You Don’t Know Who Your Students’ Parents Are — And It’s Costing You Twice

Let me start with the payoff instead of the theory, because the theory never convinces anybody.

Here’s a partial list of who was sitting in my Mile High Karate lobby, found only because somebody asked a question and wrote the answer down:

“We found the guy who was in charge of the Rocky Mountain Flag Football League, whose two sons were students of ours, and we found three of the C-suite executives of a $780 million electronics chain and the person who was the HR director for the biggest employer in the state, and you can kind of go on and on and on. We had several people who were connected with the Denver Broncos and several people connected with the Denver Nuggets.”

Here’s the part that makes the point: none of them announced themselves.

“If I hadn’t dug a little bit, I wouldn’t have known, because one of them was an accountant, but he happened to be CFO for the Broncos organization. Another one was a low level marketing guy, but he was the marketing director for the pro basketball team. So all of a sudden you start to find these connections that create opportunities.”

An accountant. A low level marketing guy. That’s what the intake sheet would have said, if it had said anything at all.

Most school owners can tell me a student’s belt rank and payment status and nothing else. That’s a retention problem and a marketing problem at once — and it’s the same problem.

Nobody Told Greg Moody About Charles Barkley for Four Months

Chief Master Greg Moody brought this up on our Leadership Mastery meeting. It’s the cleanest illustration I’ve heard of what an untrained staff will sit on.

“Charles Barkley’s daughter was a student of mine… And that was really a useful relationship. He couldn’t give us a testimonial because his agent says you’ve got to get paid millions of dollars for that. But we could still do — we did some stuff with him. But the staff member didn’t tell me for four months. The kid was six months into the program. You’d think that that would be a big enough deal, but they just didn’t think of it.”

Take the footnote honestly — I’m not telling you to go chase celebrities. The agent priced a testimonial in the millions. Fine. There were still things they could do with the relationship, and they did them.

The lesson isn’t celebrity anyway. It’s the four months. If a staff member won’t mention a Hall of Fame NBA player standing in the lobby twice a week, he certainly won’t mention that the quiet mom in the corner is the front desk person at the school you’ve been cold-calling for three years. He didn’t withhold it. He didn’t think of it, because nobody trained him that noticing was part of the job.

The Introduction You’ve Been Chasing Is Already on Your Mat

The Broncos CFO is a fun story. Here’s the one that changes your numbers:

“More likely what you’re likely to find out is Mrs. Jones is a third grade teacher at the elementary school you’ve been trying to get in for years, or she’s the front desk volunteer at the school you’ve been trying to get into, or the dad works at the administrative office, or dad is a regional person for the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts or something.”

Every owner I talk to has the same complaint. I can’t get into the schools. The principal won’t return my call. The PTA never wrote me back. And every one of them has forty to four hundred families enrolled and can’t tell me what one of those parents does for a living.

You’re cold-prospecting an institution whose employees already pay you tuition, and a league one of your brown belt dads runs. This is the cheapest martial arts school marketing there is, and almost nobody does it, because it requires knowing something.

Why the Enrollment Form Doesn’t Do This

Sherry from US Kung Fu Center asked the right question on the meeting: is there verbiage we can use in the intro process to find out what parents do? Right now, she said, “a lot of times we figure out their occupation organically in some way.”

Grand Master Jeff Smith’s answer is the one most owners give:

“It’s on their page when they sign up. It’s on that enrollment form, that first intro when they come in. Parents’ occupation.”

And it is. It’s on almost everybody’s form, which is exactly why almost nobody knows anything. Jason Purcell of Family Black Belt Academy said the quiet part out loud:

“And we have that — sometimes they’ll just leave that blank.”

Let me be blunter than that.

“I don’t rely on any piece of paper. They don’t fill them out. It’s not accurate. It’s not personal. What I’m relying on is I’m relying on instructor and program director being personal.”

A blank on a clipboard is not information. A filled-in blank that says “accountant” isn’t either — ask the Broncos. The form is an administrative document, not a relationship. What works is a human being asking a human being, out loud, and writing it where somebody else can use it.

For staff to be personable, you’ve got to teach them what that means. First, the script.

Jason Purcell’s Registration Questions — Use Them Word for Word

Jason has the best version of this I’ve heard from a member. Steal it verbatim:

“When I’m doing a registration, I usually say, ‘By the way, when we sign people up, I always like to get to know people. Where are you guys from? How long have you been here? How’d you guys meet? What do you guys do?’ Because I’ll get a dad that’s sitting there — this is the first time he’s there. When I say that, they light up, they start smiling, and then I’m writing that information down. On that sheet, I’m also writing down what are some of your goals?”

Four questions. Notice what they do. “How’d you guys meet” isn’t a business question, it’s a human one, and it’s what cracks open the dad who’s been in the lobby chair for forty-five minutes saying nothing. He lights up. Every owner reading this has that dad and has been treating him as furniture.

Master Moody added one correction, and he’s right:

“Well, don’t use the word signup.”

Then Jason names two payoffs — the two halves of this whole article.

Payoff one: the save. Because he wrote the goals down next to the occupations, six months later he has ammunition that isn’t an argument:

“If they ever come to me six months later, a year later, ‘Well, we want to quit’ — ‘Well, you wanted this and this and this. I’m a little confused. He’s been making progress. Why would you pull him out for this?'”

You can’t have that conversation from memory or from a payment record. It exists only because somebody wrote four sentences on a sheet at registration.

Payoff two: the network.

“We needed a mortgage broker and I can go through my list of all the parents that I know that I want to work with.”

That list is an asset, and part of why his school looks the way it does — see the Jason Purcell case study. Most schools have no list, just a billing system.

Most of Your Staff Was Never Taught How to Have This Conversation

Here’s the part owners underestimate. You hire a good 19-year-old black belt who’s fantastic with kids, then you’re baffled he can’t hold ninety seconds of conversation with a 44-year-old father.

“What happens when you have a young staff is oftentimes they don’t really know how to build rapport with people, or they’ve never done it outside of their social circle in high school.”

That’s not a character flaw. It’s a missing skill, and skills get taught — put it in your staff training alongside how to hold a target.

Here’s what I drill in. Meeting a new person, I’m asking questions: What school did you go to? What do you do? What company do you work for? How long have you been in the area? Nobody gets offended by those at a first or second lesson.

Then the observational version, better because it proves you were looking:

“If they’re holding something in their hand, ask them about it. If they’re reading a book, ask them about it. If they’re reading something that’s technical — my goodness, that sounds like a pretty complicated topic. Why are you reading about that? ‘Oh, well, I work for Rockwell and I do this and that.'”

If a parent walked in with a book in their hand, I remembered the book and asked about it next time:

“How’s that Nelson DeMille book? What are you thinking about it so far? Have you read a lot of his other books? What do you like about — just asking him questions like that. It just shows that you notice, that you remember, that you’re paying attention.”

Master Moody put the right frame on it:

“And you care. It’s showing that you care. And guys, you guys do care. This is genuine. But what happens is we get caught up in, oh, we’re doing a sales process, so we get distracted from connecting with people.”

Nobody reading this is a cold person. You got distracted by your own checklist.

The End-of-Day Recap Is What Makes It Stick

Training staff to ask is step one. Holding them accountable is the step everybody skips — and the step that does the work.

“If I’m having a staff meeting, I’m peppering the students. Well, who do we enroll today? Okay, we enrolled the Jones family. Great. What’s dad do? What’s mom do? What’s their background? How long have they been in the area? What school does Billy go to school at? What other activities is he involved with?”

Here’s the honest part, and it’s the reason this works:

“About half the time they didn’t know. But I will tell you, the fact that they were being peppered on it — they sure as hell went back and found out. And then what would happen is they didn’t want to get peppered and not have an answer to it.”

Half the time they didn’t know. The mechanism isn’t the question — it’s the repetition. Nobody wants to stand in a staff meeting three days running with nothing to say about the family they enrolled. They fix that themselves.

Your job is to model what a good answer sounds like. Mine sounded like this:

“We had the Jones family in for the first lesson today. Mr. Jones is a CPA — you probably haven’t heard of it, but so-and-so firm, which is a big firm downtown. Mom is an MD, she’s an ophthalmologist, so that means she works on people’s eyes. Mom went to Johns Hopkins and dad went to whatever it might be.”

And then:

“All of those details, when you start sharing them around — that’s how people feel respected, that’s how people feel recognized.”

That’s the sentence for your staff room wall. Not “that’s how we get referrals” — that’s how people feel respected. Referrals are the byproduct. Put the recap in your operational systems as a standing agenda item, not a good intention.

The Ten-Minute Research Pass

Then the layer that costs nothing.

“We’re definitely in the days of privacy as dead. So when you have a new person coming in through the introductory process, you can enter their home address in Zillow. It’ll tell you how big the house is, where they live, what it’s worth, what comparables have sold for, when they bought the house. A short Google search, and you’ll find just about anything that you can possibly want. You can go to LinkedIn and search for the dad and search for the mom.”

Be precise about what this is: publicly available information about adult prospects, the same information any professional looks up before a meeting. You use it to serve people better and connect them to each other, not to sort them by net worth. And it never replaces asking directly — the asking is the part they feel. Occasionally you’ll turn up something that gives you pause. It’s rare.

On the volume objection, which is what owners actually push back on:

“If you enroll 20 new students a month, that’s less than one a day. Doesn’t take very long to do a little Google search and do a little LinkedIn background.”

Less than one a day. Ten minutes. And you don’t have to do it by hand — when a new lead comes in, I have a briefing run automatically: background, awards, associations, where they live. It won’t give you a lot. A paragraph. A paragraph is infinitely more than a blank line on a form.

Turning What You Know Into Belonging

What is all of this for? Not a spreadsheet. The introduction.

Sherry raised the right frustration — she introduces parents to other parents at the second intro, “but it kind of falls flat.” Of course it does. A generic introduction is two strangers standing closer together. An introduction with a reason in it is the start of a friendship.

“If I have this child goes to Lincoln Elementary, I’m going to say, I don’t know if you know the Jones family. Susie also goes to Lincoln Elementary School. Susie’s a fourth grader.”

And:

“Dad’s an accountant — I introduce them to the other family whose dad or mom’s an accountant. If they’re an MD, I introduce them to that. If they go to the same school — whatever commonalities I can find, so that I introduce them to other people where they’re going to be more likely to click.”

Grand Master Jeff Smith’s version says where it ends up:

“People like to talk about themselves and what they do, and then you say, ‘Wow, that’s impressive. We have a couple other students, Mr. So-and-so and Mr. So-and-so, I’ll have to introduce you guys.’ That’s when you become a family.”

He also named who actually leaves your school: the ones “on the sideline that never got engaged, that never felt like they were part of the school.” You don’t drop out of friendships.

Doubling your enrollments and cutting your dropouts in half have about the same impact on growth — except retention is the more valuable of the two, because it feeds year two, year three, black belts and your instructor pipeline. It comes down to rapport and the renewal process. This is the rapport half; for the rest, start with reducing student dropout.

What to Do Starting Monday

Five things. None of them cost money.

1. Add the four questions to your registration. “By the way, I always like to get to know people. Where are you guys from? How long have you been here? How’d you guys meet? What do you guys do?” Don’t say signup.
2. Get a sheet. Somewhere those four answers and the parents’ stated goals get written down. If it isn’t written, it didn’t happen.
3. Add the recap to the end of every day. Who did we enroll today? What’s dad do? What’s mom do? What school does the child go to? What else is he in? Expect half your staff to have nothing the first week. Ask anyway. Ask again Tuesday.
4. Run the ten-minute pass on every new lead. Google, LinkedIn on both parents, the address. Publicly available, respectfully used, never a substitute for asking.
5. Give every staff member one standing instruction. “If you find out a parent works at a school, works for the city, runs a league, runs a company, or works in HR — tell me that day.” Say the word day, or you’ll find out in four months.

Do those five and in ninety days you’ll know more about your families than you learned in three years — plus two or three community relationships you’ve been chasing cold.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a martial arts school ask parents at registration?

Use Jason Purcell’s four questions: “Where are you guys from? How long have you been here? How’d you guys meet? What do you guys do?” Write the answers on the registration sheet along with the parents’ stated goals for the child. The goals become your save conversation six months later; the occupations become your referral network.

How do I find out what my students’ parents do for a living?

Not from the enrollment form — parents leave that line blank. Train the instructor and program director to ask conversationally at the first and second intro, write it down, and report it at the end-of-day staff recap. Then run a short Google and LinkedIn search on both parents before they arrive.

How does knowing a parent’s occupation improve retention?

It powers the introduction. At the second intro you say, “I don’t know if you know the Jones family. Susie also goes to Lincoln Elementary School.” You match accountant to accountant, MD to MD, same school to same school. Students who make friends stay; students who never got engaged are the ones who leave.

How do I get my martial arts school into local elementary schools?

Stop cold-calling principals and look at your own mat. Mrs. Jones is a third grade teacher at the school you’ve been trying to get into for years, or the front desk volunteer, or dad works at the administrative office, or dad is a regional person for the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. The introduction is already enrolled.

How long does background research on a new martial arts lead take?

At 20 new students a month, that’s less than one a day. A short Google search plus LinkedIn on both parents takes about ten minutes and can be run automatically as a briefing on every new lead. It is publicly available information about adults, and it never replaces asking them directly.

Come Work On This With Us

We run this material live, with your numbers in front of us. If you want somebody to look honestly at your retention numbers, see The Martial Arts Wealth Mastery Program, or book a call with Grand Master Oliver and we’ll go through your year-to-date stats.

Our live meetings run three days back to back in Colorado — Quick Start for you and your staff, Leadership Mastery, and Million Dollar Schools. Dates for the next round are on the site; fly into Denver International (DEN), and RSVP through Bob Dunne so we have a chair for you and an accurate food headcount. We always have a hard time getting a good headcount and therefore a hard time being organized. If you know a school owner who’d be a real contribution in the room, invite them and let Bob know.