Episode 753 - Running a Martial Arts School is Like Training
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about why Running a Martial Arts School is Like Training.
Running a Martial Arts School is Like Training - Episode 753
Running a school is not as easy as you think. It involves complex tasks dealing with complex individuals. However, running a school has so much in common with martial arts training. In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about why Running a Martial Arts School is Like Training.
After listening to the episode it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey what's happening everybody, welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts radio. Today, Andrew and I are talking about how operating a martial arts school is just like training martial arts, or at the very least has way more similarity than difference. Stick around. You'll see what we mean by that, of course, I am joined by Andrew, you can see him on the screen if you're watching what's going on, Andrew?
Andrew Adams:
Not much. How are you today, Jeremy?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I am great. Andrew Adams, my co-host on many of these episodes, I'm Jeremy Lesniak founder here at whistlekick, where everything we do is in support of traditional Martial Arts. And if you're new to the show, or what we do, or you just figure, you know, like, I haven't listened for a while, what's going on, go to whistlekick.com. It's our online home.
All the things that we do are over there, and it is a steadily growing list. Because we have more people coming in, they're like, hey, what about this, and so we work on it, and we do more stuff. Because we love traditional martial arts. And so that's why we do all the things we do to support you through traditional martial artists of the world.
If you want to support us, you have a few things you could do. The easiest one, is just to share this episode, send it to somebody that you train with, or know that you think would like to hear more, and then maybe the two of you can discuss what we talked about. Remember, nothing we ever put on the show is meant to say this is what is or what you should believe. It's meant to spark thought and discussion. And sometimes we tackle some heavier subjects. And I just want to make sure that we're reinforced there, we're not telling you what to believe, because that would be really arrogant. And that's not a thing that we do.
Of course, other ways you could support us, we have a Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. And if you want to pick something up, a training program or shirt or whatever, at whistlekick.com You can use the code PODCAST15 to save 15%. Andrew’s running a martial arts school is super easy. And everybody should do it. And it takes like five seconds out of your day.
Andrew Adams:
Well, I don't know if I go so far as to say that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
In seconds.
Andrew Adams:
Maybe you get a little closer.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's complex, isn't it? You run a school, and you've run things before, right? Like anybody who's run anything knows that it takes time. And of course, we're not to say that teaching is simple and easy. But if you are an instructor, a paid instructor, you're not running the school. That's only a subset of what running a martial arts school is. Right? Like we're not talking about teaching is easy. We're talking about. We're not talking about anything being easy. You're not talking about this, simply as that's the word I was looking for. We're not talking about this simply as the instructor. Because the majority of martial arts schools out there are smaller. And the instructor is the school owner.
Andrew Adams:
Yep, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And they're doing double duty.
Andrew Adams:
And I would go so far as to say that in regards to running a school, honestly, in my opinion, the teaching part, is the easy part. Like it's everything else that comes with it. That can be difficult.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The teaching part, for the most part, starts at the beginning of class and ends at the end of class, corral, there may be other responsibilities. Teaching is teaching, operating a school operating any business is pretty close to a 24/7 proposition. I've run a number of businesses over the years including a martial arts school, and it can be exhausting.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't. I don't run a school right now. You know, I help my instructor with the school but you know, it's not my school. I have a lot of stuff. Right, currently right now I don't have to deal with it but I have in the past. So absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So you get it? Yeah. Got it. And so, what we're going to talk about today is this notion that operating a martial art school isn't simple or easy. The very skill sets that we learn coming up as martial artists can be applied to operating a martial art school, just as they can be applied to anything.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I think the way we train, there is a lot of synergy between the way we train and schools that are run very well and do very well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. Let's start with some of the personality traits, the skill set, and the toolbox that are relevant in both. Let's talk about the overlap of the Venn diagram. Nobody's starting a martial arts school and it's successful, you know, day one. If it is you, you did work before you called it day one. Day negative 400. Right. Creativity. You can't do the exact same things. You've always done and expected different results. Yep. Yeah. Understands the definition of insanity. What are some of the other things? consistency?
Andrew Adams:
Consistency, both, you know, and in terms of your training, you are not going to get as much if you're only going to class, you know, one day a month or one day every other week, you know, you won't have that steady progress, which is another one that that I would consider.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You have to show up to teach, and you can't change your schedule every six weeks. Because it suits you.
Andrew Adams:
Exactly. I mean, that's not to say, and being there for class all the time, keep just canceling class all the time. You know, it's one thing if it's, I mean, we're in the northeast, so snowstorms happen, you know, I'm not saying a school may have to close on the day, because there's bad snow everywhere. But, you know, if you are constantly canceling class, for whatever reason, that's something that you can't get the class for.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I feel like teaching tonight.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, exactly. It doesn't show consistency for the students. And that would be the same for you. If you were training that's not consistent.
Jeremy Lesniak:
About new information. Learning continues to evolve. Yeah, just as we shouldn't be striving to be better martial artists, martial arts school owners should be striving to be a better school and developing new skill sets around business ownership. There's a kind of a half-joke cliche observation in the martial arts world that most martial arts school owners are bad business people. We've probably all heard that said, No. I don't know if I would say most but certainly a significant portion. So it's not a trivial number of them. And I think it's because they don't actually want to own a business.
Andrew Adams:
Well, and I think, I don't know that it's that they don't want to own a business. And maybe you're correct, that might be true. But I think a lot of it goes down to always doing what you've always done. And that change is hard. But when you take that mindset from running your business, over to how you train, you know, if you go into class and teach every single class, the exact same thing, every single class, the students will get better. Eventually, they will get better at sticking around the things that you teach. But they're only going to know those things. And I don't know any instructor that does this, I'm just using this as an analogy. But instead, you go to class, and every class, you teach something different, you know, maybe your warmup is the same, but what you're teaching changes and evolves because there's other stuff to learn. If you run your business this one way, and you always run it that way, and you don't ever look at anything else. I think that can be a problem, notice how I said it shouldn't be a problem. Sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, when I say that there is a chunk of martial arts school owners that don't want to be school owners. I mean, that many of them are the ones that I'm talking about, let's say I just want to teach and construct a framework where they get to teach. Maybe they make a little bit of money teaching, but they don't want to do the rest. Yeah, okay. They want to care about marketing, they don't want to worry about fire, you know, tax filings, they don't want to worry about ordering equipment, they don't care about any of that. They just want to teach. Okay, that's not only a business. Yeah, yeah, I get it, the teaching part is the best part. But as an aside, the stronger your business, the more people you will reach, the more people that you'll have to teach the veteran instructor you will get the more all those things that you say you want, can happen. Yep. Keep that in mind. Yeah. And again, with training, maybe there's an tn running your school, maybe there's something that you're not as good at, whether it's martial art wise.
Andrew Adams:
I happen to know, there's one form that I've just I know, I'm not very good at it. And so, you know, I let people know when I'm teaching that particular forum like you know, it's not my best form like I mean, I've to help you with the moves because you're you're working on it, but like this is not my The Best Thing and Thing I'm best that there's nothing wrong with as a school are recognizing, you know, what, there's one aspect of running the school that I'm not good at, and maybe there's someone else that would that would be better at it than
Jeremy Lesniak:
What else? We started to take some tangents there. I want to make sure we hit everything we talked about. Persistence, consistency, creativity. How about attention to detail?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, being diligent about little things.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think that's so important. You know, as we get better as martial artists, we start to refine smaller and smaller details, okay, the toes are pointed here, they need to be pointed, you know, 15 degrees over here, or this needs to move out a little bit of rotation in this hand, don't look here, we'll get right like details that if we tried to give them too, don't ever try to give super details to like brand new students, right?
When you're learning something, we've got to learn the macro before we get down to the micro. But as we progress, we recognize “Hey, there are all these little refinements that come in”. As a business owner, here's, here's the one that most schools are probably going to be familiar with keeping things clean.
It's one thing to make sure the floors are swept, it's another to make sure that it's mopped periodically, it's another to make sure that the bathroom is clean. Or that you know, the dust bunnies behind the chairs are swept up, right. Like there's, there's finer and finer detail. And just as learning those nuances in your forms, your techniques, et cetera, showcase you as a better caliber martial artist.
So does attention to detail showcase you as a better caliber business owner. Yeah, doesn't necessarily mean you're doing all of it yourself. But it does need to get done to make that progress. Yeah, imagine somebody coming in, and they're evaluating your school to train there. And they go and they sit down, and they noticed that, you know, underneath the chairs are gross. And they go to get a drink of water, and there are no cups. And they use the bathroom and the bathroom is gross. I'm not coming back.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I mean, it's like when you go for a job interview, you dress, you should theoretically be dressing nice, right? You want to show your potential employer, your best side, it's the same when you have a potential client, whether it be a student or parent, come in the door. And then the other thing is, once they are there, good, clear communication. which holds true when you're training.
So what if I'm teaching someone how to do something? And I just say, move your foot? Okay, well, my foot, which way does your foot move that way? Well, we move it to the right, that's better communication, you know, you know, your arm is in the wrong place. Okay, well, how is it in the wrong place? Right?
Clear communication is needed when you're training, what you're learning as a student. And when you are a school owner, you have to have really good communication skills. Whether it's coming from you, or from someone that you delegate to do communication for your business, you have to be able to give clear communication to your students, and parents of students so that they know what's going on with the school.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Most problems in any business originate back to communication.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, that does not surprise me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've known a number of businesses. I've consulted with businesses for a very long time. And while there is a small excerpt of problems that originate from people just being jerks, it's usually not that they're being a jerk. In fact, 90 plus percent attracts back to communication. What that student left your school because they were unhappy about something that they didn't tell you about that you could have corrected. Or you were pushing them in a way that they weren't comfortable.
If you didn't tell them why you were doing it. They didn't tell you they were uncomfortable. The parent that sits down and they see you know, this place is filthy. They leave and you reach out to them and you say hey, you know, what did you think? Oh, it's not for us, is it? I'm really concerned that your space seems filthy.
What's going on with that? But you didn't even realize because you never sit in those chairs. Yeah, no one told you. Right. It can all be tracked back to communication, usually lack of communication. Yeah. Okay. So let's review persistence, consistency, diligence, communication, creativity.
Andrew Adams:
Let's talk about the things that it's not. Okay. Great gimmicks. Or trickery.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, new whistlekick offering. Open a martial arts school and have 500 students in 12 months.
Andrew Adams:
If only it were that easy,
Jeremy Lesniak:
Just pay us however much we would need to pay 500 people to come take your classes for us a little bit more.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. It doesn't work. That way. There is no one size fits all.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Who finds a gimmick because different people have different definitions of what a gimmick is? Some of the things that some schools weren't very, to a very effective result. Others would look at and say that feels gimmicky to me. I think a gimmick is anything that is inauthentic to how you operate. I may have a school that is very simple, what someone called very classic or traditional, you know, two nights a week, and we're doing this and this, and very few kids in the kids class, it's primarily adults.
And you know, there, maybe it's a karate school and there there are, you know, conditioning things mica water all over the place, right. Like, you know, that type of school, and I'm talking about, and I suspect a lot of people watching or listening to as well, if that school, came out and and offered a black belt club with a fancy uniform with, you know, a bunch of colors on it, and you know, demo team and stuff like that. It would seem authentic. Yeah, it would be somewhat of a gimmick. It wouldn't be right. And how do you know it's a gimmick?
Whereas I know plenty of schools, who have demo teams, and it's a wonderful recruitment, retention strategy. And they have different color uniforms. Sometimes it's because of programs they're in or rank that they hold or other reasons. And it works great for them. And nobody bats an eye because it's part of their culture. In fact, in some of those same schools, if people showed up and you asked them to do conditioning drills, or wore all white uniforms, they'd raise their eyebrows. Oh, really? That doesn't doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. So now that we've got that out of the way, are there any things that are universally gimmicky?
Andrew Adams:
Something runs to my brain, but I don't know that I've not yet determined whether it's a gimmicky thing. But I have seen schools that will do like parents night out or a date night and drop your kid off. And I just, I feel like that turns more into, we're gonna babysit your child while you go have a date with your significant other. And it's not a karate class, or, or a martial art class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I think most of the schools that do that would fully acknowledge that it's not some of them do it as revenue. Yeah. And they open it up to the community, others do it, as I think there's something important to talk about here. And others do it as an exclusive benefit of being part of that school. And I think that there's value there in potentially recruiting students. And there's also value in the culture of a school with people hanging out.
And be in France, guys, you know, so it couldn't be done in a gimmicky way. Is it necessarily gimmicky? And again, it comes down to what is the culture of that school? What is an authentic offering? So to sum it all up there, be authentic. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Andrew Adams:
And I guess I could see how it could come across as gimmicky but I see the reasons for it to not be considered.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you're a school. I know. I know your school. I know how your school operates. If your school all of a sudden had a Parents Night Out this coming weekend, I'd really go? That would surprise me. That's where it's, oh, is this being authentic? Okay, what else? How else is it not? Like our training? Because, you know, we didn't really say but I think everybody understands. Training is not gimmicky.
You can look for shortcuts, you can look for these secret ways to train and it just doesn't work. You see this with a lot of, quote, keyboard warriors. I'm going to take these elements of this style and these elements of this style and these elements of this style and then I'm gonna be the best thing ever. And the irony is they've trained maybe six months in one thing that is none of those 10 years ago.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yeah. So there's no shortcuts. Is there? Is there any I'm trying to think of training and what it isn't?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, here's one. The more committed you are, the better the results. That's not, we're going back to the ways that aren't like, yeah, the more committed you are to your training, the more committed you are to operating a school. The more time you put in, the more energy you put in. The more passionate you are, the more you're seeking out how to improve, the more all those things will happen.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, absolutely. Running your school is an afterthought. And I think I want to be clear here, and I think I think I would speak for you too. We're not talking about quitting your day job and putting 100% of your effort into the role necessarily.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But it's not a requirement.
Andrew Adams:
No, no. You know, there are a ton of school owners who have regular day jobs and they teach in the afternoon, evening, and that's fine. But if you're like, oh, shoot, I gotta go. I gotta go teach like if, if you're only putting half of your heart into running your school, that's not going to be great. And the same is true. If you're training if you're like, oh, six, I guess I guess I go to class today, I guess I don't know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What is the most realistic example I can offer? And this is probably the one thing that I'm going to say today, that is going to make some people unhappy. In the example you're talking about the school owner, likely the only instructor has a full time job. And also teaches maybe afternoons evenings, weekends. Yeah. If it is not uncommon for that person to show up late to their own classes because of their day job. Everybody sees that? Yeah. Oh, but Jeremy takes, you know, sometimes starts your classes 30 minutes later. Yeah, create more of a buffer. For you to show up late to your own class tells people it is not a priority. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if that just triggered you. I'd encourage you to think about why. Probably because your classes are important. And you're probably frustrated that you can't give them more time. How do you do that?
Andrew Adams:
Right. Yeah, that's a good point.
Jeremy Lesniak:
There's nobody ever said classes have to start on, you know, at the hour and a half hour. Classes could start it. quarter off. Yeah. quarter after 10. After? It's okay. World War just.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, absolutely. Our kids' class starts at 5:45.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And did anyone come to you and say, Well, why don't you start at 5:30? Or 6? Have they not been able to wrap their heads around that? Right? Like, it's not that hard. But if you were to start it at 530 wouldn't work? That's why you're starting at 5:45.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So what else did we get? Sometimes I'm thinking of lessons I've learned in my own training. Ah, here's one, sometimes taking a big step back and looking at things in a different way. Whether that's solo, or with a fresh set of eyes can be really valuable.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, absolutely. I think. Can a person train on their own with no help from anybody else? Yes, can it be done? Absolutely. But it's much harder to make progress that way. Can you run a business 100% By yourself with no outside external help in any way, shape or form? Yes, absolutely. You can. But having someone else to look at things from a different perspective can absolutely help.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The majority of what I provide in my consulting role to martial arts and non martial arts businesses, is that alternate perspective. Yeah, the thing that everything is rooted in, and maybe you operate a school and you have negative dollars, I know schools that run at a loss just because they're so passionate about what they do. Some of these schools even become nonprofits and fundraise to, to cover the gap and the instructor is, you know, the owner doesn't pay themselves. That's fine. I'm not saying that. That's the wrong way to handle it. But there are free ways you could do this.
Find somebody else who has a small school, and maybe there's trade classes once in a while. Maybe you have to because that person wants you to teach classes. Maybe you have a weekly or monthly call you get on the phone and and say, Hey, here's the thing I'm struggling with, what do you think there's so many ways to handle this, if you want to just as the same way, if you're struggling with a form, or you're struggling with an element of your sparring or your self-defense, there are so many resources available to you, that require just a little bit of desire and time. If you're not solving the problem, it says, either you don't know about the problem, or you don't want to solve it. There's really only two options.
Yeah, that's a great point. So if you think about if anybody out there is a school owner, and they have a problem, and they're looking for what can I do with this? We just laid out a whole bunch of things you can do, you can talk to people, you can talk to your contemporaries because I'm not aware of anywhere in the world that doesn't have other, you know, there has just one martial art school, you know, maybe you've got to drive 30 minutes to get to another one. But they're all over the place. Even in tiny little Vermont.
We've got them all over the place. Exactly. Right. So they're here. I imagine they're everywhere. Oh, here's another way that they're similar. Don't badmouth people in the class. And recognize that there is an appropriate time and place for criticism. If I'm a, you know, senior student, and I turned to, you know, a younger student, younger in terms of rank, not necessarily age, and I tear him a new one in the middle of class, I'm probably going to get something some kind of disciplinary action because that's not appropriate.
Just as if I'm a school owner, I should not badmouth my students or their families or so any, you know, something like that. To others. Yeah, yep. I've known school owners who have done this, their schools did not last.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. And I think you could also take it a step further and badmouth other schools as well as a school owner. Because there's no reason that there's no benefit. I mean, I would love to know the benefit of doing that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm letting them know that this other school isn't as good and that, you know if they were to decide to leave here and go there, they wouldn't have as good of an experience. So I'm trying to keep them from making a bad decision, Andrew? Yeah. They'd figure that out on their own. You don't need to tell them. That's the only reason they would consider going to the other schools because you've left something open for them. They're not having a great time.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. But the same is true with your training. You know, I'm not a student, I'm not going to badmouth other students, as an instructor at this school. I'm not going to badmouth other instructors of other schools.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why bother? Yep. Focus on you. Every bit of energy you throw directly elsewhere is the energy you could have directed on what you actually have control and influence over.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, so we've got a pretty good list. Is there anything we're missing?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I know, I think actually, that took us a lot deeper into the conversation than I expected. I didn't think we'd go that long.
Andrew Adams:
And if you're listening or watching, and you think of something that we've missed, tell us.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'd love to hear. Absolutely. And as always said at the top, if you don't like what we say. It's not that we're not telling you what to think. We're telling you our beliefs and we're hopeful that it will inspire thought and conversation for you. And if you feel strongly about something, let us know. You know, you can email us, you know, Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, Jeremy@whistlekick.com You know, we're there. And sometimes we have conversations about episodes. Not all often, not always, but sometimes on Facebook, whistlekick Martial Arts Radio Behind The Scenes.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. All right. I think that's it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. All right. Our social media is @whistlekick, remember, you can support us in a whole bunch of ways, but our favorite ones are Patreon and the discount code PODCAST15. But we've also got the family page whistlekick.com/family And something you got to type in but if you do, now, there's the Patreon, patreon.com/live. Okay, but if you do type in whistle kake.com/family It's kind of like a mini Patreon. I update it weekly, and there's a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff as well as the whole list of all the things you can do to help us out. Some of them are free, some will take some time. So one thing somebody, but we give you options, right? Training programs are available with ok.com. If you're interested, we just rolled out an updated version of the FLEX program that's up to version 1.3. And if you're interested in having me come out to your school for a seminar, reach out, and we can make that happen. All right, until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.