schools for years.

Whether you hold it on...

by Michael A. Perri Jr.

This year has been one for the ages, with the wildfires, hurricanes, riots, a polarized country and, of course, the global pandemic. Many businesses have been so severely impacted that they’ve been forced to shut their doors for good. This includes some of our fellow martial arts professionals, people who were making a career out of sharing their passion. Although we’ve suffered setbacks, our industry still boasts people who are not only surviving but thriving. Schools that had the systems in place have managed to pull out record months financially regardless of the trials and tribulations they faced.

I’m talking about schools like Caleb and Heidi Collier’s Championship Martial Arts in Kaysville, Utah, where they took the systems and strategies of CMA’s Holiday Event and applied it to their “Christmas in July Sale.” It transformed what was regarded as a slow time of year into one of their most profitable months...