Have you accomplished the goals that you set for yourself in 2021 so far? I hope you have. If so, how did you do it and how are you going to continue to build upon those goals of the past, regardless of what we all experienced in 2020? If you did not accomplish the goals that you set for yourself, why not? Did you even set goals to accomplish? What are you going to do differently to grow your business and get the life and business you deserve?
The saying “Doing the same thing will only get you the same results” is very true. I know you have heard this before but have you done something about it. Did you have to change your way of thinking, the way you do business, the way you teach, etc after the pandemic shut down your school? Changing the way you do a technique on the floor is not going to change your business. You have to make a HUGE change in order to get HUGE results. The problem is do you know what to change and what to change it to? Confused yet?
The first thing a school owner must do is set clear concise goals. Once you set your goals you have to make a plan to accomplish those goals. Let’s use a common goal amongst our colleagues as an example. A lot of school owners in the business want to make more money, but they don’t want to lose quality in their students. The first thing that one has to realize is that one does not go hand in hand with the other. Making more money can actually enhance the quality in your school. If you have more money you can hire more instructors to give more attention to your students. More money will allow you to give scholarships to schools, more money will allow you to reach out to more students by opening multiple locations, making more money will give you an opportunity to give your black belts opportunities to create a career in the martial arts, and so on.
Some of us in this industry (and I believe that this is the only business in the world that thinks this way) believes that if you make money you’re a sell out or a “belt factory”. I will never understand this way of thinking. I have seen schools that do $70,000 a month that I believed were belt factories and I have seen schools that are barely doing $2,000 a month that I believed to be belt factories. Making money in any business should be important. The difficult part of making money in this business is knowing how to without jeopardizing your program or curriculum in your school. So that goes back to the question of what do you have to change.
The hardest thing to change in any business is your mind and the way you think. You have to shift your mindset in order to grow. School owners have to understand that there are other people in the same industry making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. All you have to do is do what they are doing. I don’t mean teaching wise, I mean business wise. Do the successful schools look good, smell good, do they have contracts or month to month, do they have some kind of upgrade program or not, do they or the staff look professional or like ragged martial artists? These are the things that you have to look at and then COPY them. Most people are more than happy to help other people in our industry.
The last thing that I would recommend once you made a mind shift that it is ok to make money in this industry, is to attend seminars, read books, and network with other business professionals. We are not getting any younger and time is not getting any slower. When do you think your school is just going to start making you money when you haven’t changed any systems or changed the way you run things? I won’t hold you in suspense, so I will answer it for you. NEVER! Now don’t wait, go out and do something to achieve the goals you want and deserve.
For more information regarding how you can increase revenue and make more money from your martial arts business, take a look at this Kicksite webinar.
Mike Metzger is the MAIA lead consultant and a successful multi school owner with 7 schools in Orlando Fl. He can be contacted at 321-228-7875 or via email at Metz2000@aol.com