Episode 859 - Opening a Martial Art School: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk in detail about Jeremy’s new school opening.
Opening a Martial Art School: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Episode 859
Andrew sits down with Jeremy on a few different occasions to talk about how he is feeling about opening his new martial arts school, Central Vermont Martial Arts. They then sit down and talk about how the opening went, and how it has been going for the last month. A great discussion on what it’s like to open a new school and get a peek into how Jeremy was feeling and thinking as it was happening.
Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:00.589)
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome, this is Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And on today's episode, we're chronicling my opening of the first martial arts school of my own in 20 years. Andrew and I are gonna talk about that. This is gonna happen in several parts. We're gonna put it together. You're gonna get to hear or watch the whole thing as one, but us together, this is gonna happen in pieces.
Shout out, thank you as always to Andrew for your support and coming on the show and all the work that you do behind the scenes. And if you have a great guest suggestion, best thing to do is go to whistlekickmarchalarchradio.com, fill out the guest form. You can also use that for a topic suggestion. But if you've got feedback, maybe something a little more direct, you're welcome to reach out to Andrew or I, andrewwhistlekick.com, Jeremy at whistlekick.com, or social media is at whistlekick. And if you want to support us...
Best thing to do, go to whistlekick.com, check out all the things that we've got going on, find something that engages you, and while you're there, maybe pick up something in the store and save 15% of the code of podcast, one five.
Jeremy (01:06.649)
You ready? Let's talk about this.
Andrew (01:09.237)
I think so.
Jeremy (01:10.989)
So as we're recording this, this is just shy of 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. And tomorrow, Wednesday, at 4 p.m., my martial arts school opens.
Andrew (01:17.377)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew (01:22.77)
Yep. You will be holding your first classes in a number of years. Not you have, you used to have a school before and it's not like you haven't taught since then and now you've taught seminars all over. Yeah.
Jeremy (01:35.033)
Thankfully, oh man, do you know how terrified I would be if I had not been consistently teaching between seminars and Events and stuff. Oh, I'd be terrified Yeah, I have not had my own students in 20 years I opened that school when I came out of college in fall of 2001 and Closed it about two years later. I had two students make it to Blue Belt
Andrew (01:40.659)
Yeah.
But in terms of having your own school, this is going to be good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew (02:01.422)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (02:03.109)
And that was it. And just to go on record, I've talked about this. The reason I closed is because I was growing my IT company and I didn't have enough left at the end of the day. And I was showing up and I was fried and I was getting irritable and I just knew it wasn't gonna be a good experience for my students. Now in hindsight, I might've done it a little differently because I turned them loose. I said, I want you to go train with other people. There were two other martial arts schools in town. Sadly, most of them stopped training altogether. And that really bummed me out. I didn't think that would happen. I thought they would go to one of those other places.
Andrew (02:32.433)
What about those two blue belts?
Jeremy (02:32.61)
So if I had it.
Um...
Jeremy (02:39.509)
Neither. Neither kept training. It was sad. So I would do that differently, but also keep in mind, you know, when I opened that school, I was 22. You know, I had some teaching skill and I had some martial arts skill. I didn't really have running business martial arts school skill that I do now. And, you know, I think the biggest question somebody might ask is, why am I doing this? Andrew, ask me why am I doing this?
Andrew (03:08.49)
Well, I mean, why are you doing it? For 20 plus years, you've been without a school. Why now? What's different?
Jeremy (03:15.813)
But there are a few things going on. One, I'm working with a number of martial arts schools. We do consulting and I'm helping them because, let's face it, all businesses are really the same. It's about providing value and being consistent and things like that. But as I work with schools and I'm helping them grow, I get really excited about it and I get a little jealous that I'm not getting to do that. So that's part of it. Another part of it is I always try to test.
theories in a low-risk way, right? Like, so I'm not gonna go to a client and say, I think you should do this really crazy thing in your martial arts school. I don't probably help your students or make more money or reach more people. What, right? That's scary. Well, I can do that for myself because I'm the one that has to fix it, right? So it gives me a test bed, in a sense. And then the third reason, the most important reason to me is,
Andrew (04:02.431)
Mm.
Jeremy (04:15.601)
You know, because you've been around what I've taught so many times and people who've come to the seminars that I've taught know that my biggest passion is in helping people learn how to learn. That the way most martial arts schools run, I believe, has room for improvement in the way that information is conveyed. I'm not talking about the fact, you know...
you shouldn't teach this move or you have to teach this move. I'm not talking about forms versus no forms. I'm talking about very, very simple principles that I think are lost on most martial arts schools. And we bring some of that in on the MADEC stuff, the martial arts teacher training and certification stuff that Craig and I do. But I have a theory that if I implement all these things that I know and I do them well, I can get students to progress twice as fast.
Andrew (05:10.409)
Hmm.
Jeremy (05:10.717)
I believe and I'm opening my school at one day a week.
but let's pretend it was two days a week because that's the average. Most people go to classes two days a week. That if I had students that were training twice a week, that I could get many of them to black belt levels of competency. I'm not talking about just putting a belt on their waist, but I could get them to black belt levels of competency in two years.
Andrew (05:31.606)
Hmm. That's a pretty bold statement.
Jeremy (05:34.389)
It is. And it's one thing to say, if you do these things that I believe in, this might happen for you.
And it's another thing to say, I'm going to build a school around this.
Andrew (05:50.205)
Yep.
Jeremy (05:50.753)
And one of my biggest challenges over the years was thinking about in doing this.
I never wanted the schools and the students that we were supporting to feel like I was trying to make this about me. There are a number of martial arts schools in this general area. Many of them have been on the show. Many of them have schools. You know, great example, Freddie LaPan. He's a friend. He's been immensely supportive. He came on, what, episode 12 or something. He lives two towns over. I think the world of him.
I don't want it to even remotely appear like I'm trying to take his students. He's a wonderful instructor. And that's part of why, where I've put the school and everything. So that was in the back of my head for a very long time. But as I came to understand more and more about what was going on and what I wanted to do and what was important, not just in my local area or my own personal fears, but I said, wait a second.
Andrew (06:35.87)
Yep.
Andrew (06:39.138)
Hmm?
Jeremy (07:00.277)
If I can test some of these theories and they work, and I can help martial arts school owners not only progress on the business side, but on their teaching methodology side, I have a responsibility to do so. The role that I claim that I am in, I have to do this. Now it's not that I don't want to, but I am nervous.
Andrew (07:11.521)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew (07:21.282)
Sure. And I think you're nervous because you want it to go well. You care. You know, you care about what you're doing. Um, and you, we've talked a little bit. You have a fair number of people you anticipate being in your first class tomorrow.
Jeremy (07:37.081)
Yeah, so I think the first thing to let people know is that I live, I've been looking for a space for almost two years. I live in a very small town. If you look at, you know, where Whistlekick is headquarters, we are in Montpelier, Vermont. It's the smallest state capital. It's 8,000 people. But guess what? Legally, I don't even live in Montpelier. I live in a town called More Town. And it's just, the,
Just the way the postal stuff hits, right? Like it says Montpelier on our addresses and everything, but I pay my taxes to a little town called Mortown. Actually, my property taxes are right there. And Mortown has about 2000 people. We have a general store.
It's 20 minutes away. That gives you an idea of where I live. I'm 20 minutes away from the general store. And it took a while to find a location because I wanted to do something in a certain area that wasn't going to be obviously, I mean, I'm pretty sure that, you know, a variety of the friends that I have that teach in the state, that if I opened something near them and was doing something different and not being a jerk in my advertising.
Andrew (08:26.058)
I'm sorry.
Jeremy (08:49.337)
they'd have no issue with it. But just for the sake of optics, because of, again, because of whistle kick, because of this role that I'm in, it was really important that I did this.
within an excess of ethical visibility, I guess is what I'll call it. But I finally found something and it is the old Moortown Town Hall. It's where we have town meeting and those of you outside of New England, most town meetings, we vote on things by hand. It's like, you know, how many of you think we should buy a new fire truck? Right. Let me do that one. And it's a beautiful old space, hardwood floors. It's inexpensive to rent.
It's $50 for four hours. It has awkwardly placed support columns, which I believe is an unofficial requirement of every, if not every martial arts school, every fledgling martial arts school needs an awkwardly placed support column. In fact, there are two upstairs and we get access to the basement where there are three. So that's really exciting. And you know, it's in a decent area.
Andrew (09:36.447)
Every good school should have those.
Jeremy (09:59.981)
Wi-Fi, which will play a role with some things that I'm looking to roll out. And it's just, it's a nice space. So I finally found that space and we were set to go kind of internally. And by the way, she has not been on the show and we will remedy this, but a woman in the area that I know from a now closed martial arts school, Corey, Corey shows up to your trainings and...
You know, she shows up at free training day. Some of you know her. But I'm at a point with everything I do, I don't have the emotional and energetic strength to pull things off on my own anymore. I need help. And so I reached out to Corey and, you know, we... I laid out the concept, you know, much as I've laid it out to all of you. She's like, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it. And so we're looking for spaces, we couldn't find it. Finally found the space. Finally had the timing right. And we were going to open in about a month ago.
And then I went away and I came back and I was back for less than 24 hours and Vermont had the second most catastrophic flood it has ever had. And I was stuck home for three days. We haven't talked about this on the show because it really doesn't have relevance to martial arts, but in this case it really does. Because the day I was going to go pay for my first few months in this space, I literally couldn't get there. It was impossible for me to drive there.
Andrew (11:18.967)
Yep.
Andrew (11:26.578)
Yeah, you were literally stuck at your house.
Jeremy (11:28.769)
I was, there are four ways I, I have two vehicles, one of them being a Jeep and it is rather capable off road and I still couldn't leave. So that should give people an idea of what was going on. And so we had to wait and you know, here we are, it's August 22nd when we record this. Now, this isn't the same in every part of the country, but here in New England, culturally we get to August and people start thinking about back to school.
Most people either have kids or are involved in something that involves kids, school or whatever. And so the idea of launching something in August...
Jeremy (12:09.513)
Not great, but I didn't want to wait any longer, right? So tomorrow, we'll talk about the classes and the class structure a little bit, but we've got, there's a kids class, and I have no idea how many people are showing up because one of the decisions I made was I'm gonna keep it super simple. The beginning, I don't want to build these difficult sales processes, which will get implemented over time, but I can only focus on so many things. I wanted to focus on curriculum and some of these other things.
Andrew (12:34.538)
Yeah, to start, just have it open. Yeah.
Jeremy (12:38.057)
So people are just going to show up and everybody's first class is free anyway. You know, that's my vision. So we'll have some kids. How many? I don't know. Two? Twenty? Couldn't tell you.
Jeremy (12:51.125)
I went in yesterday because originally in this space, this beautiful old building, it's like 200 years old. At the front, it's raised, there's a stage, and it's not a super tall stage, but it's a stage, and I was like, this will be enough to start because the library also operates out of this building. Because the last time we had a terrible flood, the library washed away. And...
I'm anticipating like 20 adults.
Andrew (13:18.092)
Well...
Jeremy (13:20.153)
not gonna fit 20 adults on the stage, not doing the things I wanna do. So I went over yesterday and talked with the librarian and was like, let's move some things. And everything's on wheels really fortunately. So we've got plenty of space. And so I'm pumped because I'm hearing from people who live hours away that are coming for the first class to support. And I'm just, I'm so excited. I'm very lucky in that I get to do this work.
I get to do this work with you, Andrew, we've become great friends and I get to meet all these wonderful people and work with all these wonderful martial artists, school owners, students, really around the world. And to have some of them say, I'm going to drive three hours to come to an hour or two of classes, because yeah, there's a family class sandwiched in the middle. To drive six hours to train for two is quite the honor.
Andrew (14:15.91)
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. What are you the most nervous about for tomorrow?
Jeremy (14:27.333)
two things. The unknown, right? Anytime you launch something, something's gonna go funny. Something's gonna go not according to plan, right? And is that going to be that... I mean, there are things that if you sat down thought, well, maybe the power goes out. Or maybe, maybe people get lost. Or...
Jeremy (14:55.381)
Maybe so many people show up that it, or maybe nobody shows up, right? Like there are things that you could think about and say, okay, I could plan those. But it's never the things you plan for. It's never the things you expect. There's always something, right? You know, somebody shows up and I don't know, they...
Andrew (15:05.387)
Yeah.
Jeremy (15:13.785)
Here's a good example of it that I couldn't imagine happening, but it's a fun example. Somebody, you know, dojo storms, they show up and they're like, I'm calling you out. So I'm just, I think you all know how I would respond to that to be like, no, this isn't the fighting class. I never said I was a good fighter. Get out. And make them do kata in the corner until they got bored and left. And that's another thing that we should talk about what I'm teaching.
Andrew (15:43.214)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (15:43.473)
at some point too. So fear of the unknown is one and then the other is how well my theories translate. You know, these ideas that I have in terms of curriculum, which is locked at 25 techniques. This, what is essentially an algorithm, a cadence of what is being focused on, you know, as a structure from which to teach a platform. How's that going to go?
The fact that I am inviting people of different experiences, different ranks to come and train, and I'm not gonna make them do things exactly my way. If you, I don't care if you come in from a Taekwondo background or a Filipino martial arts background and a karate background, I don't care how you punch.
Andrew (16:21.227)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew (16:41.717)
Mm.
Jeremy (16:42.389)
I care that your punch has technique in such a way that it is effective and I'll help you through that. But I'm not going to say, well, you're pulling your hand back here versus here. If somebody wants to compete and I coach them on that, that's where I'm going to care about that. But there are, and this is a, maybe this becomes a transitional moment here. People could only worry about so many things. Where they pull their hand back.
Andrew (16:59.722)
Mm-hmm. Sure.
Jeremy (17:11.89)
is less important than most of them.
Andrew (17:13.814)
Mm-hmm, yeah, that's fair. Now, what are you the most excited about for tomorrow?
Jeremy (17:19.461)
Hmm
Jeremy (17:24.341)
In a sense, this is 20 years in the making. And if you think back, how many hours have I put into Whistlekick? Some stupid number, right? It's been an insane number over the last decade. And I've helped, I believe I've made a contribution to the world, to the world of martial arts. And as I've done that, I've taken a lot. Not taken, but I've received a lot. And...
Andrew (17:26.858)
Hmm. Yep.
Andrew (17:32.43)
countless.
Jeremy (17:53.801)
I'm excited to try to put together what I believe is a better mousetrap. I'm not gonna crap on what anybody else does. One of the things I love is that martial arts is done and taught in so many different ways. But I think I'm onto something here. And if I... if even half of my theories are correct, this methodology becomes a massive step forward without...
Andrew (18:06.711)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (18:21.285)
Losing things that makes traditional martial arts great. That's the big thing right? We like over the last 20 years By including MMA in the conversation. We've had conversations around curriculum change We've had some conversation around teaching methodology But we have not had conversation about learning understanding the way people learn and That's what I'm most passionate about in this context
Andrew (18:33.444)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew (18:46.45)
Yeah.
Cool. And before we wrap up, let's talk really quickly, briefly about what your curriculum is gonna be like.
Jeremy (18:57.401)
Yeah. So, as I was jotting notes, and this goes back, there's a piece of paper, I don't know that I saved it, I scanned it. There's a piece of paper where I just had one of those moments where...
Jeremy (19:15.157)
It almost wasn't, it was almost like it wasn't coming from me. I was like, and I kept finding the number five, right? I grew up with the pinion contest. There's five.
Andrew (19:25.376)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (19:28.761)
white, yellow, blue, green, brown. There's five.
And I kept finding five in other ways, and if you've been to All in Weekend or a number of other seminars that Craig and I talk about the cinematic, most people can handle three to five choices. And one of the core issues in the way martial arts is generally taught is that people are either told, no, you didn't do that thing, you should have done this one correct way, which breaks their brain, or it's left completely open to them.
They have a bajillion things and they can't choose Three to five is where the psychology of choice Comes in that like that's an effective set of choices So let's give people five stances Let's give people five kicks Let's give people five blocks five strikes, and then there's five miscellaneous So there's five of five and there's a five week rotation Not that we're only drilling basics, but there's a five week rotation where
It's one stance, one kick, one punch, and we'll work from those and we'll get people better at those. Now somebody is probably already yelling at their speakers or their screen or their TV, but Jeremy, there's more than five stances. There's more than five kicks. You're right. So let's take kicks as an example. Front kick, back kick, roundhouse side.
Jeremy (21:00.921)
What about crescent kicks? It's a front kick with a drift on the hip. What about axe kicks? It's a front kick where you pull it back harder and then you stick it out.
Andrew (21:10.765)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (21:14.717)
If you teach people those five and you say you can find your other techniques of your own, then that gives you the ability to focus on the things that are most important without locking them down. A lot of martial arts schools, as people get to higher ranks, they spend a lot of time on techniques that are not frequently used in...
theoretical or real combat.
Andrew (21:42.398)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would agree.
Jeremy (21:44.609)
But Jeremy, this one time I scored a point using an inside crescent kick. Great! I'm not going to tell people that you can't use it. But what would I rather have my students spending their time on? The front kick. Spend your time on the front kick, your crescent kick will get better. So if we worry about those fundamentals...
Andrew (21:56.89)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeremy (22:05.665)
and I don't lock them down and say, you can't cross train, you can't do anything else, it frees me up to worry about what I think matters most, but because there's still going to be a lot of free-form time, they can figure out their own stuff and bring in their own understanding, especially if they're coming from other systems.
Andrew (22:23.85)
Yeah, cool. Well, I'm looking forward to talking with you in a few weeks and finding out how it went. Anything to add before we say goodbye for now?
Jeremy (22:38.221)
No, no, I know you and I will talk probably more on a personal level between now and then about this, but I hope that when we come back and we talk about this, I hope that this section of our conversation.
Jeremy (22:56.885)
As we often say, I hope it just made you wonder, I hope it made you ask questions. I hope you take a step back from what you do, especially if you're an instructor and say, why do I do it this way? If you have a great answer, do it. If you don't have a great answer, come up with a great answer. And if that great answer requires you making some changes, make the changes. Because this is how we've always done it, is not a great answer.
Andrew (23:18.974)
Awesome. All right, I'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Andrew (00:58.571)
Hey Jeremy, how's it going?
Jeremy (01:00.714)
I'm great, Andrew. How are you?
Andrew (01:02.558)
I'm great. I feel like I just saw you like 10 seconds ago when we ended the last recording, which was just before you were going to open your school.
Jeremy (01:05.874)
You're dead.
Jeremy (01:13.242)
It's true. So that was August 22nd. It is now September 12th. Tomorrow will be the fourth class.
Andrew (01:21.642)
Yep. You will have done a whole month.
Jeremy (01:28.18)
So a few things that I can say.
Jeremy (01:34.078)
that I'm really happy about. The first thing is that everyone who has shown up has continued to show up. We have not had anybody that came and tried and said, this sucks, I hate it, I'm quitting. Which I'm really stoked about. We've had a lot of inquiries on people coming in. We've had one new student join.
Andrew (01:46.978)
That's great. Yeah.
Jeremy (02:00.426)
Last week was a bit of an anomaly because it was the hottest day of the summer. See here in Vermont we had like five days of summer. They all happened last week.
Andrew (02:13.931)
Yeah.
Jeremy (02:15.49)
And I got to class and I'd already heard from a couple people that, you know, it's too hot. I'm not going to be able to do this because this building, it's an old building. There's no air conditioning. There's one window that has a screen on it. And I was like, you know, I get it. No worries. And I got there. I said, wait a second, there's a basement and we rent the whole thing. It was perfectly fine. It was 70 degrees down in the basement. Everybody's on cool concrete. Nobody noticed.
Andrew (02:44.382)
Yeah. So let's back up a little bit. Tell me about or tell us about your very first class, right?
Jeremy (02:46.79)
What? Well, sure.
Yeah. Oh yeah, that would probably be a good thing. I was terrified, which, you know, might be difficult for people to imagine, given that, you know, I've taught some rather large rooms and I do this show and a huge part of my life involves being in front of strangers, either literally or kind of digitally, but I still get nervous, right? Because...
When I teach a seminar, if people don't like it, it's a one and done for the most part, right? Like most of the time people have me back and everything, but if I completely screw it up, I don't have to see those people next week. If I miss something in the way I teach and I catch it six weeks later,
Andrew (03:29.046)
That's a good point.
Andrew (03:36.426)
Yeah, that's a good point.
Jeremy (03:45.446)
they suffer because I did a poor job. And that's something, if you've been paying attention to this show, if you know anything about Whistlekick or me, you know that I set very high standards, that I set the bar really high for myself, usually what most people probably call too high, but that's just how I'm built. I wanna crush everything that I do. And so this was no different. But fortunately, through...
the last couple of years of consulting, working with schools, all my seminars, all these things, there were a few, were kind of mantras in the back of my head. Keep it simple, you know, air on the side of doing less and focus on having fun. And that's what we've been doing. And you know, if you've been to a seminar that I've put on, you've, you'd recognize a lot of what we did. You know, it just happened to be on a shorter time basis.
and people were having a blast. They had a blast that first class, they left with lots of smiles. And I said, you know, if I can leave, if they leave smiling, I'm doing something right. So second class was still a little nervous. Last class, still a little nervous. I'm probably gonna be nervous every class because I wanna do a good job, but the butterflies aren't quite.
Andrew (05:05.022)
Yeah. Now with that first class, you went into the, I have to imagine you went into that class with some sort of expectation of something, regardless of what that was, didn't meet your expectations.
Jeremy (05:24.594)
So I had some goals around numbers of students. And we met those numbers.
but it's almost all adults.
I, and I talked about this on TikTok a little bit. I had a few people chime in and say that, you know, they've been at schools or they operate schools that are like this where it's primarily adults. But day one, if I take out the friends that came to visit, we had 12 adults and two kids, which is so weird to me. But it also is likely the time of year, you know, end of August, just before school starting, parents aren't wanting to get routines going for their children yet.
Andrew (05:53.858)
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Jeremy (06:06.014)
or add new routines. And most of the inquiries I've been getting from the website have been for parents of children. So I expect those numbers to shift a little bit, but that was the first one. And then the second one, I had an expectation which was realized in that building these classes around this curriculum and in the way that I am was likely to lead to...
Andrew (06:13.76)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (06:34.878)
positive and educational experiences for people regardless of prior experience. Because in my, in my adult class right now, I've got, you know, one, one prior black belt and two almost black belts. People that I might as well can, you know, I can consider those three people very high level in terms of their experience. In there with people who've never done any martial arts.
Andrew (06:40.03)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (07:04.474)
and they are training together and they are learning together and it is working beautifully.
Andrew (07:12.842)
Okay, and what happened on that first class that you didn't expect? I don't wanna say what went wrong, but what was something that you didn't expect to have come through? Other than having more adults than you had of kids.
Jeremy (07:19.845)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (07:29.006)
I didn't expect to be as comfortable as quickly and let the humorous part of my personality come through.
Andrew (07:38.059)
Oh, nice. Okay.
Jeremy (07:39.482)
You know, we've spent enough time together and you've seen me work seminar groups.
Jeremy (07:47.19)
I figured I was going to be more serious until people got to know me. That all went out the window. I was goofy Jeremy from almost from moment one. You know, we've had a term come up on the show from someone that I'm running with serious fun. And every time I say it, I kind of playfully in my brain say it the other way. Funly serious.
Seriously fun, funnily serious.
because that's the heart of it, right? If you have fun and you do some stuff that makes sense, you learn some things. And so just not letting it get too formal.
Jeremy (08:32.187)
Allowed for that.
Andrew (08:34.574)
And I don't know if there's a whole lot else that I want to go or get into, but the thing that I definitely want to hit on is, you've now had three classes, tomorrow will be your fourth class. It's been a month, we'll say. Have there already been things that have come up that you've said, you know what, I was going to do this, but I'm going to pivot and I'm going to do this other thing instead?
I don't necessarily mean technique stuff, but like stuff about the school that you were planning on doing this and you realized I need to change.
Jeremy (09:07.387)
Uh.
Jeremy (09:12.962)
Yes, I am far more comfortable letting things kind of happen organically. So I haven't even offered to sell.
uniforms, geese to my students.
Will I? Yes. And I've even, last class, a couple of people asked, I said, you know, what are we doing about that? And I said, well, let's get t-shirts going first. And I've got a t-shirt design and, shout out to Corey, who's helping me with the school. Corey and I have batted that back and forth a little bit. But let's get t-shirts first. You know, let's, I don't have the full testing methodology, the evaluation methodology, done. I've got most of it in my head, some of it's down on paper, digital paper.
But I'm letting things happen much more organically because if we go back to that, are they having fun and are they learning? And if those two boxes are checked, I get lots of grace from everyone on those other things. Do I need to have the testing methodology done yet? No, they've had three classes.
It's not a big deal. I'm not focused on rank. I'm not focused on.
Jeremy (10:27.263)
uniforms. I'm focused on...
Right? This comes back to the why. Why am I doing this? Because I had all these theories that I wanted to test. And I'm testing them. And so far, it's working out.
Andrew (10:42.694)
Awesome. That's excellent. Anything else that you wanna mention or go through?
Jeremy (10:48.53)
Um, we're going to do a part three, right? Like in another month or so, I'd like to. If we, it depends on if we need this episode sooner. What do you think? Okay, then let's, I'd like to give it a little bit more time and talk a little bit more. We might also, and the audience gets to kind of see behind the scenes here.
Andrew (10:54.94)
We can, it wasn't on the list, but we can.
Andrew (11:04.177)
No.
Jeremy (11:17.878)
Maybe we can put something in the Facebook group, in the New Martial Arts Radio group, questions for part three, what questions would people have about this school, and we can incorporate those next time.
Andrew (11:30.222)
Sure, that sounds great.
Jeremy (11:32.51)
Cool. I think the way I wanna leave this section is my why is completely connected to my how. And so I'm having a great time and it's working out. You know, that my reasons for teaching are completely present and evident, I guess, is a better word, in the curriculum, in the way I am teaching. And...
I remember what it was like when I was teaching CrossFit at this same time.
roughly the same distance away from my house. And if you've been around a while, you know I love CrossFit.
I didn't have this much fun. Because it wasn't my school, it wasn't my curriculum, it wasn't my why.
Andrew (12:23.959)
Yeah.
All right, so we'll see you in about three weeks. All right, see ya.
Jeremy (12:29.17)
Sounds good. Thanks.
Jeremy (00:01.322)
Jeremy, here we are. Yeah, so it's been, how long has it been since we, I opened the school, it was the last week of August. Yeah. It's the first week of October.
I think Wednesday is going to be the seventh class. Yep, so just under two months. Yeah. Okay. And so how's it been going? You know, I love the beginning of any business. Really I'm an entrepreneur at heart, more so than a business owner. So it's that early energy that I absolutely thrive on as part of why I like working with schools that are getting started. It won't help anybody. It's why I...
like working with new businesses of any kind. Because there's so many ideas, right? Like, you know me well enough to know my mind races constantly. It is oft frustrating to the people around me. But that means that...
It's a little more appropriate to have a thousand and one ideas and to throw them at a brand new business than it is to throw them at a well established business and make people go, whoa, what's going on here?
Jeremy (01:13.542)
We've attracted a few new students. Since your first class. Since the first class. Good. Have not lost any students. That was gonna be my next question. So we started, so day one we had two children and 11 adults. And we are at 14 adults. Okay, so we've added two adults.
11 to 14 is 3. Sorry 12 to 14? Okay. I'm just thinking of who's new since day one. But you've got 14 adults now. But we've had a few others come and try that at least what they expressed was logistically Wednesday just doesn't work for me. Okay.
Jeremy (02:03.662)
So I'm happy, I'm happy with where it's headed. Right, I think it's really easy in our space when people talk about the number of students they have. You don't hear from the 10, 20, 30 student schools often. You hear about the, I have 500 students, I have a thousand students, I made a million dollars. And if that is your goal, that is awesome. But that is not the majority of schools. No, absolutely not.
And just as an aside, that's why there are a number of things that we're doing as an organization to support smaller schools. And part of why I wanted to do this was to immerse myself back in that culture and make sure I wasn't missing things. And when you say we're doing, you mean Whistlekick. Whistlekick is doing. Yeah, because I wanted to clarify for the audience that you're not talking your martial arts school is doing. So things that Whistlekick is doing to help smaller schools. Yeah, absolutely. Yesterday, I emailed everybody who had reached out with interest but not shown up.
Just said hey just want to check in you know, and there was half a dozen people and heard back from a few and you know Some of them have other stuff going on. They're like, you know, I'm thinking about this as a winter activity Totally cool. Mm-hmm. Now it's been most round up. We'll just say it's been two months, right? And we already talked about things that happened on day one that you didn't anticipate in the last two months
Has the progress been what you expected? And I don't mean progress of students, I mean of the school. I always set the bar really high. I know you do. And I do that for a variety of reasons we won't get into, but the bottom line is while I'm not disappointed, I had hoped for more. I always hoped for more.
I think I've told you, I know I've told my students once we hit 25 students total, we'll add a second day. You know, so I'm getting them involved in the benefit and we'll probably add in a second location. I don't see having a inestablished brick and mortar. Like this is my space just because there's so much more you have to worry about. My question ever or for right now? I don't know about ever, but at least for right now because you know, here's the thing. Every night I go in, I teach and I teach.
Jeremy (04:27.633)
cost me 50 bucks.
If I did that every day, that would be 1,500 bucks. Yeah. Am I gonna get a space anywhere close to what I have for 1,500 bucks a month? No. Yeah. Not a chance. Yeah, no, and that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And there's something to be said for that, like having a separate location that you just rent out. One of my Shotokan schools that I was a part of for 16 years.
our classes were at a VFW, or no, it was an Eagles club for General Order of the Eagles. And it was the same thing. The instructor came in once a week and he only had to pay rent for that one day. And so that was something we said. And I think it depends on how much time is going into it. Sure. I don't know that my personal involvement in this school, and I'm saying those words specifically, that my personal involvement in this school goes beyond two days. Yep, that's right. I would love to see the school become more. And
That's probably the other thing to mention. I think we talked about in the first segments That I was testing some things. I had some ideas. Yeah, and those ideas are Absolutely proving true awesome students are I think the place most people would notice it would be in defense people are defending Brilliantly with less than two months under the belt. Mm-hmm. That's great. That's phenomenal
The kind of the last question I have that I think we can wrap up on is, where do you go from here? You've already talked about if you get 25 students you're going to open up another location or another class, maybe a separate location, but what is the next big step for you at this new school? I don't know. Okay. You know, every week, and I don't know if you saw it because I know you came in, you put your drink over there on the counter, you may have seen all of my notes. So what happens, I come back from class,
Jeremy (06:25.15)
and I've got my class plan and I've got a couple other pieces of paper that come with me, you know, new releases and whatever, and then all that stuff goes there. And it usually sits there for a couple days, classes tomorrow, so you know, it's been sitting there for a few days, and I make notes through the week. Oh, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this, and I'm making notes, and then tomorrow I'll go to, I'll sit down and look at my class plan and say, okay, this is what I want to do.
And it's really at the point of being iterative now. You know, I don't think there are any massive things I'm going to do differently, because what would those be? Changing days of the week, changing locations, changing what I teach. I don't think there's an upside to doing any of that. So it's how do I keep moving things forward? And it's, you know, peek behind the curtain is the things that I focus on with the clients that I work with. Focus on retention, make sure that your students...
Have fun and learn in that order and everything else will fall into place and that's what's happening Most of the people who have tried classes Was word of mouth Yeah, it wasn't you know, I've got Facebook ads going I've got posters up around town There are a lot of things that I'm doing but it's still that word of mouth and how do you do that have fun and make sure they leave having learned something new and
I think I'm checking those boxes well enough that what's next is fairly obvious. I'm going to be constantly making refinements to the curriculum and how things are presented and the drills that we do. I'm going to make refinements to how we market the school and how things operate. And I think, you know, the only other thing I think might be of interest to people is when we launched day one, I didn't do anything around etiquette. I didn't get everybody. Okay.
When you walk in the door, you gotta bow, and you gotta do this, and you gotta do this. I'm just slowly trickling it out. Interesting, yeah. Because what happens at an established school? They see everybody else bow, they pick it up. They figure, okay, I'm supposed to bow when this happens. Maybe they don't know why, but they do it. I didn't wanna spend the first 20 minutes going over, okay. This is what you do. This is how you bow, this is why you bow and everything. Because that's less important to me. Yep, yep. And it does lead to a question that I hadn't thought of asking, which is,
Jeremy (08:48.994)
We as a friend couple and with Craig and others have talked quite a bit about school culture and developing a culture. How are you finding the culture of your school is being developed and has it found its own yet or is it too new? It's happening. One of the things that was critically important to me in the culture was that it would be mutually supportive.
And this goes back to the curriculum and the idea that I didn't, I think we gave the example before of how a punch is executed, you know, and maybe where the retracted hand goes and everything. Uh, my theory, and it seems like it's proving true is that, is if I'm not at the front of the room saying this is exactly how everything has to be, then the students will find comfort in, well, try this, try that.
Because I believe that's where the most education comes from is that experimentation process and that seems to be happening I noticed we do a lot of partner work and I noticed that when students switch around They are communicating about what they're doing. They are communicating in a mutually supportive way whereby they are learning from each other Through that iterative experimentation. That's amazing. That's great. Great to hear so There's also a lot of humor
That's not surprising. You've been in the room enough times when I've led classes that yeah, you know I want to make sure it's not too serious So I think we're gonna wrap up but I could see us coming back together in about a year or so Yeah, and doing a follow-up and seeing where things are looking from there. That sounds good There are also and a little bit of foreshadowing You may or may not even know this. I have a plan whereby
the audience might get to see what my classes look like and even participate in them. Mm, that's cool. And that is not an exclusive thing to my school. There's a plan in the works. Cool, well, sounds great. Jeremy, thank you for taking the time. Thanks, Andrew, I appreciate being here. Hey, nice to meet you. So, there you go. Yeah, so this is where we'll close it. So thank you, everyone. I appreciate your support. I've received a lot of wonderful support.
Jeremy (11:08.59)
questions. Just this episode isn't even out and people have been reaching out. How's it going? And they want to know and it's nice to feel that from everyone. And I think if you have a school
Take that same approach. How do I make things 1% better? How do I slowly move forward? Not just in what I teach, but how I teach, who I am, where I am, et cetera. And if you don't have a martial arts school and you want one, you don't have to do a lot. My costs per month with insurance are about $250, $300. Let's round up, call it $300. It cost me $300 a month to run this school.
I need six students to break even. If we're talking kids, I need seven students to break even in there, right? It's not much. And every school does not have to be a million dollar school. It doesn't have to have a thousand students. For a lot of us, running a school is the next step in our martial arts education and development. So don't shy away from it if it's something you're feeling called to do.
Jeremy (12:22.662)
Awesome. If you want to support Whistlekick and what we do, head to Whistlekick.com. Check out everything we've got going there. We've got the Patreon. We've got all kinds of cool stuff. And if you want to reach out, Jeremy at Whistlekick.com, Andrew at Whistlekick.com, or social media is at Whistlekick. And until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day. Oh, we nail it when we're in the same room.