If you want a martial arts school that grows predictably, run twenty different marketing activities every month. No single source can carry you, because every source eventually stalls. Twenty overlapping activities, each one capturing contact information, build the awareness, the lead flow and the enrollments that add 100 students in 90 days.<\/p>\n\n\n
Watch the original video:<\/strong> Watch the original on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n Every school owner I coach wants to find the one thing. The one ad, the one school program, the one big event that fills the school. I understand the appeal. I have also been burned by it more than once, so let me tell you what the one thing actually does to a business.<\/p>\n\n\n Early in my career I was buying full-page ads in a major weekly listings magazine, and they worked so well that I built the whole school around them. Then the ads stopped working. Not slowly. Newspapers and listings guides simply stopped producing, and I had a payroll and a lease sitting on top of a source that had gone dry.<\/p>\n\n\n Later I was running locations that did an enormous volume of enrollments, with one location alone producing 460 enrollments in nine months. Then a local tragedy near my schools shut down access to the surrounding community for a long stretch. Three of my locations were within a few miles of it. Overnight, a big share of my lead flow disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n That is the lesson, and I will give it to you as a rule: Murphy’s Law is real.<\/strong> Anything you count on to carry your month will fail at the worst possible time. A county fair that produces 500 leads one year gets rained out the next. A school program that floods you with leads gets shut down by a new principal or a policy change. A Facebook campaign that produced leads at a profitable cost gets more expensive, or the platform changes the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n The answer is not to find a better single source. The answer is to stop relying on any single source at all. I call my solution The Twenty-Activity Month<\/strong>, and it is the spine of this article.<\/p>\n\n\n Here is the rule exactly as I teach it to school owners: every month, you should have twenty different marketing activities going on.<\/p>\n\n\n Not twenty big projects. Twenty activities, and they come in different sizes. Some take an afternoon. Some take a weekend. Some are set up once and run themselves. What matters is that at the end of the month, your lead flow is coming from many places, so that when any one of them fails (and some will) your school barely notices.<\/p>\n\n\n Think of it as a portfolio. An investor who owns one stock is gambling. An investor who owns twenty is building wealth. Your marketing should work the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n For something to count toward your twenty, it needs to pass four tests:<\/p>\n\n\n If an activity fails any of those four tests, fix it or drop it.<\/p>\n\n\n I want to start with the most important mechanical rule, because it is the one most school owners violate. In every marketing activity, anytime you interact with someone, leave with their contact information.<\/strong> Name, phone number, mailing address, email address.<\/p>\n\n\n It sounds obvious when you hear it. Yet most school owners who set up a booth hand out flyers and wait to talk only to the few people who want to schedule an appointment right then. They leave with a handful of intros, and the hundreds of people who walked past or took a flyer are gone forever.<\/p>\n\n\n The same thing happens with school programs. An owner goes in, teaches a class to 500 kids, hands out guest passes, and says “come see us on Saturday.” Maybe five kids show up. That is a heroic effort for a tiny result, and the owner concludes that school programs do not work. The programs work. The missing piece was contact information, collected ahead of time through permission slips.<\/p>\n\n\n A permission slip, in my system, is the school-friendly name for a contact capture form. It gives you the parent’s name, address, phone number and email. It lets you poll them: “We are providing two free weeks of lessons. If you are interested in us contacting you to schedule an appointment, check yes.” And it gives you permission to contact them.<\/p>\n\n\n Now run the math on a school of 500 kids. If 400 permission slips come back, that is 400 new names on your email list and 400 new names to mail. If half of them check yes, you immediately have 200 warm names to follow up by phone and text. You have a real database of families who live down the street, with kids at the right age, in the right neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n Compare that to five guest passes on a Saturday. Same event, same effort, wildly different outcome. That is the difference between a marketing activity and a marketing system.<\/p>\n\n\n Occasionally a school administrator will tell you that by law they cannot give out student names and phone numbers. Here is my answer, and it has never failed me in principle: “I am not asking you to give me anything. The parents provide whatever information they are comfortable providing. We just need you to pass the form to the kids.”<\/p>\n\n\n Then I add the second reason: “Our insurance requires us to have permission slips and to know who we have taught. If a claim ever came up years from now, we need that file.” That is true, and it ends the conversation almost every time.<\/p>\n\n\n I will be honest that you will occasionally meet an administrator who blacks out everything but the first name with a marker. It happens. You do not abandon school programs because of a few strange responses out of hundreds of schools.<\/p>\n\n\n You cannot plan twenty activities without knowing what each one is supposed to produce. Here are the ratios I teach for a school program done correctly, meaning a class where the kids participate rather than watch a demonstration, followed by an after-school enrichment program.<\/p>\n\n\n Notice how different that is from the guest-pass approach. Five out of 500 is one percent. Thirty enrollments from 500 is six percent, and you still have the other 70 to work.<\/p>\n\n\n Let me show you why I push “add 100 students” as a goal, because it changes how a school owner thinks. Use a tuition of $375 a month, which is realistic for a well-coached school.<\/p>\n\n\n That is the kind of number that lets you hire two full-time people, train them properly, and fund more marketing. A school stuck at a low break-even cannot afford a second instructor. A school that just added $37,500 a month can.<\/p>\n\n\n Notice something else: adding 100 students in 90 days is easier than adding them slowly over two years, for two reasons. Over two years, attrition is going to chew on your growth the whole way, so you are running up a down escalator. Over 90 days, you add the students fast, they are not leaving yet, and you get breathing room. The jump creates the cash that makes the next jump possible. I teach more about this idea in What a Martial Arts Lead Actually Costs and How Many You Need<\/a>, which is worth reading alongside this article.<\/p>\n\n\n Twenty sounds like a lot until you realize how many places families gather. The easiest way to build your list is to draw from five families of activity, so that no single failure can hurt you.<\/p>\n\n\n These are the simplest activities, and they are where I tell new members to start. Think harvest festivals, trunk or treats, pumpkin patches, county fairs, farmers markets, movie theaters, malls, church events, community centers, and any place that takes children on an outing, such as a zoo or a nature attraction.<\/p>\n\n\n All you need is a table, a prize wheel, signage and clipboards. The offer is simple: spin the wheel, win a prize, and leave your information. Most schools that run these properly walk away with about 100 leads from a good event. If you only get 50, you should be disappointed and investigate why.<\/p>\n\n\n October is the best month of the year for this, with Halloween and harvest festivals everywhere. I have sent one person to a single four-hour trick-or-treat event at a family attraction and had them come back with well over 80 appointments. Do not ignore the non-obvious places. Every town has them.<\/p>\n\n\n These include PE Teacher for the Day, after-school enrichment programs, and national events where professionals visit classrooms. School programs have more moving parts than live events, so I tell newer members to build their live event muscle first and then add schools.<\/p>\n\n\n Timing matters. Back-to-school in August and September is the single biggest window of the year, and it is the best time to launch. You can repeat in the fall and again in the spring.<\/p>\n\n\n This family includes children’s hospitals, charitable fundraising flyers, daycares, libraries, scout packs, and any organization that already has a relationship with local families. These work at different levels. Some produce a trickle and some produce a flood.<\/p>\n\n\n Facebook advertising, Google advertising, direct mail, and your website all belong here. These are the most scalable but also the most dependent on conversion. Let me give you the economics, because they matter for how you structure everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n In a typical funnel with an agency running Facebook ads, a school might pay in the neighborhood of $50 to $75 per lead, which becomes roughly $175 per appointment, $300 per intro and $600 per enrollment. Is $600 per enrollment acceptable? Absolutely, if you structure your enrollment properly, which I will cover in the next section.<\/p>\n\n\n This includes your ambassador program, your referral nights, parent testimonials, and what I call a birthday party without the birthday, which is a pizza party where every student invites friends. These programs are most worth running once you have 150 to 200 students. If you are below 100, your time is better spent on the other four families.<\/p>\n\n\n This part surprises people, but it belongs in a marketing article because it determines whether your twenty activities are profitable or simply busy.<\/p>\n\n\n My goal for every school owner is this: whatever you spent to get a new student, you get the money back on day one, when they enroll.<\/strong> If it cost you $600 to produce an enrollment, I want that $600 back at the enrollment conference. Then every month of tuition afterward is pure profit.<\/p>\n\n\n I present the registration this way. The normal registration is $800. Since this family came in through a particular marketing activity, I offer a $300 discount if they finalize their enrollment today. That makes the initial tuition $500. Then monthly tuition, in the $375 to $397 range, begins on a 12-month Trial Enrollment.<\/p>\n\n\n So at the table, the family pays $500 plus the first month. On a $375 tuition, that is $875 at the door.<\/p>\n\n\n I avoid the words “down payment” and “monthly payment.” They sound like buying a car, and they give people a small negative emotional jolt. “The initial tuition to get started is this, and the tuition is that” does not trigger the same reaction. Words matter.<\/p>\n\n\n Some families will say, “I did not know it would be that much,” or “I can do the monthly, but not the monthly plus the initial tuition today.” This is where you stay calm and do not negotiate on price. I ask, “Is that going to work for the budget? What would work for you today?”<\/p>\n\n\n Often the answer is “I can do the monthly now, but I get paid on the fifteenth.” Fine. Run the agreement with the monthly now, and schedule the initial tuition for the fifteenth. If both together do not work, push the first monthly draft out a month. I am rearranging the dates, not discounting the value. Notice I never get into a back-and-forth about whether they should pay.<\/p>\n\n\n Run the numbers. If you enroll 20 students and each pays an average of $500 or $600 up front, you have an extra $10,000 to $12,000 in cash you would not have had. Once you are past break-even, that additional money is almost all net profit, and it arrived without nickel-and-diming a single family. It also funds the next round of marketing, so growth pays for itself. I teach more about the value-first approach to pricing in Stop Selling Mat Time<\/a>, because the price conversation only works when the family understands what they are getting.<\/p>\n\n\n Because school programs are one of the largest families in your twenty, let me give you the specific language I use. I learned it through years of being turned down by administrators.<\/p>\n\n\n Parents are exhausted by fundraisers. They have been through chocolate bars one month and wrapping paper the next, and most schools see only a small slice of each sale. Many schools tell parents “this is our one and only fundraiser of the year,” even when they run enrichment programs, book fairs and other revenue activities that give the school a cut.<\/p>\n\n\n If you walk in and say “I have a fundraiser idea,” the answer is often, “We have already committed to our one fundraiser this year.” You have just been shut out by your own vocabulary.<\/p>\n\n\n I describe the program as a character and focus program. “We come in and teach a single class with all the students. We are going to talk about focusing your eyes, ears and mind to be more effective in school, and about the values of martial arts. Nobody is going to practice kicking and punching on the playground. Then we give them a preview of our after-school enrichment program, which can run before school or after school.”<\/p>\n\n\n On money, I say: “We keep the registration fee minimal. We donate 100 percent of the materials, uniforms, lessons and our time. Whatever registration fees come in, we donate back to the school.”<\/p>\n\n\n A typical PE budget is a tiny amount per year. If you run a program at $49 per child and register 100 kids, that single event brings in more than the PE teacher might see in many years. They get excited fast.<\/p>\n\n\n Every school has a different power structure. I have been in and out of roughly 150 elementary schools. Some PE teachers are practically assistant principals. Others have one foot out the door. In some schools the person in charge of after-school care makes everything happen. In others, only the principal can approve anything. In some, the parent organization drives everything.<\/p>\n\n\n My rule is to deal ultimately with paid staff of the school, not just the parent group. A parent group is a good foot in the door. Showing up at parent meetings gets you welcomed, and they can introduce you to the real decision makers. But keep moving until you find the paid person who can say yes. The PE teacher or the after-school care coordinator is most often that person.<\/p>\n\n\n Planning twenty activities is one thing. Running them with a small team is another. Many owners say, “I teach most of the classes myself. How do I get out to events?” Here is how I answer it.<\/p>\n\n\n Live events are not complicated. A prize wheel, a table and a short script. We trained black belts to do them. We trained leadership students. We even trained parents. If you have a proven, simple script, you are not the only person who can staff a booth.<\/p>\n\n\n If you and your partner both teach, then schedule the events on the calendar the same way you schedule intros and enrollments. Block the time, one person runs the event, and the other teaches the class. You do not have to be in two places at once.<\/p>\n\n\n When I took over a struggling location, I would pour everything into it. For three to six months, sometimes up to nine, all guns were blazing. That was exhausting. But a school that jumps by 100 or 150 students in 90 days at the right tuition changes its whole financial position.<\/p>\n\n\n There was a second benefit I learned from a coaching colleague. When you have several locations and you take the worst one and make it number one by a big margin, you destroy everyone’s excuses. The old leader is embarrassed into improving. The second and third schools are embarrassed into improving. Then I handed that school to a manager and said, “You have no excuses. Just keep it where it is.”<\/p>\n\n\n You can apply this to a single school. Pick 90 days. Declare it your sprint. Forget everything else, and add 100 students. Then use the new cash to hire and train, so the next stretch is easier.<\/p>\n\n\n Growing a school slowly over two years sounds gentle, but it requires more total work than growing it in 90 days. Over two years, attrition catches you the entire way. Over 90 days, you outrun it. The sprint is exhausting but short.<\/p>\n\n\n The final piece is the most underrated. It is the combined effect of all your marketing that makes it work so well.<\/strong> Your bandit signs and rack cards work better when you have also been in the schools, at the fair, at the mall and at the movie theater. A parent sees your sign and thinks, “Oh, those are the people we saw at the festival.”<\/p>\n\n\n That is why twenty small activities outperform two big ones. Each exposure makes every other exposure more effective. Even simple things count, like a big balloon outside your school so that anyone passing knows immediately that it is a martial arts school. Halloween cards that your students hand out to trick-or-treaters. Little things add up when they overlap.<\/p>\n\n\n I teach this same philosophy in The Scorecard Method<\/a>, because you cannot manage twenty activities without tracking what each one produces. And if you want to see where this fits into your overall growth plan, my martial arts school marketing hub<\/a> collects everything in one place.<\/p>\n\n\n Use this checklist at the start of every month:<\/p>\n\n\n Yes, and the reason is risk, not volume. Any single source can fail from weather, policy changes, a platform update or an event outside your control. Twenty overlapping activities mean a failure in one barely registers, and the combined exposure makes every activity work better.<\/p>\n\n\n Start with the simplest: live events with a prize wheel, a table and clipboards. Add one new activity each week until you reach twenty. Train black belts or parent volunteers to staff simple events so you are not the only person who can run them.<\/p>\n\n\n A well-run school program should register about 20 percent of the student body and enroll about a third of those. Combined with live events, community partners and paid marketing, the goal is to add 100 students in 90 days. At a $375 tuition, that is $37,500 a month in new recurring revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n Marketing works best when someone looks at your actual numbers and tells you which of your twenty to build first. If you want that, claim your free Personal Evaluation<\/a>, a $1,297 value, and we will map your next 90 days together.<\/p>\n\n\nWhy One Great Marketing Source Is a Trap<\/h2>\n\n\n
The Twenty-Activity Month: The Core Rule<\/h2>\n\n\n
The Four Properties of a Good Activity<\/h3>\n\n\n
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Gate One: Capture Contact Information on Every Interaction<\/h2>\n\n\n
What the Permission Slip Actually Does<\/h3>\n\n\n
Handling the “We Can’t Give You Names” Objection<\/h3>\n\n\n
Gate Two: Know the Ratios So You Can Plan Your Month<\/h2>\n\n\n
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The Worked Math on 100 New Students<\/h3>\n\n\n
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Gate Three: Build Your Twenty from Five Families of Activity<\/h2>\n\n\n
Family 1: Live Events Where People Already Gather<\/h3>\n\n\n
Family 2: School Programs<\/h3>\n\n\n
Family 3: Community Partners and Charity<\/h3>\n\n\n
Family 4: Paid and Digital<\/h3>\n\n\n
Family 5: Referral and Reputation<\/h3>\n\n\n
Gate Four: Collect Enough at Enrollment to Liquidate Your Marketing Cost<\/h2>\n\n\n
How I Structure the Initial Tuition<\/h3>\n\n\n
What Happens When They Can’t Pay It All at Once<\/h3>\n\n\n
Why Cash Flow Is the Hidden Growth Engine<\/h3>\n\n\n
Gate Five: Pitch Schools the Right Way (Never as a Fundraiser)<\/h2>\n\n\n
Why the Word “Fundraiser” Kills the Deal<\/h3>\n\n\n
What I Say Instead<\/h3>\n\n\n
Finding the Real Decision Maker<\/h3>\n\n\n
Neutralizing Common Objections<\/h3>\n\n\n
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Gate Six: Make the Twenty Executable<\/h2>\n\n\n
Train Other People to Run the Simple Stuff<\/h3>\n\n\n
The Turnaround Method: A Herculean Effort for 90 Days<\/h3>\n\n\n
Why Slow Growth Is Actually Harder<\/h3>\n\n\n
Gate Seven: Let the Activities Multiply Each Other<\/h2>\n\n\n
Your Twenty-Activity Monthly Checklist<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Common Mistakes to Avoid<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n\n\n
Do I really need twenty activities every month?<\/h3>\n\n\n
What if I only have time for a few activities right now?<\/h3>\n\n\n
How many students can I realistically add with this formula?<\/h3>\n\n\n
Your Next Step<\/h2>\n\n\n