You Were Charging More in 1970: How to Raise Your Tuition Without Losing Your Nerve
By Grandmaster Jeff Smith — from the Wednesday coaching call, September 2026
I want to give you a number, and I want you to sit with it for a second before you read any further.
In 1970, we were charging $197 a month. By the middle of that decade we were at $247. By 1980 we were at $297.
That was forty-five years ago. And I can tell you, without looking at a single one of your tuition agreements, that some of you reading this are charging less today than we charged in 1980.
What Else Costs What It Cost in 1980?
Think about what has happened to every other price in your life since then.
The Corvette you’d buy today for a hundred thousand dollars — back in the seventies you could have had it for three or five thousand. Houses were nineteen, twenty thousand dollars, and that was a big house. Now they’re a million. Look at what you pay in rent. Look at what you pay your staff. Look at your insurance, your mat, your billing fees, your electric bill.
Everything you buy has gone up. The one thing that hasn’t moved is what you charge for the most valuable thing in your community.
Here’s the part I want you to hear clearly: it is not entirely your fault. It was your master’s fault. It was the system you came up in. You learned what a martial arts program is worth from somebody who was also underpricing, and he learned it from somebody who was underpricing before him. Of everything we teach school owners, this is the single hardest thing for martial artists to get past. We devalue what we teach. We have been doing it for three generations.
It stops being your master’s fault the day you decide to fix it.
The Objection Is Not the Problem
I hear this every week. “Master Smith, a guy told me my pricing was too high. Should I lower my prices?”
No.
You are not expected to sign up everybody who takes an intro. What we are looking for is closing at least fifty percent out of first intros. That means half the people who walk in are going to say no, and some of them are going to say no because of money. That is the job. That is not a signal.
And I’m going to tell you something you have probably already lived through: no matter what price you charge, somebody will say they can’t afford it. Somebody said it at $200. Somebody will say it at $297. Somebody will say it at $397. So if a person is going to tell me no either way, I would much rather hear it at $397 than at $197.
The people who say yes at $397 are the same quality of people who say yes at $197. You just get to keep more of them, and you get to keep them longer, because now you can afford the staff and the space and the marketing that keeps them.
The Stepping-Stone Method
Now, Master Oliver will tell you to grow a backbone and go raise your prices tomorrow. He’s not wrong. Some people have the nerve to do exactly that, and they get it, and they never look back.
But I look at it a little differently, because I have watched too many owners raise their price, get scared by the first two objections, and quietly drop it back down. And here is the rule you cannot break: once you raise it, you can’t lower it back. Not without telling every family who just signed that they overpaid.
So if you are not comfortable yet, do it in steps. Here is exactly how it sounds.
Say you’re at $247 today and you want to get to $347. You don’t jump. You start saying this:
“Our regular tuition is $347. But if you finalize your paperwork today, it’s only $297.”
You say that for a couple of months. And something happens to you while you’re saying it — your mouth gets used to the number $347. It stops feeling like a lie. Then you move up:
“Our regular tuition is $397. But with the intro special we’re running this month, it’s only $347 if you finalize your paperwork today.”
That’s it. That’s the whole technique. You are not going from $200 to $397 overnight. You are climbing one stone at a time until you’re standing where you need to be.
How fast? I want your price point up as soon as possible. But if it takes you three months, fine. Six months, fine. I don’t care if it takes you a year — as long as it went up during that year. What I will not accept is a year going by with the number sitting exactly where it was.
What About the Grandfathered Families?
This comes up on every call. A parent has a child who joined two years ago on a dinosaur rate — call it $229 — and now the older brother wants to start, and the basic program is $347. Mom says it’s not fair.
My son once walked into a car dealership and said, “My dad bought this car from you three years ago for ten thousand less. Can I have that price?” You know what they told him.
Keep the grandfathered student at the old rate. That’s a promise you made and you keep it. But the new enrollment comes in at today’s price. You cannot have any new program priced below your current basic — the moment you do, your student value stops climbing and everything in this article stops working.
Where you have room to be generous is at renewal. If that student upgrades to your Black Belt program later, you can make an accommodation for a family member. And you have a much better card to play than a discount anyway — the family plan. Two people join, everybody else in that household trains free. That is a far bigger yes than knocking fifty dollars off, and it costs you nothing but mat space you were already heating.
One caution: you can only afford a family plan like that if your price point is high enough to carry it. If you’re running a cardio program at $169 or $199, you can’t give away seats against it. Which brings me to the last piece.
Stop Renting Mat Space to Month-to-Month Members
I don’t want anybody occupying space in my school at a low rate. Not because I’m greedy — because a low-rate seat is a seat I can’t give to somebody who will still be there in three years.
Years ago my boxing coach was charging $99 a month and making about five thousand dollars. I told him, Jimmy, you’re charging too little. He said that’s all they’ll pay. I said no — make a program out of it. Stop selling month-to-month. Build a bronze, a silver and a gold: one year, two year, three year, each with its own curriculum.
They signed up. Because people don’t buy a month of exercise. They buy a destination.
Your cardio kickboxing can have a ranking system. It can have belts. It can have an intermediate level with pads and light sparring that people upgrade into, exactly the way a basic student upgrades into Black Belt Club. The gym down the street charges $99 because all they do is have people go up and down for an hour. The moment you have a curriculum and a rank, you are not selling the same product, and you should not be charging the same price.
The Only Question That Matters
Find the number you are comfortable saying out loud, and then say the next one up. That’s the work. Everything else in your business gets easier at a higher price point, and nothing gets easier at a lower one.
You have spent your life becoming a great martial artist. Your training is way up here. Your business is way down here. This is the fastest place to close that gap — and it costs you nothing but nerve.
Grandmaster Jeff Smith is the first PKA World Light-Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion and a seven-time world champion. He earned his black belt under Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee in 1969 and served as Senior Vice President of the Jhoon Rhee Institute from 1970 to 1985. From 1981 to 1991 he coached the WAKO World Champion United States team to ten consecutive world titles. He is Director of Instruction for Mile High Karate and a coach with Martial Arts Wealth Mastery.
