Martial Arts Teachers – Managing Your Business Time

Why do some school owners always seem to be busy, working very hard but never getting what they deserve from their martial arts business?

Well many years ago I was one of these people until I realized that I needed to improve the results I was getting from the effort I was putting in.

I found that I was spending too much time on tasks that had little effect on the results my martial arts school produced. To keep it simple, there are only two elements of your school that you really have to think about, these are; retain your existing members and find new ones to grow, anything outside of this will simply have little effect on your business. It’s simple, if you can’t keep students you won’t grow and if you can’t attract new students you won’t grow either.

So each day ask yourself what am I going to do today to retain my members and what am I going to do today to find a new one. Anything outside of these should be placed at the back of the stack until you have done all the activities that fall within the previous two areas. Yes, you have chores that need to be done, I hear you say! Accounting, tax returns, etc., but the key is to do it after the two fundamentals; this requires a bit of discipline and keeping a clear head on your part and not leaving this for the last minute to become urgent.

So let’s look at some of the activities that fall into the two areas starting with retention;

Planning your lessons, new exercises, improving your syllabus, delivering great classes

Track student attendance, call students, send postcards

Special event planning, updated bulletin board, on time newsletter

Order belts in time for performances, retail equipment in time

Keep your facilities impeccable, service calls to new registrations, student survey

Follow through on what you told a student you would do

Develop yourself through training, reading, networking, and attending seminars.

and secondly, martial arts marketing;

Planning your marketing for the month or quarter, printing posters and brochures.

Manage your lead boxes, distribute brochures, put up posters

Delivery of test passes, contact with alumni and lost sales

Visit schools to speak with a principal or give a talk.

Host a bring a friend event, free self defense clinic

Call students to organize birthday parties.

Teaching great classes to develop enthusiastic fans = more referrals

I’m sure you can think of a lot more to add to the lists yourself. Some activities will work in both areas, which is even better, for example, hosting a referral event will not only excite your existing members, but also get you new leads – a great use of your time!

This is a critical area to master unless you want to be a goofball busy in your martial arts business, always feeling like you should get more reward for your hard work. At the start of each day make a list and then prioritize, let’s test for 30 days and commit to doing this daily and see what kind of results you get. If you have a team of trainers and trainers-in-training, spend time training these people in these important skills as well.

A couple of programs I highly recommend you buy are Brian Tracy’s How to Master your Time and Stephen Covey’s Put First Things First.