Unscripted Real Results: Inside the October 13, 2026 MAW Mastery Call — 115 Leads, 107 Appointments From One Halloween Event

115 leads. 107 appointments. One Halloween event.

Yana Burtney wasn’t presenting a prepared testimonial when she gave those numbers. Master Oliver simply asked her how her weekend went, live, in the middle of the October 13 Martial Arts Wealth Mastery call — and she reported it the way you’d mention any other weekend.

Our Case Studies are researched, narrative write-ups of a school’s growth over months or years. Unscripted Real Results is different: it’s a running record of what actually gets said, by actual members, in the middle of an actual coaching call — not written for marketing, not polished into an advertisement. Here’s what came out of the October 13, 2026 call.

Meeting Snapshot

• Meeting: MAW Mastery Meeting
• Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026
• Format: Live Zoom coaching call, approximately 105 minutes
• Coaches on the call: Stephen Oliver and Dr. Greg Moody
• Topic: October live-event marketing and ROI by event type, the renewal blitz, and black belt behavior standards
• Members quoted in this entry: Yana Burtney; Krista Wells, Mercer Island Martial Arts; Sherry Shaoling

The Headline Result: 115 Leads, 107 Appointments, One Weekend

Master Oliver was mid-lesson on October marketing when he checked in on a member he knew had just run an event:

“It was a Halloween event set up by the city. It was like a six-hour event, ended up being about five minutes away from the school.”

— Yana Burtney

Then came the numbers, one question at a time:

“And how many appointments did you make?” — “107.” “How many total leads?” — “Total leads was like 115, something around that.”

— Stephen Oliver and Yana Burtney

That is a 93% lead-to-appointment conversion rate from a single city event — the kind of number Oliver doesn’t let pass without naming it:

“Good, good conversion rates — well over 90% conversion to appointment is excellent.”

— Stephen Oliver

And the appointments were already converting into students:

“So far, for the very first class, I had roughly around 50 people show up.”

— Yana Burtney

Additional Results & Implementation Evidence

Yana Burtney — The Show-Rate System Behind the 50

Dr. Moody didn’t let a 50-out-of-107 show rate go by without asking what produced it:

“That’s a very good percentage show up. Did you do anything to make sure they showed up?”

— Dr. Greg Moody

Yana’s answer was a stack, not a single trick:

“I wrote them postcards. I messaged them, called them, texted. I did the CTE plus postcards. I have them in our system for reminders.”

— Yana Burtney

Moody pressed on the detail that matters most on a postcard:

“Did you put their appointment time and everything?” — “Yes, I did. Time, date.”

— Dr. Greg Moody and Yana Burtney

His takeaway for the group:

“This is golden to hear from Yana. Doing all that stuff makes a big difference. A lot of times we have people say their show-up doesn’t go well — well, did they do all the stuff that Yana just did, including the postcards? Validates kind of what we’re telling everybody.”

— Dr. Greg Moody

Krista Wells, Mercer Island Martial Arts — An Expensive Event That Pays for Itself Twice

Asked about the cost of her events, Krista didn’t hide the real number on her biggest one:

“That’s our summer celebration, which is a hit-it-out-of-the-park event for us. The return on investment is worth it, because not only do we get at least 80 to 90 leads — appointments, rather — I also run into a lot of former students who come back because of that, or give us live testimonials.”

— Krista Wells, Mercer Island Martial Arts

“Five, five thousand for that one. The other thing that one does for me — because I have a relationship with the lady who runs the city of Mercer Island, she gives me all of the Music in the Park events, which are eight weeks of live booth events, for free. So it’s worth it. Most of them are like three hundred to a thousand dollars.”

— Krista Wells, Mercer Island Martial Arts

One $5,000 event, reported live, turned into a standing free booth for eight more weeks of the year.

Sherry Shaoling — The One Enrollment That Was Still Worth $2,000

Not every live event produces a headline number, and Sherry reported hers plainly instead of skipping it:

“I think it’s totally worth spending the money on the live events. I would do every and any live event I could get my hands on, because we have scarce opportunities. We got one student from a live event before that we paid two thousand dollars for, and we only got one enrollment — but their lifetime value was so good because they ended up renewing to leadership, so it does pay off. And even if you don’t get any enrollments, it still pays off because you still get exposure — it’s belly to belly.”

— Sherry Shaoling

Oliver used the moment to name the math everyone in the room should be running:

“What you’re bringing up, Sherry, for everybody is making sure you know what the return on investment is. The lifetime value — what we know is more established schools that are in the right price point are ending up in the seven to ten thousand dollar average lifetime value. If you took the lower number, $7,000, and it cost you $1,000 to get one, you’ve got a seven-to-one return.”

— Stephen Oliver

Why We’re Building This Section

We could take Yana’s number and dress it up — add an exclamation point, put it on a graphic, call it a testimonial. We’re not going to do that here. “115 leads, 107 appointments, one Halloween event” is more credible exactly as she said it, in the middle of reporting her weekend to a room of other school owners, than it would be polished into an ad.

Every MAW Mastery call gets its own entry in this section, built the same way: real members, real numbers, real quotes, pulled directly from the call and lightly cleaned only for filler words — never for meaning.

Individual results vary.

Related Reading

Read the previous entry in Unscripted Real Results: The October 7, 2026 Small School Accelerator Call, see the channel-by-channel numbers in Martial Arts Marketing Conversion Ratios by Channel, and browse the full Case Studies library.

About the Author

Grand Master Stephen Oliver, MBA, is a 10th Degree Black Belt and the Founder and CEO of Mile High Karate and Martial Arts Wealth Mastery, one of the martial arts industry’s leading coaching and consulting organizations for professional martial arts school owners, BJJ academies, and MMA gyms. A martial arts school owner since 1975 and business coach since 1985, Oliver has spent more than five decades building, operating, and advising successful martial arts schools. He also serves as CEO and Chairman of NAPMA (the National Association of Professional Martial Artists) and Publisher of Martial Arts Professional magazine. A Georgetown University cum laude graduate, he earned his Executive MBA through the Executive Program at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He was promoted to 10th Degree Black Belt in April 2026 and inducted into the Official Taekwondo Hall of Fame in August 2026. Learn more at MartialArtsWealth.com and StephenCOliver.com.