A Radically Different Formula for Martial Arts School Growth

By Chris Whamond on September 12, 2009 — No comments

Here's a different formula to grow your martial arts school.

I know everybody touts a “secret formula” for winning in the martial arts business. But when you strip most of them down, they rest on a solid foundation of tried-and-true business principles. Like sending out a monthly martial arts newsletter to all your students.

But this one’s different. It’s truly an “anti-formula” for martial arts success if I’ve ever heard one.

Growth Without Overhead

This formula requires no capital, no leases, no overhead, no instructors, no big capital outlay and – best of all – no risk.

And I think it’s a great formula for these tough economic times.

My friend Curtis, a Taekwondo instructor, used this formula to build his way to 600 active students…with no overhead.

When he got it running full-steam, it was making him $24,000 a month net profit. Net. All in cash. Yes, you heard me: $24,000 a month going into his personal bank account…with virtually no overhead. Just a little hustle.

Here’s how he did it:

Curtis approached rec centers, senior centers and community centers and gave them the following pitch:

How would you like to have an extra $1,500 for your community center each month? I’ll teach Taekwondo classes for free. You keep all the monthly tuition and I’ll keep the testing fees.”

If you ran a cash-strapped community center, you’d jump at the opportunity. Why? Because you’d be able to generate income, expand your offerings, help your members exercise and gain self-defense skills. And it costs you nothing to do so. It was an irresistible offer.

It was a great deal from Curtis’ side of things, too. He had no overhead, didn’t need to market (because the rec center did that for him), didn’t need to sign a lease, didn’t need to hassle with signing up students (the rec centers did all that) or do any paperwork. All he had to do was…

Walk In and Teach!

Curtis recommended that the rec centers charge $15 per month for classes. This ensured packed classes, killed “price objections” (anybody can afford $15 a month) and kept retention high. And he needed lots and lots of students. Because, as you remember, he only made his money on testing fees. Heck, if the rec center gave away free classes, all the better.

His price to test? $80 a person. Might seem like a lot, but not many balked because their regular tuition was so low.

Anyway, Curtis got things rolling and eventually ended up with six “schools”. He taught at each location two times per week.

I’m sure his schedule looked something like this:

Basically, three classes a night at three different locations. As you can see, it’s easy to do if you give yourself some drive time.

He also alternated which schools tested each month. In other words, he had three schools test each month. Over six months, his testing schedule looked like this:

Now let’s do the math on how much he made on all those monthly testing fees:

And so on.

Wait a second. Could that be right? $24,000? That’s a lot of money. Let me double-check my numbers…

Yep! I was correct: Three schools X 100 students X $80 is…do the math…

$24,000 Per Month

All from testing fees. He made nothing on monthly tuition. Had no instructors. No overhead. No phone. No paperwork. No hassle. No risk. No marketing.

Everything was done through his “hosts” – the community and rec centers. They helped their members and made money.

Curtis did what he loved best: taught Taekwondo and made money. As a result, he retired in his early 50′s as a multi-millionaire from this one idea.

True story.

See if you can make it work for you, too!