Martial Arts Teachers - Managing Your Business Time

By Lee Mainprize
http://www.mainstructor.com

Why do some school owners always seem to be busy, work really hard but never seem to achieve what they deserve from their martial arts business?

Well many years ago I was one of those people until I realized I needed to improve the results I was getting from the effort I was putting in.

I found that I was putting too much of my time into tasks that had little effect on the results my martial arts school was producing.

To make it simple there are only two elements of your school you really have the think about, these are:

1. Retaining your Existing Members
2. Finding New Members to Grow

Anything outside of this will simply have little effect on your business. It’s simple. If you can’t keep students you won’t grow and if you can’t attract new students you can’t grow either.

So each day ask yourself, “what am I going to do to today to retain my members,” and “what am I going to do today to find a new one.” Anything outside of these must be put to the back of the pile until you have done all activities to satisfy these two questions. Yes owning a martial arts school means that you will often abounded by a multitude of tasks! Book keeping, tax returns, lease agreements etc. but the key is to get these done after the two fundamentals; this requires some discipline and keeping a clear head on your part and not leaving these until the last minute.

So let’s look at some of the activities which fall within the two areas starting with:

Retention:

• Planning your lessons, new drills, improving your curriculum, delivering fantastic classes
  
• Tracking student attendance, calling students, sending postcards
  
• Planning special events, notice board up to date, newsletter out on time
  
• Ordering belts in time for presentations, retail equipment in on time
  
• Keeping your facilities spotless, service calls to new enrollments, student survey
  
• Following through on what you told a student you would do
  
• Developing yourself by training, reading, networking and attending seminars and secondly
  

Martial Arts Marketing:

• Planning your marketing for the month or quarter, printing out posters and flyers
  
• Managing your lead boxes, distributing flyers, putting up posters
  
• Handing out trial passes, contacting old students and missed sales
  
• Visiting schools to speak with a head teacher or to do a talk
  
• Host a bring a friend event, free self defense clinic
  
• Calling students to arrange birthday parties
  
• Teaching great classes to develop raving fans, creating more referrals

I am sure you can think of a lot more yourself to add to the lists. Some activities will work both areas which is even better. For example, hosting a referral event will not only excite your existing members but provide you with some new leads too. A great use of your time!
This is a fundamental area to master unless you want to be a busy fool in the martial arts business— people who equate any form of hard work as producing success and results. At the beginning of each day make at list and then prioritize, let’s put it to the test for 30 days and commit to doing this daily and see what kind of results you achieve. If you have a team of instructors and instructors in training, spend time coaching these people these important skills too.

A couple of programs I would highly recommend you purchasing are How to Master your Time by Brian Tracy and Put First Things First by Stephen Covey.

Lee Mainprize is a martial arts business and marketing expert visit http://www.MAinstructor.com for martial arts teachers resources.