Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast

Ever had a close call in your martial arts business? That you'll need to close doors? That was Bob King not too long ago. Here's how he turned it around.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

• How to grow your student base through Facebook advertising 
• Why key conversion elements are essential for martial arts websites 
• The power of having a business mentor to guide you through your journey
• How does the Academy program compare to other Martial Arts Business Coaching programs
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

Well, it's certainly gotten rid of that big dark cloud hanging over me, and I can see that if we continue the way we are at the very least, even if we didn't grow any further than what we are at the moment, we are now financially viable, and I'm actually putting money back in the bank account.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie, and I'm joined today by one of our Academy members, Bob King. How are you doing today, Bob?

BOB: Good, thanks George. How are you?

GEORGE: Pretty good. Pretty good. Thanks for jumping on.

So we're just going to have a quick chat just about Bob and his school and working together with our Academy program, and a couple of results and things that came up.

So thanks again for jumping on, Bob. If you don't mind, just share with us a couple of minutes, a bit of background about you. Who do you teach, a bit about your school, etc.

BOB: Okay, so I'm a member of the Koryu Uchinadi Kenpo Jutsu school. Hanshi Patrick McCarthy is the head of our school. We teach old-style, predominantly karate, but also jiui jitsu and weapons.

I've been doing martial arts for nearly 50 years, been teaching for probably 35 years. Predominantly ran schools out of school halls and community centres and that sort of thing. It was about seven or eight years ago, we had enough numbers to go into full-time premises that became available in the area where I teach. It progressed from there. Just started teaching full-time, probably five, six days a week with different classes on most days.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. Okay, so we recently started working together and what I want to sort of getting down to, before we got to that point, what problems were you facing and what were you hoping to achieve through the program?

BOB: Well, the biggest problem that we had was our numbers had declined. When we first opened, we had good numbers. The bank account was looking healthy. The building we were in, we occupied two-thirds of it. Third of it was occupied by a funeral director who parked his hearse in it. That extra area became available and we decided to take it on. We were offered the lease on it to expand, and we took it on because we were concerned who might move in and cause us problems.

And we thought also with the extra area, we could make some improvements to our facility and that would hopefully increase numbers further. Failed to materialize. Once we'd gone into the bigger area, our rent went up but our numbers started to decline, and we got to the point where, probably for 18 months, I was losing money. We were going out the back door.

Just prior to joining your Academy program, we were at the point of we either had to do something and turn it around and actually start making the club profitable, or I was going to close down...

Case Study on how to market martial arts to adult students with one of our Martial Arts Media Partner Members, Darryl Thornton.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

• Signing up new adult students through simple cross promotion 
• The Martial Arts Bot – a total time saver and game changer 
• The power of having community support in your martial arts business
• How does the Partners program compare to other Martial Arts Business Coaching programs
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

Realistically you'd be looking at, what would we say, probably $1,200 a year per member. So probably $30 to $40 grand a year more. So it's a pretty big increase, yeah, pretty good little kick forward. They're already our customers. I didn't have to spend anything to get them. They're already in the door, they're all ready to pay me more now. I'm just getting them to pay me more now.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie and I'm joined today by one of our Partners members, Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate Dojos.

DARRYL: That's it.

GEORGE: The naming has changed, right?

DARRYL: Yeah, it has. That's what happens when you go from one location to four locations. You actually got to change the name. Yeah.

GEORGE: There you go. Awesome. Darryl, thanks for being on. So we've been working together for a bit and so I just wanted to ask a couple of questions on your experience and how things have been, etc. So I guess just for a quick introduction, who's Darryl, tell us a bit about your schools. Give us like two, three-minute overview of you.

DARRYL: I currently run an organization Shukokai Dojos in Melbourne Southeast. We now have four clubs. 18 months ago we had one club with around 300 members. We're now 4 clubs with about 700 members. We teach traditional Japanese karate. We've actually just introduced judo as well, which has been an interesting part for me because it's not something that I've really spent a lot of time doing or training in. So we've got a really good coach for that is actually one of the current Australian team members, so that's very good.

We have a very big child based membership. I guess like a lot of martial arts schools. We probably would have maybe 100 adults members and the rest are children, the majority of in between 7 and 12-year-olds. So we are very, very much a family-oriented clubs I suppose. We encourage family members to try and we have family classes available in most of the dojos, where the parents can train with their kids as well. That's actually a really good thing. I enjoy that family class, family orientated ones.

Currently Victorian state coach. I've been a state coach for six years now. Takes a bit of time away from our club but also allows me to gain knowledge from other coaches that I see every weekend basically and a bit of a networking thing as well. There's other business owners and coaches so I can get a bit of Karate information, business information, that type of thing as well. Yeah, that's pretty much it in a bit I suppose.

GEORGE: Perfect. Cool. So, so when we started working together, were there any particular problems you were facing or what were you hoping to achieve?

DARRYL: Well really the biggest problem was our marketing area, like having it simplified. It was quite disjointed. I would just go, oh, we need some more members, so let's run a promo. So the promos I was running with just regular every day, so promos that it everyone sees online and they're quite generic. And even when I started I think as I was using just stock photos which were horrible. So now we run pretty sharp sort of campaigns with landing pages for each campaign.

Rather than having a generic landing page, we have a separate one for the extra promotion, which is very good, much neater, much tighter. We've run some really good campaigns, the parents' program, the women's self-defense program. We run all these top lines and they've been very good in that was actually probably a more internal growth one. Those ones actually have grown out from our own customer base I suppose. The external ones, having the wording or the text correct and the ad placement better would help as well...

Calling out ‘fake’ martial artists has built Rob the brand McDojoLife with over 300k social followers, but sometimes it comes with a threat to his life.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

• What is a McDojo really
• How McDojoLife came into existence
• Rob’s 5 rules in considering if a martial arts school is a McDojo
• How to run an effective paid trial offer
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

But sometimes people misunderstand what I'm trying to do and if I call out an instructor or I call out somebody that I think is doing something wrong, which I would never do without really doing my research, then sometimes their students, some of their students may have some type of a slight mental handicap, not making fun of them, but that has happened where I had a student who was on the spectrum somewhere and he threatened to kill me.

GEORGE: Hey, this is George and welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. So today, I have a different guest with me. And when I say different, but we are going to explore a whole different topic. So one thing that comes up every time I speak to a martial arts school and the last couple of shows, I've explored the conversation of what is a McDojo? 

What is a McDojo really? It's a term thrown around, it's thrown around quite loosely. A lot of people are quick to label a school a McDojo or they're not, and then there's obviously people that are really fake martial artists out there that need to be called out.

And somebody that does really successfully and has a huge following on Instagram is Rob from McDojo Life. Now welcome to the call Rob.

ROB: Hey, thanks for having me, man. I appreciate you having me on.

GEORGE: Awesome. So now, here's an interesting little twist. I can only introduce Rob as Rob and I can't actually share what his last name is. Why is that, Rob?

ROB: Well, I… you can't really get my last name because I actually get death threats often, so I don't like people looking me up that way. So you can't have that. But that's the only reason. It's not that I'm not trying to be cordial or anything like that. I just don't want people finding out any information about me because that always goes bad, especially with my job, I pretty much call people out all the time, so I try to keep my personal and my business separate as much as I can.

GEORGE: All right, that's really interesting. So you've got, well let's talk about, right, because you've got a huge following on social media, yeah?

ROB: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Roughly right now currently about 300,000 between the different social medias, between Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and now I've started up a Twitch and YouTube, so it's been growing.

GEORGE: Okay, so what's the whole drive behind this? What's the purpose behind McDojo Life?

ROB: Well, the idea is that our job as martial arts instructors is to teach people how to defend themselves. And we would hope that if we do our jobs correctly, we can actually protect people in their times where they might have to protect their lives or a loved one's lives or anything like that. The problem when you have a shyster or a charlatan or someone who's out there lying to their students is that those students are basically taking that person, those students… those instructors are taking advantage of those students... 

It's great to know the real reason why your martial arts students want to join, but what if you could go one level deeper? Cat Zohar shares how.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

• How to improve your martial arts school’s student retention
• Member engagement vs. customer service
• Why member engagement is like fortune telling
• How to identify your martial arts students inner greatness
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

GEORGE: Hey, this is George and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. So, I've got a repeat guest with me today, Cat Zohar, all the way from the States. Hi Cat.

CAT: Hi. How's everyone? Welcome, hello. Glad you're here if you are.

GEORGE: Cool. So, a quick intro. Why the episode number two and a bit about what are we going to be talking about here today. Recently on our Partners program, we co-created something with all Cat's expertise, all her IP, and we called it Retention by Design. Retention by Design, and Cat's going to correct me if I've misplaced the wording.

But something that we've focused on in our Partners program, we always talk about how to attract the right students, how to increase sign-ups and how to retain more members. And on the increased side, we talk about mastering sales. And with mastering sales, we're really big on really understanding the real reason why people join. Not the hey, I want confidence, but why the confidence? What is the deeper emotional reason why people go ahead?

Cat's taken that to a whole another level when it comes to retention. And instead of just uncovering and discovering what the actual emotional reason is why people go ahead and start martial arts, but she's developed a system where she can actually identify the personality traits and how to identify the actual greatness of the student in a more detailed way. Are they good at the competition, would they make a potential instructor, and so forth.

I'm not going to reveal too much from that, but what I really liked about the whole concept is it just takes things to a whole another level. And if you've got retention problems and football is a top priority over martial arts and a whole bunch of other things and you're finding price wars instead of value wars of why your martial arts program is superior, then this is going to be a lot of fun and a lot of value.

So with that, welcome again, Cat.

CAT: It's great to be here, George, thanks for having me.

GEORGE: So, just for a quick two-minute intro. Just for anybody who hasn't listened to the first episode, just give us a quick rundown, who is Cat?

CAT: Well, that's a loaded question. Cat is a person who has a marketing company that focuses on helping martial arts schools with their member engagement. Member engagement is probably a lot of my contribution to the martial arts industry and helping martial arts school owners not just sign up new members, but most importantly keep those members and keep them not just coming to classes, but keep them showing up happily and referring their friends and family members to their martial arts schools.

So, a lot of what Cat is, is a little special twist on taking a look at our relationships that we have with our students and how to be able to best serve our members. Not just in a sense of giving things, but most importantly in a sense of what they're able to receive by taking part in the martial arts class. Pretty much a combination of the martial arts business along with being a martial artist myself for over 30 years and a practitioner of the arts...

Dave Friedman takes a unique approach for sharing his passion for running Krav Maga based self-defence courses for corporates.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: 

• What is personal safety really
• About Live Safe Education, which aims to teach a spectrum of self-protection strategies to schools, companies, and businesses
• How not to be more vulnerable or prone to becoming a victim of a crime
• The advantages of learning self-defence and self-protection techniques in the workforce 
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

No matter how good you are, no matter what degree of black belt or dan you might be in your martial arts, if in the moment you freeze, and you're unable to physically act, it doesn't matter how good you are.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today, I am joined with Dave Friedman.

Dave Friedman, he's going to do the official, good intro, but he's from Krav Maga Australia, and something we're also going to talk about today is Live Safe, which is their company based on personal safety, and working with corporates and schools. Welcome to the call, Dave.

DAVE: Thanks, George. We appreciate you having me on.

GEORGE: Yeah, cool. This is the first time I actually have a South African guest on the podcast, other than myself, which is pretty cool.

DAVE: So now there are two accents that people won't understand.

GEORGE: Two accents, and I mean, we're not as good as the Kiwis, because apparently we're second best in the world. I don't know how that stat works. And I don't know why the Kiwis got it. It's not like they already have the All Blacks, you know? They have the All Blacks and now they've got the best accent as well. But anyway.

DAVE: That's right.

GEORGE: Yes, so I hope you can decipher the two accents. Well, I guess you're used to one, so now you've got two. Awesome, Dave. Thanks for being on.

I guess, just to kick off, if you can give sort of a bit of a background, just I guess also your background, all the way from South Africa; how you ended up in Australia, and then what you do in the martial arts space.

DAVE: Sure. I'm from Cape Town in South Africa, which is the good part of South Africa. I grew up doing judo as a kid, I represented my province, which is the equivalent of my state, up until about the age of 10. I then actually took quite a break from martial arts. I focused on soccer, I played soccer at quite a high level. And about the age of 18, 19, I got back into martial arts through Muay Thai and through Krav Maga.

So I trained quite a lot of Muay Thai, I competed in a few tournaments in South Africa, in Cape Town. At the same time, I was also training Krav Maga. I've been teaching Krav Maga since 1997, so 22, 23 years now, more so on the side. It wasn't my main, professional form of income, up until about a year ago.

I moved from Cape Town to Melbourne in 2008 with my wife. Most reasons, obviously just crime was on the up in South Africa. Also, more so for education, in terms of starting a family and just wanting my kids to be in a better education system. I've now got two boys, both born in Australia; a nine year old, and a six and a half year old. They both train at my Krav Maga school with me as well. So the bigger they get, the more nervous I get.

And yeah, so been in Australia, now teaching Krav Maga full time. And as mentioned, we've got two companies. Our first company is called Live Safe Education, and that does most of our work in schools and in corporate or businesses, where we teach a spectrum of self-protection, or personal safety, not just self-defense. And then Live Safe Education also owns a Krav Maga Dojo called Krav Maga Australia.

There, we have about 120 students currently, growing. We've owned Krav Maga Australia for seven months, and we've doubled the student base in that time. So we've gone from 70, from about 65 to 120 in seven months and still growing, which is great. We run kids and adult classes there, 11 sessions a week. And then during the workday, we focus on the schools and the corporates under the Live Safe banner...

Geordie's life is 24/7 martial arts! We discuss creating your own style, tournaments, optimising KPI's and more.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

• How Geordie was able to develop his own martial arts style and why he refers to it as the best style
• How he started teaching combat sports in the Australian army
• The three battles one must win in self-defence
• How to host successful martial arts tournaments
• How to optimise key performance indicators in your school
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

If you can put those sorts of things together and you can work out what makes an elite athlete, what things should you focus on and you apply it to your business, OK, what makes a really good class? What makes a really good ad?

And even if the ad is to a completely different thing, or your classes are a completely different style, you can just put those key factor and key components together and work out what it is that's really important.

GEORGE: Hey, George here – welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media business podcast. This episode is going to be a little bit different. We’re busy driving in a car, we just finished an event in Sydney and I've got with me Geordie and Giorgio.

GIORGIO: How's it going guys?

GEORGE: Good, and I'm speaking today to someone I've been trying to interview for quite a long time and he's been hard to track down, but I'm finally in a car with him and he can't escape. So, welcome to the show Geordie Lavers McBain.

GEORDIE: Thanks for having me on George.

GEORGE: Cool, so just for the sound, I'm going to be passing the phone up and down. So we might sound like we’re going in and out, but here we go.

So first up Geordie – thanks for being on the call. Just for everyone that doesn't know who you're, you own multiple schools, you've got a long history in martial arts – give us the two-minute take – who's Geordie Lavers McBain?

GEORDIE: Ok, that's a complicated question. I'm a martial artist, I like just about all styles of martial arts. I teach my own style of martial arts in my school and I have a lot of combat sports that I also teach. I teach wrestling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, MMA, I have guys who fight in Kyokushin, boxing – lots of different styles of combat sports, but I also have my own style of martial arts, which I've sort of combined with all the different styles that I've done over the years.

I've done a variety of different things, and have black belts in different things, so… yeah, so that's what I do there. Also, around jiu-jitsu tournaments in Queensland and wrestling tournaments in Queensland and I also am a defence force contractor with the army. I go on base two times a week and teachgrappling, close quarters grappling and different things like that, so it's pretty much me I guess.

GEORGE: Pretty much, but that's quite a full plate. So there's a lot of places we could start. I guess just starting – how did you get around to developing your own style?

GEORDIE: Yeah, so my own style was a combination, so basically what happened was, many years ago I've trained in a lot of different styles of martial arts, so I started teaching Zen Do Kai way back in the day and my instructor ended up leaving Zen Do Kai and then he sort of went on a different path, so I started doing my own system. And Zen Do Kai was the best of everything in progression, but I really sort of took that to heart.

So I started sort of thinking about, what other things I can incorporate into what we do. I looked at different ways to test that, so I bounced for about 15 years, so I sort of worked at a few things that worked in that environment. Also, I sort of was just looking at different ways that we could test things, such as like, how do we work out if body punctures were effective for multiple areas...

How to avoid hiring the wrong martial arts business coach who will take you nowhere faster.

• IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:Why do you even need a martial arts business coach
• Beware of martial arts business coaches who coach what they can’t do
• How to not get burnt by a martial arts business coach
• How to choose the right martial arts business coach for your business needs
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

But the problem is, that the people that are actually doing the martial arts business coaching, have never actually done what they are coaching.

Hey, George here. Nice, sunny day here in Perth, having a quick walk with the baby girl.

So what happens when you hire the wrong martial arts business coach? I was on a call yesterday with a great school owner, really doing everything well, when you look at their marketing front. Great content, great with video, sharing a lot of value and there's a lot of give happening. But unfortunately, just not enough take, not enough coming back.

So looking at their Facebook page and their ad account, I could see there are just a couple of tweaks that would make a world of difference, but unfortunately, with the frustration of not getting things right, is the frustration in business coaching. And in investing, I think he mentioned up to $50,000 in coaching with top industry icons and just not getting the results with the coaching.

Now, if you're a professional and serious about your business, then the first thing you'd probably say is well, you know, it's 100% your responsibility, you know, to make things work. 100% true and that's exactly what this gentleman had to say. He knows it's 100% his responsibility and his job to make it all work.

But then here's the problem with martial arts business coaching, and sometimes you see people that have a high profile and they get praised within the industry for all the great things that they do, but the problem is that the people that are actually doing the coaching have never actually done what they are coaching.

So within the coaching session, you get very surface level type answers and not really getting help to actually move the needle and move you forward. So they might be trying to teach you how to run Facebook ads, but they're not the ones that have been running the ads, so I mean, they are a great coach to tell you how to run other parts of the business, but they're not actually specialized in getting the leads and getting traction on platforms like Facebook, Google, you know, whatever it is that you use for lead generation.

And going back to the client, the big problem was just the frustration of being told the same old thing, over, over and over again and not being able to plugin into real frameworks, real frameworks and real strategies that can actually get results. And yeah, marketing is never simple. There's always ups and downs, but if someone hasn't walked that path and run ad campaigns and done the lead generation for multiple schools, or for multiple locations and different demographics, then it's going to be very hard for them to coach you and give you a strategy that's actually going to work and move the needle for you and your business.

So what to do? Well first up, I mean, hire a specialist. Hire somebody that's actually done, walked the path that it is what you want to do. And in our case of what we are talking about here, that have run successful ad campaigns and have an actual framework, something that you can plug into, that you can model with a couple of tweaks, pulling in a couple of things, pulling a couple of strings and being able to make it work for your school.

So yeah, make sure that you get someone on board that can help you, first that obviously has the expertise and second of all, actually have the time and the resources and the infrastructure to be able to help you. I mean, maybe they get a good result, but are they actually going to be a good coach for you? Do they actually have the time to work on your business, instead of just work on their business at the end of the day?

So if you need help with actual lead generation, not how to run the class, about the curriculum and so forth – that's definitely not our cup of tea. A lot of people in the industry that can teach you that. But if you need help with actual lead generation, then it's worth having a chat with us. Seeing if what we have can be an option for you. If you need help, reach out to me. Just click on my profile or leave me a comment wherever you see this and we’ll just have a quick chat and see if what we have is a potential option to help you with your school...

Robbie Castellano from IMC Australia shares practical tips on how to grow your martial arts school.

Jim Morrison talks about contributing to the community, creating content & teaching martial arts to kids with autism and special needs.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

• The surprising benefits of giving back to your community
• How Jim Morrison teaches Taekwondo in a wheelchair to students with special needs
• The importance of being genuine about your martial arts business
• How to communicate effectively to your target ‘avatar’
• Useful techniques in creating awesome martial arts videos
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

You know, just like martial arts, we all start as white belts, right. Every single one of us, the greatest martial artists to ever walk the Earth, started on their first day and they sucked. And you know, we have to really embrace the suck, right, that's what it is. We know how hard martial arts are, right, if you can't embrace the suck, then you're never going anywhere from there.

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast episode. So today I'm speaking with Jim Morrison, all the way from Barrie, Ontario. How are you doing, Jim?

JIM: Awesome, how are you?

GEORGE: Very good, very good. Great to speak with you. This is the first time we've just been chatting before the show, and Jim's been going for about 15 years in his martial arts school, Champs Academy. And yeah, we're just going to have a conversation and add some value for you as the school owner. So let's jump in.

JIM: Awesome.

GEORGE: First up, Jim, just to … just give us a couple of minutes, who you are, what type of styles you teach, all the rest.

JIM: Awesome. We're a martial arts academy that primarily focuses on Taekwondo and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. We've had our studio in place here in Barrie for about 15 years. Before that I was in the martial arts industry teaching for my instructor for many, many years. I think since I was 17, I was teaching. And then I started martial arts when I was about eight years old, so it's a long time ago.

And yeah, we've grown and grown. We started as a small school out of a community center that expanded to a small unit and then that unit grew, and now we're in a 10000 square foot space, yeah, and we're looking to open another two schools in the next two years, so yeah. We're programmed for growth.

GEORGE: Awesome, so 15 years, break that down a bit. So you got started with the same business that you've got now, 15 years ago?

JIM: Yes. So we've been, Champs Academy has been in business for 15 years, this is our 15 year anniversary, so we're actually going to have a big anniversary party this year, mayor's coming and everything so it should be really fun. But we started 15 years ago, it was a small school, we were just teaching out of a community center.

I always had aspirations to make this a full time career, at the time I was working construction during the day, and teaching at night. But you know it was always a big thing for me to be able to make the plunge, and make myself a career martial artist.

And it was just, I'm a growth minded person, and over the years the industry's changed a lot, but I've been able to try and stay on top of all the growth and all the changes over the years. And yeah, I think we've done a good job of staying on top of the pulse of our community, and it's helped us kind of grow.

GEORGE: Hang on, you're not going to let that off so quickly. You've got your 15th birthday party, but the mayor is coming. How did you do that?

JIM: So actually, the mayor is, his family's training with us now, too, but before that we'd also made contact because what we do in our community, we do a lot of outreach stuff in our community. I think that's really important, because if you want to be the go-to location in your area, you need to make sure that you're present in everything you can possibly be in your community.

So we do a lot of work in the schools, we offer free bully prevention courses that we go into schools and teach. We go in and do self defense courses, stranger danger courses, things like that. We do Cub Scout groups, anything like that we do big group areas...

Cheyne McMahon's school got flooded moments after going full time! With some help and sales skills, he turned disaster into profit.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

• How Cheyne McMahon applied his experience in selling cars to selling martial arts memberships
• How he was able to bounce back from a flooded dojo and an eight week hibernation to a full-time school
• How he grew his 110 students in December to 185 students in February
• Some valuable marketing hacks to attract potential students
• The secrets to a profitable martial arts open day
• And more

*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here.

TRANSCRIPTION

As a teacher, if you don't think you're teaching the best quality chosen martial art that you're doing, then how can you convince other people that they should join you?

GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. Today I'm joined with someone who I've gained a lot of respect for in the industry, being fortunate enough to work with him the last couple of months in one of our programs, our Partners program. I want to introduce you to Cheyne McMahon from Australian Karate Academy in Brisbane. How are you doing today, Cheyne?

CHEYNE: Yeah, good mate. Thanks for having me on.

GEORGE: Awesome, so welcome to the show. I know you've mentioned you've listened to a few of my episodes as well, so this is going to be an interesting conversation. There's a lot of value, you're getting some great results in your school and you're going to be sharing a lot of details on what you are doing, how you're going about it. First, if you want to give us a bit of background, just a bit about you, the school and how you got started in the industry, etc.

CHEYNE: Yeah, no worries. I started karate when I was four. My father was, I suppose he still is, my teacher. He started karate in 1967. He opened his first club in the Sunshine Coast in Queensland in 1976, so I followed him around and wanted to do karate. For the first couple of weeks apparently was holding me as I was walking around and I was crying. 33 years later, I'm still in love with karate. The longest break I had was six months off when I moved overseas. My dad started the Australian Karate Academy in ‘89, so this is our 30th year as the Australian Karate Academy. He and my mom were the main teachers. He retired a couple of years ago and I've since taken it over. We're in our 30th year and still going strong.

GEORGE: Fantastic. You went through school, you've been training all your life. At what point did you gravitate towards the teaching side of things?

CHEYNE: I started teaching with my mom when I was probably 14 or 15. Actually, one of my students now, I was there on his first lesson when I was 14. He was a six year old training with us for 15 years, then went off and had a career and came back a few years ago. In a couple of weeks, he's about to go for his third dan. I clearly remember his first lesson when he turned up, him and his sister. I started straight after school, so in year 12.

I was never really an academic, all I really wanted to do was karate. It was just karate. Karate was my life. In year ‘12, towards the end of year ‘12, I went on a three month tour of Europe for karate. No thought about, it's going to affect my ability to get into university or TAFE training or anything like that, that's not what I wanted, so I went over there and competed for Australia and stuff like that.

After school, I was lucky enough to qualify for a grant from the Queensland government, so I was being paid to teach karate and to train in karate as an 18 year old, as an elite athlete. From there man, every part-time job I've ever had was all revolving around karate, fitting in karate times, training, teaching, training. I've loved karate ever since I was four.

GEORGE: Alright, awesome. That's pretty cool to get a grant from the government as a sportsperson.

CHEYNE: I had to do some TAFE courses to keep it, but everything was revolving around the training. Staying in condition, first aid, those sorts of things. I think it went for about two years. I got 250 bucks a week. Big money, huge money, but my parents were pretty happy because they didn't have to pay me.

GEORGE: Exactly.

CHEYNE: I don't think they do that anymore. There's a lot of issues around the government funding stuff like that for karate, because karate didn't get into the olympics and stuff like that, so a bit of politics. It might change now with karate being in the olympics.

GEORGE: Yeah, definitely so. Let's backtrack, because we met, it was December last year, depending on when you're listening to this, that's 2018. The first time we spoke, you were in a bit of a situation with the school. Do you mind sharing a bit what had happened?

CHEYNE: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. In September of 2018, I decided I was going to quit work and just concentrate on karate, so very happy to do that. Four weeks later we got flooded. Where we are in this big building, they took the roof off because there were dramas with the roof. And of course, we had rain for two weeks so we lost all of our mats, we had to close the dojo, obviously. We lost all of our carpet tiles and bags and we went from having an increased number of students to suddenly no classes for six weeks. In between that, the landlord told us we have to move in that building as well...