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[Hock]

In the 1990's I was heading to San Antonio for a seminar and decided I would stop in a small TX city near Glenn Rose where Michael Evans had a school and do a seminar there.
The downtown area was old and almost abandoned. I knew it would not be much of a seminar but I was passing through and at least would see Michael again. He'd been a regular travel-in student since about 1992 and he had worked at the Glenn Rose nuke plant. We had done some after-hours seminars right at the nuke plant. Built in crowd at the plant gym. This was our first shot at doing a little something at his school.

I showed up to find a older building on an older downtown "country" side street. Before the seminar, people started showing up. No one I recalled from the plant. At kick off time there were nearly THIRTY people, mostly guys and all in great shape. From the looks of things, I wouldn't have guessed thirty people lived around there! Still, the school drew from the local geography. (Evans also ran a primitive fitness room with gear in the back.)

I tell this story to say that an element of school business success is geographic. After some basic ABCs - the things these books and groups tell you to do, there is a local mojo, a personality to the geography that makes or breaks you.

You might not be doing anything wrong and be having a hard time, or as we have seen and known people who seem to do everything wrong and still they succeed.

I know a guy who tried to run a school in San Fransisco. Couldn't. Moved to Wyoming and in one year opened two successful schools. Location. location. Location. Same methods.

Hock

[Keith Miller]

Also...driveby traffic to fill your club is now a thing of the past with the advent of the internet.

I would say that 7 out of 10 first lessons or visitors come from internet leads. The other 3 come from referrals...which cost nothing. My goal is to turn that equation upside down, btw.

With all of my business coming from either online or word of mouth advertising, I can save a grip of money every month by not paying for retail space.

Think about it.

Also...take the time to decide what your school's swagger is. We have developed a reputation as a gym where there is tough training, and people actually learn to fight. Our kickboxing class is a real kickboxing workout minus sparring, our little kids spar weekly with boxing gloves and headgear (kickboxing not point sparring) and grappling to a tapout. Our MMA program is real MMA not Jiu-Jitsu with gloves on...etc.

We attract the type of people we want, because people in the know know what we do. That might not be "Location, Location, Location" per say...but it attracts the fish we are looking for or higher quality leads.

[Kelly Knight]

Thanks Hock, for creating this topic!

My school is in a small town with a population well under 4000. We're on a busy street, with very, VERY little walk-by. We are profitable.

Previously, I taught at a school in a bigger town (pop. ~9000), located right on a fairly busy street that was near a freeway entrance. The rent was high, but we had 150-200 students. Profits, after all was said and done, were very similar (with far fewer members).

My local competitors are, to me,  a study in the discussion of "location, location, location".

Example #1: TKD/BJJ School
Owned by two brothers since 1996, their current location is right next to a McDonald's on a very busy 4 lane street. I don't know exactly what their current membership is, but my guess is somewhere between 150-200. I do know that that location is very high rent, comparatively. So, my assumption is more students (and higher membership fees with long-term contracts), but higher rent and running costs. Very little print advertising.

Example #2: TKD School
Owned by an individual since 1997, their current location is tucked away in a business park. You would never just stumble across them. In fact, they have very little signage and it's even difficult to find the entrance! They used to have a second location, on a busy 6 lane road, near a Target, large mall and lots of shopping. They seem to have closed that location, I don't know why. My guess is that they have a current membership around 100. He does a lot of print advertising. Low running costs, low rent, lots of money pumped into advertising.

My best guess is that both schools actually bottom line profit similarly. I have heard (and experienced) this story over and over ... "you've got to have a good location!" Maybe, but I don't see the proof that location is the only key to sustainability and growth. And I don't see anybody making wildly larger profits without multiple locations and staff (and costs). If you do your homework and have a business plan in place before you open your doors, you will be fine no matter where your location is. Besides, being right next to a McD's is not necessarily the best fit for everybody. I'm not drinking that cup of Koolaid, thanks.

Just my two cents!

Kelly Knight

Reference 5 Business Bios for more examples of both sides of this issue.

[Hock]

It is not unusual for the dedicated "Kuraty" guy to open a school in the dirt poor place they can find and afford and they go at it with zero idea about business at all. And it is always in the dead parts of town. Suddenly they find themselves cleaning dirty bathrooms.

But I have cut my martial arts teeth working out in low-class, low-rent places like these, (but they were all pre-kid, pre-parent era.) And I relate to this.

I have seen this work! I have been to karate schools all over since the 70s and many times a year since 1996. "Location" has many interesting stories, successes and failures. Just like a fight, it is HIGHLY situational.

Leasing and rental rules have changed. What landlords use to fix? They don't anymore and it becomes your problem. The water heater. The roof. The air conditioner. Leaks.

I am shocked to see in my city, a burb of Dallas, like 3 new TaeKwonDo schools open up, in a 4 square mile area where about 3 TKDs already existed! That's a head scratcher to me. THREE of these are virtually on the small intersection in mall strip centers. They could shoot each other's windows out with a .22 rifle. I'll see how that works out.

But like the latest TARP debate - "it saved the country! No telling what would have happened without it?" -  How can you prove that? It is impossible to prove or disprove what a non-frontage school would have done at a frontage location. It is completely situational of that roadway and the people who drive it.

One quick "bio." For a year in the 1990s I taught Wednesday nights only, three hour clinics in a smaller fitness gym in Lewisville, TX. The gym was just west of Interstate 35. The gym's front faced south and was not visible from the major highway. BUT the building was. The side of the building! I got with the new owner and told him that I'd heard about one zillion people run up and down the interstate in a short period of time. And at rush hour, I35 was deadlocked. Bumper to bumper. Like a parking lot. I told him we needed a sign on that blank wall. Because slow traffic people would sit there and see it. Not regular fast traffic but the slow traffic.

We bought a banner that read...

"Self Defense! Gym!"

...and I hung it one morning in the far upper left of the brick building. Within two months my attendance and gym membership increased directly from that "semi-frontage" sign.

I essentially rented a room in that gym. $100 a month for a total of 12 hours a month. I stored nothing there. I carried gear in with giant bags each night. Three hours every Wednesday night. My total rent investment. I took in $3,000 to $4,000 a month. BUT, but, but...my situation was unique. I already had a HUGE student base in Texas and Oklahoma from about 6 years of work "in the trenches." You have to remember I became a semi-"name" in the 1990s, a time ripe for such things to happen.

Each Wednesday was a 3-hour mini-theme.
   Unarmed.
   Knife.
   PAC/Filipino.
   Stick.
   (I couldn't do "gun" long term in a fitness center room. I did teach at the Dallas Gun
      Club once a weeknight too. Rented space there too.)

For example, one Wednesday a month I would do PAC/Filipino and all those folks would drive in from as far as Lawton, OK to Austin, TX! Yeah! It became a gathering event for a theme topic. Some guys came to two of the themes. Some guys like Barnhart and the Mad Professor Jeff Allen and Jason Gutierrez and others drove the 40 minutes from Denton and attended all four a month. Jeff Rawhide Laun was running his own school in another city and could get there once a month. This was a very unique formula. Highly situational. At perhaps a unique time?  We did in-depth core material slowly and surely. In progression order. Better than weekend seminars.

THEN!? I had to move to northern Georgia, southern TN area...new plans...

Anyway that is a bit more business bio that is unique and situational.

Hock

[Kelly Knight]

I'd read about it, but didn't believe it. How is it possible that train tracks are psychological barriers? What student wouldn't cross tracks to come to my school over another? I just couldn't believe that hogwash. Until the day I opened my own school...

Well, it's true!

There is another martial arts school that is approximately a mile and a half away from mine, located on the other side of railroad tracks. Neither side is the "bad side of town".

But, my students would never go there and their students would never come here.

So, the myth of the tracks is true. Make sure you pay attention to where or if there are some in the area that you wish to open your martial arts school in. Don't bother adding the "other" side in to your population calculations! Can you survive without them? You'd better be prepared!

Kelly Knight

[Black Knife]

Also...driveby traffic to fill your club is now a thing of the past with the advent of the internet.

I would say that 7 out of 10 first lessons or visitors come from internet leads. The other 3 come from referrals...which cost nothing. My goal is to turn that equation upside down, btw.

With all of my business coming from either online or word of mouth advertising, I can save a grip of money every month by not paying for retail space.

Think about it.

Also...take the time to decide what your school's swagger is. We have developed a reputation as a gym where there is tough training, and people actually learn to fight. Our kickboxing class is a real kickboxing workout minus sparring, our little kids spar weekly with boxing gloves and headgear (kickboxing not point sparring) and grappling to a tapout. Our MMA program is real MMA not Jiu-Jitsu with gloves on...etc.

We attract the type of people we want, because people in the know know what we do. That might not be "Location, Location, Location" per say...but it attracts the fish we are looking for or higher quality leads.

What do you consider real MMA........and real kickboxing without sparring..Huh?

[Kelly Knight]

A poor man takes advantage of the downturn in real estate and buys a mansion for pennies on the dollar. He moves his entire family in and they are loving it.

Then the utilities roll in...tens, hundreds, thousands of dollars every month! Then the winter hits. He runs around, trying to seal up every crevice, gap and cranny. He tapes plastic over the windows. Finally, he tries to shut off large parts of the house and now his family is living in a space the size of an efficiency apartment.

Why didn't he take this into consideration before he bought the house?

MABOs, don't fall into the trap of lots of space. Evaluate what you need and reconsider, remeasure, think again. You don't need an office. You don't need a HUGE training area. You don't need full service facilities for 50, 100, even 200 members. You need a waiting room/area (if you have waiting parents). You need a reasonable training area. You need at least one bathroom. You need some place to store stuff. That's it! And, depending on who, what and how you teach, you may not even need all of that.

When we looked for space, we decided that we didn't want more than 2000 square feet. We chose a location that was 3/4 underground. The internal temp never drops below 60 in the dead of winter and never goes over 80 in the heat of summer, without ever having touched the thermostat.

Don't make the mistake that the poor man did. Or you might become one.

Kelly Knight

[arnold]

Open next door to a bar and a whore house near a Marine base.....