I’ve just been listening to the audiotapes from my boot camp, “The Summit of Martial Arts Millionaires.” As I sit here listening to over 22 hours of tapes, I am blown away by the incredible content.
As I facilitated this discussion of how to most effectively run multiple locations, one theme surfaced early: Most school owners who want to do multiple schools — shouldn’t!
Before you even consider opening a second location, ask yourself some penetrating questions:
Why do I want another location?
Is your motivation to make more money, have more students, or is it to provide a career path for very competent staff members who are being stifled in the current situation? The only real justification is that you are busting at the seams with quality staff and want to provide a career path for them.
If you want to make more money or have more students, you can do that by growing your existing school. I know of single school locations with over 1,000 active students and know of at least one school that NETS $500,000 per year. If you haven’t exceeded those numbers, you probably haven’t maxed out your current location.
Am I capable of managing multiple locations?
Step back and look at your current school operation. Is it systems driven or purely personality driven? What happens when you take a week off? (Do you ever?) When you are gone, do things just keep clicking along, or does your operation grind to a halt until you get back and make things happen?
Document, organize and systematize your existing school. Train your staff. Teach them to follow processes that have been proven while striving for the monthly goals of your school.
Is my existing staff focused on our growth objectives?
Do you have a strong team that implements well-developed systems and strives to hit your growth objectives? If not, get to work on sharing the numbers for the school and creating a team that is focused on your goals rather than carrying all of the weight yourself.
If your staff members don’t know active count, dropout rate, enrollments, renewals, gross, and other significant numbers, how can they effectively contribute? I would never have an instructor who wasn’t focused on the active count and who didn’t know how many people dropped out, who they were, how many enrollments we added and how many students upgraded or renewed in a given period. I would never have a program director who was not intimately aware of intro flow, conversion ratios-to-enrollment, gross revenue and renewal rates.
Am I capable of managing a large staff?
Many school owners are excellent motivators and salespeople with students, but aren’t good at teaching employees those same traits. Once you go from a single school operator to a multiple school operator, you give up the role of “doer” and moveto the role of trainer and supervisor.
It’s very important that you evaluate your interests, temperament and perspective to determine if people management and staff development is a strength that you have developed.
