The Program-Director Multiplier: How Karis Brodie Helped Triple a Chicago School

How do you triple a martial arts school’s revenue without tripling your lead spend? You build the staff-and-teaching engine underneath the numbers. At TIA Martial Arts near Chicago, program director Karis Brodie helped take the school from roughly $19,000 a month to about $50,000 a month — by mastering her role and infusing a character-development curriculum into every class.

Watch Karis Brodie’s story

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XhcJ8H2voac

I want to do something a little different with this article. Most of the case studies I write are anonymized on purpose — I protect my members’ privacy, and you’ll usually see me describe “a school owner I coached in a mid-size market” rather than naming names. But this one is a public, consented success story that Karis Brodie told on camera at one of our Wealth Mastery live meetings, so I’m going to name her, name her school, and walk you through exactly what she said. Because what she described isn’t a fluke. It’s a repeatable pattern, and I’ve watched it play out in school after school for forty years.

Karis is the program director at TIA Martial Arts, in a suburb just outside Chicago. She’s been on staff a little over five years, and she’s been coming to our Wealth Mastery meetings for about four of those years. She works alongside the ownership — school owner Tim Harris gets a well-deserved tip of the hat in her video — but the story I want to tell is hers, because she is the living proof of a principle most school owners completely miss.

Here’s the principle: the single highest-leverage investment most school owners can make is not another ad campaign. It’s a fully-developed program director. I call this The Program-Director Multiplier, and in this article I’m going to break down exactly how it works, using Karis’s own words and numbers as the spine.

The Program-Director Multiplier: the framework

Let me define the framework before I prove it. The Program-Director Multiplier says this: a school’s revenue is not capped by its marketing budget. It’s capped by the capability of the person who sits across the desk from families and the depth of the program that person represents.

Most owners think growth is a leads problem. So they pour money into Facebook ads, into trial offers, into events — and they wonder why the bank balance never really moves. The leads come in, but they leak out the other end. Enrollments are soft. Renewals are a fight. The black belt program never fills. The owner concludes the market is tapped out and goes looking for more leads.

That owner is solving the wrong problem. The leak isn’t at the top of the funnel. It’s at the desk and in the curriculum. When you fix those two things — a great person in the program-director seat and a program with genuine depth behind it — the same number of leads produces dramatically more revenue. That’s the multiplier. You don’t add students by addition. You add them by raising the conversion and retention rate on every family who walks through the door.

The Multiplier has three components, and Karis nailed all three. I’ll take them one at a time:

1. The Developed Operator — a staff member who actually knows the role and gets sharper over time.
2. The Curriculum With Depth — character development woven into the martial arts so families are buying transformation, not punches and kicks.
3. The Easy Conversation — enrollment and black-belt-renewal talks that close themselves because the value is already visible.

Component 1: The Developed Operator

Listen to how Karis describes where she started. “When I first came on staff… I really didn’t know much about my role and what kind of things I should be doing to grow our school.” And she says it plainly: when the school was grossing about $19,000 a month, “I wasn’t even aware of the numbers. It really didn’t mean much to me, because I was so new to the job.”

I want you to sit with that, because it’s the most honest thing a staff member ever says out loud and the thing most owners are terrified to hear. The person you hired to grow your school started out not knowing what the job even was. That’s not a knock on Karis — it’s the universal starting point. Nobody is born knowing how to run a program director’s desk. The skill is built. And the tragedy in our industry is that most owners never build it. They hand a passionate black belt a clipboard, point them at the front desk, and hope.

What changed for Karis? She told us: “Coming to these live meetings and interacting with other school owners really has prepared me well for the job.” Four years of showing up. Four years of watching how other operators handle the desk, the phone, the enrollment conversation, the renewal. Four years of, as she put it, “sharpening each other just by being together and swapping ideas.”

That’s the Developed Operator in a sentence: a staff member who is deliberately, continuously trained — not just in technique, but in the business of teaching. And here’s the part owners need to internalize: Karis is on staff. She is not the owner. The owner of TIA Martial Arts made a decision most owners won’t make. He invested in sending a staff member to high-level training, repeatedly, for years. He treated her development as a growth lever, not a cost.

Why the owner can’t be the multiplier alone

I founded my first school in 1975, as a teenager, and by 1985 — at age 25 — Mile High Karate had crossed $1,000,000 a year in revenue. I did not do that by being the only good teacher in the building. I did it by building a team. By the late 1980s we had around fifty staff and more than 3,500 active students. There is a hard ceiling on what one person can teach, enroll, and retain. The owner who insists on being the only one who can “really” sell a program or “really” teach a class has built a job, not a business — and that job tops out fast.

The math is brutal and simple. If you, the owner, are the only person who can run an enrollment, your revenue is capped at the number of enrollments you personally can run in a week. Clone yourself into a program director — a Karis — and you’ve doubled that ceiling. Develop that person for four years and you’ve done something far more valuable: you’ve created an asset that compounds. Karis today is not the Karis of five years ago who didn’t know what the numbers meant. She’s a seasoned operator who can sit across from any family and close.

That is the first half of the Multiplier. The second half is what she’s selling.

Component 2: The Curriculum With Depth

Here is the line from Karis’s story that I’d put on the wall of every martial arts school in America:

“One huge part of the puzzle is those good-habits sheets, the character development that we infuse into the program. It’s huge. I now don’t even know how we survived without them, because it gave our program so much more purpose and depth. Now our students don’t just come to class to learn how to punch and kick — they truly are learning life skills, and it truly is shaping them for life.”

Read that again. “I don’t even know how we survived without them.” That’s what a real curriculum upgrade feels like from the inside. It’s not a marketing gimmick. It changes what the school actually is.

The good-habits sheets she’s describing are a character-development tool: structured worksheets that connect what a student does in class to what they do at home and at school — focus, discipline, respect, goal-setting, follow-through. The student takes the sheet home. The parent participates. The behavior gets reinforced in the living room and the classroom, not just on the mat. And every week, that loop closes again.

Why does this matter so much for the business? Because it changes the category you compete in. A school that sells “punching and kicking” is competing on price against every other school, every rec-center class, every trampoline park and travel-soccer league in town. That’s the commodity trap, and it’s why the industry average tuition sits down around $140 to $185 a month. A school that sells “we will shape your child for life” is competing in a category of one. That’s how top, well-coached schools confidently charge $347 to $397 a month — call it $375 — for the exact same square footage and the exact same hour of class time.

The difference isn’t the kicks. The difference is the depth. Karis felt it directly: the good-habits sheets “gave our program so much more purpose and depth.” Purpose and depth are what parents pay a premium for. No parent in history ever lay awake worrying whether their eight-year-old could throw a better roundhouse. They lie awake worrying about focus, confidence, respect, and resilience. Sell the thing they actually want, back it with a real curriculum, and price stops being the conversation.

Depth is also a retention machine

Here’s what most owners miss about character curriculum: it isn’t just an enrollment tool, it’s a retention tool, and retention is where the real money is. The industry loses 3 to 5 percent of its students every single month. Well-coached schools target below 2 percent. That gap is the difference between a school that’s always scrambling for leads and a school that compounds.

Why does depth drive retention? Because a parent will pull a kid out of “an activity” the moment it gets inconvenient — a schedule conflict, a slow week, a bad mood. A parent will not pull a kid out of the program that is visibly making them a better human being. The good-habits sheets make that progress visible every single week. The parent sees the focus improving at school. They see the chores getting done. They see the attitude shift. You haven’t sold them a class. You’ve made yourself part of how they’re raising their child. That family doesn’t leave.

And remember the economics: a new student costs five to seven times more to acquire than to retain — somewhere around $150 to $300 in ad spend and staff time per enrollment. Every point of attrition you eliminate with curriculum depth is money you don’t have to spend re-filling the room. That’s a quiet, invisible multiplier that never shows up in a Facebook ad report, and it’s exactly what Karis built.

Component 3: The Easy Conversation

Now watch the two components combine. A developed operator, representing a program with real depth, walks into the enrollment conversation. Here’s how Karis describes it:

“When I go to sit down with a family and talk about a new enrollment, it’s so easy for me to sell the program, because we truly do offer that value that they’re looking for.”

“So easy.” That phrase is the entire game. When the program genuinely delivers what families want, selling it stops being persuasion and becomes simple description. Karis isn’t overcoming objections with slick scripts. She’s a trained operator describing a program that actually works to a parent who actually wants it. The close takes care of itself.

This is the right way to think about enrollment, and it’s why at the top of the industry we enroll new students on a 12-month Trial Enrollment — framed as a school-led evaluation of whether the student is a good fit for the full black belt program. That framing only works when you actually have a real program with real standards behind it. You can’t credibly evaluate a family’s fit for a journey that doesn’t exist. The depth Karis built is what gives the Trial Enrollment its weight.

The black belt upgrade conversation

Then comes the bigger conversation — moving a family from the basic program up into the black belt / leadership program. This is where most schools leave the most money on the table, and it’s where Karis’s results are most striking. Listen:

“When we sit down with the family and talk about renewing to the black belt training program and really committing to training the black belt, they have already seen so much growth in their student — in their good habits at home, in focus, in all those good life skills they apply at school. So it’s such an easy conversation: ‘Hey, do you want more of this? Do you want to continue to see these things develop in your student?’ And they do.”

Do you see the mechanism? By the time Karis sits down to talk about the black belt upgrade, the parent has already experienced the proof. They’ve watched their kid change. The good-habits sheets manufactured a steady drip of visible evidence for months. So the upgrade conversation isn’t a pitch — it’s an invitation to continue something that’s already working. “Do you want more of this?” is the easiest yes in business.

And the numbers Karis put up are the proof of concept. The school started its black belt training program with nine students in its first year. Today, 80 percent of a student body of a little over 200 is upgraded to leadership. Run that math: that’s roughly 160-plus students in the leadership program, up from nine. That is not a marketing achievement. There was no special ad campaign for “leadership program upgrades.” That is a teaching-and-staff achievement. It’s the Multiplier in its purest form.

The numbers, and what they actually prove

Let me lay out Karis’s stated numbers in one place, because they tell a clean story:

• Starting point (5 years ago): grossing about $19,000 a month.
• Today: averaging about $50,000 a month.
• Record month this past year: around $70,000.
• Black belt program, year one: 9 students.
• Black belt / leadership program today: ~80% of a student body of a little over 200.

From roughly $19,000 to about $50,000 a month is more than a 2.5x increase in revenue. Annualized, that’s the difference between a school doing a little over $200,000 a year and one running around $600,000. And here’s the framing I want you to hold onto: the million-dollar school — the goal so many owners chase — is just $83,333 a month. TIA’s record month of around $70,000 puts that target within sight. Not by some marketing miracle, but by continuing to run the same engine Karis described: develop the operators, deepen the curriculum, make the conversations easy.

Notice what Karis did not attribute the growth to. She didn’t say “we found a better ad.” She didn’t say “the market got hot.” She said it came from “implementing the steps and the pieces of the puzzle that we learn here,” and she named the single biggest piece by name: the character-development good-habits sheets. The growth came from the inside out — from the staff-and-teaching engine, not from the top of the funnel.

The compounding nobody sees

Here’s why these three components compound rather than just add. A developed operator enrolls more of the families who visit. The curriculum keeps those families longer, lowering attrition. Longer-staying families produce the visible results that make the black belt upgrade an easy yes. Upgraded students stay even longer and pay more. And every one of those happy families refers their friends — which means the developed operator now has more, warmer leads to enroll, at no added ad cost. Round and round it goes, each turn of the wheel feeding the next.

That’s the difference between buying growth and building it. Bought growth stops the moment you stop paying. Built growth compounds whether you’re in the building or not. Karis built it.

How to install the Program-Director Multiplier in your school

Reading a success story is enjoyable. Installing the system is what matters. Here’s how I’d have you start, in order:

1. Pick your operator and commit to developing them

You probably already have a Karis on staff — a passionate black belt who doesn’t yet know the business side. Stop treating their development as optional. Get clear on what the program-director role actually is, define it, and then invest in training that person continuously. Not one seminar. Years of sharpening. Karis took four years of live meetings to become who she is today. That’s the timeline. Start now. I go deeper on defining and building this role in our material on the program director role.

2. Install a real character-development curriculum

The good-habits sheets are not a nice-to-have. They are the engine that turns “punching and kicking” into “shaping them for life.” Build the home-to-class feedback loop. Get parents participating. Make student growth visible every single week. This is what justifies premium tuition, drives retention below 2 percent, and makes the black belt upgrade an easy yes. We cover how to build this out in our resource on building a character-development curriculum.

3. Restructure your enrollment and upgrade conversations around proof

Once the curriculum is producing visible results, your conversations change. The new enrollment becomes a 12-month Trial Enrollment built on real standards. The black belt upgrade becomes “do you want more of this?” Train your operator to lead these conversations the way Karis does — as simple descriptions of obvious value, not as high-pressure sales pitches. You can explore the full staff and leadership development pillar for how all the pieces fit together.

4. Surround your operator with other operators

The single most important thing Karis credited — over and over — was being in the room with other school owners and staff. “You sharpen each other just by being together and swapping ideas.” There is no substitute for it. Your operator will grow ten times faster surrounded by people fighting the same battles and solving the same problems than they ever will in isolation. Karis closed her own video with this exact advice: “Keep coming to these live meetings, keep learning.” She’s right.

Related Reading

• The Leadership Ladder: How to Build the Bench That Lets Your School Scale
• The Implementation Filter: How Top School Owners Turn Coaching Into Growth
• The Rotating Curriculum Engine: Simplify Class Management and Scale
• How to Hire, Train & Pay Martial Arts School Staff
• Case study: How the Sullivans built a $1.3M school with a team-run operation

Frequently asked questions

Do I really need a program director, or can I run growth myself?

You can start growth yourself, but you can’t scale it yourself. Every school hits a ceiling defined by how many enrollments and classes one person can personally run. A developed program director — like Karis Brodie at TIA Martial Arts — raises that ceiling and lets the system run without the owner in every seat. The owner who refuses to build a team has built a job, not a business, and that job tops out fast.

How does a character-development curriculum actually increase revenue?

Three ways at once. It moves you out of the commodity “punching and kicking” category, which justifies premium tuition of $347 to $397 a month instead of the industry’s $140 to $185. It drives retention below 2 percent monthly because parents won’t pull a kid from a program visibly shaping their character. And it makes the black belt upgrade an easy yes because families have already watched the results. Karis’s school grew its leadership program from 9 students to roughly 80 percent of 200-plus this way.

How long does it take to develop a strong program director?

Plan in years, not weeks. Karis went from “not knowing much about my role” to a seasoned operator over roughly four years of continuous live training and peer learning. That’s normal and it’s worth it. The good news is that the development compounds — every year that person becomes a bigger multiplier on your enrollment, retention, and upgrade numbers. Start now, and keep them in the room with other operators.

About the Author

Stephen Oliver, MBA and 10th Degree Black Belt — Founder and CEO of Mile High Karate and Martial Arts Wealth Mastery, CEO of NAPMA (National Association of Professional Martial Artists), and Publisher of Martial Arts Professional magazine. A martial arts school owner since 1975, he and his coaching team — including Grandmaster Jeff Smith and Dr. Greg Moody — have helped owners build $1M+ schools.

Ready to build your own staff-and-teaching engine?

If Karis’s story lit something up for you, take the next step. First, claim a free Personal Evaluation (a $1,297 value) — a one-on-one strategy session where we map out exactly where your growth ceiling is and how to lift it, just like TIA did. And because the entire engine here runs on teaching quality and staff development, get my free Extraordinary Teaching resource at ExtraordinaryTeaching.com — it’s the foundation for everything Karis described, from character curriculum to the easy enrollment conversation. Build the engine, and the numbers follow.