Martial Arts Professional Magazine

Dear Rob,

This whole thing with Stephen Oliver and Mile High Karate is out of control. Frankly, I am tired of looking at that guy’s face in your magazine and all the NAPMA literature. Not everyone wants to be part of Mile High Karate and do what he does. We all have different disciplines; and, for him, to jam his franchise and overpriced seminars through your organization as president has really turned off many of my martial arts friends and me who used to be NAPMA members, but switched to MAIA. 

Sincerely,

Master Larry Zahand
Zahand’s Martial Arts, Akron, Ohio
………………………………………………….

Stephen Oliver’s Response

Larry,

Frankly, your perspective is way off base.

First, to unilaterally blame me for anything you don’t immediately agree with is absurd.

Second, as we agreed, we’re happy to pass on the NAPMA member discount to Joe Lewis attendees. We are actively looking for ways to do anything we can, with or without compensation, to help Joe Lewis and his organization.

Third. The $800 fee is only for non-members.

Also, I offered to send you all the membership materials through July, absolutely free. The same offer is open to all Joe Lewis members (and I believe has been made before). We are very open to working cooperatively with your convention and have contacted Joe (and he’s contacted us) about working cooperatively.

Finally, regarding seminars: We just did 6 or 7 that were free ($98 seat reservation - 100% refunded if you attended).

More interesting observations from several perspectives

1.  MAIA and its magazine, MA Success, are HEAVILY pushing ATA, Premier and American Top Team.

If you somehow mistake contributions by me, with emphasis on Mile High Karate, then you totally miss the point. ATA is a feature/cover in MA Success Quarterly (I assume you don’t want to be an ATA school either); and Premier and American Top Team has similar emphasis. Our intent is to feature Mile High Karate no more in Martial Arts Professional than any ONE of those THREE programs.

2. “Different disciplines” - This is ALSO true of Mile High Karate school owners and Instructors. We have a Big Tent. We talked to Joe Lewis in October about franchisee owners being able to be a part of Mile High Karate and us encouraging it, and visa versa.

3.  If you’re not interested in being a franchise - then don’t. No one’s trying to “push anything down your throat.” We would expect AT MOST, this to be of interest to 5% of the industry. We would expect that NAPMA would be of interest to 20 to 25% of the industry and, frankly, would never expect more than maybe 10% of NAPMA members to ever be interested in Mile High Karate. Obviously, the two are very separate. There was a much higher expectation before the ownership change of NAPMA and MAIA members being Century customers.

The NAPMA membership materials, including Web sites, teleconferences, Webinars, three mailings per month, etc. are making massive upgrades and receiving rave reviews from most members. You really should take advantage to review them and see what value they may have for you and your friends who are interested in becoming “professional” martial artists as you obviously are. The magazine after all is “Martial Arts Professional” and the target for NAPMA are school owners that want to be full-time and make significant improvements in their incomes, student bases, student quality and career longevity.
I have known you a long time and you are a bright guy, so I just don’t understand where you are going with all this Stephen Olivier bullshit. I understand that money is the underlining factor in all of this, but what happened to helping school owners to succeed. Ten years ago, NAPMA never ran thing this way, and I really think you need to rethink you mission statement and what NAPMA was created for.

By the way…having recently looked through NAPMA materials all the way back to 1994, in relative terms, just about everything was more expensive then. The prices haven’t changed since 1994 for member materials, which have expanded in quantity (and, soon, quality - dramatically.)
The mission is to make MANY improvements that will actually help school owners succeed at every level. Our Inner Circle group is already moving $500,000-a-year schools to $750,000 and $800,000-a-year schools to $1,000,000 or more. At the basic level, we are adding front-line “best practices” interviews with those “in the trenches” to give members real implementation strategies. Successful school owners (including Toby and me) are developing marketing materials that really work. Finally, we are partnering for real-time growth strategies: For the kids market: Kung Fu Panda; teen market: The Forbidden Kingdom; and the adult market: Redbelt and other movies.

So, your memory is inaccurate.

Clearly, there hasn’t been a NAPMA event since the Century take-over and members (who account for essentially 100% of past attendees to all NAPMA events) are paying less than $300, if they register now. Let me tell you the expenses for the Extreme Success Academy will likely be much more than any previous event, including, for the first time, the many paid speakers and experts from outside of the industry.

[Visit ExtremeSuccessAcademy.com to register at our Early Bird Special and reserve rooms discounted specifically for NAPMA members.]