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This year to date I’ve enrolled 20 students… roughly 6 per month.

Guess how much I’ve spent on marketing during that time?

ZERO.

I’ve been lazy.

(Actually I’ve been extremely busy with another business. I just have fallen behind in marketing my dojo this year.)

The funny thing is that even though I’ve done nothing in terms of dojo marketing, it’s nice to know that my school is at a point where it just ticks over like clockwork bringing in new students without lifting a finger.

And I am extremely grateful for that.

However it wasn’t always that easy.

You see when I first started I was working my tail off, promoting left and right. I was doing events, posting ads, doing demonstrations, joint ventures, mailings, and doing loads of internal marketing.

I was doing exactly what a mentor of mine says, “You’ve got to market and market and market and market and market and market and market <take a breath> and market and market and market and market and market and market and market and market.”

But with so many different people telling you different things on what works and what doesn’t, how do you ever know what’s true?

Here are a list of things I’ve done over the last 12 years in terms of martial arts marketing:

• Flyers
• Door hangers
• Direct Mail
• Demonstrations
• Joint Ventures
• Signs
• Bring a friend day
• Karate parties
• Cold calling door to door
• Vendor booths
• Hand out business cards
• Web site
• Coupon books
• Online ads
• Newspaper articles and ads
• more

And you know what? Guess how many of those things I do now?

3

That’s 3 out of 15.

Or 20% of the things on that list.

Funny how the 80/20 rule works.

80% of your students will come from 20% of your marketing!

And I estimate the other 20% takes 80% more effort, more money and more time to acquire.

Seems like a good idea to focus on what works best, right?

But how do you know?

Simple.

Test it.

What works in my community might not work for you in yours. So test what works and what doesn’t. When you find the things that work best for you, invest your time, energy and marketing budget into the things that bring you best results.

However, before you start marketing drinks for sale in 100° F weather, you might want to consider if it’s hot cocoa or ice-cold lemonade you’re going to sell.

Same holds true for martial arts. You’re not going to have a hugely successful kids program in a 55+ community. (In fact you’re not going to have much of a martial arts program at all in a 55+ community, but you understand my point!)

When I first started teaching here in the US, I didn’t want to teach kids… but because of the location where many adults commute and get home late, getting them into class has always been a challenge. However, getting kids has been easier than shooting fish in a barrel. My dojo demographic is about 20% adults (16 years and up), 80% teens and kids.

Yet back in Australia, friends of mine run dojos where their adult / kid ratio is about 50:50.

It just depends on your market, and how well you position yourself in that market.

“But I just want to teach karate… enough of all this marketing stuff!”

Yep, I hear you. But that’s why your dojo hasn’t grown in 4 years….

Truth is, if you want to grow your school or have a full time club, you’ve got to market and market and market and market and market and market and market <take a breath> and market and market and market and market and market and market and market and market.

Until you get to a point where your dojo is self-sustaining through passive marketing methods.

It took me 3 about years. Then a funny thing happened. I reached a stable 100 student strong base. And now it just seems to take care of itself with minimal effort. My active student count is around 125 right now and it goes up to as high as 140 and drops back down with seasonal changes.

And it’s been like that for the last 9 years.

Could I grow it bigger?

Of course.

Do I want to?

Not particularly. There’s a point where you need more infrastructure and employees… and it takes a lot more effort to take it to the next level. I would rather serve 125 students to the best of my ability and maintain high skill standards, than have an overcrowded dojo with massive classes and poor skills.

But if I did want to grow bigger… can you guess what I’d have to do?

I’d have to market and market and market and market and market and market…

I often get asked, “How do I get more students?”

There are a ton of ways which I’m not going to go into today.

Sorry.

That would be an entire book by itself (and in fact one that I’m writing currently).

However, I do want to share with you one way I stumbled across last week to create exposure and goodwill in your community through charity. And this in my opinion is key to establishing a great community reputation and ultimately new students over the long term.

It’s simple and everyone wins. Your charity wins because they get paid. Your dojo wins because it creates a tighter group of students, families get involved and talk about it, etc. It’s also a great way to create community exposure through newspaper articles and social media.

Simply do a fundraiser, kick-a-thon, spar-a-thon, break-a-thon  or a whatever-a-thon at your dojo. Have your students get involved and then give away the raised funds to charity. You can donate all of the money or part of it. You might keep 50% for dojo upgrades for example and donate the rest. Or you might simply set a goal of donating $1000 to charity. Whatever feels right for you.

(In fact a friend of mine created a wildly successful fundraiser in which he raised and donated $14,000 this year alone! How awesome is that?)

Then simply go to the charity and tell them you want to make a donation. Notice I said “go to” and not “call”. There is a reason for that.

Olivia and I with Ellen Bilney, director of development at AFV.

When I walked into Animal Friends of the Valleys (the local animal shelter) last week and told them I would like to donate $700 they welcomed me with open arms. The director of development came to greet me and my daughter and asked if we would like a tour of their premises. Of course I said yes. For 40 minutes Ellen showed Olivia and I AFV’s operation. It was impressive and we learned a lot.

I asked if it would be ok if we took a photo (to show the parents involved in the fundraiser we actually donated the money). Ellen said of course and offered immediately to post it online if I would simply email it to her.

So I did and within a couple of hours we were all over AFV’s Facebook page with loads of likes and comments from local people thanking and blessing me for our contribution. Wow. That was unexpected!

My intent was never one of self-promotion. It was simply one of charity. The byproduct of this action was community exposure and the creation of goodwill and reinforcement of a great reputation for my dojo in our community. And I’ll take that every day of the week.

This is something you can do to help the local charity of your choice and simultaneously create exposure for your dojo too…

 

 

You may know the WKF World Championships begins tomorrow in Paris
from November 21-25, 2012.

What you might not know is that this year’s event will be
broadcast live on YouTube in countries that don’t have television
coverage.

So, for many people that means you can watch the event LIVE on
the official WKF YouTube channel.

More information can be found here:

http://wkfkarateworldchamps.com/

Even if you don’t get to watch it live, there are a ton of videos
on the channel for you to see – kata, kumite and the team events.

Pretty neat if you’re a fan, a coach, or a sensei wanting to help
your students improve their skills for karate tournament.

Hope you get a moment to catch the action…

http://wkfkarateworldchamps.com/

I don’t know about you, but one of the most irritating things for me as a karate teacher is having to tie kids’ belts every 2 minutes.

Yes, I know, I hear you saying, “Just make them tie it themselves!”

And for the most part they do, but there are times in my youngest class where 4 and 5 year olds have a hard time especially when they are beginners.

Now I could always go for one of those “Velcro belts” (pre-tied) that just wrap around your karate kids’ waists and never come undone, but that really wouldn’t be karate now would it? Part of the discipline is learning to be responsible and tie your own belt.

I REFUSE to go down that Velcro-belt path and you should too… (To quote my daughter, “If you do that then I won’t be your best friend!” – not sure where she got that from, but that’s 3 year old negotiation skills at their best).

Now I’m sure you ask your karate kids to practice tying their belts at home, and maybe some of them will, but you’ll always be faced with those lazy kids with over compensating parents who always tie their belts for them.

Well, last week I came up with a little incentive for my youngest kids to keep an eye on their belts and make sure they don’t come off.

I told them, “Sensei just made a new rule. If your belt comes off, then it belongs to Sensei for the rest of class!”.

A few of the litte ones laughed, some looked at me with wide eyes, and some probably wondered why I talked about myself in the third person.

Anyway, as soon as the first belt hit the floor, I quickly snatched it up faster than a magician in a coin-snatching contest and tied it around my waist, over my black belt.

The class errupted with laughter and the student who just lost their belt stood there in shock. His precious belt, his most prized possession now was tied securely around Sensei’s waist.

Not 3 minutes later the second belt hit the floor. I pounced on that one like a cat and tied that sucker on top of the other.

This time there was less laughter, some concerned looks and a lot of focus on the state of their own belts.

When the 3rd belt came off just a couple minutes later during an exercise we were doing, I claimed that one too. At that point every child checked the status of their belt. Every student pulled on their belt to make sure it was tight!

The kids without belts had anguished looks on their faces and the others realized that pretty soon Sensei would have more belts than the rest of the class if this trend kept up.

Toward the end of the class I returned their kidnapped belts, and those kids who “didn’t know how to tie their belt” suddenly learned how.

And I’m happy to report since that class, we have less belts coming off, more self awareness and less interruptions.

This little trick worked well for me, and feel free to use it too.

What methods do you use to ensure belts stay tied?

– Jason

Here’s a great kids karate game you can use as a warm-up or a reward at the end of class, that kids go crazy for…

It’s called “The Safe Game” and here’s how it works:

• It’s basically a game of tag / cat and mouse with a bunch of “safe groups”, and requires 10 or more  students for best results.
• Students pair-up and stand side by side at random locations on the floor, with a minimum of about 5 feet between groups. These are the “safe groups”.
• Then choose one student to be the Cat (the tagger) and one other to be the Mouse (the runner).
• On your command the game begins and the Cat must catch the Mouse. The only way the Mouse can be safe is to run to a safe group and yell, “SAFE!”.
• This action releases the person on the far side of the safe group, who now becomes the Mouse. The Cat must now catch this new person, and the new Mouse must run to another group and call “SAFE”.
• In the event the Mouse is tagged by the Cat, roles are reversed and now the person who was being chased is now the chaser.
• The game continues until students pass out from exhaustion, or you decide that it’s gone on long enough!

Some rules:

1. There can only ever be 2 “safe” people in a safe group. The person on the outside is ALWAYS the person who is released.
2. If the person on the closest end of the group accidentally runs (instead of the outer person), the game stops, the person who broke now becomes the Cat, the original Cat becomes the Mouse, and the original mouse is safe.
3. To make this more challenging you can allow/deny “tag-backs”. You can also have 3 Mice and one Cat, so there are fewer safe groups.
4. To make it more karate-related, have each of the safe groups stand in a different karate stance.

Try it out and let us know how it works for you!

Enjoy!

~ Jason

Today we continue our discussion about the different learning types. So far we talked about 3 basic types of learners and went into some detail about visual learners. We’ll continue and this time explore…

So are you listening? Yes, you right there who is not looking at me when I’m speaking to you…

You can tell an auditory learner almost immediately particularly in a group situation. Your visual learners will be looking at you and seemingly paying attention, while their minds are wandering. But your auditory learner might be visually zoning out, looking at nothing in particular and might have their head turned with one ear toward you.

That’s your auditory learner right there… he’s listening to every single word you say, while at the same time looking at his feet or scratching the back of his neck. I encounter this a lot in class, particularly with kids who haven’t been taught to “look at someone when they’re talking to you” (which by the way is counter-intuitive for an auditory learner who might generally prefer to turn to hear you).

Auditory learners also like to hear themselves speak… they can’t keep quiet for long, but they like to listen to learn and follow verbal directions well.

Which way are his eyes pointing?

A quick test for an auditory learner is to watch their eye movements when asked a question about a place or time they remember. You’ll recall visual people will generally look up to their left for remembering images, and up to their right when constructing them. Auditory learners tend to look either horizontally to their left (remembering sound) or to their right (constructing sound).

Ever had a someone play guitar just for you? They kind of give you this creepy zoned out look where you’re not sure where they’re focusing their gaze, but it’s really them listening and thinking as they play.

Auditory people also use words like “I hear what you’re saying”, “Let me explain it again for you” and “Listen to that!”.

So this is all great and fascinating stuff, but how the heck do you teach those guys when you’ve shown them 5 times already Mr. Visual karate instructor??

Easy!

Just use your voice! 

BE LOUD! 

Give clear verbal instruction.

And have your students repeat back to you or someone else, what you just explained


Try this with your students…

A little exercise I do sometimes in class is to teach a technique visually and verbally, and then have students pair up and take turns teaching it to each other. You’ll notice your visual learners will just show the technique and your auditory learners will break it down, step by step with explanation.

So that brings us to the conclusion of our brief discussion on auditory learners. Who’s up next??

Hmmm…well let’s just say you’ll have to experience it to understand all about those crazy kinesthetic learners…

Until next time.

Jason