By George Fourie
5
22 ratings
The podcast currently has 152 episodes available.
Breaking down the price barrier: Are your martial arts tuition fees simply too cheap? Are you undervaluing your classes? There’s poison in the pricing, and it might not be what you think.
IN THIS EPISODE:
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TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. But today I want to talk about the poison in pricing for martial arts classes, for martial arts tuition.
Are martial arts classes just way too cheap? Are martial arts school owners charging way too much for their classes and tuition? Are they just ripping people off? Are people getting the value for what they are paying? Or are they the dreaded controversial McDojo if they charge too much?
All right! Lots to unpack here. I will dive deep into this, probably ruffling a few feathers in my take on this, but it needs to be said and unpacked. So, let's do this.
For show notes, for the transcript of this episode, and all links mentioned, go to martialartsmedia.com/151. Let's jump in.
If you've listened to my podcast for a while, okay if you haven't, but we talk a lot about marketing, lead generation, and getting and attracting new students for martial arts schools. That is the primary conversation because I guess in a way, I'm a little bit known for it.
People always come to me for that. But here's what's interesting: the first conversation that I had when we onboard martial arts schools into our Partners program was not about any marketing. We're always talking about offers and we're always talking about pricing.
It's probably the conversation that's valued the least, but it makes the biggest impact because when we fix this in a strategic way that's without selling your soul and all these limited negative beliefs that come up, providing good value and charging a premium, good premium rate for what your classes are worth.
It makes a huge impact because martial arts school owners come up with the idea that they need all these hundreds of students to hit their income goal to have a decent life and be able to provide their martial arts services without having to have a job, a side job to keep the dream alive, etc.
You know, for martial arts school owners that want to do this full-time. They have this idea of all these students they need and all of a sudden, we half that by just tweaking the numbers, changing the terms, changing how we go about all this.
Now I want to address a few things that come up with us. First up, I probably want to say that there is no wrong and no judgment in any martial arts school owner who provides a great service, and loves what they do. They serve the art of what they do and they want to share that and maybe they just want to do it part time and maybe they just want to keep it as a hobby...
The tables turn as the interviewer becomes the interviewee: George Fourie shares his life experiences and journey through marketing and martial arts on the Kyl Reber Podcast.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I am going to feature an episode, an interview that I had on the Kyl Reber Podcast. Kyl, a good friend of mine, interviewed me. You can look him up on kylreber.com.au. Also, martialartsmedia.com/145.
I had the pleasure of having Kyl on our podcast. By the way, I was looking at it. In episode 145, we were talking about him having 370 students. I know that number's almost up to 500 now. They are booming, to put it mildly. Anyway, go have a listen to that if you haven't yet.
For this episode, I really wanted to feature it because I got to tell you. I've been trying to record a podcast where I tell a bit of my story and just background where I came from, how this all got together, and I've given the pieces and inside of this over the years. I just had a look. We had episode 150, and I actually started this podcast in 2016, July of 2016.
I'm probably in the race for the longest-going podcast with the least amount of episodes, but 150 awesome episodes it has been, and I'm going to continue to do this for a while. Anyway, I've really wanted to have an in-depth– about my story, and I tried to record it a couple of times solo by myself, and I've got to say, it felt weird.
I did it about three times, and I deleted it every time. Then, I got on Kyl’s podcast, and Kyl gave me 10 questions just to prepare for the podcast. I did that, and I thought it was going to be enough, but Kyl's questioning technique was really solid and in-depth. Every time I answered, he dug a little deeper and dug a little deeper.
I’ve got to be honest. I probably spoke about things that I maybe just haven't shared over the years. Nothing too serious, but just things that I've buried in my past and let go. But Kyl did a really good job of unpacking all the details about me and asking a lot of questions. So, this podcast is going to be a bit longer.
I highly recommend you check out Kyl Reber’s podcast. I will have all the links for that at martialartsmedia.com/150. That's it for me. I hope you enjoy this. I would love to know your feedback afterward. Let's dig in...
If you’re running Facebook ads and all your martial arts leads are tire-kickers, your problem might be two-fold. Here’s the fix.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Hey there, George Fourie here. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today, I want to talk about your martial arts leads being tire-kickers. What if they are all tire-kickers, non-responsive, or just the wrong demographic or bad quality when you are running Facebook ads, Google ads, or from any other marketing source?
I’m going to dive into the details with a few little twists to this conversation. For show notes and all the resources of this podcast, head over to martialartsmedia.com/149. Let's jump in.
What happens when all my leads are tire-kickers? They inquired via the website, Facebook ads, or Google ads. They've put their hand up, disappeared, or never put their hand up. We can't get hold of them, and that's that. All the leads are tire-kickers, or they are responsive, but they're just the wrong type of lead.
They won't fit the culture of your club, or they won't be fit for the products that you have, the martial arts services that you offer, and the classes that you run. These are all things that can be fixed within your targeting, quality, and messaging. But here's the danger. I want to address the danger of labeling all your prospects as tire-kickers.
A few of my members in our Partners group brought this up: I love you, and you're not being singled out. Actually, I can count about six or seven encounters where this has come up, and that's just this year. So, you're definitely not being singled out. This is done with love. I hope that this is helpful for you and for you, the listener, as well.
Labeling all your leads as tire-kickers. Here's the danger. Let's say you're running an ad campaign, and you've got 20 to 30 leads in your CRM. It's just a list of names. And you get one bad response, two bad, three, and all of a sudden, your sales mojo motivation dies out.
And you're like, “Oh, really?” They’re all tire-kickers. Maybe it was only three, maybe it was five, but all of a sudden, you give everybody this unanimous label. Now, what if you took those 20 to 30 people off the list and put them all in a room together, all in a room together, or all on the mats? And you looked at all these people, all their faces, and they all put their hand up.
They responded to your ad, right? Can you look them all in the eye and say, “You're all tire-kickers. All of you are wasting my time. It's like all of you got together and collectively decided that you're going to waste my time.” A bit unrealistic, right? But it's very easy for us to look at a lead list and then throw a label out.
The danger that I want to address is it's their fault and not yours. So, immediately, you relinquish all responsibility for the leads, not furthering the conversation or signing up, and it's their fault and not yours. Now, I'm not here to debate whether that's true or not because there can be parts where it's their fault.
But if it's all their fault, you've got no room for improvement. They've got nothing that you can fix. You could never really say it's them. And yep, I come from an old school sales training where things were beaten down into my brain, not literally, but the message was enforced all the time—that it's never about the prospect.
You're the sales guy. It's your job to be persuasive, engaging, have charisma, and actually engage in a relationship. Sell the program and actually get them interested. Uncover the underlying objections or problems that they are facing and the reason why they put their hand up. Maybe they are super paranoid about taking this first step.
There's a lot there to unpack. This whole process between them putting their hand up and saying, “Hey, I'm interested,” and to actually go ahead, it can be a little fragile process. And so, we have to take it with care that this person is stepping potentially into an unknown territory.
They've never trained in martial arts before. They don't know what it's about. They've seen people beating each other up at UFC. They've got these perceived concepts of what it can be like completely untrue, but they have all these things going on, or it's super personal, right? There's something that happened in their life that they really need this...
Here’s how using an irresistible martial arts offer can almost completely squash your no-show rate for martial arts trial appointments.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to reduce no-shows. Prospect inquires, books a trial appointment with you, but then ghost you; they don't show up. And sometimes, it's really hard to re-engage and get the conversation back going and get them to reschedule.
So, I'm going to be talking about a couple of ways that you can reduce no-shows, almost eliminate them completely. Some are going to be simpler, and some are going to be a little bit more complex. There's going to be a few options for you to consider. I'm going to cover those. Make sure to head over to martialartsmedia.com/148. That is where we've got the show notes, downloads, and everything for this episode. Head over there, and hey, let's jump in.
Okay, some context first. I was talking at a martial arts business event in Texas late last year, that’s 2023 and was chatting to a lot of martial arts business owners that were experiencing a lot of no-shows. A bunch of these guys was using different types of marketing agencies and just various problems that were coming up, mainly no-shows.
Out of the 10 leads that they were getting, only three were actually showing up—three to four. I’m kind of shocked, to be honest. That's like a really, really high no-show, right? So, there are a few things that you can do to mitigate this now. There are a couple of dangers and a couple of things to consider here, right?
If you are trying to automate things as much as possible and be as hands-off as possible, that might be the price that you're going to pay, right? Is that you're going to have some no-shows, and there's going to be little investment of time and following up and doing things, but you're going to get fewer leads. You're going to be paying a lot more for leads to show up. That's just going to be the nature of the beast for you.
But, if you're keen to be a bit more invested and thinking, “Well, I want to get my dollars’ worth.” Like, “I want to really reduce the cost per acquisition of getting these students in, really want to bring that cost down, control it.” There are a couple of things that you can do, so let's explore them.
Number one is, first up, just looking at the automation that happens, your automated follow-up sequences. What happens once a new trial, a parent or an adult books a trial to come and take their first class with you? What happens from that point?
Are they getting automated email messages instantly and then timed all the way to their appointment? Are they getting text messages or follow-ups? What else? Is there some personalization? Maybe it's a real quick, like a video message—something that is a bit more personal. Because, let's face it, we're living in a world of AI automation, and everything is getting automated.
The more human elements are getting removed, the more kind of numb you get to the messaging, right? Because it's almost like you're not responsible for answering to a human. So, you feel off the hook if you don't stick to your word for the machine, right? The more personalization you're going to remove from that process, you're probably going to be experiencing some form of no-shows. So, that's the first thing to look at.
Look at what you can automate, but rather than automate, is there some personalization that you can do? It could be just grabbing the phone, doing a quick video message, and saying, “Hey, Johnny, I saw you're booked in for a class on X, Y, Z day. I’m really looking forward to meeting you. So is the team.” Whatever you want to do, right? Or show them around, etc.
If you don't want to be that specific, the way you can get out of that is to say, “Hey, George. I just wanted to say thanks so much for booking your class.” You can introduce yourself, but make it a bit more automated, but still have a personal feel to it. That's one thing you can do, right? Optimize your automation, but then insert some form of personalization that makes it a bit more personal if that’s what you want—human to human. All right. That's option number one...
Discover how Buzz Durkin, the headmaster of Uechiryu Karate, effortlessly keeps martial arts students for as long as 52 years.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today, I am interviewing a true master in martial arts and business, Buzz Durkin. I was really fortunate to spend some time with Buzz when I hosted our Martial Arts Media™ Intensive event, which was part of the Bushi Ban Power Week hosted by none other than Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed.
As part of the Bushi Ban Power Week, we hosted the Martial Arts Media™ Intensive, and I had Buzz share a talk in regards to retention and keeping students for life and how they basically work all their marketing from the ground up. I was so inspired by the speech; well, so was everyone else. He got a true standing ovation, and I invited him to speak at one of our events online, which is the Partners Intensive. Our members were just blown away by the information. I wanted to bring that over to you as part of the podcast, so I'm going to share a video on this page. If you want to go visit it, martialartsmedia.com/147.
Buzz shared a video during his talk showing how every Saturday, how much experience, and how many black belts they have. It ranged from four years to, I think, 44 years of experience, and I can't recall counting. There were at least 20, 30, got to be like 30 people at least.
Anyway, Buzz is truly a master at keeping it simple, keeping students for life, and he's got some valuable strategies to share. So, without further ado, jump in all the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/147. That’s the numbers one, four, seven. Jump in. Let's go.
GEORGE: Buzz Durkin, welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast.
BUZZ: It's my pleasure to be here. I'm happy to be here with you, George.
GEORGE: Good to see you again, and we'll loop back to that story. But a question I always like to ask first is, what's the number one thing that you do to attract new students into your school?
BUZZ: Well, the number one thing we do after all these years that's evolved is internal marketing. We do internal marketing with some social presence, too. We do a lot of posting on Facebook, and Instagram, just about every day or at least every other day. Our main venue for acquiring new students is through internal marketing. Parent's nights out, pizza parties, and birthday parties, where we encourage our students to bring their friends, inviting their friends and school teachers to our black belt promotions.
So, we concentrate mainly on the student body that we have and how can we grow that family from within primarily.
GEORGE: Very interesting. So, everything from the inside out. And so, when it comes to promotions, you're still sort of doing a little bit of outbound because you're saying with the social and so forth, but the focus is what's happening internally and making that the message to attract more students?
BUZZ: Yes. We like to make our students raving fans, and we like to make our students want their friends to study and train with them, whether they’re five years old or 50 years old. So, we try and provide a high degree of value in every single class so that the students will want to talk about what a great experience they had. And like we say, we don't teach good classes here. Every class has to be a great class.
And I think the marketing-- I think anything starts on the floor. I think it all starts with good instruction. You have to have something of substance that you're teaching, and you have to do it in an effective way. I think it all ebbs and flows on the quality of instruction on the floor. Everything should spring forth from that, I think.
GEORGE: I know you're the master at keeping students, and I want to tell this little backstory. So, we met officially for the first time at Grandmaster Zulfi's Bushi Ban Power Week, where we got to host our event during the Power Week, which was the Martial Arts Media™ Intensive. Buzz Durkin was one of the featured speakers. You shared a video during your talk that I can't recall how many students there were, and I'm probably, if that's okay with you, I'll share it within this podcast, just in the show notes so that people can see it...
George Fourie explores the highlights and game-changing strategies shared from the Partners Intensive - a live martial arts business event held on the Sunshine Coast, Australia.
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TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I'm going to be doing a bit of a review of an epic martial arts business event that we ran here on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. We are going to be talking about the highlights, epic, real cool things that we did. And most importantly, also talk about the next event that's coming up and how you can potentially be part of it.
All show notes can be found at martialartsmedia.com/146. Head over there and download everything, and you'll get all the resources on how you can potentially join us for the next event. All right, let's jump in.
A couple of months back, we hosted our Partners Intensive. Now, some context: you've heard me talk about Partners if you've been on the podcast. If you haven't, Partners is our martial arts business group that we work with, school owners from around the world. We get together online a lot, well, two to four times per week.
But it's also important to get together in person. And so, we put together the Partners Intensive, which was a three-day event that we hosted on the Sunshine Coast here in Australia. I've got to be honest; it way exceeded my expectations of how amazing it was. We had speakers from multiple parts of Australia and also Grand Master Zulfi Ahmed from Bushi Ban International, who flew over from the United States to come and join us for the event.
I'll tell you what. You've probably been to a business event, but if you haven't, it's the one thing that brings it all together, right? It's great that we've got all these online tools, and we can switch on Zoom and teleport virtually altogether from all different locations and connect fast.
And there’s nothing that beats that quick way of accessing information. But when it comes to human-to-human connection, we martial artists like to be around people, and the same goes with the events. Plus, you can get all the content that you want online, but it's that one conversation you have with a person who sits next to you, that insight that you get, that conversation that you're a part of where the magic happens.
And I want to say, whether it's my event or someone else's, but if you're going to go, look at the business, look at it as a nice little tax write-off to get away and do it because whatever you spend, you get back tenfold plus form awesome relationships with like-minded people, other martial arts, business owners, et cetera.
That was a universal plug for all events, including ours. Coming up. I want to give a bit of a rundown. I'll tell you what, a bit of insight from me. We moved across the country from Perth, which is in Western Australia, all the way to the East, which is the Sunshine Coast. For those of you, maybe if you're in the United States, that's the equivalent of moving from San Diego all the way through to New York, give or take.
So, opposite sides of the country, right? Of the, in our case, the continent. And I knew we had to put this event together. I was thinking, “Look, where do we go? Where do we go?” It's always good. I was putting this event together, and I was thinking, “Where do I host it around the country?”
Most events typically happen in a nice city, and people fly in from all over, so it's going to be easy to be accessible. At the time I was standing in this thought process, I was standing on a beach close by, Mooloolaba, that's how you say it. I got it wrong a few times anyway. My daughter's playing in the playground, which is down by the beach and the sand.
I'm standing there thinking, “We could do it on the Gold Coast. We could do it in Sydney.” As my daughter's playing, I look up and see, here's the Mantra Hotel. I look the other way, and I see the ocean, and I look back up at the hotel, and I'm like, “Well, it's got to be there, right?”
It's in my backyard. We moved here because I believe it’s one of the most beautiful places in the country, if not the world. And I thought, “Wow, wouldn't it be magnificent to bring martial arts school owners from all over the world to meet up on the Sunshine Coast?” And so that was it.
It was so successful that I've already booked the hotel for next year, June 2024. So, how did the event go down? All right. I played mostly part as a host, which is what I wanted to do. I think everybody in our group hears me talk a lot. I like the aspect of bringing so many people around and bringing people, having people from our community step up and share a lot of great insights.
I think I'm just going to break it down from top to bottom. I kicked off the event, and straight after me, we had Ross Cameron, who spoke about the $20,000-a-month pro shop formula. This was a really exciting session. And, you know, when I was promoting the event, I promised that within day one, you would walk away with six figures.
Strategies that would get you six figures in the bank if implemented within the next 12 months. And we did that on day one. A big part of this was Ross Cameron's $20,000-a-month pro shop formula.
That's generating $20,000 a month from your pro shop. Ross, being an engineer by trade, went down into all the aspects to look at and how to design your pro shop, from the layout, where it should be exactly, how to display the items, what to display, and where to source them from, changing stock.
There was so much to cover. It was a really, really impactful 90 minutes. Next up, we had Cheyne McMahon, who spoke about the open day—a six-figure open-day formula. That's something we've covered a lot. Shane's done really well with running open days. We call it the six-figure open day because that's what's generated on the day in student value.
For him, his record, I think, was 89 students signups on the day. When I moved up to the Sunshine Coast, Shane lives in Brisbane, and I knew he was running an open day. I thought, hang on, I want to get this on film. We've talked about the strategies and bounced it around, but I've never really been hands on a part of it.
I drove down to Brisbane, filmed the entire open day, and just watched him. Watch the whole process. It was great because we got to talk about it after, but we got to run through the open day live and break down exactly each strategy, what to do from the marketing, how to fill the room, what to do during the day, the demos, who to get involved, organic marketing through the community.
And so we did a rundown through the video and basically covered all the strategies from that. Awesome. Next up, this is all day one.
We had Lindsay Guy. Lindsay Guy was talking about retention boosting strategies, things that they've done within their school. When we started working with Lindsay Guy, it was reported that he's grown his business by 233% since being in the community.
He attributes a lot of that to things he gets from our community. That's not “me and me. Give myself a pat on the shoulder”, but the weekly calls that we have where we have a bunch of martial arts school owners that get together. That's where the magic happens because that's where the ideas are shared.
The martial arts school owners that attend those calls are the ones that succeed the most because that's where you get the live feedback, right? There's nothing like bringing a problem to a call, and you've got someone that's been in the business 30, 40 years and has gone through those different phases and be able to share those insights with you.
How to create retention boosted customer experiences from first contact to walk-in to introduction to sign up. Awesome. We finished the day off a bit early, but we did something epic. We did a mastermind on a river cruise. We hired, what do you call them? A big boat cruiser. To do a river cruise through all the canals.
We also got a sponsor on board club works and martial arts software, and they got on board and contributed with gifts and just really enhancing the experience, which was really, really amazing. So anyway, it's sunset now; if you haven't seen the sunset around the Sunshine Coast, it's pretty spectacular.
I've got a video and some footage that I'll include below this post, martialartsmedia.com/146. Go check it out. It's pretty amazing. We had the river cruise. We got on board. It was networking, a bunch of drinks, a bunch of fun, and picked up a bunch of world-class seafood and had meals on board.
That wrapped up day one for us. Pretty amazing for day one. On day two, we had Grand Master Zulfi Ahmed. Now, there are a million things that I can say about working with Grand Master Zulfi Ahmed on the day and through the weekend. But I can say he completely blew everyone away with the value, the knowledge, his energy just unmatched.
Grand Master Zulfi is a unique individual. You've probably heard of him; if not, go look him up. Based in Pasadena, Texas. Bushi Ban International is his organization. And Master Zulfi, we spent the entire Saturday with him going through a bunch of topics, which I was actually sworn to secrecy and not allowed to share.
I can tell you that everybody in our group still talks about the experience that day, and he went over and above and delivered. After the event, we visited different schools around the Sunshine Coast in Brisbane, having lunch, having dinners, having talks. For me, it was just a super, really, really valuable experience.
The amount of knowledge that I gained spending a couple of days with Grand Master Zulfi Ahmed. That was Saturday, a jam-packed day. The next morning, Sunday, we started wrapping things up.
Grand Master Zulfi shared his insight, which was what he promised. His promise was that he would show you how to increase, give you a million-dollar idea, how to increase your trial-to-member conversions by more than 70%.
He demonstrated that with a bunch of school owners. They sat down, and he showed us the structure of how they do that, which was mind-blowing, pretty spectacular. Within that, we hosted what we call the Instructors’ Roundtable, but we had a bunch of top school owners who joined us and basically sat on the hot seat.
That was a great experience. We had Grand Master Ridvan Manav shares from the Australian Martial Arts Academy in Sydney—one of the largest martial arts schools within the world. Listening to the wealth of knowledge he brought to the table, being interactive with everyone in the group, being open and generous, and helping everybody within the group.
Also, Zak Jovanov from Premier Martial Arts in Perth sharing how they run thousands plus students between their two schools and just a wealth of knowledge, and it is great to have him on board. That almost brought us to the end of the day.
Then we had Kyl Reber. Kyl from Chikara Martial Arts in Brisbane. When I put all the event details together, I shared everything, and he sent me a message and said, “Hey George, I really love the lineup. It's all great on money-making strategies and everything. But if I could take 10, 30 minutes and share a couple of things that we do differently and how we've grown our school to 370 students plus by really focusing on community activities.”
And then another great community member, Kyl Reber, shared cultivating culture and community for retention. Kyl sent me a message after I put the lineup together for the Partners Intensive and said, “Hey, George really loved the lineup. Everything seems focused on money-generating activities, which is awesome, but we do things different.”
And organically, they've grown their martial arts school to 370 plus students without running ads but really focusing on their culture and community activities. Kyl said, “Look, if I've got 10, 30 minutes, I'd love to share.” And I said, “Well, you've got 90 minutes. Take it away.” It was a really amazing session and just brought a bit of a different flavor to the event.
Last but not least, I finished up with the 90-day growth plan. Every 90 days, we get together and work on a plan—a plan for what are the things that you need to do. And I guess for, I don't know about you, but sometimes you go to an event, and you get all this information and insight, and then you go home. You're so pumped with everything to do, but now I've got this long to-do list of things you've got to get done, and you don't have a plan on the most essential thing to do next.
It's great that you've got all these ideas, but if you're at a certain level and someone is at a completely another level to you, the insight that you might have gotten is great advice, but just not in the moment. The 90-day growth plan is all about taking all the things from the event and make sure that you get a plan structured and you know what to do as soon as you get home.
Anyway, that gives you a bit of an idea of what happened at the event. We've got a few events coming up, and I'd love to invite you to a few, depending on when you're listening to this. I'll be hosting the Martial Arts Media Intensive. I'm coming over to the United States. I'll be hosting the Martial Arts Media Intensive as part of the Bushi Ban Power Week, hosted by Grand Master Zulfi in Pasadena, Texas, which will be running between the 18th and the 22nd of October, 2023.
We'll be there Friday, the 20th. We're going to be hosting the event, and we've got five speakers covering over three different continents, right? Two speakers from the United States, two here from Australia, as well as from the United Kingdom. It's an epic week that Grand Master Zulfi hosts the Bushi Ban Power Week, which is their martial arts organization.
There's between gradings, martial arts seminars, and the martial arts workshop, business workshop. There's a lot happening. If you're in Texas or keen to travel, I'd love to meet you in the USA. First time back in five years, almost since the last time I spoke at an event. Three years, four years, something like that.
Anyway, we'd love to see you. On top of that, we have two martial arts business events happening. One online and one again in Australia in June 2024. I know online isn't as cool as in person, but the cool thing about online is that we've got access to speakers from around the globe, and we get double the work done in half the time.
And you don't have to travel, right? I know, yep, being in person is great, but in between, we run our online events too, which are awesome. And no matter where you are in the world, you could potentially join us.
Look, if you'd like to know anything about these events, shoot me an email at [email protected] or wherever you see this, comment below, whether it's on Facebook or Instagram, or wherever you see this, comment below and ask. I will reach out to you and share with you all the details of how you can attend the next event. Awesome. Look, thanks so much for watching or listening.
If you've got some great insights from this, please share this with someone, one of your martial arts school and friends, somebody who might get good value from this. I look forward to speaking to you on the next podcast. Go to martialartsmedia.com/146, and you'll find all the photos of the events, some videos, and a couple of cool resources.
Kyl Reber shares his secrets to 27 years of successful growth in his martial arts business, driven by the power of organic marketing through word-of-mouth referrals.
IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I am interviewing one of our great clients, one of our members of our Partners community, Kyl Reber. Kyl is from Brisbane. Chikara Martial Arts. You can look them up.
And this interview is a bit of an extension from the Partners Intensive, which is an event that we hosted here on the Sunshine at the beginning of June. And Kyl was one of the featured speakers talking about the things that they are doing in the community.
And what is mind-blowing for many other school owners is Kyl and his team, they're just pushing past the 370-member mark. And at this point, they've only focused on organic marketing strategies.
It's all about community. It's all about giving back. It's all about the things that they do in their school and the impact that they make within their community.
And so I wanted to get Kyl on and dig a bit deeper, talk a bit more about the strategies, what they do.
And the great thing is I've been working with Kyl for a little more than six months, and I haven't really tapped into that backstory about how he got started on this journey when they opened their school, what got him into martial arts and so this was a great opportunity for that.
So jump into the episode. All the show notes and resources are on our website, martialrtsmedia.com/145.
That's the numbers one, four, five. Head over there and download the transcript and resources. That's it. Let's get started. Jump in.
GEORGE: Mr. Kyl Reber, welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast.
KYL: Thanks, George. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and an honor to be here.
GEORGE: Awesome. Long time coming.
KYL: Long time coming. Third time lucky.
GEORGE: Third time lucky. Hey, so thanks for jumping on. I'm really excited about this conversation and what I'm excited about is I've known you for a little while, we've been working together for a little while and I haven't really tapped into the back story of you and how everything came about.
So I'm really excited to chat about that and just witness a lot of the things that you're doing in your school and how you approach things differently. But first up, I always like to kick off this being … We always talk about marketing and attract, increase, and retain strategies.
If you have to share, what is the one thing, your go-to strategy that's helped you grow the school the most, generated the most students, strategy that you always lean on, that you always go back to and repeat over time?
KYL: I guess our biggest strategy or our biggest way of generating business is it always has been referral. But I guess if you were to put that into a strategy, a strategy is our image and our standing in the community.
Because if we have a good image standing in the community and members come to join, they're very quick to refer to other people that they know about what we do. You and I have had conversations in the past about Facebook marketing and all that sort of stuff.
Without sounding arrogant, that's still quite foreign to us. And I guess we've been very lucky that we're able to build the club to where it has gotten purely by just referral, word of mouth. We'll have whole families train. We have people very willingly wanting to involve themselves more in what we do externally.
So I think, referral has been always something that's been very good for us to lean on, and it's something that's very important to us. Our culture and community are the real backbone of what we do.
Damien Brown, a UFC fighter-turned-gym owner, shares his journey of transitioning from the octagon to entrepreneurship. He reveals his secrets to success in both the fighting world and the martial arts business realm.
IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
My job is to make sure that any child between the age of four and 13 loves jiu-jitsu until they turn 16. If I'm too hard on them and they hate it and they don't like it, they leave. My job is to make sure that I teach them jiu-jitsu but I make sure they have enough fun that they want to stay in jiu-jitsu until they're 16.
When they're 16 they get graded as an adult, they start learning as an adult. It's a little bit different. They get to make their own choices. But if I can make them enjoy it that much that they stay from the age of four until 16, then I've now got a long-term member, I've got a kid that's done jiu-jitsu for 12 years that's now going to get a blue belt and go on to be a great adult addition to my gym.
GEORGE: Good day. George Fourie here. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I'm joined by a professional MMA fighter, UFC Fighter, and owner of Base Training Centre in Brisbane, Damien Brown. Welcome to the show.
DAMIEN: Hey, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
GEORGE: Good stuff. You've had a complete career between martial arts and your business. But before we get into the good stuff, a question I always like to ask upfront is, what's been your go-to marketing strategy, the thing that you guys do that generates the most students for you on a consistent basis? Consistently or that one thing that's the hook.
DAMIEN: Typically, the greatest marketing strategy we had was Facebook Ads. Social media is so big now. If you're not using it then you, you're either behind the times or you're just too stubborn to do it. Potentially, you don't know what you're doing so you outsource it. I'm a massive believer in outsourcing anything that's not your line of expertise. I just think that everyone should be advertising on social media.
Zulfi Ahmed covers conversion-boosting strategies for your martial arts business and shares the content to be delivered at The Partners Intensive.
IN THIS EPISODE:
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I'm going to share with you a very powerful concept, only in the meeting, that will increase your lead to conversion, by up to 70% to 90%.
GEORGE: Master Zulfi, welcome back once again, back-to-back weeks to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast.
ZULFI: My pleasure. It's my pleasure.
GEORGE: Today I want to do, I guess just extend last week's Episode 142. We spoke about how to elevate your martial arts business to the next level. It was a bit of a teaser in the subject line, with Master Zulfi's Breakthrough Mindset Formula, and we didn't go that deep into it.
So what I wanted to do today, was chat a bit about what that is, in a bit more detail, but also for anyone that's coming to The Partners Intensive on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, which will be the 2nd to the 4th of June.
Master Zulfi is joining us all the way from Houston, Texas, about as far as you can travel, and he'll be spending the entire day today, going through a bunch of things that I want to learn about today, as well.
I know it's going to be great. It's the challenge of, how we condense 50 years of knowledge into one day of impact, and that it's impactful for you as the school owner. So glad to have you back on.
ZULFI: Thank you very much. It's my pleasure. And again, I'm super excited. Finally, get to go to Australia, meet my friends, make new friends, and share some of our successes and even failures. It's not all hunky dory, it's not all perfect.
I've experienced many failures and that itself is a part of the journey. What to do, what not to do, what to be cautious and mindful about? What to be careful of, and how to approach situations, which might be very challenging.
And George, all of us martial arts school owners, if you stay in the martial arts business for X number of years, there are certain things we are going to experience. Like in America, taxes, death, and health, it's inevitable in life. So same thing in the martial arts business timeframe, there will be challenges we know that we have experienced and we will experience.
So some of you folks out there, they might not have experienced these. So my job with my team and my group is, “Hey, be mindful, retention, instructor staff retention, instructor staff training. Sometimes deflection, people leave and go open a school down the street, some legal issues.
All things, which if you've been there for as long as I've been, you will experience, hopefully not negative, but if you are armed with the knowledge, information, and mentally aware, then you will deal with them at a much better rate.
Believe me, I've experienced a lot, good, bad, and even ugly and I've learned everything has been a lesson and everything has been a growth and it's just keeping us moving forward. So that is what I want to share.
Zulfi Ahmed is coming to Australia to share his breakthrough mindset formula that’s responsible for his martial arts business empire.
IN THIS EPISODE: When is the perfect time to scale your martial arts school?
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here.
TRANSCRIPTION
It's not just the idea. It's not just the clarity. It's the process, procedures, and steps that people need to take to get through to the next level. We might know that I want to get 400 students, but I want to get 600 students. Well, I need to advertise more. No, there's more than that, but I will give you that process.
GEORGE: Master Zulfi Ahmed, welcome back to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast.
ZULFI: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Happy to be back.
GEORGE: Awesome, so I think it's good for us to just go back down in the history of the journey on the podcast and then we'll jump into the big reason we're chatting today. So, we spoke back, I was looking earlier, in February 2018. We spoke about The Real Secret To Success With Your Martial Arts Business. I believe this was just before Fred DePalma‘s event in San Diego where we met for the first time.
Then in episode 110, we spoke about How To Become A Master Martial Arts Instructor. Actually, just when your book came out, we had a chat about that. And today, we're back. We're back for episode 142 because you're coming to Australia. How good is that?
ZULFI: Yes, I'm excited. Thank you very much for the kind invitation and I'm super excited. I can't wait to get on the plane and go and meet you again and all the friends in Australia. I have some very good friends, and fellow martial artists in Australia. I would love to see them and make new friends. And I am excited, super excited.
GEORGE: I think it'd be good, even though this is the third time around on the podcast, it'd be good to go back to your story. But a story I want to share quickly, which was really, I think a pivotal point where we really connected is at Fred DePalma's event. You spoke at the event and I really loved your chat and your knowledge.
And I remember you making a lot of Jay Abraham references, which I thought, “Oh, that's really good.” For those of you that don't know Jay Abraham, look him up. And in the morning when we were flying back, we were all waiting down in the lobby at breakfast. We were all waiting for our trip back.
And we just got into a conversation. And it was one of the most valuable conversations I've had in martial arts and martial arts business, and you just openly shared things that I can do in my business, how I should approach it, and how I should approach the American market differently. Yeah, so I want to thank you for that because I took a lot away from that.
ZULFI: My pleasure.
GEORGE: And so, we've always kept in touch. And so, the conversation came up and I know we mentioned it, somewhere along the line we mentioned, maybe sometime you'll come to Australia. And so, we host this event for our members once a year. We call it The Partners Intensive. We did one in Brisbane last year.
I just moved to the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Australia and I thought, “If I'm ever going to do a great event in Australia, it's got to be here because it's beautiful.” And we're planning one for the US later in the year. And lucky enough, our dates have aligned well, and I'm really excited that you're going to be joining us for the event.
ZULFI: Me too. It's a pleasure. I can't wait to do this. I've been wanting to go to Australia for many, many years. Actually, in 1979, I'm originally from Pakistan, so we had a Pakistani Burmese kickboxing team. We were going to go to Australia for a tournament in 1979.
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