Unexpected developments and a request for advice from gym owners

[HighKick]

I am one of three people on the management team. We are responsible for day-to-day running of the gym, making sure the lights stay on, and making the decisions on everything from class schedules to pricing to code of conduct to making a budget to implementing new revenue streams, etc, etc, etc. Fortunately everyone on the team is highly motivated, hard-working, smart, and in close agreement about how we want to approach things. As we get things more stabilized we will probably start divvying up responsibilities a bit more, but in these first few days we've just been in constant communication working everything together.

As an introduction to how I see my role as head instructor, I should explain something about our prior situation. My coach was a believer in an open-ended, big-tent approach to martial arts where everyone could find their own path. This is great. Unfortunately, his implementation of the philosophy was just to give a time slot to anyone who was willing and able to teach and let them go their own way without supervision. That produced a lot of great classes ... but also some instructors who would flake out and not show up at their scheduled class times, some instructors who weren't diligent about student safety, junior instructors who weren't getting their own continued training needs met, overlapping class schedules that were competing for students, and a situation where there was no instructor who knew all the students and what they were working on.

As head instructor, my immediate top priorities are as follows:

• Ensure that no matter what, if a class is on the schedule, there will be an instructor on the mat at that time. Period.
• Making sure that we have a structured path for advancement for all students (both in terms of skills and ranks)
• Making sure that we have a robust culture of safety in training that is strictly enforced.
• Helping to design and enforce an appropriate code of conduct for both students and instructors
• Getting to personally know every student in the gym and have at least a rough idea of where they are in their progress and what they are working on. I am terrible with faces and names, so this is going to be a challenge for me.
• Making sure that class schedules and curriculums work so that the different classes support each other.
• Have a consistent structure in place to support students who want to compete, rather than the semi-random, ad-hoc approach we've had in the past. This includes making sure students are aware of competition opportunities, making sure they are properly prepared for competition, and that we have coaches accompany them and support them during their matches.
• Making sure that the other instructors are given the support and guidance that they need to continue progressing
• Making sure the mats are cleaned every night. I'm leading by example on this one, but I want to build a culture where first the instructors and then the senior students are just in the habit of automatically picking up the brooms and mops at the end of the evening.

Our school is a BJJ/MMA/Muay Thai/Boxing gym, although we have had classes for other styles in the past and I hope we will again. I don't know exactly what the connotations of GM status in TKD are or whether we have anything in BJJ which exactly corresponds to that. I'm a 3rd degree BB in BJJ, which represents 25 years of training in the art, and a passable amateur boxing/Muay Thai coach. (Weirdly enough, "3rd degree" in BJJ is actually the 4th level of BB, since we have a zero-based system that starts with no degrees.) I also have various levels of functional skills in a number of other arts. I don't present myself as an instructor in those arts, since I don't have the credentials or expertise, but that experience does influence my coaching.

What is your competition structure? Does everyone compete (inside or outside of class) or do you have competition specific classes or teams? It is a Very important component IMHO.
Competition is not for everyone so we don't require it, but we do have a very robust competition program. We do local friendly's, have two inter-school tournaments/year (three States), and we are very involve in AAU and WT/TKD at the upper circuit levels. We are also dipping our toes into a Kali circuit that has established. Good fun.

We have enough mass that we can push anyone in our regular classes, so if a person does not want to compete, they still get plenty of push.

 

[skribs]

What is your competition structure? Does everyone compete (inside or outside of class) or do you have competition specific classes or teams? It is a Very important component IMHO.
Competition is not for everyone so we don't require it, but we do have a very robust competition program. We do local friendly's, have two inter-school tournaments/year (three States), and we are very involve in AAU and WT/TKD at the upper circuit levels. We are also dipping our toes into a Kali circuit that has established. Good fun.

We have enough mass that we can push anyone in our regular classes, so if a person does not want to compete, they still get plenty of push.

My guess is that it's like most BJJ schools, where there's some folks that compete and some folks that are hobbyists.

I also guess they roll (what we would call spar) every class, because that's how BJJ works.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

What is your competition structure? Does everyone compete (inside or outside of class) or do you have competition specific classes or teams? It is a Very important component IMHO.
Competition is not for everyone so we don't require it, but we do have a very robust competition program. We do local friendly's, have two inter-school tournaments/year (three States), and we are very involve in AAU and WT/TKD at the upper circuit levels. We are also dipping our toes into a Kali circuit that has established. Good fun.

We have enough mass that we can push anyone in our regular classes, so if a person does not want to compete, they still get plenty of push.

I’ll just talk about BJJ for the moment, because boxing/MMA/Muay Thai work differently.

Sparring (in various forms, not always corresponding to tournament formats) is included in every class and generally everyone participates unless they have some particular reason not to, such as being injured or having to leave early.

There are a variety of tournaments available. Some are big “brand name” promotions with a regional, national, or international presence. Others are small, individual events, usually sponsored by local schools. We used to occasionally host small in-house tournaments and invite other local gyms to participate, but that’s been a while. I’d like to restart that practice, but we have a lot of other work to do first.

We also used to have more students competing in regional tournaments, but that’s another thing which had mostly fallen by the wayside. I did take a couple of our newer students to a couple of tournaments last month and they did pretty well - 2 golds, 2 silvers, and a bronze medal. (One student was competing in multiple divisions, thus the numbers.) But I would like to get back to having more students competing regularly.

MMA is a whole different deal. It’s a much more hazardous endeavor and we have to make sure anyone pursuing that sort of fight career is thoroughly prepared, evaluated to make sure they are safe to fight, are matched up fairly, given a proper fight camp to prepare, and have coaches to drive them to the fight and corner them.

 

[HighKick]

I’ll just talk about BJJ for the moment, because boxing/MMA/Muay Thai work differently.

Sparring (in various forms, not always corresponding to tournament formats) is included in every class and generally everyone participates unless they have some particular reason not to, such as being injured or having to leave early.

There are a variety of tournaments available. Some are big “brand name” promotions with a regional, national, or international presence. Others are small, individual events, usually sponsored by local schools. We used to occasionally host small in-house tournaments and invite other local gyms to participate, but that’s been a while. I’d like to restart that practice, but we have a lot of other work to do first.

We also used to have more students competing in regional tournaments, but that’s another thing which had mostly fallen by the wayside. I did take a couple of our newer students to a couple of tournaments last month and they did pretty well - 2 golds, 2 silvers, and a bronze medal. (One student was competing in multiple divisions, thus the numbers.) But I would like to get back to having more students competing regularly.

MMA is a whole different deal. It’s a much more hazardous endeavor and we have to make sure anyone pursuing that sort of fight career is thoroughly prepared, evaluated to make sure they are safe to fight, are matched up fairly, given a proper fight camp to prepare, and have coaches to drive them to the fight and corner them.

The higher WT circuit is much the same. You cannot compete without a certified coach in your corner. Oddly enough, there is no required certification (yet) for competitors beyond competing by the rules and becoming a member. There are checks and balances and such but no formal certs yet. Ranking is it's own animal.
Competition (at the higher levels) is literally another extension of our business. It is also a passion of mine so it works. I lost count but we are north of one-hundred WT certified coaches and refs and in the 1,000's for AAU/WT competitors from our schools.

Since your model is somewhat diverse in styles/systems, it may require a more modular approach where one person is head over competition in MMA, another over Muay Thai, etc... Knowing the rule set and how to fairly exploit it is part of the battle. Nothing worse than showing up for a meet and not be able to compete because of a technicality.

The locals and friendly's around here are easy to participate in as long as a decent channel of communication is kept with the organizers/school owners.
Which brings me to networking. How plugged in are you with the schools/gyms in your area? I never feel it is good to set yourself up on an island, even when you are 'king of the hill'.

Certainly, the odds of injury increase as the competition level gets higher and the rules get looser or more open. In our business format, there are clear lines of liability protection that Must be covered by the competitor, coach, school, host assn. and in junior cases, the parents. It can be a Real PITA, but once you have a good system down, it gets easier.
I suggest setting down with the organizers of your bigger meets, seeing how they do it and what they suggest for liability protection (I cannot say those words strongly enough). Also, get with your insurance provider, or better yet talk to at least two different sources to promote competition. It is very much a racket business and can be hard to keep them competitive.
Surprisingly enough, I have been with the same provider on nearly everything for over 35-years (State Farm). We have had our differences and some very hard conversations and negotiations, but they have consistently beaten everyone else's price. We even have some of our investments with them.
Without question, it is an area where the more you have to offer them, the more competitive they will be. So, think about All your needs, personal, business, and otherwise before going to the table.
With two large(ish) farms, my company, my wife's company, and two schools, we can play a little hard ball when needed.
That, said, don't forget what insurance is there for. Yes, it you have the means, self-insurance is a 'cheaper' way to go from a purely financial perspective, but we have had some truly bizarre claims that State Farm got in front of and took care of for us so that we could concentrate on our core businesses.
I have heard too many stories from my piers in the working world about off-brand insurance companies to take the risks.

 

[JowGaWolf]

So, I've been training out of the same gym for 18 years now. Teaching for 15.

The gym has always been kind of chaotic and teetering on the edge of profitability. My coach is a good guy and a top-notch martial artist, but not really much of a manager or businessperson. In recent months the level of management had dropped even lower as various health issues prevented him from attending to business necessities.

Over the weekend, we found out that due to his health, my coach was going to be moving out of state to be close to the rest of his family and that the gym was going to be closed down. This caused much consternation among those who love the gym and its place in Kentucky martial arts history. I was also very concerned about our current students and making sure that they were taken care of fairly.

As of last night a small group of us signed papers to form an LLC to take over the gym and keep it running. I am now head instructor, co-manager, and part owner. My ownership share is based on sweat equity rather than financial investment. I'm going from being one of 8 instructors teaching 2 nights per week to being the head coach, teaching 4 nights per week as well as working to design a cohesive curriculum for all the teachers, helping to codify gym policies, and helping to figure out business and financial decisions.

Right now the other managers and I are scrambling to figure out everything from the best products for cleaning mats to whether we should switch membership payment solution companies. (We currently have ASF, which apparently is known to have some issues.)

Fortunately, none of us are in need of deriving an income from the gym. We all have good day jobs. We just need to get things stabilized so that the gym can consistently generate enough revenue to cover expenses, then hopefully profitable enough to invest back into improvements, then any eventual profit coming back to the owners will be just a nice bonus.

Any of you who have experience running a profitable gym, please share any and all advice. General or specific. Best cleaning products, membership payment solutions that you suggest we check out or avoid, student retention policies, marketing, alternate revenue streams, gym code of conduct, social media, things that you wish you had known in your first year of running a gym. Whatever.

We've already got a long list of steps that we know we need to take and changes that we want to make. But I figure the more input we get from experienced gym owners, the less likely we are to overlook some important detail because we were too busy attending to everything else that needed doing.

The one thing you'll really need to focus on, is to make sure that your marketing is driving enough customers who like what you gym offers, to you gym. That's going to be one of the main priorities.

The first is the quality of teaching and the atmosphere. That includes the quality of teachers (personality and skill wise) the physical look of the gym, and the type of people who take part. All of that will influence your bottom line and your profitability. In short People care when you care and that's a big driving force of who shows up to be a part of something. Get that chemistry correct and the profit will come in without any problems.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

If you haven't already, you could look into getting your staff SafeSport certified. IBJJF has a code you can use to sign up, I think it's around $20/person.

SafeSport is primarily focused on a set of controls to make sports safe for kids, to prevent injury, bullying, or abuse. The instructors at my gym are SafeSport certified. A lot of it is things that I had already implemented as a result of my family's experience working with kids, as well as my experiences as an instructor.

Good idea. I actually had to be Safe Sport certified to be certified as an amateur boxing coach. I let that expire last year because I haven't been so active in coaching boxing, but I should probably get that renewed and look into the possibility of starting to require it for all our coaches down the line.