Mike Vacca: What the Mastermind Actually Changed

So we’re not hard traditional in any specific style right now. We have a nice, easy blend for students to follow for all ages. And who did you start training with initially?

Where was your martial arts? background. I started training in Philadelphia with Dennis Tosten, who was traditionally a chempo stylist. And from there, I started to train with Greg Silva and his affiliates through United Professionals back in the early 90s. And I would say in the last decade, I trained with Steve LaValle and his organization down in South part as well, and most recently for the past couple of years been associated with yourself and the MATM organization. Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about some of the lessons that you and I have talked about that. The, you know, Greg School when he was running down in Coral Springs I was intimately familiar with. He and I were good friends. But what are some of the, coming from a traditional Kimpo background, what were some of the early lessons that you got from him and his operation?

I think one of the most valuable things we learned from that watching Greg run his school was that freedom to kind of leave the boundaries of a traditional style and be able to kind of teach some things that were a little bit easier to grasp from young children, maybe easier to perform for some adults in their 40s and 50s. And we got that sense of that family environment that was created inside that Carl Springs school where all ages of the family could perform in class comfortably and feel that they could advance and acquire black belts in martial arts without being strict to traditional forms and powerful movements that may be intimidating to the average household mom or dad. And their management of children, the friendly environment that they created, just made it a very welcoming place and it made you want to be there.

[04:03] And I think that’s invaluable in a martial arts school. Absolutely. And he was really a genius. at getting everybody in the family involved at some level. What were some of the things that you picked up from really how you managed to accomplish that?

I think prior to that experience with Craig Silva, we didn’t see a lot of family participation. We usually saw either an adult or a child and being part of his team kind of showed us So, I think that they were aggressive in marketing towards siblings, marketing toward parents. And they would have special classes that would encourage sibling participation, free parent fitness classes. Anytime you can get a family member on the floor training, as opposed to being on the sidelines in a chair and moving them one step closer to becoming part of the program. And it was really good at having non-members participate on the floor via target holding, participating, any way to get them active and that kind of is their first step to becoming a student and that’s been really helpful for us. Yeah, yeah.

And certainly, you know, back at that Coral Springs school, I was good friends with Greg and paid a lot of attention to what they were doing. And something he did that I recall that was non-intuitively obvious, that’s being used, that convoluted phrase, but he was very good at you’ve got a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old, but there’s a 13 and a 16-year-old sibling of getting the teenagers in as well. And it’s something I took note of at the time is everything from social events that he had to different things. He was really making an effort to recognize if everybody in the family was there. Obviously it dramatically improves your retention. as opposed to you’ve just got the seven-year-old and one day he’s not enthusiastic about that. What were some other things you noticed about that?

Well, along these lines, that’s something that we’ve seen success with as well. Anytime you have mom and dad training and child or children, I think everybody at all ages goes through that period throughout a four to five-year journey toward Black Belt. ups and downs where they may or may not want to continue with the program. And when you have mom and dad training and the eight-year-old says, I don’t want to do it anymore, much more likely to talk them into staying than if the mom or dad had nothing to do with the program. So Greg created an environment where the teenager is well welcome in the school. He even went as far as to create a teen class, and he had the facility for it and the staff. Not everyone can do that, but he created a teen class.

And, you know, he had musical forums events and he would have social events, like you said, like a parents night out and a movie night. He was very active in a demo team. He gave people an environment where they could feel that they didn’t grow out of when they hit their teenage years. So, again, I think it kind of contributed to that whole family environment. The more people in the family training, the more likely they are to encourage each other to continue through their down times and remain active. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, on the downside of it is, you know, in that book that I wrote quite a while ago, and we’ve updated it a couple times, that everything I wish I knew when I was 22, there’s a chapter in there that was written about that Carl Springs school that’s called Bigger Isn’t Always Better.

And I remember when I put out the first iteration of that, Greg called me and said, you know, I know that’s about my school, and God, I wish somebody had told me that before I did it. And the logic was, at that school at one time there were close to a thousand students who were on the rosters. And of course sometimes it was the seven year old that enrolled and there was the two teenagers and the mom and dad and so forth. But the net profit was never really there at the ratio you would think of a school that big. And that was the conversation I had, as I know his rent was huge. Staffing was huge. He, to his benefit, even on Thanksgiving Day, I remember his biggest renewal day of the year was always Thanksgiving Day and he would come in all day on Thanksgiving and do renewal conferences.

[08:25] But frankly, the reason he had to do that is he just had so much going on. It was the only time he could get with nothing else going on to do renewal conferences. Yeah, I remember they used to even remain open on most holidays and hold classes. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of it was just to have the time to get people in a sales conversation or progress updated conversation where they didn’t have the opportunity to do it otherwise. Right. But there’s always something to learn on the good side and the bad side and that was one of the things that had been a challenge there. And again, it’s not a criticism. I mean, it was just phenomenal. operation down there and of course it had good demographics but it wasn’t in the middle of LA or Manhattan.

It was suburban Fort Lauderdale or Boca Raton, Coral Springs. So he was people of LA and of course another good friend of mine. What are some of the things you picked up from Steve?

I mean he was certainly a genius instructor. Incredibly I always I tried to, I one time loaded 28 staff members on a plane and took them to Syracuse because I just couldn’t get them to get the level of energy that he was able to create in the classroom. What are some of the things you picked up in your class?

Well, right away to echo what you just said, motivation and inspiration. As soon as you walk into one of the Lavalie Dojos, you just feel the energy in the air. And as much as we learned with Ray Silva’s team regarding teaching and floor skills and classroom management, I think one of the biggest benefits we learned from the point of the LaValle team was that energy that was built inside the dojo to kind of keep your focus on earning your black belt, admitting to long-term goals, and he was great at developing staff and, you know, running multiple locations with a really, really strong team. Everyone was kind of focused on the same goal collectively, which is really nice to see. Oh, absolutely. Something I was having a conversation with Don Sowderson and Tim Kovar. We were all good friends with Steve, obviously before he was on Timely Death.

But Steve was the best micromanager I think I’ve ever seen. And of course in the news recently there’s been Steve Jobs and in the bio and so forth with him, he’s described as being incredibly on top of every little detail. But I don’t think the two people that I’ve known in the industry who’ve been so good at that are Steve LaValle and Keith Appner. It just seemed with Steve, there was nothing going on in any one of those schools that he didn’t have his finger on top of. Talk about how his systems worked, that he could be that, that on top of things and make sure nothing comes with a crack. I think one of the things that led to that success was his planning and management. Things were scheduled out all the time individually and for a staff.

For example, like most successful schools, he had specific staff training times scheduled on a weekly basis that were always consistent. He planned time to meet with individual head instructors from each dojo, either face-to-face or via conference call on a weekly basis. There were a lot of checklist items put in place for people to follow to stay on track. And it kind of creates a system of follow up and follow through. Things don’t slip through the cracks and able to remain in good contact with everyone to keep people focused and on track so that they don’t get distracted. But it’s easy to get distracted in a dojo day to day with busy work that doesn’t necessarily equal work that’s going to create some revenue. So he was real big on kind of you know, guiding his staff toward revenue generating time spent as opposed to just getting stuck with busy work.

[12:27] But scheduling and planning ahead of time really is the big key. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and one of the things that we hear often, you’ve heard it too, is, you know, the hardcore guys think that, you know, I’ve heard I heard Steve online especially being called a McDojo on one thing or another. But I think if anybody in the world, between him and Jeff Smith, exemplifies the fact that you can continue to get higher and higher quality in your martial arts, higher and higher quality in your own athletic skill, in the skill of all your students and continue to thrive financially, stronger and stronger as you grow. It’s the opposite of what what some of the naysayers say, is that a fair assessment?

I think it’s very fair. His students, and especially his staff, extremely high quality martial artists, very talented at self-defense and forms and basic skills from weapons and everything else. He’s got instructors and students who have and do currently fight in the ring successfully. He had high-level jiu-jitsu practitioners. So he didn’t sacrifice martial arts quality for martial arts growth. And if you’re playing properly and you train the right way and you go about it with passion and sincerity, you don’t have to sacrifice quality just to have quantity. No, in fact, I think usually the opposite is the schools that are most profitable are the ones that combine a sincere interest in their students. and super high quality martial arts. And again, the role of a master teacher is determine the right level of chunking, the right place to teach the right thing.

Going back to what you were saying about Greg Silva’s operation is many of the people who think they’re hardcore, in reality, they’re trying to teach white belts what brown belts should be learning. Or they’re trying to teach people in six months what it should take a year for them to learn. and it’s not about watering down, it’s about a matter of getting to a true level of high level internalization with the student. But I think what you, the best example of the Valley’s operation is just the fact the energy and the physical quality that everybody extrude through that operation with thousands of students spread out between Florida and New York. Yes. Talk a little bit more about the floor systems and management multi-schools. Obviously, you’re now at three very successful locations. What are some of the other things that you see perhaps that you modeled from Steve’s operation that are essential for you?

Regarding staff, it’s been consistent staff training both on the martial arts end and the business end. three hours, two times a week on training. Mondays from 9 to noon is our physical martial arts skills, practicing and training. And then on Wednesdays from 9 to noon, as a staff, we sit down and go over business topics from reviewing stats to discussing curriculum to marketing and planning internal and external events and everything that goes in between. So that consistency is really important and that’s something that we picked up from the La Valley team, scheduling and planning as a staff and as a team as opposed to just possibly like ownership or management doing it. Everyone’s involved. It makes everybody feel part of the team. And, you know, we have three key staff members at each facility, head instructor, program director, assistant instructor.

[16:18] And then there’s some part-timers, you know, here and there. We fill in and help up front and on the floor, but three full-time primary staff members at each facility. And they’re all part of the training. So that would be one thing. As far as on the floor, you know, high energy classes, educational classes. One of the things you mentioned about the quality and some mistakes some people make is they feel that you either have to teach advanced skills to beginner students or they have to teach beginner students at a very advanced level. I think if you just kind of find that middle ground, you can show an advanced technique to beginner students, but you don’t have to that’s the level of proficiency that you would from an advanced student. And sometimes, you know, that’s a good way to keep students motivated and fun.

They’re learning advanced skills, but they realize that the expectation isn’t so high for them, so they feel positive about it. They’re not great at the beginning, you know?

And I think that as an instructor, when you lead your students to believe that you have faith in them and they’ll progress along the way if they just stick with it, you have much better long-term success than China, you know. Push it too hard with them at the beginner level. Yeah. Well, certainly the easiest way to guarantee that people will drop out is to push them to the point that they feel like the challenges them, that they’re just not cut out for this thing, that other people are more capable or athletic. If you push them to the point, where you’re trying to get them in over their head too quickly, all it does with most people is they get frustrated and they drop out rather than that they rise to the occasion early on. I think that’s- Certainly.

Good. One of the things that we got from the La Valley team, especially KC La Valley, was the benefit of high level of fitness amongst the student body. And it’s something that we really didn’t focus on prior. But, you know, the Valley team is big on having their students run and jog as part of getting to their black belt and doing push-ups and stuff. So just being in a really good physical shape. And not that that’s uncommon in any way in a martial arts school, but it’s done in a very positive way and it’s kind of very encouraging. Again, a lot of our students aren’t the typical MMA demographic, but they are more or less the mom and the dad who, you know, work a nine-to-five job and are home in the evening so they don’t have the mentality to get into a cage fight and sometimes they can be intimidated a little bit about just jogging a mile or doing 40 push-ups.

And when you approach that and encourage that in such a positive way and make them think that you believe in them and they’ll get to where they need to go just by pushing forward. We’ve seen so much progress mentally with our adults that their physical skills and their physical well-being can’t help but improve. because they’re trying and they believe in themselves. And we have middle aged moms and dads running a mile or two miles voluntarily just to get in better shape. And it’s made such a difference with the morale inside the dojo. That’s a big key factor, I think. You know, encouraging physical fitness in a positive way. Yeah. Well, if nothing else, picking off the endorphins and just the sense of physical and emotional well-being that the students get. And obviously they link it directly back to us and to the program.

You can’t underestimate that. You know, something we skipped over a little bit, and I don’t want to skip over it, is in the multi-school environment, and it’s just as true in the single-school environment, although I think as an operator when you’re in the multi-school environment, you see the need for it more easily and force yourself to do it more readily, is you went back to your training agenda, which was, exactly the same agenda that I had for about 25 years. And very similar to what Bill Clark does with his operation. Similar, although different in structure, to what the Junior Institute did for years and years and years with nine locations. But you talked about three hours on Monday morning, three hours on Wednesday morning. And for a while there I did. three hours on Monday morning, three hours on Wednesday night.

[20:39] Talk about what it is you do during those training sessions and why it’s so time intensive to have a really sharp staff. On Mondays, like I mentioned, it’s our physical training. So we’ll get in and out. I’ll lead the class through a warm up. We’ll do some pad work. you know, pick boxing slash Muay Thai type of drills. And from there, we’ll do a little bit of a curriculum review just to make sure all levels of staff are up to date, you know, forms and self-defense. And then depending on the week, we alternate week to week, the second half of the physical fitness workout is either going to be jujitsu training or it’s going to be sparring to keep everybody skill sharp where they need to be. And then the last half hour from 11.30 to 12, we work on strength work, whether it be any various way of doing push-ups, sit-ups, partner drill squats, occasionally we’ll go for a run together as a team if that’s planned ahead of time.

But it’s always going to be pad work, either sparring or jujitsu, depending on the week they alternate from Monday to Monday, and then finishing up with strength work. And then on Wednesday, we take that opposite side and we work on the business skills and we sit down and we review stats school by school working to review new members, upgrades, revenue from deposits, in-house tuition, retail, monthly billings. We cover all the important stats, info calls, appointments, things like that. And then we talk about any victories that we’ve had from school school to school and any challenges that we’ve had. And then we review whatever the topic is. And they’ll run the gamut from reviewing, you know, info call procedures, to handling renewals, to handling intros, classroom management skills, announcements for the week, skills for testing. It could be, you know, countless things.

But the focus is always going to be on some type of you know, business topic, and we try to cover something that’s going to be educational and inspirational, so we can kind of share that with the staff. That they’re learning, yet they’re inspired to go and do better. So that’s pretty much a good summary of the two days. Well, and maybe to hone in on that a little bit, if you aren’t constantly going through the stats and doing it in a positive and enlightening way, then it’s kind of like you send somebody out to play basketball or something and they don’t know how many baskets they scored. People thrive if they know the score, if they know what the goal is, if they know where they stand. And they have a hard time rising to the occasion if you don’t let them know, good or bad, where they stand at any one point.

And I see school owners who Well, they’re instructors to get better, but they don’t know how many people are dropping out on a weekly basis or how many people are behind on testing or how many people who have gone inactive. And I know those are all kind of negative numbers, but on the positive side, you know, what percentage every nude and what percentage of improvement you have in the attendance. And in my case, what we did, was Monday, Wednesday was a third of what I consider generic business or communications or sales training. A third was Scripps info call, first intro, second intro, enrollment conference, renewal conference. And a third was looking at numbers and putting together the plan for the week. And then in a multi-school environment, we always had Friday night is we pulled all the black belts from all the schools into a single black belt class.

[24:40] And we also pulled all the staff into a single black belt class. So we would have an overlap where we would do an hour and a half or two hours of staff and an hour and a half or two hours of black belts plus staff of hardcore physical training from throughout the organization. If you’re not getting the people from the various schools together, oftentimes you can end up with one that’s really on a growth trend and one that’s really of slacken off. Yeah, and you know that’s something that we are big on is getting all three of our teams together, you know, always on those Mondays and Wednesdays, but even throughout the week, you know, we’re in close enough proximity where there’s great communication and involvement from school to school and staff to staff. So it creates a strong team environment.

And along with those Monday, Wednesday, Death training days. Daily at each individual school, the head instructor will run a class prep meeting at 3.15 every day because most classes start at 4 or 4.15 for us. So 3.15 every day, head instructor is running an overview for the night, an objective that need to be handled, you know, from intros and renewals and, you know, mat chats and talks all the way through who’s warming up what class, who’s running what drills and things of that sort. So complete daily meetings. I’m sorry I didn’t mention that earlier. Very, very important. Yeah, I mean that’s essential. And the type of things they’re going over is we have the Smith family, the Jones family, and the Wieckowski family coming in for introductory classes tonight. Here’s a couple things that Mrs. Smith is concerned with.

Joey, here’s a couple things we’re focusing on, etc. People who are depressed. I mean, to reactivate that night, people that there are in some level of a review or renewal prep, obviously, if you’re in a cycle of exam prep or if you’ve got a big event coming up and you frankly should always have a big event coming up, right?

So whatever the event is coming up, you know, I mean, right?

Sure, absolutely. Talk a little bit about that. You’ve had a lot of success with internal referral events and student retention events and I think they’re really one of the same. But talk about that. What’s some of the things that are working well and what’s some good ways to think about that?

Sure. One of the things that we do consistently is we do pull to bring a friend class event once a month and it’s the last week of the month we call it Bring a Friend Week and it’s available to our children and our adults and any of them can bring a friend with them to any class that week as long as it’s not one of the sparring classes because it would be really hard to manage. We encourage them to bring a friend and have them introduce to the martial arts and we come in and we’ll run classes with the friends involved and that generates a lead for us. And three times a year, we do a special Bring a Friend event where if you as a student bring a friend that week, we do a special practice weapon giveaway.

We do like rubber nunchucks. We do the foam commas. And we do, I’m sorry, commas, chucks, and the third, oh swords. We do little wooden swords. And okay, we have, three months throughout the year that are weapons month. So this week that’s finishing up right now, this week is September, is foam commas. Any student who brings a friend this week, we give them a free pair of foam commas because October is going to be comma training month. So every student in the school is going to need a pair of commas. We let them know if they bring a friend, they can get a free pair. Other than that, they can purchase one of our basic styles or a custom style. So we’re going to generate retail sales on commas. Plus, we’re going to generate leads because a lot of the beginner students are going to want the free commas.

[28:43] And we’ve had success that by averages close to 45 or 50 leads for that week. I mean, it may be as low as 30, but we’ve had it spike into the 60s and 70s, depending on the participation. And we do that three times a year all through the year. Nunchucks happen in January, February, swords happen in the summer, and we do commas in the fall. And that’s one of the ways we generate a large amount of bring-in friends. But we have the event every month. We just do the weapon to give away three of the 12 months. Is that helpful?

Oh, absolutely. And they low the phone comments. I think what a lot of people do is they think that they can put an event, put a note on the front door, put in the newsletter and people are going to flood the doors. Talk a little bit about how to build energy. If you’re not building excitement, what’s worth nothing?

One of our instructors who’s been around the longest, he always talks about when the staff’s making an announcement. He says, look, if you’re making an announcement, it’s just that. It’s an announcement. But if you’re selling the announcement, you’re going to get results. So the passion of the staff has everything to do with the success of the event. I know a lot of school owners who will hold similar events and have completely drastic and opposite responses. And one thing that’s unique and I’m happy and proud of is that throughout our schools, we’re very consistent with high participation with our events. And it has to do with the energy and the passion from the staff from announcing slash selling the event and Intermingling with the parents up front and talking to them and getting them involved and say hey are you joining us for this event?

Hey, who you bringing in for next week? You know hey who you bringing to bring a friend class next you know next Wednesday constant communication one of the biggest things and That’s going to lead to your success and certainly communication with your student body you just can’t be a great teacher on the floor and Not have a relationship with people off the floor whether it be children or adults. But you have to be able to kind of merge those two aspects of the school and converse with people often and get to know them and have conversations with them and let them know you care. And that involvement, they want to participate in events and they want to support your school. And if there’s any advice I could give, you want success. Every area from retention to event participation, you know, shake more hands, have more conversations, get out there and create relationships with people and you’re going to see everything in your school improve and skyrocket.

Yeah, you know, and the number one criteria for good retention is the level of rapport you have with your students and if they’re kids with their parents. What so many martial arts instructors try to do is they travel to Brazil or they travel somewhere and they try to improve their own technical skillset, thinking that that’s the difference. And while it’s always important to improve the technical skillset that you have, improve the technical skillset of your students, ultimately, if you’re a good person interested in your students, engaged in your students, and the students know that you love them and care about them, then you’ll have good retention. But if they don’t know that and if you’re not actively engaged, know you can be the world champion in three different things and it’s still not going to accomplish what you’re looking to accomplish.

[32:21] Yeah, I agree 100%. It almost sounds a little contradictory, but unfortunately, your level of skill and proficiency probably got to the number one contributing factor too. attention and success of your school?

No. In fact, it’s quite a ways down the list, although it’s, again, there is a direct correlation between those who are really good at, perhaps not as athletes themselves, but are really good at producing high quality students and high quality black belts, and those who do really well. Again, it’s just like anything else. Our role is to be the the teacher not to be the athlete ourselves, although certainly your own athletic skills is useful. The, sure, go back to promoting the events is the, I don’t think you were there, but at our Inner Circle People, Performers meeting last fall in Keystone, is I heard the best presentation I’ve ever heard for promoting an event. And we have the pictures of this, but it was at our Fresno school, and it was one of these deals where they had more friends and buddies than they had capacity in the school.

And they had a portion of the sidewalk, and they had a hanging from the rafters, literally. And it was this kid who was one of the instructors there. And I say kid, he’s probably, I think he’s 19. But he had this great presentation we haven’t recorded. I think we put it up on the website. But it was all about One of the ways you develop your leadership skills is by leading other people to do things that they’re going to enjoy and that are useful for them. And so we had this great presentation about one of the things parents that you want to teach your child how to do is how to be a leader among their friends and their peers. And one of the things they should lead them to do is come down to this because their friends are going to get this benefit, this benefit, and this benefit out of being here plus is going to be a lot of fun.

And I’m butchering it. I can’t do it nearly as well as me, but you get the idea. Sure. But anyway, so between the three locations, about how many active students are you running right now?

375, 410, and about 136, so over eight, nine. Eight or 900. About 900. Yeah, about 900. Yeah, and obviously you’ve gone the route towards multiple schools. If you’re talking to a school owner, they’re trying to figure out, do one big school, do multis, what are the plus and minuses both directions?

Well, you know, I think maybe at the top of the list is making sure that you’re overstaffed in your first school before you try to open your second school. Because if you spread your staff too thin, you could run into trouble. We made sure that we always had enough backup and enough bench strength and had enough consistent instructors that, you know, when it was time to expand, we could move a team of staff over and begin that school with a strong team without having the homeschool suffer. And they don’t necessarily have to have been paid instructors previously. You know, a lot of our staff, if all of our staff, begins as volunteer and then they move up the ladder, you know, part payroll, part time into full time. They have to go through those stages. But, you know, being staffed is key obviously.

You know, beyond that, you know, I think some level of financial stability, you don’t want to put yourself in too big of a hole, you know, where you could present a problem. You know, staffing and stability, I mean, that comes to mind right away. Is there another… angle you’re thinking of?

[36:12] Well, I think part of it is your role as the owner operator. If you’re the guy who wants to be out on the floor every day and directly involved in the minute by minute day to day operation of a school, that’s probably a pretty good indication. that you can both have fewer headaches and make more money with one location, whether it be with 300 active students or 1,000 active students, and be there on the day in and day out environment. And again, it’s probably we’ve talked to already, but if you looked at Greg Sullivan, if you looked at Keith Hasner, that was the decision that both of them made, is they were actively engaged in the day to day operation. running very highly profitable schools, but either didn’t want to be or perhaps knew they weren’t good at managing a lot of people from afar.

Once you go into multiples, your primary skill set is not in the teaching class or doing the thing or any of that. It’s really on orchestrating the marketing and it’s inspiring and training staff so they’ll be able to inspire and train the students. Yeah, absolutely. I have two close friends, one who’s local with me and he runs one school, has a core staff, not looking to expand, successful operation, everything’s running great and that’s the plan he looks to follow. I have another close friend up in Brooklyn, Jiu-Jitsu instructor Gene Dunn. He has five successful Jiu-Jitsu schools. in Brooklyn and they’re two opposite models. They’re totally successful in their individual way. And you know, I’m somewhere in the middle there. You know, I’m at three schools right now and your role does change as an owner operator.

If you’re going to be a single school owner, you can love teaching. You can be out there. You can put the weight of the teaching on your shoulders and you can carry your school. But if you’re going to have multiple schools, your role has to change where you’re more of a, you know, a supervisor and you’re teaching your staff and you’re educating them and having them follow systems and you’re teaching them how to fill that role. You’re teaching them how to run the school. You’re teaching them how to put the weight on their shoulders so it’s their responsibility and not yours because you have to operate that business end of it like you were mentioning from the marketing and the directing. That has to be your supervisor role. That’s how I feel. I would view the two different scenarios.

I remember having that conversation. You know Joyce Anna Maria who’s been on the support for years. And having the conversation with Joyce, she was out here shadowing me for a week one time and she kept saying, you know, asking me about different aspects of the operation and I said, well, that’s not my job, that’s his job, that’s not my job, that’s his job. And eventually at the end of the week, she kind of shook her head and said, is there anything in the organization that you do?

I said, yeah, I watch the numbers like the Hawk and I train the staff for about nine hours a week. And then I show up and kick their ass or pat them on the back, you know, one end or the other. That’s what I have to do. And the probably thing that’s left unsaid is that as the owner of a multi-school operation, you’re always the person orchestrating all of the marketing activity, whether it be internal, activities or the advertising is left to their own devices, no matter how good the staff is. They may take their eye off the ball on the internal promotions or they may just not be aggressive enough on the other stuff. I always preferred the multi-school environment. I always preferred spending money as opposed to having people do stuff when I could get away with it.

[40:11] Because if I could buy TV ads and drive 50 calls into a school, it was easier for me to accomplish that than to get them out and feed the bushes. But you always have to make that balancing act between the two as you’re looking at multiple schools. And I see a lot of people who end up with two or three locations just because they think that’s what comes next. And you really should have. Right, I think some people certainly make that mistake. If they’re looking to expand just because they think it’s going to make them more money, that’s probably one of the worst reasons to expand. You have to be able to provide an opportunity for someone else. You know, I think the biggest goal for me in expanding is giving a career opportunity to my students who’ve been with me for 10, 12, 15 plus years.

To be able to provide that opportunity for them, that’s what makes it a win-win situation, which makes it successful. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, if you… Don’t have bench strength of people. And you said it implicitly, but I’ll say it explicitly. In a multi-school environment, you frankly always are overstaffed. Because one, you have to have bench strength because there’s always going to be somebody who gets married or goes off to college or, you know, God forbid, has an illness or gets hit by a truck. You’ve got to have bench strength. And at the same time, you’ve always got to have a feeder system for those people coming up and you’ve always got to have a career ladder for the ones who have been there. Because if they’re not continually growing sooner or later, they’re going to leave.

Yes. What are some of, in fact, we chewed up a lot of your time so we probably should wrap pretty quickly, but if you had a couple pieces of advice for a school owner who wanted to get the next 90 days strong and really generate a bunch of new students. What would you go about first, second, and third to really get the enrollment flow up?

Well, in order to spike in enrollment right away, if you just look at the process of it, you have to start with a lead. A lead has to come from somewhere. So you can create the lead internally or externally. One of the things that you mentioned, Oliver, have been instrumental with is developing some really solid marketing foundation skills for us to develop those external leads through either direct mail, ads, promotions, cross promotions with businesses, things of that sort. Or we can do the internal lead generation through bring your friends, offering some free parent classes, things of that sort, sibling add-ons, any type of promotion or special you can run inside the Dojo. But lead creation would be number one. And then once you create the lead, then you just have to have a quality system in place for the intro enrollment process.

And from there, you have to let your systems take over from classroom teaching and promotions and upgrades. But I think when someone comes into your school, once the lead’s created and they see that you have a platform for them to learn not only martial arts, but to develop in life, in the Life Skills Program that you’ve kind of taught us through the different leadership opportunities. That’s when they see the value. And once someone sees value, they’re likely to refer you to someone else. Then it becomes that cycle of referrals. And that’s what you’re looking for, a constant referral-based system based on the quality of your program. You know, I think without, you know, going into a complete seminar on, you know, how to create leads, it’s create the internal lead by looking to get a family add-on or get a referral, create the external lead through some of your great marketing ideas.

[44:01] And then when they come into your school, service, for service them, wow them, let them see exactly how you’re going to change that child’s life or their life physically and or mentally. And then, you know, you did your job. From there, the program kind of sells itself and starts to refer itself. Do you agree?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the one thing I would add to that was implicit is that a lot of people are good at getting a bunch of buddies to show up at their school, but ultimately don’t enroll very many. And whether it be something like a birthday party or a or a movie event, whatever it is, just because they show up at your school today doesn’t mean they’re ready to enroll today or this week. And if you don’t, then make sure you’ve collected the name address, phone number, email address, and follow up for a year or two pretty consistently. You far missed most of the opportunity. And I think we all think that if I’m just a great instructor, people will flood through the doors. Well, that frankly doesn’t happen. But if I create referral systems, happy students are delighted to bring their friends, not particularly good at selling their friends on taking martial arts lessons, but good at loading them in the car and bringing them down.

And then it’s up to us to continue to stay in front of them and show them the benefit until they’re ready to move into an activity like what we’re doing. Yeah, I agree. And one of the other things that you’re so great at is constant email updating, keeping on the top of people’s minds through sending them educational emails and reminders and articles and things of that sort. Like you said, they may not be ready to enroll in martial arts when they come to your school, but they may be ready three weeks later, three months later, nine months later. When they decide to make that step, they’re definitely going to choose your school if you’ve been staying kind of in front of them throughout the process. You bet. Hey, we’re about out of time, but you’ve been in inner circle for a while, and of course, you’ve been around the industry quite a bit.

For some of the members who have heard about peak performance in inner circle, what would you tell them?

A lot of them are kind of skeptical or they’re perhaps afraid that it’s not going to do much for them. What are your observations?

The first thing I would say is if you take a look across the country, anybody who’s running a high-level school or multi-schools, they’re all involved in a high-level mastermind paper program with someone like yourself. For the martial arts school owner who’s hesitant to either invest the time or the money because they don’t know if it’s going to work, I would say, well, look what all the top people are doing. and that’s where all the top people are. So when you get yourself in an environment that’s filled with people who are succeeding and achieving and continuing to grow, they have to be on the right track. So if you’re a NABMA member, peak performers has to be your goal. If you’re a peak performer member, Inner Circle has to be your goal, because that’s the next level.

That’s where everybody who’s doing better than you are, that’s where you need to go, because they’re the people who are going to help pull you up to their level. And if you shun that, you kind of spray for yourself. Absolutely. Well, and I think as you know, I in part modeled what we’re doing after what I perceived to be the peak in the 80s of that, which was the EFC board of directors at the time. And of course, it spun out, Greg Sulla and Sibyla Valley and Dave Kovar and Jim Kovar and Jim Mather. Tom Callos and a whole bunch of others of that ilk and as well as what I’ve done many years with Dan Kennedy. But without that combination, I’m reading a book right now on Tiger Woods. It’s called The Big Mass by his coach.

[48:02] And it reminds me, I mean, there’s no such thing as a world-class executive business owner or athlete who doesn’t both surround himself with other winners, avoid losers. and have a constant coach who’s taking an objective look at what they’re doing and giving them feedback on it. Absolutely, and that’s what these programs like Inner Circle, Performers Provide. Is it Dan Kennedy that has the quote?

You’d be familiar with it. The average of the five people you spend the most time with is gonna become what your personal income is gonna be in the next three years. Yeah, I think that’s Brian Tracy, actually. We had him at a Y event. great. He’s also a black belt by the way. He’s a black belt. He showed me at one time he ran a school. But Mike, it’s been great talking to you. I think we’ve chewed up enough of your time today. If you don’t mind, I’d like to do a follow up before long and we can really delve more into the multi-school thing because I know a lot of people either are running multi-schools and perhaps are a little frustrated or they’re thinking about it and are trying to figure out the right way to balance it out.

I’d be happy to. It would be my pleasure. Well, thank you very much. It’s been very enlightening, I think, for everybody listening. Any couple points you might make for everybody to wrap up today?

You know, just continue along following the systems that you know lead to success. Tony Robbins says, success leads clues. So look at the people who are successful. eating, follow what they’re doing, get involved with a mastermind group like Natmas Peak Performance or Inner Circles, and I guarantee you’re going to see yourself go to the next level. Exactly. Well, thank you very much, sir. And with that, we’ll wrap it up for the day. OK, great. Thank you again, sir. Thank you. Bye-bye.