Unscripted Real Results: Inside the September 1, 2026 MAW Mastery Call — 173 Appointments From a Back-to-School Push

173 appointments. From two days of back-to-school tables.

Stephen Oliver wasn’t reading a case study when he said that number out loud. He was reading it straight off a post in the private Martial Arts Wealth Mastery community, live, in the middle of a Tuesday coaching call, to make a point about where back-to-school marketing should actually rank on a school owner’s priority list.

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 September 1, 2026 call.

Meeting Snapshot

• Meeting: MAW Mastery Meeting
• Date: Tuesday, September 1, 2026
• Format: Live Zoom coaching call — the group session ran approximately 104 minutes, followed by individual member coaching
• Coaches on the call: Stephen Oliver, Dr. Greg Moody, and Grandmaster Jeff Smith
• Topic: Post-summer retention and reactivation, back-to-school elementary school marketing, and the birthday-party referral system
• Members quoted in this entry: Heidi Gilbert; Jason Purcell; Christian Arias, ABK – El Paso

The Headline Result: 173 Appointments From a Two-Day Elementary School Push

Neither Dean nor Scotty was on this particular call — their numbers came from posts in the members-only MAWM community — but Stephen Oliver read the actual figures out loud, live, while explaining why back-to-school day outranks nearly everything else a school can do with an elementary school:

“I would point out what Dean posted in the circle group — 173 appointments from back-to-school days, and a bunch more coming up this current week. That’s a pretty good number of appointments for a couple days in the elementary schools.”

— Stephen Oliver

A little later in the call, he came back to both numbers together:

“Scotty, down in San Antonio, last week did 70 appointments in one day from back-to-school programs, orientation days. Dean, the number we just put up there was 173, and then even more this week. Sounds like he’s going to do 250, 300 appointments just from that.”

— Stephen Oliver

The reason he brought both up wasn’t to brag on Dean and Scotty — it was to rank the tactic. In his own words, addressed to the whole room:

“The single most productive thing that you can do at any of these schools… you’re getting in front of the parents and getting in front of the kids and you can make appointments on the spot.”

— Stephen Oliver, on elementary school back-to-school days

Additional Results & Implementation Evidence

Heidi Gilbert — Four School Partnerships, Signed Up Through a QR Code Straight Into Her CRM

Asked to walk the group through her school-partnership program, Heidi didn’t describe a plan — she described a system already producing signed partners:

“We’re really lucky because there’s, like, 14 schools within a four-mile radius of us. We just literally made a packet… we’ve been able to get four schools so far. I have one private school, three public schools.”

— Heidi Gilbert

The registration itself is built to remove friction for both the PTA and her front desk:

“They just scan the QR code and they can sign up directly, and all that information will drop into my CRM. So I have everybody’s information right there.”

— Heidi Gilbert

Heidi Gilbert — Rewriting the Enrollment Script Booked Out October and November

Heidi also reported the direct result of a small script change made at the point of enrollment — asking for the birthday party instead of just offering it:

“We were struggling just with the birthday party stuff — getting them all scheduled. It was kind of like, oh, we offer birthday parties, but now it’s, we offer birthday parties, when’s your kid’s birthday, let’s get them on the books. We really changed the verbiage… I think we have almost a birthday party every weekend in October and November, leading up until the first week of December.”

— Heidi Gilbert

Jason Purcell — 10 to 12 Birthday Parties a Month, and a Hard 50% Standard

Grandmaster Jeff Smith set Jason up to explain his own volume, and Jason didn’t undersell it:

“This September, we actually just had a meeting with our program directors yesterday about it — we’re pissed because we only have 10 for September. We have them all the freaking time.”

— Jason Purcell

He also laid out the internal benchmark his team holds every party to, and the same-night follow-up that backs it up:

“For us, if we don’t get 50% to 100% signed up for an appointment, that’s a failed birthday party. Minimum should be 50% set an appointment… As soon as we’re done with the day for the birthday party, we’re not done for the day. We are sending postcards out, handwritten… We’re texting them.”

— Jason Purcell

Members Teaching Members

Early in the call, Jason pointed the group toward Heidi before Stephen ever called on her:

“For anybody — what do I do in October? What do I do in November? Ask other people in the group. Heidi is phenomenal at that. She’s the queen at planning events. Every month she’s got something going on in the school that’s really, really good. Talk to other people in the group about what they’re doing every month.”

— Jason Purcell

Heidi’s school-partnership breakdown above is exactly what Jason was pointing to — one member naming another member as the resource, in real time, before the coach even got to that part of the agenda.

Where the Systems Come From

Jason also traced a specific, still-in-use system back to its source — a three-month activity poster he saw on a visit to Dr. Greg Moody’s school:

“Something I got actually visiting Master Moody’s school, when we were in Arizona — he has the next three months of activities in a school poster on the wall there. I was like, that’s fantastic. So that’s what we are doing now with our program directors… I got that. Thank you, Master Moody. I really appreciate that.”

— Jason Purcell, crediting Dr. Greg Moody

Later in the call, right after hearing Stephen Oliver walk through scheduling the birthday party at the moment of enrollment rather than mentioning it and hoping the parent follows up, Christian Arias said he was changing his own school’s approach on the spot:

“We had started calling people to tell them about birthday parties, but I like the way you did it where you just included it in the tuition. We’re going to implement that now.”

— Christian Arias, ABK – El Paso

Both moments are the same evidence from two directions: a coach teaches a specific, nameable technique, a member adopts it live, and the credit gets said out loud instead of left implied.

Why We’re Building This Section

We could take Dean and Scotty’s numbers and dress them up — add an exclamation point, put them on a graphic, call it a testimonial. We’re not going to do that here. “173 appointments” is more credible exactly as Stephen read it off a community post to make a coaching point 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

See the full tactical breakdown of school-based lead generation in PE Teacher for the Day, read the first entry in this series in Unscripted Real Results: The August 4, 2026 MAW Mastery Call, and browse the full Case Studies library for researched, narrative growth stories.

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 Tae Kwon Do Hall of Fame in August 2026. Learn more at MartialArtsWealth.com and StephenCOliver.com.