The Truth About the Martial Arts Business with John Graden

After nearly two decades of teaching traditional taekwondo, Guevara realized that what he was teaching was not providing the benefits he wanted for his students. 

He replaced his curriculum with Empower Kickboxing™ and did not lose a single student.

Guevara has reduced the number of classes he has to teach by half, and he’s retained all of his students through the transition to Empower Kickboxing and the COVID pandemic.

Bonus: Martial Arts Instructor Teaching Tip: No Rescues

https://martialartsteachers.com/martial-arts-teachers-certification-course/

https://empowerkickboxing.com

In the ultimate “fake it till you make it” scenario, podcast guest Willie Johnson was so desperate to escape Baltimore’s inner-city that he actually made up his own kung fu techniques to compete against black belts in martial arts tournaments. 

His dream was to become a karate champion and get out of his violent, drug-infested neighborhood. That dream eventually became a nightmare. 

As a teenager, Willie would climb on a bus to travel for days to compete in major tournaments around the USA. 

Then, a strange thing happened. He started to win. In fact, he won the prestigious US Open Karate Championships in 1986. 

Podcast host John Graden says, “I was at that event and remember being impressed with Willies’ performance. Like the rest of us, I had no idea what kind of world he lived in. This is a great story I know our listeners will enjoy.”

The newly crowned US Open Champion was not greeted with fanfare after his big win. Instead, he was met with a shower of bullets that left his best friend dead at his feet. His neighborhood crew gave him a dire ultimatum. Continue to do martial arts, or rejoin them and sell drugs to junkies.

Caught up in the emotion of the murder, Willie chose revenge for his friend over another tournament win. It was a fateful decision that sent him spiraling down into the dark world of hustling and muscling drugs. Overnight, he went from karate king to drug lord.

Though he knew it was the wrong decision, Willie spent the next three years as a violent stoned-out drug pusher until he was arrested for fighting with the police and sentenced to a year in the maximum-security prison. 

It was in that prison that Willie turned his life around. He kept to himself in his cell rather than mix with the prison population in the day area. He spent his time practicing his martial arts and setting goals for his future as a martial arts school owner and world champion. 

Willie “The Bam” Johnson went on to win seven-world championships, author books, and become a highly respected master martial arts teacher to his students, including many from the same inner-city neighborhood that he grew up in.

“The Bam” shares his story in a three-part series on John Graden’s The Truth About the Martial Arts Business Podcast. In addition to his martial arts experience, Johnson describes the harsh truth about martial arts in the inner-city.

He clearly explains the stark difference between what a martial arts black belt may think would happen in a ghetto street fight and what is most likely to go down and it’s not favoring the black belt.

In the episode, the truth about the martial arts business is that not only is it easy for instructors to fall into these drastic mistakes of the past, but that it’s almost expected. Listen in and I’ll share with you the generational pitfalls that are rarely shared or spoken about because they’ve been repeated for decades and it’s my goal to help you navigate past them.

This week, the truth about the martial arts business is that in order to grow your school in the season of COVID, you have to learn how to meet students and potential students where they are at rather than leading them down tired, out-dated training methods.

Our guest today is Mark Moore. His martial arts school in South Jersey has continued to grow through the pandemic. He was an original Pro-Star curriculum school that has evolved into Empower Kickboxing.

A certified leadership coach in the John Maxwell system, Mark says the three keys to his success are, the curriculum, the school atmosphere, and a special mindset that any martial arts school owner will appreciate learning.

This week, The Truth About the Martial Arts Business explores a deadly serious topic that every martial arts school instructor needs to understand and teach.

As a martial artist, you train in self-defense to protect yourself and your loved ones, but what really happens in the court system when a martial artist defends him or herself?

This episode of The Truth About the Martial Arts Business will help you to understand and prepare for the legal battle that happens after an attack. The first fight is for your life – the second for your liberty. 

Attorney Andrew F. Branca, a renowned expert in self-defense law and author of The Law of Self-Defense,  teaches you how to make quick, effective, legally appropriate decisions in life-and-death situations. 

The 5 Elements of Self Defense

2:50 Do I have to wait for the bad guy to hit me first?

3:40 Can I use a weapon in my defense?

4:00 What it cost to defend a self-defense case

4:00 Deadly force and the martial arts

4:25 How is "Deadly Force" defined by law?

4:40 Does the court look at a trained martial artist differently than an untrained defender?

5:30 Prosecutors love to talk about martial arts expertise

5:55 What influences juries in regards to martial arts for self-defense?

6:05 Will your defense attorney use your martial arts training as a defense or suppress it from the jury?

6:15 How can martial arts help your defense?

6:40 The Three Fights

9:00 What we can learn from Tom Hanks

9:30 Use of a force expert

10:15 Can the prosecution include the defender's instructor?

11:00 Can an instructor face criminal charges for the actions of his or her student?

13:00 Applying the five elements of self-defense to a martial artist defending himself.

13:05 Element 1: Innocence

14:27 How a victim loses their claim of innocence

14:45 Element 2: Imminence 

15:20 Element 3: Proportionality

15:45 What if you have a gun and he attacks you with his fists?

16:20 The common mistake concealed weapons holders make

16:46  Element 4: Avoidance

17:00 Is Stand Your Ground just in Florida?

18:07 Element 5: Reasonableness 

18:33 Is there such a thing as Jury Selection?

19:30 The danger of CCW

20:00 The Law of Self-Defense Workshop info with Andrew Branca

21:00 Why students get so stressed at Andrew's seminars, that they can't remember what they just did.

Map of State Self-Defense Laws

The Law of Self-Defense on Amazon

Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense

The Psychology of Self-Defense

Joe Robaina is a veteran martial artist with a wide range of skills and talent. But for the last few years, he has excelled in the self-defense business. Joe shares some strategies that have helped him to build a successful self-defense business.

During that process, he has discovered some realities about the martial arts business model and how the COBRA Self-Defense business system operates in order to avoid those pitfalls.

COBRA-Defense Information: SelfDefenseBusiness.com Empower Kickboxing Information: EmpowerKickboxing.com Past episodes: MATAPodcast.com

The Truth About the Martial Arts Business episode 16 guest Sam Horn is the author of Tongue Fu. Like Verbal-Defense, Tongue Fu teaches how to verbally handle, defuse, deflect, disarm, and/or align with someone who is attacking you verbally.

Tongue Fu is IDEAL for martial arts instructors, parents, or teachers of any kind.

These important skills need to be part of every martial arts school curriculum to help students gain control of bullies, insults, false praise and many other anxiety-causing verbal attacks that we all face at school, work, with family, online, and out in public.

This is training that does NOT require any physical contact so it is ideal for martial arts schools in the post-COVID-19 eta.

Sam Horn Tongue Fu Courses

1. Tongue Fu!® Full Course

2. Tongue Fu!® I

3. Tongue Fu!® II

4. Tongue Fu Book on Amazon

The Trump Tax Act may benefit your martial arts school in several ways. Here are 7 major ways that self-employed martial arts instructors and school owners can slash their taxes and keep more of their hard-earned money to put in the bank each year.

The new act offers more tax deductions for martial arts schools.

You can also download the report the podcast is based on.

In this podcast, I go solo with a harsh look at what martial arts schools are teaching and how to lead your students into the future by discarding the smoke and mirrors of the traditional curriculum.  A good master instructor avoids teaching these contradictions.