Plan for the bunny, get ready for the sun!

By Darren A. Gaitan


We are now towards the end of the first quarter and April will be here soon. April is a great time to increase your schools revenue and prepare for the summer months. We should be thinking about the month in front of us and we should also be thinking three moves ahead like a good chess player. Everything you do during these next two months will have a major impact on your summer months. New enrollments during this time will affect the success of your renewals in a couple of months. The number of renewals will affect your retention during this time. The success of your renewals will affect the amount of referrals you’ll get during the summer. As you can see everything you do will affect the moves you make down the road. This is why it is so important that you start to pre-frame your summer success now!

First of all, lets talk about what you can do to pre-frame your summer months in April. This is a good time to start calling all of the daycares in your area and book them for a field trip to your school. Daycares are finalizing their summer schedules and they are always looking for places to take their kids. You can have them come to your school for a safety day which is an extended version of a fun night, but the theme is safety. It comes complete with lunch and other fun activities. Some centers will pay a set price for each child, but I provide the event for free and call it a service to the community. This will help build your community image, and it will improve the chances that the daycare center will book the event. Plus, when it’s free they will quickly refer you to other centers in their franchise and that means more students for you. For more details about this event go to the webinar archive in the help center at championsway.com.

Next, you might want to start your summer referral program in April or least start to build it up during your classes. Try to find a big item that will get the entire family involved in referring members to your school and not just an item that appeals to kids. I live in California and I’m close to Disney Land and other six flag parks so raffling off a family package to these places is within a reasonable budget. I just saw on TV that Disney World has a complete family package for around $1,500.00. Here’s how you ensure that this contest will not cost you money. Figure out how many single paid in full contracts you need in order to cover the cost of the trip. For me, a single student will pay $774.00 for their first six months so it will cost me two students to break even. When you’re running a referral contest you should always collect paid in full contracts to cover the cost, it’s a must! The bigger the item the more students you will get. Also, be sure to have a minimum number of participants set for the contest. This will keep the referral contest from breaking you just in case it doesn’t turn out the way you planned. By running a contest of this sort you will get the whole family involved and that means more students for you.

Another event you should start to promote is your summer camps. Schedule them now with your staff and start to promote them at your school. Parents are planning their summer activities so get in early before they schedule something else. You can even start to take pre registration fees and sign ups. This would also be a good time to promote to the entire community. You can send out postcards by mail or email, put flyers up at local businesses, visit schools, set up booths at local businesses, and change your lead boxes to offer a free summer camp membership. Set your goal to have more non-students to attend than your regular students. Making money should be your second priority when you host a summer camp. Your first priority should be to gain new students from these events. I usually find out what daycares charge for their camps and I offer my camp at a lesser price. Parents will shop for price first and quality second. That’s just the financial mentality of parents today.

For the month of April there are a lot of great revenue events you can hold at your school. The first is the annual Easter egg hunt. Be sure to promote this as a community event and invite church groups, daycares, dance centers, gymnastic centers, etc. Schedule it on a Saturday and hold it at your school. You can charge a small fee of $2.00. I would do it for free only if you’re going to hold it as a community event. If you only offer it to your students then you can charge the fee. You want to encourage students to bring friends to this event so here’s how you’re going to do it. Have a special set of eggs reserved for the students who bring in a friend, you can call them the “Wonka Eggs”. Inside of the eggs there are prizes like karate bucks, double prizes, chocolate bunny’s, and your grand prize of the giant Easter basket. The Easter basket can be one you buy at the store or you can make one out of karate items. Have this basket up for display so that it will build excitement for the event. For each friend, your student gets to open one of the special eggs. Make them as big as possible, paint them gold, and have a big display at your front desk. Now for the Easter egg hunt you need a couple of things: You will need to order some items from the oriental trading company, you’ll need candy, a lot of shredded paper, and plastic eggs. Each egg will have numbers inside of them from one to five. Have a table set up with the prizes and number them from one to five. After a child has collected ten eggs they take them to the prize table, open them, and collect one prize from each number category of their eggs. Have special golden eggs hidden that contain prizes like private lessons, pizza parties, birthday parties, free admission for them and five friends to a fun night, and other fun prizes. Here’s the most important part about the golden eggs, have one of them contain a $20.00 bill. Put this on all of your flyers and you’ll see kids go through your hunt three or four times. One last thing, get a bunch of cheap chocolate bunny’s and put a guess pass on them for all of the buddies. When they come in give it to them and invite them back to a mass intro for the following week.

Another good event to hold in April is an inner school tournament. If you are part of an association you can invite a couple of the other schools or if you have colleagues close by then invite them and their students. Give away medals to people who place and certificates to everyone who competes. Have special divisions like musical forms, group forms, team sparring, tag team sparring, gladiator divisions, and other events that are out of the ordinary. If you want to be real innovating then have a special dodge ball division. Get a couple of parent volunteers to run a snack booth which is a great way to fundraise for the upcoming Super Show in Las Vegas. Pass out the division sheets during class and every time a student signs up put their name on the mirrors. I have special karate characters that we put up, one for boys and one for girls. Offer students special discounts for signing up early, multiple events, and for black belt, master, and leadership clubs. Inner school tournaments are a great event for the students and a great way to bring in revenue. If you need an example of the sign up sheet or the karate characters just email me.

A new thing that I’m going to try this year is special karate Easter baskets that I will sell in the pro-shop. Parents go Easter crazy at the stores during April so I would rather have them spend the money at my store. I made up a couple of display baskets that range in price and put them at the front desk. I’m having the parents pre-order them so I don’t have to buy any stock and so that I will only buy what I need. I’m also promoting this as a fundraiser for the Super Show. Kids love baskets that have items that they like and I guarantee that no store is selling karate Easter baskets. I asked some of the parents to help put together some themes and ideas for me. It’s a new idea that I’m trying and I have a couple of twists I’m going to try. One is that I’m trying to set up a couple of booths in front of stores to sell karate birthday party baskets. The money will go to buying Easter meals for families in need. I have some parents that are putting me in contact with church groups who will participate in the fundraiser. It’s a great way to recruit new students and help those in need. The project is a little work to set up but the benefits are fantastic. You will need parents to be deeply involved in this so I suggest you start to put together a list.

These are just a few of the many possibilities for new enrollments and revenue in the month of April. At the same time, planning for the summer should be high on your priority list. I’m sure that by reading this you probably came up with a few ideas of your own and a couple of twists. That’s good! The next step is taking action. If you need any help or feedback I’m only an email away darren@championsway.com  .


Darren A. Gaiten
Associate Consultant
ChampionsWay Inc.
877.774.5425
darren@championsway.com