The Business of Jiu Jitsu

Stop Stressing and Learn When to Market, When to Manage, When to Retain

It’s growth season. If you’re not growing, you’re either working on the wrong thing or you don’t know what to work on.

This episode is about giving every month a main objective. Marketing, managing your systems, or retention. Pick one, put it on the calendar, and stop guessing. I also answer a listener question on kids vs. adult pricing and discounts for first responders, military, and families.

• If you build it, they won’t come. You’re the 20th gym in your area now.
• Pricing: don’t discount so heavily you get stuck undercharging for years
• A token 5% for first responders and military, stacking discounts for families, or no discounts at all. Just make the math work.
• Don’t run ads until the whole new student journey is built. Then run them in 4 to 6 week sprints.
• Retention ideas: belt promotions, in-house tournaments, master classes, seminar trades, scorecards, team barbecues
• Marketing doesn’t have to be paid ads. Mailers, door hangers, B2B partnerships, free seminars for local first responders. Just do something.
• Systems: write SOPs and solve every recurring problem for the last time
• Class format is underrated. Write a lesson plan. Skip the 15-minute war story.

The Calendar (use as a starting point for your own academy/gym)

• January: Retention
• February to March: Marketing
• April: Retention
• May: Systems
• June: Retention
• July to August: Systems
• September: Retention
• October to November: Marketing
• December: Retention and systems

It’s never a perfectly clean split where you get to focus on ONLY one activity, all three pots are always on the stove. You’re just turning one up to a boil for a while and letting the other two simmer.

1. Pick one pot to boil each month. The other two still simmer, but one gets your focus.
2. Give your students something to look forward to. It takes one bad experience for them to leave.
3. Write it down once. An SOP means you never solve the same problem twice.

I’m JP, the host of The Business of Jiu Jitsu and founder of GrowJitsu, a coaching company for BJJ academy owners. If you want help growing your academy, fill out the short form below and we’ll hop on a quick 15-minute call. I’ll look at where your business is at and what’s holding it back.

👉 https://bdmlrby8e2s.typeform.com/to/aKsaYCA5

McDojos, Cults, and Red Flags: What Every Academy Owner Can Learn From Rob of McDojoLife

My guest this week is Rob Ingram from McDojoLife. For 13 years he’s been calling out the fakes, frauds, phonies, and cults in martial arts. Along the way he’s become a business consultant for martial arts schools, VP of AcademySafe, and he’s now in LA finishing a documentary with Jocko Willink as executive producer.

We get into how a white belt’s question started the whole thing, what separates a martial art from a cult, the red and green flags students should look for, and the three numbers every academy owner should know off the top of their head.

• The martial arts industry has no regulatory body. No background checks, no CPR, nothing.
• The difference between a martial art and a cult: when it’s about the instructor, not the students
• The test: will doing this make me better at martial arts? Will not doing it make me worse?
• Red flag: watch how they treat everyone else, not how they treat you on day one
• Green flag: they call you before your first class. Don’t automate the relationship.
• Partner with the gyms around you instead of trash talking them
• The three numbers: lead generation, conversion, and retention
• Make the first year fun. If they love it, they stay.

Three things to take away

1. Pick up the phone. Call every lead before they come in and every no-show after. That’s what builds trust.
2. Know your three numbers. Leads, conversion, retention. If you don’t know them off the top of your head, your gym is at risk.
3. Make it about the student. The moment it’s about your ego, you’re drifting toward cult territory. And make it fun.

Want to learn more about Rob?

Check out the links below:

• McDojoLife: https://mcdojolife.com
• The documentary: https://mcdojolife.com/documentary/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mcdojolife/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/mcdojolife
• AcademySafe: https://academysafe.org
• Rob’s book, Sensei’s Bars and Scars: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Sensei%27s+Bars+and+Scars

I’m JP, the host of The Business of Jiu Jitsu and founder of GrowJitsu, a coaching company for BJJ academy owners. If you want help growing your academy, fill out the short form below and we’ll hop on a quick 15-minute call. I’ll look at where your business is at and what’s holding it back.

👉 https://bdmlrby8e2s.typeform.com/to/aKsaYCA5

It’s October. If you’re overdue for a price increase, this is the season.

But raising prices isn’t a fix for a gym that’s struggling. This episode covers the prerequisites first: the season, the pipeline, and the math. Then the how: when to tell people, how to tell them, and what to expect for the two weeks after.

I’ve done this myself and watched a lot of gyms do it successfully. The ones that do it right don’t have it go bad.

• Raise prices in a season of high momentum. If the gym feels like a sinking ship, people will use it as a reason to get off.
• Check your pipeline first: retention, onboarding, trial and sales process, follow-up, lead generation
• If your product is okay, your offer better be great. A bad physio offer and what it taught me.
• Call every trial before they come in. It’s great service and almost nobody does it.
• More competition is good. Let the bad gyms die. It raises the bar for everyone.
• Good business doesn’t cost you good jiu jitsu. No belt tests, no board breaks, no selling out.
• Get reviews. It’s your job.
• Set your price so you don’t have to raise it again for two or three years
• Why I don’t love a baked-in 2 to 3% annual increase
• Billing on the 1st and 15th to line up with paychecks
• Give two weeks’ notice. Talk to your five biggest talkers in person first, then call everyone else, then send the email.
• Don’t grovel. State it and move on.
• Expect two weeks of pushback. Week one is the worst. Then it goes back to normal.
• Do the math. Look at your roster, estimate who leaves, and make sure you make the same or more.
• Tie it to a facility or service improvement when you can
• Cut once, cut deep. A $5 increase riles people up and does nothing.
• Use it to consolidate memberships. 20 options down to three.
• Grandfathered rates and families who can’t afford it: your call, handle it one on one
• Test the new price on new students first to build your confidence

1. Fix the pipeline before you touch the price. Retention, onboarding, offers, trials, follow-up, leads. If those are dialed, the price increase is an afterthought.
2. Do the math and make it meaningful. Know who’s likely to leave and make sure you still come out ahead. Go big enough that you don’t have to do it again for years.
3. Call people. Talkers in person first, then everyone else, then the email. People are a lot kinder on the phone than in the comments.

Want help growing your BJJ academy? Fill out the short form below and we’ll hop on a quick 15-minute check-in call to see where your business is at.

👉 https://bdmlrby8e2s.typeform.com/to/aKsaYCA5

What we coverThree things to take awayWork with me

My guest this week is William Watts, co-owner of East Austin Jiu Jitsu. Two years open, several hundred members, 250+ five-star Google reviews, and voted best gym in Austin by the Austin Chronicle readers in their first year. Not best jiu jitsu gym. Best gym, period. And they haven't spent a cent on ads.

William learned the business side before he ever opened. He helped a wellness brand open 165 locations in seven years, then worked in small business lending. Now he's put it all into a book.

We get into how they make it fun without making it soft, how their 12-week fundamentals cycle works, actually coaching instead of just demonstrating, and the do's and don'ts of opening and running an academy.

• Why "fun" wins best gym in a city full of serious fitness people
• Fun isn't goofy. Swap in "enjoyable." Solving problems and getting better is enjoyable. Being called stupid is not.
• Instructors demonstrate. Coaches adjust for the person in front of them. Most gyms don't coach.
• The 12-week fundamentals cycle, built around submissions and scoring positions, not guards
• Why beginners need an objective: what's the point of the game?
• Specific warm-ups tied to the day's technique, and telling students who the drill is actually for
• Why black belts should partner with a business-minded purple belt instead of doing it all themselves
• Why most owners skip the business side: it's boring, they're tired, and they don't see the value
• The biggest don't when opening: never put anything in writing you're not 100% sure will happen
• Time blocking. Do one thing at a time. Put the phone out of reach.
• Ask students what they're working on, and connect members to each other
• Paid ads are the last thing you do, not the first
• Before you open: what your gym is, who it's for, and why it needs to exist. One sentence, then one page.

1. Make it fun. Most people want to train 2.3 times a week. Build the gym for them and the hardcore people will still work hard.
2. Coach, don't just demonstrate. Bodies are different. Adjust the technique for the person in front of you.
3. Say what you'll do, then do it. Schedule, opening date, all of it. If it's not certain, don't write it down.

• East Austin Jiu Jitsu: https://www.eastaustinjiujitsu.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eastaustinjiujitsu/
• The Jiu Jitsu Gym Operations Manual: How to Run the Best Gym in Your City Without Spending a Cent on Ads: https://a.co/d/0dBvuXG3

Want help growing your BJJ academy? Fill out the short form below and we'll hop on a quick 15-minute check-in call to see where your business is at.

👉 https://bdmlrby8e2s.typeform.com/to/aKsaYCA5

Hell of a click bait title I know but there is A LOT of truth in it for most academy and gym owners.

Tell me if this sounds familiar...

"I post all the time. Why don't I have more students?" Or the other one: "I tried ads once, they didn't work."

This episode is my whole philosophy on organic and paid for a jiu jitsu academy. Short version: organic is a vibe check for people who already found you. Paid is how strangers find you. Follow-up is what puts new students on the mat.

Organic

• Don't hire someone to run it. Put that money into ads or retention.
• Organic is a store window. Do people see regular Joes having fun, or blast doubles and staph?
• Easiest content: belt promotions and stripes. Photo every time, quick five-question interview on every belt promotion.
• Also good: what a class is like, basic positions, how to tie your belt.
• Why your posts don't bring in leads: organic only reaches people already following you.
• Three posts a week, Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Viral reach doesn't help a local business.
• Get comfortable on camera. Ads need a face and it should be yours. Wear a rash guard.
• Attribution isn't worth chasing. Separate forms per lead source, and watch leads, trials, and sign-ups go up.

Paid

• Nobody has ever come to me happy with their agency.
• Don't run ads until follow-up, a simple sales process, and onboarding are built. Six to eight weeks for most.
• Budget: about $30 a day, $1,000 a month. Less than that, don't bother.
• The offer: free class. Put a seasonal wrapper on it (back to school, bullyproof, no wasted winter). The season is the reason.
• The ad: you, selfie style, in a gi, walking your mat. "This is JP from ABC Jiu Jitsu, come try a free class, book below." That 24-second ad got me $5 leads for years.
• Three to five of those a week. Use the Edits app. Buy a wireless mic. People tolerate bad video, not bad audio.
• Why your leads "suck": Google leads were looking for you. Ad leads were on the couch scrolling. They're colder. Call them the minute they come in, or at least 10am and 3pm.
• The math: you lose about half at every stage. Reply, book, show, buy. That's the game.
• Agency or DIY? Invest 20 hours and run your own. If you go agency, $1,500 a month tops, by referral, and expect some months to flop.
• Keep lead nurture in-house. Not staff, not a third party, and not an AI robot.
• Timing: July and August are bad. Right now is great.

1. Organic builds trust. Paid buys attention. Follow-up gets students on the mat.
2. Your offer is a free class in a seasonal wrapper. Film it yourself, good audio, done.
3. Don't spend on ads until you're willing to play the game. Call leads, book trials, sell, onboard.

I've got room for two or three more academies looking for growth. Fill out the short form below and we'll hop on a quick phone call. No pitch, just a conversation.

👉 https://bdmlrby8e2s.typeform.com/to/aKsaYCA5

Onboarding: The 90 Day Process That Turns a New White Belt Into a Long-Term Student

Back to school season means new students walking through your door. This episode is about what you do with them once they're there.

Onboarding is the piece in the middle. Lead gen and sales get people in the door. Retention is what you do with them week after week. Onboarding is the bridge between the two, and it's the part most academies skip entirely.

I walk through the BJJ Retention Pyramid and the 90 day process that sits on top of it: safety and help, clarity and expectations, community and belonging, then the cycle of improvement that turns a member into a super fan. Then I show you how to actually run it, which is three sheets of paper and a couple of reminders in your CRM.

Also worth doing this month if you run kids classes: an anti-bullying campaign. Good for enrollment, and it's a genuinely good service.

• Where onboarding sits between lead generation and retention, and why the middle is where you're losing people
• The BJJ Retention Pyramid: safety and help, clarity and expectations, community and belonging
• Days 1 to 30 is safety and help. You're not going to get wrecked, and there are no stupid questions.
• Days 31 to 90 is a heavy dose of expectation setting plus community
• Why clarity and expectations is the biggest lever of the whole thing
• Looking at a client's churn report and finding the saveable losses hiding in it
• Injured students: most of them can keep training, and nobody ever told them
• The homework sheet for students who can only watch
• Setting expectations around slumps and the blue belt blues before they hit
• Scorecards for adults, report cards for kids, on a 90 day cycle
• What comes after 90 days: the cycle of improvement, then super fans who recruit for you
• The actual system: three sheets of paper at day 1, day 30, and day 60
• Keep it to one page front and back, and bring a pen so you can personalize it
• Why you need two versions, one for adults and one for parents
• Putting a flagship event in every quarter so new students hit one inside their first 90
• Attendance is the number one predictor of retention

1. Build the 30 day welcome sheet first. Five minutes after their first class, sit down and walk them through what the early days look like. It's the easiest win in your business and there's no excuse not to do it.
2. Tell them what's coming before it happens. They can train through most injuries. They're going to hit a slump where they feel like they suck. Say it out loud on day one and you save people who would have quietly disappeared.
3. Put the 60 and 90 day touch points in your CRM. You'll remember the first one. You will not remember the other two.

Grab The Unstuck Academy, my free ebook. Quick read, goes deeper on retention and the systems behind it. There's also an episode where I read the whole thing if that's easier.

👉 https://growjitsu.com/free-book/

This episode is about staffing your academy, start to finish.

I break it into three parts. First, who to hire when you're still wearing all the hats, and why your first real hire off the floor is an admin, not another coach. Second, how to actually manage staff once you've got them: roles and tasks, SOPs, objective standards, incentives, and quarterly reviews. Third, hiring and firing, how to grow coaches from inside your own room, how to onboard them, and how to know when somebody has to go.

The through line: if your staff is underperforming, it's usually because you never made it clear what "performing" looks like. That's on you, not them.

• Why an admin is your first hire, not a coach
• The math on paying somebody $1,500/month and what you have to go generate to justify it
• Head coach + assistant for every program (two layers of redundancy, always)
• Roles and tasks vs. SOPs — two different documents, and why you need both
• Take a picture of the clean front desk. Seriously. Put it in the SOP.
• Making everything objectively measurable so reviews aren't "I feel like you're not trying"
• Bonuses and incentives that get profiles filled out and waivers signed
• Quarterly reviews as a relationship deposit, and knowing each person's actual motivation
• Reviewing coaches by walking a student's experience through the class
• How to give feedback without making somebody cry (learned that one the hard way)
• Gino Wickman's GWC screen: do they Get it, Want it, and have the Capacity? Run it. You'll find a lot of people in the wrong seat.
• Farming your own coaches with a paid "how to teach" course
• Onboarding staff the same way you onboard students — 30/60/90 with real touch points
• Hire slow, fire fast. And a don't-shit-where-you-eat policy.

1. Roles, tasks, and SOPs. If it's not written down, it's not their fault it didn't happen. It's yours.
2. Buy back your time. Read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Audiobook counts. Just do it.
3. Onboard and review your staff on a cycle. You don't find your best staff members — you make them. Same as your students.

Grab The Unstuck Academy, free ebook, quick read, goes deeper on a lot of this. There's also a podcast episode where I read the whole thing to you if that's more your speed.

👉 https://growjitsu.com/free-book/

If your adults program and kids program aren't where they need to be, adding a fitness kickboxing class or a kettlebell program isn't going to fix your revenue problem. It's just going to split your attention. This episode is JP's breakdown of where academy owners actually need to focus to grow monthly recurring revenue and why the answer is almost never "start something new."

In this episode:

• The unfinished wheel analogy and why adding new programs before your core is dialed is a losing move
• Why fitness kickboxing, yoga, and extra class types almost always fizzle out and what to do with that time instead
• The front end offer that works: a paid intro program that charges $500+ upfront and gives new students a clear outcome
• Why confidence in your offer comes from reps and how to get there fast
• The full student journey broken down: leads, trials, onboarding, retention and what needs to be in place at every step
• Why the sales conversation isn't scary when you prefame it before class even starts
• The 30, 60, and 90-day onboarding handouts that build trust and set realistic expectations
• The student scorecard, a 90-day check-in that coaches your students through their own progress
• What at-risk student follow-up actually looks like when it's documented and done consistently
• Why word of mouth is a gift, not a strategy and what dependable lead generation actually requires
• The reactivation bucket: what to do with leads who didn't join after their trial
• Why most gyms aren't doing any of this consistently and how one Google Drive folder changes that

Want to go deeper on all of this?

Download the free Unstuck Academy ebook at -htts://growjitsu.com/free-book or listen to the audiobook version right here on this podcast. Link below.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3XrZoaKELM5gSrrsnpcrRo?si=vhJvpSdgQ8uF7sHE6jAXYA

JP's back after a big move from Calgary down to the Coeur d'Alene area and he's got a timely reminder for every academy owner heading into the back half of summer. The jiu-jitsu side of your business is the cart. But without wheels and a track, you're just pushing a heavy ass cart at a snails pace. Now is the time to fix that.

In this episode:

• The minecart analogy, why your coaching ability alone isn't enough to create growth
• A real gym JP is working with right now: best July on record, no paid marketing, just systems built during the summer
• Why you should NOT start paid ads for the first time in June, July, or August
• The QR code system that answers your most-asked questions so you don't have to
• How to build a leave-behind for prospects who say "I need to think about it"
• The full student journey broken down: lead → trial → onboarding → retention — and what needs to be documented at every stage
• Why you make great students, you don't find them
• What onboarding actually looks like — and why one bad roll can lose a white belt forever
• The retention cadence: what you should be doing daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly to keep students engaged
• Why following up with your own leads is still the highest-leverage thing you can do (and why nobody else will ever care as much as you)
• Google reviews: the most underrated free marketing move most gyms are leaving on the table
• How to use AI to format your SOPs without letting it write them for you

Want a head start on building the backend of your academy?

Download JP's free ebook — The Unstuck Academy — https://growjitsu.com/free-book.

It's the starting point for leaning into the business side of your gym and getting those wheels on the cart.

"I can tell almost instantly if an academy is going to be successful or not, and it almost rarely has to do with the aesthetics." — Chris Haueter

In this episode I sit down with Chris Haueter one of the original American BJJ black belts and a coach who's taught at academies all over the world, from packed warehouses to hole-in-the-wall strip malls.

We get into what actually separates a successful jiu jitsu academy from one that folds: healthy leadership that still rolls and competes, why "location, location, location" only half-applies to a BJJ school, and how a welcoming room quietly absorbs students fleeing toxic, culty academies down the street. Chris breaks down how to give white belts the best shot at surviving the early humps, why one unchecked person can poison a mat, and his rules of engagement for keeping people healthy and coming back.

Then we go deep on training for the long game, what jiu jitsu feels like through your 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, and his "relax, frame, flow" and "dance, don't fight" approach to rolling for decades without breaking yourself.

Chris is a true pioneer of the art, one of the famed "Dirty Dozen," the first generation of Americans to earn a BJJ black belt, on the mats since the sport's earliest days outside Rio. He's coached black belts who've gone on to build successful academies of their own, and he carries the kind of perspective you only get from 30+ years of doing this and watching schools rise and fall around him.

When he talks about what makes a room work, it's worth shutting up and listening.

Connect with Chris here:

Website: https://combatbase.com/

Instagram

• Combat Base Club: https://www.instagram.com/combatbaseclub/
• Combat Base Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/combatbasepodcast/
• Chris Haueter (main, "Dirty Dozen" account): https://www.instagram.com/chrishaueter96/
• Chris Haueter (art): https://www.instagram.com/chrishaueterart/

Combat Base Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0oEX16lMu5v9AVRUA7d2nt

Free resources for BJJ Academy owners:
The Unstuck Academy (free book): https://growjitsu.com/free-book/
BJJ Business Scorecard (free metrics sheet): https://growjitsu.com/bjj-business-scorecard/