{"id":10700,"date":"2026-10-10T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/martialartswealth.com\/go\/?p=10700"},"modified":"2026-10-10T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T09:00:00","slug":"raising-prices-in-a-downturn-litchfield-park-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/martialartswealth.com\/go\/raising-prices-in-a-downturn-litchfield-park-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Litchfield Park Lesson: Raising Prices 40% in a Foreclosure Market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One member put his numbers on the table on this week’s coaching call. From 2021 to early 2025, his school enrolled 93 percent of the families who came in for an intro. Over the following year that fell to 80 percent. Since February it has been running around 60 percent. Other owners on the call \u2014 in tech-heavy markets on the West Coast, in an area where teachers are being laid off \u2014 said they were feeling the same thing: more hesitation, more “I don’t know if I’m going to keep my job,” more families hanging on to their money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to take that seriously, because sometimes it is real. And I want to show you what one of our coaches did the last time his market went through something much worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Center of the Foreclosure Map<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Greg Moody had a school in Litchfield Park, Arizona, in the years before the 2008 housing crash. It was a booming area \u2014 new families everywhere. He remembers his first belt testing there as 108 white belts. Enrolling was easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the housing market collapsed, and as Greg remembers it, Litchfield Park and Henderson, Nevada, were at the top of the national foreclosure lists. Families who still had jobs were watching their neighbors lose their houses. The news was bad every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Greg did next is the part worth studying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. He increased his marketing.<\/strong> Fewer people were enrolling from the same effort, so he needed more effort.<\/li>
  2. He raised his prices \u2014 by about 40 percent.<\/strong> He admits he was scared to. His reasoning: if he was going to enroll fewer students, each one needed to be worth more, and his prices needed to go up anyway.<\/li>
  3. He inspected every lost sale.<\/strong> Every intro that didn’t enroll, he wanted to know why. Every phone call that didn’t turn into an appointment, he wanted to know why. Nothing was allowed to slip through unexamined.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The result: his closing rate did not change after the price increase.<\/strong> He had to do more marketing to get the same number of enrollments, but each enrollment was worth considerably more. And because he tightened the systems across the whole company \u2014 seven schools at the time \u2014 every location got better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    When the market recovered, his business was more efficient and more effective than it had ever been in the easy years. That is not much comfort while you are in the middle of it. But it is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A 93% Close Rate Is Not the Goal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Here is a point Greg made that most owners will not want to hear. If your intro-to-enrollment rate is 95 percent or higher, something is probably wrong \u2014 not with your enrollment process, but with your marketing. It usually means you are only reaching the families who were already sold before they walked in. You are not marketing widely enough to reach the ones who need convincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In a boom, that works fine. When the easy families dry up, the school that never learned to enroll the harder ones feels it first. So a falling close rate is sometimes a sign the easy years hid a weakness. That is fixable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Tighten From Both Ends<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Jeff Smith’s framing is the right one. A drop from 93 to 63 percent feels terrible. But if you are running 30 to 40 first intros a month, 63 percent is still 19 to 25 enrollments \u2014 enough to grow substantially, as long as you control dropouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So you work both ends at once:<\/p>\n\n\n\n