Seeking advice from club and school owners

[WaterGal]

Hey all,

I'm in the process of opening up a small training club at a location I found in my hometown. I will be under the direct supervision of my current dojo and will continue to train there as often as possible (once a week at the very least!). For those of you who have opened clubs or schools before, I am curious if any of you could offer to tell me some of your experiences you had when starting so that I could either pick up some good ideas I havent thought of or avoid potential pitfalls.

Any contributions are appreciated :asian:

Well, first a disclaimer: our school is still in the process of starting (some issues with the landlord and the permit office that are taking much longer that we expected), so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Make a good website (Wordpress.com has some nice-looking templates if you're at least a little tech-savy). You want to look more pro than your competition. Advertise on Google. Our GM gets more business at his school this way than any other kind of advertising campaign he's ever done, and at lower cost. And we've already got like 5 people ready to sign up at our school just because of our web presence, in addition to the 10 local people that we knew.

And it's good that you're getting help and more training from your old school! Hopefully they can give you some good advice in terms of the business end of things. Our GM's been a huge help to us in that department.

 

[Aiki Lee]

As I'm getting closer to opening my club and I'm working out the details with my sensei and the person leasing me his space I've come to the shocking discover about what a headache running such a group can be. I'm not detered from my plan though, but I am wonder how many of you juggle the joy of practicing and teaching with the headache of managing fees, attendance, and legal stuff like liability insurance.

Any and all responses are welcome.

 

[WaterGal]

A week and a half into having our dojang open, and I couldn't agree with you more! Every single thing takes longer, involves more work, and costs more money than we expected.

 

[WaterGal]

Another tip: don't use Verizon for your business phone/internet.

This has been the absolute worst experience I've ever had with a phone or internet company in my life. Tech just no-call no-showed on the service date and I had to have someone else come out later who hooked up the phone but no the internet. I had to call over and over again for 2 weeks after that to get the internet activated. I finally got a "whoops, we have to downgrade your service to get it working" for which I had to wait 4 more days for another tech to come out. Now I've got my first bill, for three times what I was told - in writing - I would be paying.

Sorry about the rant, just.... pretty pissed about this right now!

 

[Mark Lynn]

Watergal and Himura

Just wondering how things are going with your school openings? I too am looking at opening a school in the near future.

About 3 weeks ago I was let go early from my employer of 22 years, in all fairness I did take an early out offer, however I was told we might have 6-9 months or so before we would be let go. I was shown the door after about 4 weeks. It is a blessing because now I can focus on trying to organize on opening a school; which is why I took the early out to begin with, however it was a shock to have my plans accelerated.

Currently, I'm reorganizing my curriculum, talking with realtors, developing my business plans, learning about marketing, checking out insurance, talking with remodellers, the list goes on and on and on. On top of teaching each night. So much to do.

Watergal
Would you mind sharing about your vision about your school? What you are teaching? Your market, who you plan to teach etc. etc.

Thanks
Mark

 

[Aiki Lee]

I'm likley going to postpone the opening of the club.I don't have enough liquid capital to spend on the necessary legal garbage and insurance. Plus the location isn't a great place the more I think about it. Originally I was going to pick this place because it was going to be rent free and I would pay the guy a small percentage of my tuition income. But after insurace and organizational fees I would likely be losing money for a while and even though that's expected I couldn't make it back fast enough to avoid bankruptcy. I believe I will go with the original idea my sensei had and just teach out of his 2nd location we hope to have by next year.

 

[WaterGal]

Watergal
Would you mind sharing about your vision about your school? What you are teaching? Your market, who you plan to teach etc. etc.

Thanks
Mark

Sure, I'll give it a shot.

We teach Taekwondo, Hapkido, & Kumdo. We're in a suburban middle-class market, and have two serious competitors (I'm not including the guys that teach 5 people in their garage), who are both 300+ student chain schools offering the same kind of watered-down Tang Soo Do/Karate mashup.

Our vision is to teach really solid martial arts, at a level that's challenging and authentic but also fun and engaging, and also to create a supportive and positive martial arts community. On the money end, we're of course hoping to have a successful business - our goal is to have 150-200 students, and bring home at least $60k/year. We plan to teach people of all ages, though we're targeting different programs at different groups.

 

[stickarts]

Keep learning, and treat everyone the way you would like to be treated! be prepared to wear many different hats.

 

[Mark Lynn]

Sure, I'll give it a shot.

Thanks for the reply WaterGal, I'm sorry I got back to this a few days late.

We teach Taekwondo, Hapkido, & Kumdo. We're in a suburban middle-class market, and have two serious competitors (I'm not including the guys that teach 5 people in their garage), who are both 300+ student chain schools offering the same kind of watered-down Tang Soo Do/Karate mashup.

Do you teach these arts as all part of your curriculum, or are they separated out in separate programs. I mean does the basic TKD program include the Hapkido and the Kumdo in it, or does a new student have a choice of learning just one or all three arts. If they are separated out is the student charged separately for each?

Are you renting a retail space or teaching out of a community center/health club etc. etc.? If you own/rent you own facility just wondering what is your approximate sq footage?

Our vision is to teach really solid martial arts, at a level that's challenging and authentic but also fun and engaging, and also to create a supportive and positive martial arts community. On the money end, we're of course hoping to have a successful business - our goal is to have 150-200 students, and bring home at least $60k/year. We plan to teach people of all ages, though we're targeting different programs at different groups.

Sounds to me like you have a pretty solid vision and one that I share as well; and I'm going through a similar process myself. I too have a couple of competitors in the city I teach in, although I don't think they are as large as what you are facing. One is a Olympic style of TKD and the other is a MMA school.

I ask the questions about how you are setting up teaching the separate programs because I am in the same process, in that my current TKD program I also blend in weapons training (bo, sai, and tonfa currently) for my teenagers once they get into the intermediate ranks, as well as Modern Arnis for my adult program.