By Grand Master Stephen Oliver · Nicholas P. Cokinos was posthumously inducted into the NAPMA Martial Arts Professional Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2015.
Most people remember Educational Funding Company as a billing company. If that is all you remember about EFC, you have missed Nick Cokinos’s real contribution. EFC was an educational organization disguised as a billing company — and the systems it taught are why a martial artist today can make a living teaching martial arts.
Key Takeaways
- Before martial arts, Cokinos ran professional dance schools — Arthur Murray, then seven Art Linkletter–Fred Totten locations around Washington, D.C. He arrived already knowing how a professional instructional business worked.
- By 1967 he was working with Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee, and with Grand Master Jeff Smith helped build business systems years ahead of the rest of the industry.
- He founded Educational Funding Company in 1968. By the early 1990s, published reports described EFC as handling the finances of more than 700 martial arts schools.
- He taught school owners to know their numbers — inquiries, appointments, shows, enrollments, retention, payroll percentage, rent, actual profit — decades before our industry called them KPIs.
- His most durable contribution was people: he developed operators who carried those systems out across the profession.
I First Met Nick in 1976
I encountered him again in 1978, but I certainly couldn’t have understood then just how important Nick would become to my life — or how much influence he would ultimately have on the entire professional martial arts industry.
Later, while attending Georgetown University, I worked as a head instructor and branch manager for the Jhoon Rhee Institute in the Washington, D.C., area. That put me in an extraordinary environment.
Jhoon Rhee was the visionary. Jeff Smith was the champion and one of the emerging great school operators. Ned Muffley was an extraordinarily disciplined manager. And Nick Cokinos understood business.
I had the tremendous good fortune to be the young guy in the room. And I paid attention.
Nick Had Seen the Movie Before
One of the things people today don’t fully appreciate about Nick is that his ideas didn’t appear out of nowhere. Before martial arts, Nick had been in the professional dance-school business.
He had experience with Arthur Murray and later became heavily involved with the Art Linkletter–Fred Totten Dance Studios. He ultimately operated seven locations around the Washington metropolitan area.
Think about what that meant. This was before anyone had GoHighLevel, Stripe, automated billing, Facebook leads, online calendars or CRM systems. Yet the professional dance industry already understood leads, appointments, enrollment conferences, recurring tuition, instructor development, children’s programs, multiple locations and systematic management. They even operated after-school programs that picked children up from school and transported them to lessons.
Does any of that sound familiar?
Nick came into martial arts already understanding how a professional instructional business could operate. Most martial artists didn’t. That distinction is incredibly important.
Jhoon Rhee Recognized Talent
One of Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee’s greatest abilities was recognizing talented people and bringing them into his orbit. He did that with champions. He did it with politicians and business leaders. He did it with Jeff Smith. And he did it with Nick Cokinos.
Nick helped Jhoon Rhee put business systems around an extraordinary martial arts vision. Jeff Smith was there early and helped Nick develop and implement many of those systems. Jeff understood both sides of the equation exceptionally well because he was simultaneously a world-class competitor, an extraordinary instructor and a highly successful school operator.
Those systems became part of the education I received when I came to Washington. I wasn’t getting an MBA in martial arts business from a university. I was getting it from Jhoon Rhee, Nick Cokinos, Jeff Smith and Ned Muffley.
After more than five decades in this profession, I can tell you that was a pretty extraordinary faculty.
Nick Taught Us to Know the Numbers
Nick believed you should know your numbers. Not approximately. Know them.
How many inquiries did you receive? How many appointments? How many showed up? How many enrolled? What’s your retention? What percentage of revenue is going to payroll? What are you paying in rent? What’s your actual profit?
Today everyone talks about KPIs. Nick was teaching martial arts school owners to understand their KPIs decades before anybody in our industry was calling them KPIs.
That was classic Nick. He wasn’t interested in excuses. He was interested in what the numbers told you.
EFC Was Never Just About Billing
This is where I think history sometimes gets Nick wrong. People remember Educational Funding Company as a billing company. Yes, EFC handled tuition. That was important. But if that’s all you remember about EFC, you’ve missed Nick Cokinos’s real contribution.
EFC was an educational organization disguised as a billing company.
Nick wanted to create professional school owners. He wanted them to understand business. He wanted them to make money. He wanted them to own their buildings. He wanted them to build assets and financial security. He wanted them to operate with integrity. And he wanted martial arts instructors to stop thinking that being financially successful somehow compromised the martial arts.
That’s a lesson our industry still needs occasionally. There is nothing noble about being a great martial artist who can’t pay the rent. There is nothing dishonorable about making a substantial profit while providing an extraordinary service.
Higher revenue without higher profit is just more work. Nick understood that a long time ago.
I Became Part of the EFC Family
I eventually became a founding member of the EFC Board of Directors. That was not an honorary board where everybody showed up, had lunch and congratulated each other.
Nick surrounded himself with successful operators because he wanted ideas. What is working? What isn’t working? What are the numbers? What are the best schools doing differently? How can we teach this to everybody else?
When I started aggressively expanding Mile High Karate beginning in 1983, I was applying many of the lessons I had learned in Washington. I opened five schools in approximately 18 months. Those schools grew rapidly.
And suddenly I wasn’t simply the young guy listening to Nick anymore. I had results. That gave me an opportunity — and, frankly, a responsibility — to start teaching other school owners what we were doing.
Taking the Message to the Industry
From roughly 1983 through 2001, one of my major roles in the EFC world became helping disseminate these systems throughout the martial arts industry.
I spoke. I taught seminars. I participated in EFC conventions. I wrote. I shared what was working in my schools. I challenged other owners to raise their standards. And I worked closely with Nick and the other leaders around EFC to help professionalize an industry that was growing very quickly.
Looking back, I don’t think any of us completely appreciated how much those ideas would spread. Today I can walk into a professionally operated martial arts school almost anywhere in America and recognize concepts that came through that lineage. Somebody teaching those systems today may have absolutely no idea where they originated.
That’s how influence works. Eventually, people stop remembering who invented the wheel. They just use it.
Nick Was My Mentor — and My Friend
Over the years, my relationship with Nick changed. I initially knew him as one of the senior people around Jhoon Rhee. Then he became a mentor. Then a business associate. Eventually, he became my friend.
Nick could be demanding. He could be opinionated. He could tell you something you didn’t particularly want to hear.
Good. Those are frequently the people who teach you the most. I didn’t need another person telling me everything I was doing was wonderful. I needed people who had accomplished something, knew what they were talking about and were willing to challenge my thinking. Nick did that.
Jeff Smith Deserves Recognition in This Story
I also don’t want the history rewritten in a way that leaves Grand Master Jeff Smith out. Jeff was there early. He worked closely with Nick in developing and implementing the early systems that made the Jhoon Rhee schools so successful.
Jeff became one of the industry’s great examples of something Nick believed deeply: technical excellence and business excellence are not mutually exclusive. Jeff could fight. He could teach. He could run a school. And he could make money doing it.
That’s important, because one of the most damaging myths in martial arts has always been that somehow you’re more authentic if you’re broke. Nonsense. Nick didn’t believe it. Jhoon Rhee didn’t believe it. Jeff Smith didn’t believe it. And I certainly don’t believe it.
An Industry Is Built by People
When people write the history of American martial arts, naturally they write about the champions. Chuck Norris. Joe Lewis. Bill Wallace. Jeff Smith. They write about the pioneers who brought the arts here, especially Jhoon Rhee. They should.
But there is another history that needs to be preserved. Who made it possible for martial artists to make a living teaching martial arts?
Who figured out enrollment? Who figured out tuition management? Who taught instructors to understand payroll? Who taught them to look at retention? Who helped them develop professional staffs? Who showed them that a martial arts school could become an institution rather than a hobby?
Nick Cokinos belongs prominently in that history.
What Nick Left Behind
When I look at the professional martial arts industry today, I see his fingerprints everywhere.
I see them in schools that know their numbers. I see them in owners who understand recurring revenue. I see them in professional enrollment procedures. I see them in retention systems. I see them in multi-location organizations. I see them in children’s programs. I see them in school owners who own their buildings and have built genuine wealth.
Most importantly, I see them in martial artists who understand that the business exists to support the mission. Without a healthy business, eventually there is no mission. No facility. No instructors. No employees. No students. No impact.
Nick understood that. He helped Jhoon Rhee and Jeff Smith build it. He helped teach it to me. And I had the privilege of spending nearly two decades helping him spread those ideas throughout our industry.
I owe Nick Cokinos a tremendous debt. Our entire profession does.
That’s why I believe it is important now — not simply to remember his name, but to make sure the next generation understands what he actually did.
Nick Cokinos didn’t just found Educational Funding Company. He helped make being a professional martial artist possible.
And I’m proud to have called him my mentor, my colleague and my friend.
— Grand Master Stephen Oliver
Founder and CEO, Mile High Karate and Martial Arts Wealth Mastery
CEO and Chairman, NAPMA · Publisher, Martial Arts Professional
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Nick Cokinos?
Nicholas P. Cokinos was the founder of Educational Funding Company and one of the architects of the modern professional martial arts school industry. He came to martial arts from the professional dance-school business, worked with Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee from the late 1960s, and spent nearly half a century teaching school owners to run their schools as professionally managed businesses.
What was Educational Funding Company?
EFC, founded in 1968, provided tuition and financial management for martial arts schools — but its larger purpose was education. It taught owners enrollment, retention, cash flow, payroll, expenses and profitability. By the early 1990s, published reports described EFC as handling the finances of more than 700 martial arts schools.
What did Cokinos bring from the dance industry to martial arts?
Everything the martial arts industry did not yet have: leads, appointments, enrollment conferences, recurring tuition, instructor development, children’s programs, multi-location management, and even after-school programs that transported children from school to lessons. Professional dance instruction had solved those problems decades earlier.
What is the connection between Nick Cokinos and Jhoon Rhee?
By 1967 Cokinos was working with the Jhoon Rhee organization, then the leading martial arts business organization in the world. Jhoon Rhee supplied the vision; Cokinos supplied the business systems; Jeff Smith helped develop and implement them. That combination produced much of the operating model professional schools still use.
Why should a school owner today care about Nick Cokinos?
Because the systems most professional schools run on — recurring tuition, enrollment procedure, retention tracking, knowing your numbers — came down through that lineage. Owners using them today often have no idea where they originated. Understanding the source helps you understand why the systems are built the way they are.
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