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[Hock]

Franchising

No, I do not franchise.
You make your way into the world.

The business world says that 20% of USA business is franchise-based. Look at the restaurant chains and the Holiday Inn! But martial business is different in many ways than buying a hamburger.

Most successful MA franchise involve kids as a student base. The rest are like ticking time bombs with constant bail-outs of instructors who cannot pay franchise fees.

Curiously enough, there have been and are instructors who try to sub-franchise the ME! / the SF Congress from their own region, by making them SFC instructors and sending them out in their region to teach, to tithe back...to them.

Really? How can this work, when I do not do it? Their franchise students leave them quickly, go right around them and straight to free me.

If they want to take a shot at franchising? Why not! But, I suggest they change the name and start their own original and unique name and franchise attempt? (95% of them fail because franchising sucks) or be prepared to be jumped like checkerboard piece (not even chess). Please leave me and the SFC out of your franchise plans. If you persist? It just not going to work. I am not going to tell you not to try, not my style, just warn you.

Water seeks its own level.

It is hard for a son to recreate a SFC franchise, when grandpa himself has no franchise. The grandchildren just go to grandpa.

Pappy Hock

[Hock]

I get all over the world and interface with thousands of students and their systems. From what they tell me...some of the most expensive franchises-like operations are-

Los Angeles Krav Maga (whew! tumbling off the market place, world-wide)

Blaurs SPEAR (very, very hard to stay with business-wise I am told. Tony makes good, popular suits)

Tom Patares CDT (silly, squeezy stuff that is almost completely gone now and becoming LRT. Same over- expensive hook, different three letters. I am told from folks in NJ it is his old combat hapkido.)

Martial Art School management/guidance companies (some signing contracts to get $1,000 a month for ten years from school owners! This makes me sick to my stomach to think about.)

<<<>>>

Franchises need that "50 new suckers a year" to seduce in and keep going while the one-and-two year vets bail out the other end. Sure, some stay, but for a variety of reasons you need to investigate. They will always been around. But before you jump into something, try to check the attrition rates. This is very hard to research.

I always imagine the big, fat grandmasters sitting back in lounge chairs, taking your profit like a giant, sucking tap root. Then, I see the poor instructors arguing with their spouse at home about trying to make the school electric or water bill, struggling to get by. Sound familiar?

Before you sign their dotted line? Investigate, investigate, investigate.

With me?
There is no such dotted line.
Hock


 

[Hock]

In fact!

If you train with me or us?
I don't care if you never take a test or become an instructor.
You can just train for knowledge.

Hock

[Hock]

June 2007 Update

Take another good look around at those martial systems heavy on tithings and franchising.
Two things are happening.

Point 1) They are crashing all around you (L.A. Krav Maga for one)  In another large, multi system operation, a friend of mine had to file bankruptcy to escape his $1,000 a month contract commitment.

Point 2) They are internally school-to-school, rules "fudging." In otherwords the high fees you are paying to your headquarters? Your neighbor school is probably not paying them. These headquarters are making deals, deals, deals to keep escaping/dropping school and instructors from leaving.

Hock