When I posted my experience of owning a dojo I said that I would also post how I would do things differently if I had to do over. I stopped the post before getting into that because I felt that my response was already lengthy, but at the request of a couple of people, I'll list them here. If you don't have any interest, please just skip this post. I am writing this in multiple sittings, so I apologize if this post jumps around a bit. Before I go on, there are a few things that I'd like to add that I forgot to say last time. They are listed in random order.
My instructor once told me that "Kids pay your rent. Teaching teens and adults is your fun." I enjoyed teaching the kids, but I understood what he meant. Most full-time dojos that I knew (mine and my friends) had a 3-1 kids to adults/teens ratio. I taught all of my kids classes myself and didn't "pawn it off" on a brown belt. Kids are where your money is at. My last post made reference to the new owner of my dojo closing down in a year and a half after he bought it from me. One of the things that he did was he paid someone else to teach the kids class. I thought that was a very big mistake because parents pay for you to teach, or at least someone who already has a good relationship with your students. You could hire someone who specializes in kids, but keep in mind that you are giving up a certain amount of control in your dojo because kids will be the majority of your students. The great thing about teaching kids well is that moms talk. If a kid loves your class, mommy will be very happy and will tell other moms. One happy kid can bring you two more kids. If you get a home-school student who loves your class, he/she will bring you their home-school friends. I had one home-school student who brought me his three friends...which in turn brought me even more home-school students because word got around. I essentially was their PE class. It could be like that for any group. Moms talk. A happy mother is your best marketing tool. Teens are like that too. I was a very teen-heavy dojo. Teens are looking for acceptance. If you give them a safe place to train, without judgement, you will have a good size group of teenagers. Teens will bring their friends as well.
Someone earlier posted the advice of "be a good teacher". There are so many facets to what it means to be a good teacher. My biggest advice when it comes to teaching is to learn about human behavior. If you say the wrong thing, embarrass someone in class, or talk about [insert subject] to the wrong [insert personality type] you could lose a student. When you teach for a living you don't want that to happen. You will lose students here and there, but you want to create an environment where people can feel comfortable. If you only want 30 students, run it any way you would like. But if your goal is to have enough students to do it full-time you need to have a place where people feel comfortable training.
Someone here posted to get a good accountant. That's good advice, but I did all of my taxes myself. It really isn't that difficult. Keep every receipt and categorize them. The LLC advice that a few here have given is great advice. You may need an accountant if you have an LLC.
It will be very easy to pocket your cash without claiming it on your taxes. My first year I had that attitude. I got that from my instructor. He would tell me that by pocketing the cash I would not have to pay taxes and (blah blah blah). That was terrible advice because your dojo is a commodity. You can't buy a house or a car unless you can show a paper trail of where your money comes from and how much money you make. Your dojo is your employer. Write everything down, keep track, and pay your taxes so that you can qualify to make big purchases. My first year I was stock-piling cash and only depositing the amount to cover my overhead. Pretty soon I had a good amount of cash but I couldn't do anything with it but keep it in an envelope at my house. I remember not being able to qualify for an apartment because my business didn't show enough profit. I told them that I had enough cash to pay for a year's rent in advance, but I still couldn't get the apartment because I didn't have paper trail. After the year I kept track of everything. Keep track of all monies taken in and claim it on your taxes. If not, you won't be able to qualify for a house, apartment, car, etc.
I noticed that my dojo had a big turnover about every 1 1/2 years. The dynamic would change in the dojo because of the loss of students, which would be replaced with new students but with a different energy. I still don't know why (blue belt syndrome?) but I remember more than once thinking to myself that "the year and a half" student-shift is coming. As a general rule (at least at mine and my friends' dojos) students tend to stay long-term if you can keep them through that first 1 1/2 years.
Expect to be a counselor as well as a martial arts instructor. You will play such an important role in your students' lives. They will come and share things with you that they won't share with others. Learn to be a good listener. Treat everyone like they are your most important student. That alone will help you retain your students over the long-term. Students don't always care how great of a martial artist you are or what your rank is.... they care most importantly about how you treat them.
Here is the order in which I made my most money. The last couple may be in different order for some dojos (my friend sold lots of supplies) but for the most part this is what you will experience:
- Tuition (#1 by far)
- Test Fees
- Sign-ups
- Parents night out (like a karate babysitter...you can make good money with this and offer a great service for parents) I did this twice a year, but if I had to do over, I'd do it once every couple of months.
- Supplies
Be careful of overcharging for supplies. People google costs before they buy and the "support your dojo" speech will only get you a few extra dollars. You won't make enough money on supplies to get the reputation of "ripping off your students." If I remember correctly, I sold gloves and a sparring helmet for $40. I think it cost me $18 for both. T-shirts cost me around $5.00-$6.00 and I would sell them for $15. Gi's were between $9 and $18 and I sold them for $30-$35. The really nice ones were more expensive (brushed cotton). There are are really good independent martial arts supply stores that offer great prices on great products. Don't just buy from the big ones. Rather than thinking of total money that I took in, I looked at supplies as "this pays my electricity bill."
- I didn't charge an enrollment fee to sign a student up. Many others do. Many dojos would say that the enrollment fee covers the cost of the insurance, administration fees, etc. That just simply isn't true, unless you are hiring out a company to do your enrolling for you (cold calls, lead boxes, etc). I had friends try that in the past without much success. They fired the enrollment company and just did the work themselves, still charging an expensive enrollment fee. Essentially, it's another way to get extra money out of your students. Insurance is a few dollar a year per student, and administration fees is essentially us putting the students application in a folder. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it, as it does get you an extra $75-$100, but I felt like I was misleading students. I would charge the students the first month tuition and required them to buy a uniform from me ($30-$35 depending on the size.) Get the student in the door...that's the most important thing (next to keeping them). Don't let a large enrollment fee be the difference between you having a student for a long time and you never getting the student in the first place.
- Get insurance (and an LLC). Please remember that your enrollment safety waiver can be torn apart by a good lawyer. I had this happen to two friends who owned dojos. A lawyer will use a term something similar to "Rights of Expectations" or something like that. Essentially it means that there is a certain expectation as to what will happen in a class, such as bruising, but a person does not sign up and expect to get a broken nose. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, and others may have had a different experience, but both of my friends lost in court because of an overzealous student, not so much because of instructor negligence. Also, I never sparred with students for fear of a lawsuit. I know others have different viewpoints on this, but I have heard many horror stories of instructors sparring students, injuries occuring, and lawsuits happening. I figured that I had all to lose and not much to gain by sparring students. I just never did it. I would work with students, but I never sparred them.
Here is what I would do differently if I had to do over:
- I would be nicer to everyone. I was already nice to my students, but I was brought up with the attitude that the "students never saw Sensei in street clothes" or "Sensei always meditates" or " Sensei doesn't eat junk food" or "Don't ask Sensei that question...that's disrespectful." There should be a high level of professionalism involved, but sometimes I think I acted too much like "Sensei is above everyone else".
- I would have stopped making answers up for things that I didn't know. I learned later on that it's ok to tell a student that you don't know the answer to a question, but that you will try and find out. They will appreciate your honesty. I'm sure that I looked stupid at times when I was BS'ing an answer because I wanted my students to think that "Sensei knew everything". I got that from one of my early instructors. He was the master of the ceiling technique (staring at the ceiling while he was thinking of the new "secret" technique to teach in class).
- I would not teach the techniques that would embarrass me if I had to explain why they are important. I'm sure that some students rolled their eyes when I would teach them a new "crane" technique that involved me hopping on one leg while pretending to hyper-extend their elbow. As a student I was a sponge when it came to new techniques and would learn as much as possible coming up through the ranks. As an instructor I learned quickly that not everyone was like me. As a student I would never question my instructor when he would show me "that cool snake technique that involved twist stances and multiple pokes to the neck." My teenage students weren't always so tactful. I remember one student saying, "That looks stupid. Why would we learn that?" To be fair, what I taught was not part of the core structure of the art, but more of a random, extra technique. I would not teach anything that didn't fall in line with the structure or integrity of the system that I was teaching. That way I could always answer "why" we were doing something or "how" it falls in line with the principle of the art.
- I would have students do auto debit or six-month agreements. I had my students on month-to-month and relied on my teaching to keep them as students. While I was blessed to have a good student base, I completely understand why dojos do contracts or auto-debit. Having to remind people to pay their tuition got old really quickly. I highly respect the dojos that go month-to-month, and I really don't know of I would have changed or not, but I do understand why dojos use contracts.
- I would have stuck with, and taught, bjj. BJJ=money. I was an early Gracie student and I should have stuck with it and began teaching a jiu jitsu class at my dojo. It would have been another revenue for the dojo.
- I had a pretty good relationship with some of the other full-time dojos in my area. There was an ATA guy in town. Whenever someone was looking for TKD, I would send them his way. In turn, he would send me students who were looking for martial arts other than TKD. Not every dojo will do that, but it's good to have a good relationship with other local dojos. When I first opened, some instructors came by to say hi. No judgements, no egos. They just came in to say hi and welcome me. Sure, I'm sure they were seeing what their competition was about, but they were cool to me.
- If I had to do over again, I would promote tournaments myself. You can make some good money at that. When I first opened I would get together with other dojos and put on tournaments. One promoter made sure that "everyone went home with something". He gave every competitor either a water bottle, a patch, etc. He knew that he was making at least $20 profit on each competitor and he wanted everyone to go home with something. That's great for repeat business at his tournaments. It was a very positive experience for everyone, and he made a lot of money. If I had to do over, I would have put on tournaments myself.
One final thought is that this job leads to some pretty interesting stories. Because instructors stay very late at their dojo, some interesting characters will walk through the door. I, and I'm sure that a lot of instructors, have many stories to share. That's for another thread.
Again, take whatever you'd like from this, as my experiences may be different from others. Hopefully some of this helped.
