Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast
| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 151 – From Cheap To Premium: The Poison Of Low Pricing In Martial Arts | 02 Sep 2024 | 00:17:23 | |
Breaking down the price barrier: Are your martial arts tuition fees simply too cheap? Are you undervaluing your classes? There’s poison in the pricing, and it might not be what you think. IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. But today I want to talk about the poison in pricing for martial arts classes, for martial arts tuition. Are martial arts classes just way too cheap? Are martial arts school owners charging way too much for their classes and tuition? Are they just ripping people off? Are people getting the value for what they are paying? Or are they the dreaded controversial McDojo if they charge too much? All right! Lots to unpack here. I will dive deep into this, probably ruffling a few feathers in my take on this, but it needs to be said and unpacked. So, let's do this. For show notes, for the transcript of this episode, and all links mentioned, go to martialartsmedia.com/151. Let's jump in. If you've listened to my podcast for a while, okay if you haven't, but we talk a lot about marketing, lead generation, and getting and attracting new students for martial arts schools. That is the primary conversation because I guess in a way, I'm a little bit known for it. People always come to me for that. But here's what's interesting: the first conversation that I had when we onboard martial arts schools into our Partners program was not about any marketing. We're always talking about offers and we're always talking about pricing. It's probably the conversation that's valued the least, but it makes the biggest impact because when we fix this in a strategic way that's without selling your soul and all these limited negative beliefs that come up, providing good value and charging a premium, good premium rate for what your classes are worth. It makes a huge impact because martial arts school owners come up with the idea that they need all these hundreds of students to hit their income goal to have a decent life and be able to provide their martial arts services without having to have a job, a side job to keep the dream alive, etc. You know, for martial arts school owners that want to do this full-time. They have this idea of all these students they need and all of a sudden, we half that by just tweaking the numbers, changing the terms, changing how we go about all this. Now I want to address a few things that come up with us. First up, I probably want to say that there is no wrong and no judgment in any martial arts school owner who provides a great service, and loves what they do. They serve the art of what they do and they want to share that and maybe they just want to do it part time and maybe they just want to keep it as a hobby... | |||
| 150 – George Fourie: From Life Lessons To Founding Martial Arts Media™ | 16 Jun 2024 | 01:46:11 | |
The tables turn as the interviewer becomes the interviewee: George Fourie shares his life experiences and journey through marketing and martial arts on the Kyl Reber Podcast. IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I am going to feature an episode, an interview that I had on the Kyl Reber Podcast. Kyl, a good friend of mine, interviewed me. You can look him up on kylreber.com.au. Also, martialartsmedia.com/145. I had the pleasure of having Kyl on our podcast. By the way, I was looking at it. In episode 145, we were talking about him having 370 students. I know that number's almost up to 500 now. They are booming, to put it mildly. Anyway, go have a listen to that if you haven't yet. For this episode, I really wanted to feature it because I got to tell you. I've been trying to record a podcast where I tell a bit of my story and just background where I came from, how this all got together, and I've given the pieces and inside of this over the years. I just had a look. We had episode 150, and I actually started this podcast in 2016, July of 2016. I'm probably in the race for the longest-going podcast with the least amount of episodes, but 150 awesome episodes it has been, and I'm going to continue to do this for a while. Anyway, I've really wanted to have an in-depth– about my story, and I tried to record it a couple of times solo by myself, and I've got to say, it felt weird. I did it about three times, and I deleted it every time. Then, I got on Kyl’s podcast, and Kyl gave me 10 questions just to prepare for the podcast. I did that, and I thought it was going to be enough, but Kyl's questioning technique was really solid and in-depth. Every time I answered, he dug a little deeper and dug a little deeper. I’ve got to be honest. I probably spoke about things that I maybe just haven't shared over the years. Nothing too serious, but just things that I've buried in my past and let go. But Kyl did a really good job of unpacking all the details about me and asking a lot of questions. So, this podcast is going to be a bit longer. I highly recommend you check out Kyl Reber’s podcast. I will have all the links for that at martialartsmedia.com/150. That's it for me. I hope you enjoy this. I would love to know your feedback afterward. Let's dig in... | |||
| 141 – 3 Marketing Essentials That Get My Clients To 300 Martial Arts Students And Beyond | 06 Mar 2023 | 00:11:17 | |
Other than running epic martial arts classes, which goes without saying, these 3 strategies when done well will simplify your martial arts business growth. IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Apply Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ business podcast. Today I'm going to talk about three things that'll get you to 300 students plus, and if you're ready at 300 students, it'll get you to 300 students and beyond. And if you're ready there without these three things, it's a great opportunity for you to go back and dial them in and get better results for yourself. How do I know this? Well, dozens of our clients have dialed in these three things and it's skyrocketed their results. Some are 300 students plus, and they are still just dialed into these three things and instead of adding all the bells and whistles and fancy things and all the noise that you see on the internet, they're just going layers deep on these three things and getting great results. So I'm going to share with you what these three things are and stick around to the end because I'll share with you a resource and a formula that you can use real quick, will help you implement and optimize your first strategy, which I'll share in a minute, and help you skyrocket your results way quicker. All right, let's jump into the details. So three things that you need to get to 300 students and beyond. So am I oversimplifying this? You might be thinking, George, you're just oversimplifying this. Well, I probably am, right? Because it's a given. You can't do any of these things if you don't run epic classes. I think we've covered that. If this is your first time listening to me on this podcast, yep, obviously you need some epic classes because otherwise, no marketing in the world is going to fix that, right? But let's say you got that, and I assume you do, right? Because all great martial artists have run epic classes. Then there are three things that you can focus on to skyrocket your results. Now, before I go too deep into that, I want to tell you a little story... | |||
| 50 – Australian Martial Arts Hall of Fame Inductee Grant Bannister Shares 40+ Years Of Martial Arts | 09 Nov 2017 | 00:23:25 | |
Grant Bannister recent inducted to Martial Arts Hall of Fame shares his 40+ year martial arts journey. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION People say to me, oh it was really good back in those days. I wouldn't change it. The progression is fantastic. George: Hi, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. Today I am speaking with Shidoshi Grant Bannister. Now, Shidoshi Grant Bannister has been in the martial arts industry for a very long time, so we're going to have a great chat just about where he's come from, and he's also just recently got inducted into the Australian Martial Arts Hall of Fame. So we're just going to have a bit of a chat about that. Welcome to the show, Grant. Grant: Thank you, George, and thank you for having me, it's great. I've watched, loved your podcast, and they're really great so I feel honoured to be part of it. George: That's fantastic, awesome. Let's start right from the beginning, Grant. Who is Grant Bannister? Grant: I've been a working guy all my life. I was a TV technician. We've got a family of three kids and four grandchildren. I started my martial arts journey way back in 1959 under a guy called Wally Strauss. I wasn’t interested in football and this guy said, “Oh, we're gonna do Judo.” And I said, “Oh, I don't know what it is but I'll do it.” I trained for a whole year with Wally Strauss. I left my martial arts go until I was 29, I think I was when I got back into it. My journey started then and been enjoying ever since. George: Fantastic. So, 29, and then when did you start on the path of instructing? Grant: I started with a guy called, with San Chi Kai and Mal Lomax. Mal was very big into once you've got the knowledge, now you start teaching, which is great, I think that happens a lot nowadays. Probably less than two years after I started I was teaching, and Mal asked me to open up my own club, which I did down in Blackburn, and we went from there. Unfortunately, Mal passed away a few years ago. He moved to Queensland in 1996. I didn't stay with San Chi Kai. Another chap and myself just started training in the garage. After a while we got more and more people coming in and all of a sudden the garage was full and we had to start looking for a hall. Then I thought, well we'll have to start putting something together, make it our own style. We called it Bukido Karate, that was in 1986. We've grown slowly from then, not in a large amount, but in that time I've probably taught thousands and thousands of students. It's been a great journey, I've had some amazing people by my side and that makes you want to keep going. People say to me, “Oh, you're 74 now, it's about time to retire, move around Australia.” But I still get a big buzz out of seeing the kids starting to show respect towards their parents and us. So it's still a journey. George: For sure. So, 74 years old, wow, that's good going. I want to calculate the years back. So you've been doing martial arts then for the last … Grant: Forty-plus. George: Forty-plus? Fantastic. So, forty years, that's my lifetime right now. In comparison from where you started to where things are now, what's sort of the biggest changes and adjustments that you've had to make along the way? Grant: Back then was crazy, everyone used to belt the hell out of each other and it was really, really, dangerous. People lost kidneys and all sorts of things. Of course, O.H and S would start to come in people realized that they could get sued so it all changed. But it was a good time, I had a great time with security and all that sort of stuff with Mal Lomax had contacts and we spent a week with Olivia Newton-John when Xanadu was opened. We had the Boomtown Rats and quite a few other celebrities. It was a good time. A lot of those people liked the martial arts and they wanted to become a little more involved in it. I think Bob Jones had Fleetwood Mac at the time, Richard Norton was bodyguard with Fleetwood Mac. They were good, fun times. It wasn't a lot of animosity amongst the crowds. Although we did have problems, but, it was just a really, really, good, fun time for me... | |||
| 49 – Martial Arts Websites vs ClickFunnels & Page Builders | 30 Oct 2017 | 00:28:52 | |
ClickFunnels and Page Builders can be great, but is that what you really need instead of your martial arts website? Here's my take. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: Do you need a hole or a drill (and a driller)?
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media, and in this video, I'm going to give you my take on websites versus ClickFunnels, or what I'm going to refer to is real martial arts websites, I'll explain why in a minute, versus ClickFunnels, Leadpages, and other page builders. I think there's a bit of confusion in the marketplace about what a funnel actually is, what part of a funnel you actually need, and for what type of business? Do you need the same type of intricate sales funnel structure for a martial arts business versus if you're selling digital products, or you got an e-commerce store or something like that? There's a bit of confusion, and I was on a webinar yesterday where the guy I was referring to doing a comparison between a website versus a funnel, a sales funnel, and kind of saying, “Look, the website model is dead. You need sales funnel.” But I think that creates confusion because why does it need to be different? It doesn't need to be different. It's the same thing, it just means one website model was developed with an old mindset, with the sales funnel was not. It doesn't have to be different. Do you need sales funnel? Absolutely. Does it need to be separate to your website? Definitely not. There's a bit of confusion with that, so I'm going to be as diplomatic as possible here, and want to give you my perspective on the difference between ClickFunnels, websites, martial arts websites, really crappy websites, good websites, and other types of page builders. And look, we've used them all, and I'll give full disclosure, martialartsmedia.com, my company, we develop martial arts websites, we help martial arts school owners with online lead generation. That's our focus. We've used a bit of some page builder tools for some clients, but the majority, we build out our websites on Wordpress, because it's a platform that you own, we don't have to keep your login details, you don't have to pay a monthly fee for it. That's our preferred way but I want to give you both, all the facts, and you can make the decision for yourself because maybe a tool like ClickFunnels is for you, but maybe it's not. The first thing I want to really look at here is to look at the old situation. Do you need a drill or hole? Well, you need the hole, right? How are you going to get the hole through a drill? Now, what type of drill you need? Maybe you need a certain type of drill? Different brand? Do you need to actually be the driller, or can you actually hire a person that's an expert at drilling the hole, and get that person into drill the hole for you?... | |||
| 48 – How To Create Martial Arts Training Videos With Jack Leung | 22 Oct 2017 | 00:35:38 | |
Jack Leung is capturing attention with his martial arts training videos. We discuss frameworks to create your own. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION George: Hi, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast. Today, I have another great guest with me, Sifu Jack Leung. And Sifu Jack Leung has, I'll guess I'll start off with the video side of things, has an awesome YouTube channel. You've got to see the videos to appreciate it, and we'll link to it in the show notes. And look, a video marketing, doing video in general, is something that, it's a big component. We're always talking about it in the Martial Arts Media Academy with our students, of really leveraging it. And Jack claims he's not an expert, but I'm sure you're going to disagree when you watch his videos. So, first and foremost, welcome to the show, Jack. Jack: Thank you for having me, thank you. George: Awesome. So, let's start just in the beginning, to give people a bit of an idea, who is Jack Leung? Jack: Hi everyone, my name is Jack Leung, and I teach Wing Chun in Queensland. I currently run two full-time clubs, and four different small clubs at different locations, at school halls and community centres. George: Alright, cool. So, going a bit further back, how did your whole martial arts journey evolve? Jack: I started out training in Hong Kong, and I'm from Hong Kong. I started out training with Karate first in high school. And I went to, let's just say a rough high school, and we get to test a lot of things before there were videophones and that kind of stuff. So sometimes, a lot of instructors don't say … they only tell you the good stories. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you lose badly, and that's when I started looking into martial arts. In the beginning, I like to tell people, and this is what I tell parents, I want to be stronger, to be able to protect myself, but that wasn't the case. I just wanted to be very good, to protect myself and beat up other kids. But that's very different 20 years later, that's very different 20 years later. So, that's how I started. And I started training Goju Karate first, for five or six years, and in between, I trained some different types of Kung Fu. Some Southern Praying Mantis, different lineages of Praying Mantis, and then I met my Sifu in 1996 when I walk past on the way to school. And then, I started, I just walk in and say, “Oh, what is Wing Chun?”. And that got me interested in training Wing Chun... | |||
| 47 – [Case Study] How Dave Richardson from Kung Fu Southside Grew His School by 33% | 08 Oct 2017 | 00:20:15 | |
Martial Arts Media Academy founding member shares his successful growth while getting ready for the next benchmark. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Yeah, the other thing that was really helpful was the coaching calls, and going through the websites and what not, and how to tweak this and change that, and work together in the Academy to make the pieces fit. George: Hey this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media, and I'm joined today with Dave Richardson. Now Dave is based in Brisbane from Kung Fu Southside, and Dave is also one of our first members of the Martial Arts Media Academy. So we're going to have just a bit of a chat about his experience and his journey. So welcome to the call, Dave. Dave: Good day George, thank you mate for having me on your podcast. George: Awesome, so let's just go back to the beginning, before you got started with the Martial Arts Media Academy, so what is it that made you join? Was it a problem that you were trying to solve or something? Or what sort of vision did you have in mind in the beginning? Dave: Funnily enough, in the beginning, it just started off over a cup of coffee with a mate of mine, Jack Leung from Practical Wing Chun, he pointed out your Martial Arts Media Facebook page I think it was. I looked into it and then yeah you had the academy there and it sort of went from there, because I was really wanting to make my school go full time. At that stage it wasn't, so I was just hungry for information and help to get into an industry that I'd been a part of but only on the outskirts. George: Okay, so give us a bit of a background, so 'cause you currently got the school, you're transitioning into full time, and you're still working a business during the day, right? Dave: Yes, correct, correct. The school started in a shed in my backyard and we outgrew that and we ended up moving into a commercial premises, it was just traveling under its own steam. Then I realized that this is my calling, and I'd rather be teaching people Kung Fu than killing bugs in my pest control business. So the transition is still being made, but definitely now Kung Fu is taking up more and more time and generating more income. George: Cool, so how are you juggling the two at this point in time? You've got the pest control business, right? Dave: Yes. George: Cool, so how's the juggle going between the transitioning between that and the Kung Fu school? Dave: You've hit the nail on the head, juggle is the right word. Time management was one of the skills that I've really had to learn. So trying to portion time where I can focus on the school, not just the teaching side of it, but the actual building of the business side of it as well. So that's what I've done, I've set aside two days a week where my focus is on building the business side of the school... | |||
| 46 – Fari Salievski: Training The One Championship World Featherweight Champion Martin Nguyen | 13 Sep 2017 | 00:23:48 | |
Martin Nguyen caused an upset winning the One Championship World Featherweight title. Fari Salievski shares behind the scenes insights training the world champion. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hey this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business podcast we’re on episode number 46. I have a repeat guest again for something a little different, Master Fari Salievski. How are you doing there Fari? FARI: Always well, thank you. GEORGE: Awesome. So today we’re going to talk about a bit of a different topic. One of Master Fari’s top students Martin Nguyen, he recently won the World Featherweight Championship in Asia and we’re going to talk about training a champion and how the whole journey evolved and what the next steps are. So let’s get started. So welcome Fari. I guess take us back to the beginning of all this, where Martin started training, etc. FARI: Ok, first and foremost, I just like the fact that we’re a martial arts school, not a fight gym. So yes, we have fighter, we have a cage out the back. But at the front, we have little preschoolers and moms and dads and within all of that, we still manage to do a little bit of fighting. I look at that as fun, as a chance to test out our training. So it’s a martial arts school that has a martial arts culture. People bow on and off the mats and have the discipline of the martial arts. That's what Martin knew and joined for and he joined in doing our Brazilian jiu jitsu program and obviously, when he started, he did not plan to fight, but then we had some opportunities. To this day, I still run the ISKA, back then we used to have combat grappling, which is basically modified MMA. He got into that, liked it, and then some fight opportunities came up. GEORGE: Ok, so how long has Martin then been training with you? FARI: Look, that fight in the ISKA was in 2010. He was competing in some grappling tournaments back then, so it’s been at least 8 years. it’s been a long journey. 8 years flies, but here he is, The World Champion... | |||
| 45 – How To Protect Your Martial Arts Business Name With Domains & Social Media Handles | 07 Sep 2017 | 00:09:48 | |
Getting your martial arts business name is one thing, but making sure that you have the right domain names and social media handles is another. George Fourie shares how. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media and today, I want to talk about how to protect your martial arts business name through domain names and through social media handles. So this is a question I get often, so let me give you the idea scenario. Now, specifically, it came up yesterday, I was talking to one of our Martial Arts Media Academy members about building them a new website. But it’s not just about the new website, it’s about building a new website with a bit of a brand name change, so there's this bit of a shuffle happening, where they need to make a name change, which obviously means they need to make a domain name change. So here's the ideal scenario: when you look at a domain name, you want to try and get something that's really going to match your brand name. But sometimes that is going to be hard, because if your brand name is super long, 4 or 5 words, it can get a bit tricky. Now, things that can also throw domain name off is things like hyphens, and numbers, OK? Because let's say you've got numbers, 6-0 for example in your domain name: every time you mention your domain name to someone, you're going to have to say 6-0 or 60, or is it the numbers, or is it spelt out as 60? So you're always going to have that additional explanation that you're going to need to clarify what's going on with your domain name. The other is hyphens. Now, if you go and get a hyphen in your domain name, so let’s say martialarts-yourarea, then I want to ask why do you need the dash? Is it because somebody else already has martialartsyourarea in one word, or are you just trying to split it up in words? At the end of the day, if you don’t have both, it’s not a good idea, because if somebody else has martialartsyourarea, then that means when somebody types it in, they forget the hyphen, which is going to happen, that means that they're going to your competitors website, OK? Try and avoid anything hyphened, any type of – well, that's about the only character that you can add, because that creates confusion in the mind. Now, let's look a bit further. Let’s look at what's the ideal domain to get and what's the ideal name for your area. So in the old days of search engine optimization, where you want to rank in Google, it was very popular to get domain name your area, or you want to get the keyword to rank in the search engines. So you'd have, let's say, martialartsyourarea, for example. So the logic in that was great, in the old days, we'd search to optimize and to be at the top in Google, but it’s not really relevant today anymore. So although it can have a nice catch to it and it could be good to have a domain name like that, it’s better to just stick with your brand and build an authority website. So put a lot of content on it that it ranks naturally and you can still rank for those keywords if you just put them together in the titles and things. And by the way, if you are interested in a SEO training, I am busy preparing a SEO, just a basic SEO training for our Academy members and I was thinking about making it available to this group. So if it’s something that you are interested in, just leave me a comment below this video where you see it and we'll put that together and possibly share it in this group as well... | |||
| 44 – 10 Magic Words That Revive Old Martial Arts Students And Dead Leads | 24 Aug 2017 | 00:08:06 | |
Martial Arts marketing doesn't need to be complicated. All you need is to 'sell' the next step... IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media and I'm doing a quick podcast experiment. I'm broadcasting this in the Martial Arts Media Group and hopefully, simultaneously it's being broadcasted on the Martial Arts Media page and also, to our YouTube channel and then also to Dropbox, which means we'll transcribe this for an actual podcast episode. So, let's see how this goes. Now, the actual podcast, what I do want to discuss with you today is ten words that can completely transform the way you go about your business. And this concept, I shared this at the main event in Sydney, when I spoke at the main event, and it basically comes in the email format. Now, I want to give full credit where credit is due and this ten words, it's actually nine words, all right? It's nine words and they come from a gentleman called Dean Jackson and Dean Jackson actually invented the squeeze page. Now, what we know in internet terms as a landing page, a page where you basically have a sales message or an offer or collect details, or whatever it is that you do, but one dedicated page to deliver a message. So, Dean Jackson was the gentleman that actually invented this system and he also created what's called the nine-word email. Now, we've transformed it, the nine-word email, it's ten words now. And we call it in the Martial Arts Media Academy, we call it the “Boomerang Bullet.” And the reason we call it the Boomerang Bullet is because we expect a return and it's a bullet! It has an impact. So I'm going to share what the ten words are. Now, as I mentioned, we use this within a campaign, so we use it as in a six part campaign. Every time we've done this for martial arts schools, for martial arts schools owners, we've had tremendous success. It's always baffled everybody when we do it, everybody tries and complicates it, but it works every single time and when you do it when you just simplify the message and you do it, you get a lot of responses. So the way you can use it, you can use it to revive old students, you can use it to engage conversation with prospects who have not replied or have kind of just fallen off the radar, right? So if you're trying to revive old prospects, or revive old students, then these ten words can be used. Now, the way we do it, we use this within an email sequence, so you would need some kind of an email tool, preferably to do it, if you are going to do it on a mass scale, but even if you’re using this with Facebook messages, or even in a text message, the concept of it will change the way you go about your marketing... | |||
| 43 – Henry Calantog: 3 Must-Haves For Martial Arts Instructors To Run Fun & Entertaining Kids Classes | 15 Aug 2017 | 00:41:21 | |
Martial Arts school owners rate Henry as the 'Go To' kids instructor. These 3 Must-Haves will make you follow suit. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hi this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 43. Today, I have a guest with me that I met at The Main Event in Sydney. I was fortunate enough to be able to share some presentation at The Main Event, which is hosted, Ma1st and I was able to, it was my first presentation, it was good to get to a live event and meet Kyoshi Fred DePalma, who also introduced me to Henry Calantog and I was told by a lot of some of my customers and a lot of people that I engage with, mentioned that Henry is top notch and he has been helping them with instructors, helping them instruct their kids classes and everybody mentioned they've learned a lot from Henry. So of course, I wanted to take the opportunity to get Henry on the show. So welcome Henry! HENRY: Hello George, thank you very much for having me on. GEORGE: Awesome. So, we've got lots to talk about, but we're going to start of course, right at the beginning. So who is Henry Calantog? HENRY: My martial arts background well, actually let’s go through the personal background. I am the first, I'm Filipino. You wouldn't know that, because I'm over 6 feet tall, if you're familiar with any Filipinos, obviously, that's extremely tall. I was the tallest kid in the village, that's what we would make the joke with. But I am the first generation of my family that was born in the US, so my parents of course emigrated from the Philippines – Cavite, if you're familiar where that little fisherman village is, migrated here, and I was born here and pretty much, we brought the rest of the family over. Did martial arts off and on when I was a younger child, I tried to do eskrima kali because of a friend of a friend of my father knew how to do it, so we tried to train it in the backyard. Had a really bad experience with it, just because it’s a very old school instructor and my first class was putting my hand on the table while he was hitting my hand with a rattan stick. So, at the age 8 years old, I didn't find that very entertaining, so I didn't want to come back. I enrolled into a Taekwondo class; I just remember getting the pajamas. I did a Taekwondo class at the YMCA; I didn't like that either, because I thought it was boring. We sat around too much and didn't do anything. It wasn’t until I was raised in Reno Nevada – if you know where that is. And due to a job transfer, my mom moved to Arizona. We lived in Chandler Arizona, which is a couple of miles from where I'm a direct student of Kyoshi Fred DePalma. And then, I’ve been a student of his for 20+ years and that's where we found his school in 1994... | |||
| 42 – Amy Gardam: Living a Martial Arts Family Legacy | 01 Aug 2017 | 00:35:38 | |
When Amy's dad Kyoshi Andrew Roberts sadly passed she was left with 2 options: Quit or continue the family legacy. She's doing the latter. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION AMY: I felt like he was there, I felt close to him and I felt happy to be here, I prefer to be here than at home – this was my home. GEORGE: Amazing, so you truly are living a legacy. AMY: I think so, it's a good feeling. GEORGE: Good day, this is George Fourie and welcome to another martial arts media business podcast, episode number 42. I have today with me Amy Gardam from Edge Martial arts in Mt. Evelyn, Victoria, how are you doing today Amy? AMY: I’m good thank you, George, how are you? GEORGE: Excellent, thank you. So we're going to have a bit of a chat about you and running your school and a whole bunch of other things that have happened and the journey that you've taken to… if it's right me saying that way, that you really continuing a legacy within your family, would that be the right way to say it? AMY: Yes. GEORGE: All right, so we've got lots to talk about, so I'm going to jump into the interview. Just a few things: the show notes for this interview is at martialartsmedia.com/42, so that's 4, 2 as in the numbers. And that's it, let's get started. So, Amy, first and foremost, tell us about you: who is Amy Gardam? AMY: Ok. So, I'm a mother of two, I'm married, I've got my husband. I started martial arts when I was 4 years old with my dad. We started in just a local school hall at the time and eventually, the martial arts took off and he opened up a little part time center. And then when I was 15, just shy of being 15, I actually started teaching with him, just teaching the little kids. And from that moment on, and loved it, made it a career and now I run the business. I've got my two kids, and I'm a full-time working mum. GEORGE: Ok, awesome. So you are running the business full time and you're a mum and so you're really just born into the martial arts, this is everything you know, right? AMY: My whole life I've done martial arts, it's all I've known. GEORGE: All right, cool. So now, you're also running the business and that's just you at this point in time? AMY: Yeah, running the business with my staff, but my husband has recently, in the last three weeks quit his job as a welder to come onboard and we've brought it together, so we are running the business together and he's slowly learning martial arts basically. GEORGE: All right, awesome. So he's coming from a completely different angle then. He hasn't trained martial arts yet, but he’s also stepped in to help? AMY: Yeah. He did kick boxing, but that was about six years ago. He did it for six years back then, but he's never done karate or mixed martial arts, no... | |||
| 41 – The 5 Stages Of The Martial Arts Student Signup Cycle | 20 Jul 2017 | 00:10:41 | |
Every martial arts prospect that sees your marketing is in 1 of 5 stages. Do you know what to say in each one? IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION So the big question is, right, does your website have these offers? Are you catering for the hot? Are you catering for the warm and are you catering for the cold? Hey, this is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media and today I have an awesome training for you. So, this training is something that we focus on in our Martial Arts Media Academy and is part of a presentation that I did over the weekend at The Main Event, Fred Depalma’s ”The Main Event,” hosted by MA 1st, which was in Sydney. And the presentation that I did, or the segment that I'm going to talk about today rather, is called “The martial arts student sign up cycle.” Now, credit where credit is due, always: this was created by Eugene Schwartz, who wrote a book called “Breakthrough Advertising.” You'll pay about $150 for this book on Amazon and it's, he was a legendary marketer and copywriter. And what he talks about is the 5 different stages that a prospect will be in based on their interest level. And when you understand these different levels, you are able to fine tune your marketing message to be relevant to them, because, let’s say you have somebody, they’ve got questions and they don't have everything together about this martial arts thing. And you go and just present a price to them – they're just not ready, so that's where objections normally come from: ah, I need to think about it, I'm not interested, I don't know, I need to ask my wife – that's where those kinds of objections normally come from is, because a person isn't ready and there are questions that they might not know what it is or they just feel unsure, or they're just too embarrassed maybe to tell you. And that's where sort of the objections come up, which can generally be classed as excuses. The flipside is, if you don't know when somebody is absolutely ready to join, then you can also miss the boat because you might be carrying on, waffling on and they could be ready to buy and you can talk them out of joining – also, something that can happen. So I'm going to share this segment with you – I highly recommend you look at the full the presentation because the full presentation will give you the nuts and bolts of how it all fits together, but this by itself is super valuable. So I hope it helps, let me take you through it. If you're listening to the audio, I recommend you go to martialartsmedia.com, check the video out and it will all be clear and make sense. All right. So, the presentation was “Become the go-to martial arts school through the internet and social media marketing” and this segment is called martial arts students sign up cycle. So, there are five different stages of awareness that a prospect goes through... | |||
| 140 – Signing Up New Martial Arts Students With Dead Leads | 25 Feb 2023 | 00:12:58 | |
Turn your dead leads into profitable new martial arts students. Here’s a proven strategy to revive, reconnect and reengage potential students that you haven’t reached out to in a while. IN THIS EPISODE:
TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome back to another Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about signing up students with dead leads or leads that you have just forgotten about. Leads that have inquired, they never signed up, or you were having a conversation with them and they ghosted you or just disappeared. Or perhaps you have those old students that left unless they left on bad terms and you don't want them back. But otherwise, just students that left and something life got in the way and you didn't hear from them again and they left. So we're going to talk about a few simple strategies to restart the conversations with those dead leads, all students that have left, super simple but super profitable. Hang around to the end. I've got a great resource for you, a PDF that we call Conversation Carrots. It's one of the most popular resources we have in our Partners Program, a really simple way to engage and start conversations. I'll give you the details at the end of the podcast, and how to access that. All right, let's jump in. All right, before we get into the good stuff, a quick life update for any of you that have followed the podcast for a while and know that I haven't posted much on social in a while and done a podcast, this will take 30 seconds approximately. So I'm recording this in 2023, February, in October last year, we decided to move the family from Perth to the Sunshine Coast. If you're not from Australia, that's equivalent to moving from San Diego to New York, it's that far, and that's what we did. What decided us to move? Well in the mid-last year, we came here on holiday. I was hosting our first Partners Intensive, which is an event that we run for our Partners group. And we came on holiday the week before. Absolutely loved it here, loved the beaches, and just loved the vibe of it. And we decided we wanted to do something new, that I'm closer to hosting events on this side of the country but also close to the states for travel and events that we want to host over there. And so we made the big move. That's it.
Now, we're back and on track. The other thing that's been keeping us busy the last couple of months is onboarding new clients and working on a few cool things that I'm going to announce in the next month, a couple of weeks or so. Update done, right? Let's jump into the good stuff. So how does one sign up students from dead leads? All right, so let's look at a few scenarios. You have leads piled up in your Messenger. If you collect leads via Facebook Messenger, perhaps you have inquiries via Messenger or you have them from your website. So you have email leads, and you have them in your database, preferred. We'll talk about that maybe a little bit. Maybe people walked in and you took down their details, whatever the scenario, you had people that were inquired but never joined.
Now, if you had to track back the last few months, the last few years, how many of these people do you have in your database? If you still have them, we've got a few cool things that we can do with them and I'll chat about that in just a bit.
All right, so these perfect prospects inquired, but they never joined. Now, I guess a dangerous thing for us to do is to make some assumptions about them, that they inquired, but now they're just not interested. Well, it could be, but it could also be just something else that happened that we can't control.
Life got in the way. Maybe they were tied up in some other engagement and they just haven't had Covid, or maybe it's something deeper, right? There's a fear of what this whole martial life thing is about and they're just not comfortable stepping up and taking action on starting their training yet. | |||
| 40 – Martial Arts Instructor Gets Shot In The Head And Escapes Death – Here’s His New Perspective On Life | 27 Jun 2017 | 00:26:46 | |
Martial Arts instructor Adel Refai didn't dodge a bullet, but he is lucky to be alive today. This will shift how you go about your day. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hey, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Business podcast, episode number 40. Today I channel over to the East of the United States all the way to Florida and I'm speaking with Adel Refai from Combat Performance and Fitness. How are you doing Adel? ADEL: I’m doing great, how are you George? Good morning. GEORGE: Awesome, doing great. Cool, so you've got an exciting and horrific story to tell. But before we get to that, let’s just… just give us a bit of a background: who is Adel Refai? ADEL: Well, I'm a 38-year-old male, 5’ 10”. I’m the son of Egyptian immigrants, I grew up in New Jersey in the United States and moved on to Florida about the time I was 29 going on 30 and like I was telling it before, I grew up kind of fascinated by the martial arts, but it was just something I admired from afar, watched movies and I was involved with other sports and activities growing up. And then when I moved here, I started the next chapter of my life. I just kind of decided, well, this is something I always wanted to do, so I'm going to check it out. So I went into a gym and hit a heavy bag for the first time and I signed up for a karate program and then for the next 4 and a half years after that, I would go there 5 or 6 days a week just training, wanting to get better, wanting to get better. And then from there, got my black belt and then I got a black belt in kickboxing and then I started competing in Muay Thai fights and now I'm teaching kids, so the circle is complete I guess! But you know, I do internet marketing also and I work with small business owners and I kind of teach them just the basics and martial arts is just my passion and hobby on the side. GEORGE: So how did you actually decide, all right: you're doing the martial arts and now you're going to start teaching? ADEL: You know, it was just one of those things, it was one thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. I had a lot of instructors and they were so good about spending so much extra time outside of class with me to help me train and put in extra work one on one and all that. And so when I kind of moved on from going to the classes, because actually eventually they discontinue the adult program, but I have a little brother through a volunteering program here, Big Brothers, Big Sisters... | |||
| 39 – Fred DePalma (The MAIN Event) – The Hidden Value Of Martial Arts Business Events | 15 Jun 2017 | 00:43:27 | |
Fred DePalma (The MAIN Event & DePalma Karate) shares his martial arts journey and the real value of business events. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION And it was an hour and a half long private class and that's a long time do to a private class, so we paid him the money and we wanted to learn this advanced Kenpo stuff that we couldn't find anywhere. And I watched a student come into his school and sign up for a private class for $40. And I looked at him, and I'm like, “How come you're charging us $300 and this guy $40?” He goes, “Because that's my student, that's already a paying member here. You're going to learn what I'm teaching you, drive back to Connecticut and sell it to students to make money off of it.” GEORGE: Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to another Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 39. And today I have with me all the way from Arizona I believe, Kyoshi Fred Depalma. How are you doing today Fred? FRED: I’m doing fantastic, thank you for having me. GEORGE: Awesome. So Fred is an eighth degree black belt, started with martial arts in 1981, running his own school since 1986. So we're going to be talking a lot about how he got started, where he is now and exciting events that he's also hosting around the United States, as well as Australia. So first and foremost I guess, to just start from the beginning: who is Fred Depalma? FRED: Well, I don't know, I'm still trying to figure that one out myself. I do live in Arizona, which for people who don't know where that is in Australia, it’s just inland California. So I like to tell everybody Arizona's all beach, just no ocean. As soon as California falls in, then I’ll have the beach on my property. But anyways, I'm in Arizona, I'm originally from Connecticut. Connecticut is the other side of the country, so Arizona's the west, Connecticut is on the east, it’s the northeast in New England, kind of the first states that were settled. I grew up in Connecticut in Rhode Island. I actually started my first school there, that's where I did my training. In 1986., I opened up my first school in Naugatuck Connecticut that grew to 4 schools shortly after that. Packed up in 1990, sold my schools to my managers, took a year off, traveled across the country, like Arizona and started over. So that's it, but my system is Kenpo, I've always trained Kenpo. I teach Kenpo, but to me, it’s really not the style that matters and everybody are in love with their style and they should be, because that's what you teach. I mean, it’s what you study, it’s what you do, you should love, but it’s really about being structured and that's being given more than the style, especially at the beginning for the students. GEORGE: Awesome. So I want to go back there, just to your story. So you said you had 4 schools and then you packed up: does that mean that you started completely over, or was it… Did you sell that completely, or was it sort of a franchise that you extended further? FRED: I sold them completely, I did finance them for the guys, but it was theirs. When I first moved to Arizona, I was flying back every month to oversee testing, which then turned into every other month, which then turned into four times a year, which turned into two times a year, which turned into I'm not going back. So it was just breaking away slowly, so that way they can be successful in what they're doing, but at the same time, I didn't do it as a franchise and I didn't do it as a name use at the time, I just did an upright sale and they would bring me back for seminars – that's more or less how I’d get paid to do anything, but I didn't have it setup like I have it setup now. I just wanted to… I knew I was going to be all the way across the country and back then, before the internet and all that: very hard to run a company on the other side of the country, without being able to email and so on and so on. I mean, this was all pre-email and pre-video and pre-cell phones, so… | |||
| 38 – Martialytics Review With Brad Cumbers: Email Marketing Secrets For Martial Arts Schools | 08 Jun 2017 | 00:33:29 | |
Martialytics co-founder Brad Cumbers shares a review of the software with email marketing discussions. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Biggest success and I had the biggest return on biggest response rate was from plain text emails with a sort of one of those. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to episode 38 of the Martial Arts Media Business podcast and today we have another guest, exciting guest for you: Brad Cumbers from the software Martialytics. You might have heard of the software Martialytics, so I've been on a bit of a quest to explore different software programs because there's always a bit of a disconnect when it comes to what martial arts software does and what marketing does on the front-end. And not just the manual marketing, but the actual digital marketing. The place where everybody gets leads, but for some reason, almost none of the systems want to talk to the actual software, so there's a bit of a disconnect. We talk about software, we talk about emailing, which is really on topic for me this week, because in our Martial Arts Media Academy, we are discussing email marketing and how you can use email marketing to really improve your conversions, improve those touch points, how many times you talk to people and do a bit of the heavy lifting in the relationship building, by sending out emails, so it was a really very relevant topic. I've asked Brad about different aspects of the software, how it could be used and I must warn you: it probably does get… we go a little bit on the technical side but hang in there, because there's some really good information. Things go maybe over your head a little if it’s not your cup of tea, the technical type of stuff – I rephrase, I don't think it was that technical, but I know I can get carried away with the technology stuff. But for the most part, hang in for the episode, because you're going to get great value from it, there are some true gold nuggets about email marketing, how to use software and a bit about Martialytics, what they are all about and so forth. All right, so, as always: we have the show notes at martialartsmedia.com/38. So that's it from me, please welcome to the show – Brad Cumbers. GEORGE: Good day everyone. Today I am with Brad Cumbers and Brad Cumbers is local – well, was local in Perth, now living in the UK and he's the co-founder of the software CRM system for martial arts schools, which is Martialytics. So welcome to the podcast... | |||
| 37 – Ross Cameron from Lockdown: How To Host Martial Arts Events & Tournaments | 28 May 2017 | 00:29:10 | |
Ross Cameron shares how to run martial arts events and details about their exciting grappling tournament, Lockdown. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. If you're putting on an event, at the end of the day, you don’t want to be turning around and saying, sorry about it, but I can't afford to pay you. You don't want to be standing around the official, saying, sorry, we can't afford to pay you. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 37. Today I speak to another gentleman, with multiple hats, which is Ross Cameron. And Ross, a former engineer, I’d say a serial martial arts entrepreneur, who is the owner of Aftershock, Fightcross gyms, multiple Fightcross gyms across Australia and an exciting new grappling tournament event called Lockdown. And we talk a bit about that, we also go into detail about hosting events, how you can host your own events, and everything that goes with it and doesn't sound like an easy process, but obviously doable. So lots to chat about, lots to discover in this episode. So if you need help with your martial arts marketing, the digital side of things: Facebook, Google, email, converting, having a website that converts: we just created a Facebook group, which is a support group for a lot of the information that we are putting out, so I've been doing a series of online web classes, which you can find more about at martialartsmedia.com/workshop and we pretty much over-deliver in giving away the strategies and methods that we use for top martial arts schools around the country and America and so forth. So the Facebook group is sort of a support group for that and we share bits of information and I'm starting to upload snippets of videos, things that really help you build your business. So if you want in, it’s a closed group, all that you've got to do is go to martialartsmedia.group, so martialartsmedia.group and request to join. And if you're nice, I’ll let you in – which, I'm sure you're nice. I've had to remove a few people that want to spam this service, that service, and funny stuff so yeah, I'm very on to keeping it clean and keeping it of value and not being one of those groups where people harass you and spam you and just use it for the purpose of marketing. I go with value first, marketing if you need it. So that's what we're up to. I would like to see you in the group, that would be awesome, log in, say hi, introduce yourself. It would be great to see you and connect with you there. For this episode, the show notes will be on martialartsmedia.com/37, the number 37. And that's it for now – enjoy the episode, lots of great value to share. Please welcome to the show, Ross Cameron... | |||
| 36 – Graham Slater: The Search For The Next Jackie Chan | 10 May 2017 | 01:09:52 | |
Graham Slater talks all things martial arts business and an exciting movie opportunity for school owners. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie, welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 36. I’m really excited to have a guest on board again with us today, who is Mr. Graham Slater. Now, this interview could have gone a lot of directions, but we focused on insurance, protecting yourself as a martial arts school owner. We also discussed marketing and a really, really exciting venture that they have going with a video, a video production show, where you as a martial arts school owner can really benefit from. So listen out for that, we go into details with it towards the end of the episode. And I also have to apologize to Graham, because I made a bit of a blunder and I've done this once before and I caught it in time, but I'm definitely going to adjust my process with what happens. So, let me fill you in: the way I normally do the podcast interview is, I never really meet the guest. We start talking on Skype, we have a bit of a chit chat and we get to know each other. And the conversation easily gets carried away and I forgot to clearly mention that we are not actually recording the podcast yet. And the conversation kept rolling and about 30-40 minutes in, I actually realized that we made a mistake and that Graham was actually under the impression that we really have been recording. And we have restarted from that point, so because the story was just… there was so much shared in the first 30-40 minutes, what I decided to do is actually give you the raw, uncut conversation that I was having with Graham and at the end of the show, if you keep on listening after the outro music plays out, the raw conversation between me and Graham will be added onto that, OK? A bit of a bonus for you, we cover a lot of ground. This is a bit of a longer episode if you listen to it all the way through, but we record the podcast as an episode, which is kind of a normal length and cover everything in that and then at the end, you will also get the bonus as such. Alright, so I hope you enjoy that, I'm going to jump into this, just a couple of things: of course, the show notes are at martialartsmedia.com/36, so that will be the number 36 and a few other exciting things that I will mention at the end of this show, but first and foremost, let’s jump into the interview and please welcome to the show, Graham Slater... | |||
| 35 – The Biggest Mistake Martial Arts School Owners Make When Marketing Online | 27 Apr 2017 | 00:05:13 | |
Struggling to string together successful marketing strategies for your martial arts school? You could be missing these 3 keys. *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and today, I want to talk about the one biggest problem that martial arts business owners have when marketing their school on the internet. Now, a few days ago, I released a business case study from a client of ours that attracted 96 paid trial students within a 14-day period, which is a quiet time and on the back end, managed to convert 70% into full paying members. Now, that is awesome, it's great results, I'm sure you would like it for your business as well, but there's one big problem with this, a few segments, a few parts that contribute to this one big problem. Firstly, that paid trials system, that paid trial offer is only covering 1 to 2 of 5 segments out of a buying cycle. What does that mean? It means that your prospects are at different stages in a buying cycle. Some are completely cold and they're not interested in martial arts at all, and others are hot and they're ready. And the warm and hot phases are where you can present the offer in front of someone and they're ready. They have all their questions answered about martial arts, they know it's good for them, they know their child is going to get confidence, they know they're going to get self-defence skills, they know the benefits that relate to them and all that they need is the right offer to take them over the edge. Now, that's awesome and that's awesome if you have a lot of reach. The reach as in, you have a big market to get your message out to, like you live in a big city. But what if you are in a smaller segment of the market, in a small town? How quickly are you going to burn out just putting that paid trial offer in front of someone? So you're going to need to think a lot deeper and you're going to have to think of how you can cover that cold and cooler type market and swing them to the benefits of martial arts. That comes with a content marketing strategy, which we're not going to talk about right now. So that's one part of it. The next thing you've got to look at is pre-frame. Pre-frame meaning, what has that person seen or heard about your business before that they see the offer. If your brand is not familiar or you have a bad reputation, or people just don't know anything about you, there's a lot more steps in the process before you can actually put that good offer in front of them, before they are going to cross the line and make that buying decision. And that comes to the one biggest problem, which is having no strategy. No strategy for how you market your business online. And it's not your fault because there's not a lot of this information out there... | |||
| 34 – Need More Martial Arts Students? These 2 Free Resources Might Help | 19 Apr 2017 | 00:07:51 | |
Get access to a free martial arts business case study and a online workshop to attract the right students. *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie from martiaartsmedia.com. This week, I have an awesome announcement for you, and it comes with two awesome gifts that are going to help you grow your martial arts business, especially on the internet. Gift number 1: gift number 1 is an eleven-page case study that I did about a campaign that we ran in December with Paul Veldman, which generated 96 paid trial sign ups, within the two weeks. Now, I said it with caution, because I'm not giving this case study to you with the expectation that you're going to generate that, but there are core components and strategies recorded in this case study that is going to reveal how you can apply these same strategies to campaigns that you are doing and possibly, if you get 20 or 30 or 40 extra sign ups through the process, it will definitely be worth it and it's gold. It's free, you can download it right now at martialartsmedia.com/casestudy and this breaks down just different components, different triggers that you can use and how you can structure your campaigns to get good results with your paid trial campaigns. This type of campaign is maybe not something you can run consistently, like an evergreen what we call, an evergreen campaign, meaning it's continuous, so this is really for generating that rush of sign ups. So there's a lot of good things in there, the great psychology of just the buying process and I put a lot of time into this. It’s not just about Paul's results and experience, I've really explored the topic with a whole bunch of people and a whole bunch of martial arts experts through our martial arts media business podcast. And through that, I was able to gather other insights that you can take and contribute to this. So, that's gift number one: martialartsmedia.com/casestudy, you can download that now. That will take you to gift number two, all right? Gift number two is a live online workshop that we're going to be hosting and this is really to give you that 30,000-foot bird's’ eye view of how the online platforms work and how you can set yourself up for the long run. This is going to teach you how to become the go-to martial arts school, how to position yourself as the authority within the martial arts business space, or I’d rather say not martial arts business space, but martial arts business within your community. And there are certain things that you can apply that is going to help you do that with putting on valuable content and I'm not just talking about running ads, this is way, way behind running ads, OK? If you're just going to be running ads, you're always just going to be running ads. But if you take on a different approach and you know that you're going to be in business for the long turn, which of course you are, that's why you've taken on this journey, then there are things you can do with content marketing and different strategies that are going to pay off for you right now, but even more in the long run. And this is information I want to give to you, this is my life's work, I've dedicated the past… I wouldn't say life, but the past ten years to learning this type of online stuff and we've helped a lot of martial arts business owners transform their businesses through these methods... | |||
| 33 – Kyoshi Dave Kovar: Breaking Through Barriers Holding You Back In Your Martial Arts Business | 06 Apr 2017 | 00:40:33 | |
Kyoshi Dave Kovar from Kovar Systems reveals how to conquer blocks holding you back from success with your martial arts business. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION It's a quote I learned from my father: wherever you are, be there. And you've got to put the time and effort in and quality time in. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 33. Another awesome interview for you today, with Kyoshi Dave Kovar from System Kovar Satori Academy. And how this interview came about, now, you're probably familiar with Dave Kovar as most people in the martial arts business industry is familiar with Kyoshi Dave Kovar, but how this interview actually came about was, having a chat with Matt Ball from episode number 28 and in that interview, Matt Ball was sharing how Dave Kovar helped him release some stuff within him that was holding him back. And that led to this conversation. So, if you listen to that episode, this is a great follow up on that, as Dave was actually just visiting Matt Ball, as well as Matt Wickham and probably a bunch of others school owners in Melbourne and this episode came about. I missed him while he was in Melbourne, but we managed to catch up just after he left back to the US. So this is a jam-packed interview with great value. I was really blown away by the information that Dave shared and this point of time, Dave and his organization cater to 3000 students, they're running at a 96% retention rate with a 115 new students every month. So there’s a lot of core components that came together in this interview, so you're really, really going to get a lot of value out of it. And there's one thing that really stood out for me: as we help martial arts business owners with their digital marketing systems and we are putting together a systematic structure, a course that can help martial arts school owners take their marketing into their own hands. And with that, I really picked up something very unique that Dave was doing. Maybe it’s just because I was paying attention to it, but I want to know from you if you pick that up as well, and I’ll reveal what that is at the end of the episode. And also I just want to thank Gordon Storie, who mentioned to me on our Facebook page that you weren't able to access the episodes past ten episodes, so if you're a new listener and you haven't listened to all the back episodes, there's a ton of great, great, great content there for you. You can now go through, well obviously you can access it on the website, martialartsmedia.com but if you are listening through the podcast app, or the android app Stitcher radio, any of these devices that you get, apps that you get on your mobile phone that you can use to listen to podcasts, then you can now backtrack and access all those back episodes. I think that the last 30 episodes you can access. All right, so your show notes and all links, everything mentioned in this episode is of course on martialartsmedia.com/33, the number 33 and that's it from me for now, please welcome to this show, Kyoshi Dave Kovar. | |||
| 32 – 30 Tips For Martial Arts Business Owners From Industry Experts (Part 2) | 30 Mar 2017 | 00:22:08 | |
A continuation of the 31st episode, here’s the second batch of tips from martial arts experts that are equally valuable as the first. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Commit to your passion: if you want to succeed with your martial arts business, just go all in focus on that. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another MAM Business Podcast, episode number 32. And we are continuing from last week. Last week’s episode, which was 25 tips, 25 tips for martial arts business owners from industry experts, part 1. And this week, we're going over to part 2. So we are working our way through episodes number 15 to number 30 and we’re going to be covering tips from those. So, as always, you can find the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/32, the number 32. And that’s it. I’m going to jump straight into part 2. 26 – Get out of your comfort zone, travel, and train with people that are at a much better level than you. Starting out with number 26, Justin Sidelle, who is one of the head coaches at Bali MMA. And if you want to go take an awesome tropical holiday combined with awesome training with top-level martial artists, Bali MMA should be on the top of your list. For me, it’s again, here in Perth, where I’m based, it’s a really quick holiday, it’s a bit of a common holiday to go to Bali, because everybody just does it and it’s cheaper to get on a plane and go to Bali for a weekend, then to drive down south a few hours. So it’s a very common holiday, but it’s a very diverse place. And you can have multiple experiences: if you’re into surfing, awesome beaches, awesome surfing, there’s great shopping, there’s great entertainment, and of course, Bali MMA. So if you want a very diverse holiday on a tropical island, put this on the top of your list. You’ve got Justin Sidelle, who’s one of the head coaches – I believe it was started by two brothers, Anthony and Andrew Leone and you also have Tiffany Van Soest, who is an undefeated glory world kickboxing champion, Muay Thai champion and the tip of that would be, something that Justin Sidelle mentioned in the interview was, when Tiffany walks onto the floor, everybody shuts up and listens and takes note. And training with her just lifts the game and lifts the level of everybody on the mats. So that would be the tip: go train with people that are at a much higher level than you, get out of your comfort zone, travel, and train with people that are at a much better level than you and obviously learn from that. And I know that’s something most martial artists do, but hey: go do it on a nice tropical island, why not?... | |||
| 31 – 25 Tips For Martial Arts Business Owners From Industry Experts (Part 1) | 23 Mar 2017 | 00:22:28 | |
We’re down to our 31st episode but this isn’t your typical podcast interview. This is a recap of the first 14 episodes, with tips from martial arts experts. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie, and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast Episode 31. We are going to do something different today, which is a bit of a recap. And I'm going to split this into two parts. So we are up to number 14. So up to episode number 14, we're doing the recap. And I going to give you the top 25 learnings, findings, gold nuggets, whatever you want to call them from the first 14 episodes. So there are a lot of cool things in this episode. I actually wanted to do this in one shot but I realized that there's a lot to talk about so I'm breaking it up into two parts. In the next episode, we’ll probably have about 30 tips. So for now, there's the top 25 tips from the first 14 episodes and a lot of the message you'll see, a lot of things start to overlap, a lot of the message is in sync with some of the previous episodes. And that's a good thing because when you hear people saying the same things, and these are successful business owners, then you know that this is gospel. This are things that are working across the board. So pay attention to those things. So as always, the transcripts are available on https://martialartsmedia.com/31, the number 31. And I'm going to jump right into this and start off with number one. Here we go again. So number one and episodes number 1, 2, and 3 were Phil Britten and Graham McDonnell from the WA Institute of Martial Arts. 1 – At some point you have to burn the bridges. And what I was referring to, of course, is when you're running a full-time job and you try to build the gym on the side. At some point in time, something is going to have to give go. Something is going to have to let go and you're going to have to burn the bridges at some point in time. It's most likely not going to be a smooth transition. Most people take a lot of risks to go from a part-time business owner to a full-time business owner. So there's going to be some risks involved by taking that step but at some point, you're just going to have to cut the ties and just go flat out and say, “Alright! This is it I'm going all in. And when you doing that, you might be struggling for cash. You don't have support. And if you are struggling for cash, why don't you focus on private sessions, part-time sessions, do part-time session training during the day or whenever you have time and filling those gaps to boost the cash flow while you are transitioning to a full-time successful business owner. 2 – If you want to grow your school, stop doing everything yourself... | |||
| 139 – Refining Retention After Massive Martial Arts Business Growth | 23 Nov 2022 | 00:49:03 | |
The last time we spoke to Lindsay Guy, we discussed how he tripled his karate school in record time. Today we chat about refining retention to maintain this massive growth. IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here. [elementor-template id="14434"]
TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: It's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I have a repeat guest with me, Lindsay Guy from Guy's Karate School. Now if you recall episode 117, I had Lindsay Guy on and we spoke about how he had 3x’d his martial arts business moving past the Big C, we'll call it the Big C. The YouTube and social media channels don't like us talking about what it is, although we probably mentioned it in the episode. Anyway, I wanted to catch up with Lindsay just to see how things are going right now. We spoke about how he 3x’d his business. I wanted to see where he is now, how things are going, and how he handled the growth. We talked a bit about retention, and a little bit about marketing and it was just a great martial arts conversation. Now, I must warn you, Lindsay is super authentic and as he says, he's got no switch and he speaks very straightforwardly. And we have this sense of humor where we look for little gaps and opportunities to have a go and have a bit of fun and fun with each other. So that might come out in some of the comments from him and me. Don't take it to heart. It's probably easier if you watch the episode because Lindsay's face explains his sense of humor. But yeah, one of my favorite humans to speak to when it comes to a sense of humor and having fun. So a lot of fun in this episode and a lot of value. So jump in episode 139. So head over to the website, martialartsmedia.com/139. You can download the transcript and all the resources mentioned in this episode. And do me a favor, if you get some good value out of this episode, please share it with someone you love, someone you care about, a martial arts instructor, or martial arts school owner. So they'll get as much value from it as you will. All right, let's jump in. Lindsay Guy, welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Actually, welcome back to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. LINDSAY: Thanks, George. Thanks for having me on again. | |||
| 30 – Matt Wickham: Running A Building Business By Day, Martial Arts School Owner And Instructor By Night | 16 Mar 2017 | 00:42:20 | |
Matt Wickham shares his journey of running 2 businesses simultaneously while hosting the world's best martial artists in their small town. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another martial arts media business podcast episode and were up to number 30. And today I have with me a kind of a legend in the industry, Matt Wickham, who a lot of people are familiar with, although he operates from a very small town in Victoria. And that's part of the topic, we discuss operating a martial arts school in a very small town, where obviously your marketing reach is a lot smaller then it would be in a big city and how he manages to operate with both of his businesses, side by side. So he's into the building industry and that's a family business, and then he has his passion, his martial arts business. But even operating in such a small town, he still manages to pull all the big names into his school and he invites people from all over the world to come and train with his students so that he can pass on the knowledge that he's been able to gather throughout his own travels. So great episode and lots of talk about that. I'm going to keep this intro very short today and we're going to jump right into the episode and chat with matt. As always, you can find all the transcripts on the website, so martialartsmedia.com/30, so that's the number 30. And again, if you reading this episode – the podcast players are right on the website, they're also in the app, so if you have a mobile phone, you can just download it and get the episodes delivered straight to you. So that's it from me, let's jump right into the episode and please welcome to the show, Matt Wickham. GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me Matt Wickham. MATT: Good day how you going? GEORGE: Good good. Let’s start with, where exactly on the map are you? I was attempting to visit you on my recent trip to Melbourne, but you’re just outside of Melbourne is that right? MATT: That’s right. I’m situated on the Murray River, on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, it’s about two or three hours from Melbourne, in a small community called Echuca, population is probably, in Echuca I think it’s about 12000, across the river there's an extra couple of thousand, so in the community there are about 20,000 people. | |||
| 29 – Martial Arts Success Story From Humble Beginnings – Westside MMA’s Stuart Grant | 08 Mar 2017 | 00:30:31 | |
Get inspired by a true martial arts success story. Stuart Grant's Westside MMA is a raging success, but that was not always the case… IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. Download the PDF transcription TRANSCRIPTION Good day, how are you doing – George Fourie here from Martial Arts Media business podcast and this is episode number 29. Another exciting episode today, I have Stuart Grant from Westside MMA and this was a great interview and I don't know if you've ever walked into a martial arts gym and you just, you kind of feel the energy bounce out at you, you just feel, Wow there's something magic happening in here. And that's the experience you get when you walk into Westside MMA and I'm posting a video on this page as well, which you can find if you're listening on martialartsmedia.com/29, and have a look at the video. I actually took a tour with Stuart through his gym and it’s just phenomenal. It’s really an immaculate place. And that's not something that fell into his lap, it’s something that he had to work long hours hard for, had a lot of support from his partner, and he's got quite a fascinating story and something that he does that is of course close to my heart is, he uses the power of Google AdWords and Facebook to grow his business. So that coming up shortly. Something I just want to quickly mention: I see there's a lot of people downloading the transcripts of the episodes, which is great, and you can find the transcript of this show on martialartsmedia.com/29. And of course, a lot of people prefer to read, but I also saw a few comments that people actually thought that it wasn't possible to listen to the podcast, so they actually just went to the website and they didn't see the actual play button or they’re probably not familiar – if you're not familiar with the app set you can use to listen and people end up downloading the transcript and just read it. So if you are reading this, and you're not aware that you can actually listen to the podcast, there are several ways you can do that: if you are on the website, there will be a play button, so on this one, martialartsmedia.com/29 and you'll look for a little audio player, you can play it through there. Then, if you have an iPhone, you can use the podcast app that's like a purple app and you can search for that, all in iTunes and you can just search for martial arts media business podcast, ours will come up and you can subscribe to it, and every week when we bring out a new episode, it’s going to download onto your phone, so you can listen to it directly onto your phone. And if you don't have an iPhone and you have a Samsung or any type of a phone that is on the Android platform, so on the Google platform, you can use an app called Stitcher, I believe Google also has an app for podcast, but I know Stitcher radio is definitely the one you can use. So same deal: you can download the podcast every week and listen to that way. But hey – either way you like to consume the information, of course, the reason why we do the transcript is because we know a lot of people do like to read, or you don't have time or maybe you want to skim through it – however you prefer to consume the information, we want to make sure we give you the various options. So just wanted to bring that to your attention if you are reading the podcast – you can listen to it as well and listen to it on the go while you're driving around, or driving to work or driving to the gym. | |||
| 28 – How To Double Your Martial Arts Business In 2 Years Without Selling Your Soul | 01 Mar 2017 | 00:50:40 | |
Want a successful martial arts business, but don't want to be 'that guy'? Matt Ball talks about changing your mindset and breaking through barriers. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION It made me change my whole concept, my whole thought concept on it. You can be successful and be a good guy, what I'm doing is I'm basing my ideas of success on the wrong preset. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 28. I have another awesome guest with me today, who is Matthew Ball from SMAC and SMAC stand for Somerville Martial Arts Center, which is where Matthew is from of course. And we talk about the word SMAC and the possible negative connotation it has to it, but I guess more importantly, the whole change that they went through in branding, from being a hardcore fighter type image, with skulls and skulls on the car and everything and transitioning that to a friendlier, family environment, and how they had to go by changing their branding, their public image. And it’s something that caused them to double their business, in a short span of only two years. So we talk about that, it was a really fun conversation, especially before and after, but we kept in all the good bits for you. And we also talk about Matthew's first management episode, where he was actually forced to manage, because he was in the hospital on his back, and that was the first time he actually had the whole bird's' eye view about his business and was able to manage it better from that perspective. And we also had some deep discussions about association with success, internal blocks that you might have that don't allow you to succeed, that you almost self-sabotage yourself every time you get to this point of success, because you don't want to be associated with being that guy, that successful guy that everybody hates, and how Matthew had to fight that, work through that to change his association of what it means to be successful and helping others. Now, I want to jump into a theme that's been happening and I've been talking about it in the last few episodes and it’s all tying together and it’s something I keep on talking about, because it’s something that works, and this is event based marketing. And the more I talk about it, the more I explore it, the more I discover. And the more answers I get and the more I'm doing campaigns for martial arts schools, the more I'm learning about the psychology of why things work and why they may not work and we adjust. | |||
| 27 – Turning 2 Weeks ‘Quiet Time’ Into 96 Martial Arts Paid Trial Students (And How To Retain 90% Of Them) | 22 Feb 2017 | 00:33:01 | |
Attracting 96 new martial arts paid trial students in 2 weeks is fantastic. But retaining them by providing value is another. Paul Veldman shares how. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION And what I had saw coming back in was some faces and names that I hadn't seen for years, saying, can we take up his offer? Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the martial arts media business podcast, episode number 27. I have with me for round 2 today, Shihan Paul Veldman from Kando Martial Arts in Hughesdale and also from Martial Arts Business Success and we're going to be talking about a couple of things, but we're going to start with a really, really successful campaign that Paul had in December, that we helped him with and that generated well over 90 paid trials in the end, which is now the official number, which it was 86, there were 96 results from that. And we're going to break it down, not just the signup process: we talk a lot about generating leads because that's my specialty, but I wanted to really get a background view of what happens. You put out a great offer, you put out a great trial like that, and you've got this flood of new students that sign up, but what do you do then? How do you manage to get them into your club on a permanent basis, signing them up for a long term member? And we're going to take a look at the different steps and components that go into that, to really turn these paid trial leads into ongoing and long-term club members. So lots of great things to talk about, and not to jump the gun yet, but if you do want to have a look at the actual page that we used that helped generate Paul more than 90 paid trials at the end of the day, then go and have a look at martialartsmedia.com/mabs – M-A-B-S. I did a short seven-minute video, it just gives you a bit of an overview of how the whole page works, different components, the up-sells, and that's going to put a lot of this interview into perspective, so whether you do that before or after the interview, just make a note of that, because that's really going to help you understand the different components, and how that can help your marketing. All right, I want to get going. For all other show notes and links and everything mentioned in this episode, you can go to martialartsmedia.com/27, download the transcript and everything else is on the website for you. That's it for me, I hope you enjoy this interview – you're going to learn a lot from this I can guarantee that, and welcome to the show once again Mr. Paul Veldman... | |||
| 26 – How To Run A Successful Martial Arts Open Day | 15 Feb 2017 | 00:28:49 | |
A profitable martial arts open day can position you for a successful year. Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate shares how. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION I think it's important, one of the people, so the only reason he came back was because of the email. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 26. I am finally back with a few interviews and I've got four awesome interviews lined up for you. I just did a trip to Melbourne and met up with a few great school owners. Learned a lot, got a lot of advice from different perspectives, different ways of doing things and I'm going to bring it all to you. So lots of gold and information just shared, I will probably do a recap of all this after all of the interviews, so look out for that. But for now, I just want to bring you the interviews, just as they are. For a change, it wasn't a Skype or a phone call type interview, it was face to face, so it was great to have the different live dynamics of these interviews and you're going to get a lot of value from this. We've got a lot of great information to share and today I have on the show with me Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate in Cranbourne in Melbourne area. And Darryl has great success with his open days and I guess you can rather call it an open hour, rather than an open day, because they only run it from 12 to 1 and all the energy is focused on that one hour, instead of multiple hours or five hours, where everybody's energy is scattered and high and low and everybody's walking in at a different time, so much easier to manage one hour. It is the pride and joy of all his students, they all want to be a part of it and everybody's energy is high for that one hour. And of course, he presents an exclusive offer and the process which he's going to outline for you has generated 70 students for them on the day and an additional 19 afterward. So Darryl is going to give you all the insights and everything of that. So, I'm going to jump into this episode. Now, the transcripts and show notes and everything else that you need are available as always on martialartsmedia.com/26, and that's it from me – hope you enjoy this interview, it was awesome, I'm sure you're going to get great value from this. Pease welcome to the show Darryl Thornton from Shukokai Karate... | |||
| 25 – Your Martial Arts Audience Ignoring You? This Might Help | 01 Feb 2017 | 00:07:36 | |
If you're not getting interaction from your martial arts audience, chances are your message isn't relevant right now. Learn more. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION If your marketing messages are being ignored and you’re not getting responses or any activity, this might be the answer – this might help. Hi, this is George Fourie and today, we're going to be talking about relevance – relevance in your marketing: is it spot on, is it targeted at the right person and being received at the right time? And this conversation came up while I was chatting to Professor Brannon Beliso from One Martial Arts in San Francisco. And we did an email campaign for them and we were looking at different emails going out and we spotted an email that was being sent that was not targeted at the right audience and it wasn't framed right for the right segment in that list. And we had a bit of a chat about relevance and so forth, and I'm going to give you a few insights on what we’ve gathered from that conversation. Firstly, when you look at your own marketing as such: it’s so easy to look at your Facebook page as one Facebook page, or if you have an email list and you’re doing that type of marketing, you just look at the one email list, our list as a single – plural as such. But when you look at your Facebook page, it consists of individual people. Individual people, different ages, different lifestyles, different interests, different everything – there's different people all over this page, same as your email list. Look at your membership base – these are all individual people. Yes, they have one common interest of martial arts, but they have different interests in life and they come from different backgrounds and different cultures and all these types of things. So you've got to be very conscious of how you send your message, is it relevant to this person, and is it also relevant at the right time, because there's a message of, “Hey, do you want to join our club,” which is not really a conversation opener, it’s not the first thing you'd say to someone. It would be, “Hey, how are you, how are you doing, how can we help you, what are you looking for” – it would be a different type of conversation, so you've got to think of, where is your message? Is it relevant to the person, first and foremost, and then is it relevant at the right time? This is obviously easy to do in a face to face conversation: when you're talking to someone, you can do all these things. You can assess who is this person, you can ask a few questions and you can gather enough information that you can shape your conversation further. But when doing marketing, you've got to be conscious of these things, of how you put the message out and of how it’s going to be relevant to a person. So, always bear in mind, first and foremost, one key fact that is: one person is always looking at your marketing message. I see sometimes people write an email message and it's, “Hey you guys,” “You guys,” “Team,” or something, but there's no team watching that, and there's no “you guys” listening: there's one person listening. It’s a conversation between you and someone else, or your brand and someone else. So bear that in mind: there's always one person listening and absorbing your information. So speak to that one person directly... | |||
| 24 – Martial Arts Website Templates, Replicated Websites & Page Builder Tools – The Pro’s & Con’s | 25 Jan 2017 | 00:11:07 | |
Martial arts website templates, funnel tools and replicated websites is a quick fix to advertise, but there are pros & cons to be aware of. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Should you be setting up a templated website for your martial arts school? Do you need a landing page type tool, do you need a fancy funnel creator – that's what we’re going to be talking about on today's show. Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com. Today, we’re going to be talking about websites and using website template builders, template type websites that you can purchase from a company or these landing page builders, if you should be using them, what's the pros and cons of that – all these fancy funnel tools that you might have heard of, you heard a buzzword of funnel this and funnel that, so I'm going to be exploring the pros and cons of both. And look, there are pros and there are cons. This is from my perspective, my experience with online space and building up websites and selling websites and really owning your own online property. And I guess that's what it comes down to owning your own property. But first up, I want to say this: in doing this type of thing, this is a roadblock in your business. To getting started, to getting leads, to getting out there and getting marketing done, I say just do whatever. Just get in there, as long as you're not forking out thousands and thousands of dollars, just get in there and start doing something. Get the engine rolling and start generating leads. Because sometimes when you start getting into the marketing practice, that's when the real learning comes and the real understanding comes and that's where sometimes expensive mistakes can be the biggest lesson because that's going to tell you what you should be doing. So here's me, the king of all mistakes, and I'm going to be sharing the ins and outs with you. You can learn from them and choose your course from them and choose your course from that. So should you be using a templated website? Look, it depends. It depends on, as I just mentioned if it’s a roadblock, but I want you to look at the longevity of your business. Now, your domain name, your www address – that's something that you own on the internet and you've got to own your digital assets. So what do I mean by that, by digital assets? Digital assets are your website, content that you put out, articles, videos, and these things... | |||
| 23 – The Most Important Number To Pay Attention To For Your Martial Arts School Success | 17 Jan 2017 | 00:38:56 | |
Focusing on the right numbers in your martial arts business? There’s one number that could be killing your profits. Master Fari Salievski shares his views. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION And I don't want my students to feel just as another number: I want them to know that I care enough. Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 23. Today, I have a repeat guest, Master Fari Salievski and this is an episode you want to listen to. And it might hit home for you, it might not – it might ruffle a bit of fathers, it might make you feel a bit uncomfortable if you're in that boat, but I can tell you what: if there are some complications in your business and there are some things that you're struggling with, this episode can be a great breakthrough for you. And especially also on paying attention to numbers, statistics, a lot of things that a lot of martial arts business owners are not paying attention to. So this is going to be a great episode for you. So for me, back in the swing of things after a short little getaway, a nice little vacation break. If you listened to or watched episode number 22, go check it out on the website at martialartsmedia.com. We stayed at this nice little remote spot, which was very relaxing, nice beach views – a few storms, which was OK, but a good time to relax, which is a good thing, because the New Year has kicked off on a very high note for us: a lot of martial arts school owners coming on board and we're really looking forward to helping a lot of school owners with their lead generation and creating a few success stories, which is really exciting, so go and check that out. And I guess on that note, I want to bring attention to something that we've just completed for our today's guest, Master Fari Salievski: if you go to his website martialartsforlife.com.au, go and check it out and let us know what you think. We spent a lot of time on revising the message that he was trying to get across, pretty much trying to compact all that experience, 34 years of experience into his website, to deliver that message as the front of the KMA champion martial arts brand. And look, a website's got a few core functions: it needs to differentiate yourself from the pack, obviously it’s there to generate leads, to collect phone numbers and phone calls and online inquiries. It’s about you getting your message across to your students and to your prospects. I’m sure the reason why you ventured on your own and didn't stay with your martial arts school and decided to do things your way, was because you wanted to get a certain message across and you wanted to do certain things your way and I guess represent your values, of how you want to dedicate yourself to your martial arts journey and passing that on to other people. And that's an important key to a professional website and look, it’s not the text stuff. And this is where, I think people get a bit confused about the professional website: yes, one kid can do it for $500 and somebody's going to charge $5000 or more. And what is the big differentiating factor, because the tech is all the same? Well, the differentiating factor is, does a $500 website get your message across to your target audience? Does it sell them on the benefits, on the reasons of why they should take the step and join your program and start training with you? And that is where the big art comes through, with professional websites. But just to give you a tip: if there's one thing that you want to change in your marketing, go and look at your website, because at the end of the day, your website is where people end up. Yes, people talk about using fancy tools for landing pages and so forth, but if your landing page is not converting on the first interaction with your brand, then what are the people going to do next? If you made an impression, they might log back onto go look you up and what are they going to do? They're going to go to Google, they're going to type in your martial arts school name, and where are they going to end up? On your website. So yes, it’s good to have landing pages and all these flashy things that you can use within your different ad campaigns, but at the end of the day, your website needs to represent your brand, be professional and be able to convert, be able to take orders, and more. Take orders, take phone calls and take online inquiries with ease, especially on a mobile device. So yes, go have a look, we're pretty much polishing up the final touches on Fari's website – martialartsforlife.com.au and have a look and see what tips you can get from that, especially with the wording and the copy. And look, this is not something you can really duplicate, because Fari's message will be different to your message, so if there's one thing where we spend a lot of time on is getting that type of message across to people, extracting the message from the martial arts school owner and putting that onto paper that it can be communicated 24/7 to your prospect... | |||
| 22 – How To Have Simplicity And Clarity In Martial Arts Marketing | 10 Jan 2017 | 00:07:46 | |
Keep your martial arts marketing activities simple, clear and specific with these key tips from the tropics. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION You've got to be so clear and so simple with your marketing. You know as a business owner, you tend to assume that people understand what you're trying to say and who it's for. This is George Fourie from Martial Arts Media. And here's a bit of a different podcast for you. So I'm standing too… And if you're listening to this I suggest you head over to martialartsmedia.com and watch the video. But I'm standing on a very remote island in Indonesia. It's the island of Nias, we came here for a couple of days to really relax. And believe me, there's not much you can do other than relax if you're looking for all your first world fixes of technology in busy shops. You're not going to find that here. There is literally nothing. And you know before we booked this place, the resort owner told us, “look, nobody really comes here this time of year.” So you've got to have it all to yourself. You are going to have the whole beach to yourself. And I thought Yeah OK. But. Probably not true. But we came here and we literally have this resort to ourselves and it's not very big but it… You could see in the background here. There are a few; there are three chalets there between all the coconut trees situated within nature. So that's the spot. And I'm just quickly going to do a swing around. We literally do have this entire beach all to ourselves. And yes it's a bit cloudy and rainy today. But nevertheless we got here in the first few days and there was the sunshine and there was nobody here. There's absolutely nobody here and it's just delightful. So to get the message of this podcast is. We arrived at this place. And as I said we came here to relax and we've really done that and it's made me reflect just on different things that we've done over the last year and going into the new year depending on when you're watching or listening to this. Just reflecting on different things that we will be doing and how we will be helping with martial arts school owners build and grow through the means of the Internet. And coming to this village is one message that really resonated with me is just the message of simplicity and clarity. You know my beautiful girlfriend and I took a walk down to the village. A village you can't even explain it as a village here because you walk down a road with a lot of potholes. There are only a few bikes I haven't seen a car in about five days. I haven't heard it in five days. This is pretty much what we've heard all the time and I hope you can hear my voice but just the sound of the ocean. Walking down the street there are just remote little huts. Just little huts where people live and I'll include a few of the videos and clips on this on this page and you can have a look but it just fascinated me how happy everybody is and everybody's waving. And because we are the only tourists, we are literally only tourists on this island; people are just amazed and fascinated by us. They’re waving and they getting all ecstatic and it's kind of weird... | |||
| 21 – Double Your Martial Arts Paid Trial Conversions With Festive Season and Back To School Promotions | 21 Dec 2016 | 00:09:02 | |
If you're doing paid trials for your martial arts business, this simple tweak will double your signup rate. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com. Today, I'm going to be talking about paid trials, how they can help boost your sign up rates for your martial arts school or your martial arts gym, how you and use this festive season and back to school and all these events to really amplify your results, and I'm going to be talking about the one key factor that everybody is not doing with paid trials that is literally robbing you of your success. In the last few weeks, we've been helping one of our clients with their paid trial offer. We've been helping them optimizing and tweaking it and really adding a few elements to skyrocket their results, and that's really what happened. We managed to help them generate 86 paid signups within two weeks - that's 86, 86 paid signups within two weeks. And just last week, I was interviewing somebody else on the Martial Arts Media business podcast, who's really taken this paid trial concept and they've restructured their whole process of enrolling people that actually eliminated everything free and everything goes through the paid trial feature, which in a way helps them not to focus on selling, because that's just what it is. If you want to start training, here it is, you join, pay the trial and you train with us and you assess it from there and you walk away with value either way. Having this in place eliminates a lot of the time wasters and there are so many benefits to it, and I want to get into that because there are a few things that I'm going to be talking about here, that you can do right now to your offers to optimize your results and this can be done during the right season. At the time of recording this, there'll be the whole back to school trend coming up - there's always going to be a reason to market, so you can adjust your offers to match what is happening in the environment. Right now, it will be Christmas, that's almost over, but there's always things like back to school and New Year's and New Year's resolutions and so many things happening. So, first and foremost, 86 paid trial sign-ups in two weeks. Now, taking a step back: if you're not familiar with the paid trial, to explain the basics of it, it is basically having a front end offer, something that's very cheap, whether it's 30, 50, a 100, but something that is affordable for anyone to take and then providing a free training trial, which can be two weeks, three weeks, four weeks or a few classes, or whatever suits your establishment and it's something that you've got to test. Ideally, try to give away something physical as well, maybe a set of gloves for kickboxing or a uniform. Putting that in place is a lot easier for people to decide, because even if they might get a free trial they think, "Well, free: I'm going to come in and they're going to try and sell me something," whereas, when you're just paying a once off amount, a small amount, you can justify it and you're getting something that you can keep, physical, gloves or a uniform or something and you're getting some training. In a way and strangely enough, you put an offer like that in the front and now you are eliminating a lot of your sales headaches because that's just what it is: you buy it for $50 and this is what you get or whatever the offer is. So, how did we take this type of concept and how did we get to 86 sign ups within two weeks? There were a few components that were in play. | |||
| 138 – Building A Thriving Martial Arts Business For Generational Wealth | 16 Nov 2022 | 00:47:55 | |
Michael Scott shares the 3 core areas he focuses on for a fulfilled life, and building a martial arts business that fuels generational wealth. IN THIS EPISODE:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Another great interview for you today. Michael Scott from CMA Campbelltown Martial Arts in New South Wales. So I've known Michael for a little while. We've been working together in our Partners Group. When you meet someone and they're not the front of the conversation, but when they speak, you want to listen because it's always packed with wisdom. In fact, at the end of last year, we did something fun in our Partners Group and we gave out awards within the group, and Michael was named the Wisdom Whisperer, and just for that reason, sits back, observes the conversation, but when he speaks, it's packed with wisdom. Now, Michael talks about the three areas that he focuses on his life way beyond martial arts and actually how he has used his martial arts business as a vehicle to grow wealth and build generational wealth, and talks about investment strategies and things that he does after that. So, you're going to love it. | |||
| 20 – Kevin Blundell: 100 New Martial Arts Students in 5 Weeks Without Sleazy Selling | 14 Dec 2016 | 00:39:03 | |
In just 5 weeks, Kevin Blundell from Kumiai Ryu Martial Arts System grew their new martial arts school to 100 students without focusing on selling. Discover how he did it. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION If you're in business, if you charge a dollar for a lesson, you’re in business. And irrespective of people say they do it for nothing, there are still fees involved. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 20. I have another awesome guest with me today, Mr. Kevin Blundell from Kumiai Ryu Martial Arts System and Kevin has grown his organization to 26 locations. We touch on the most recent one, because the most recent one was opened just over 5 weeks and as of today, they have 109 fully enrolled students into the system. So we touch on his success and how they’ve really engineered the process to happen in 5 short weeks. And this could be a key turning factor for you in your business, this could be just that one thing that gives you that edge, without having to be all creative with teaching your staff to be super salesy and pushy and having all these fancy sales systems in place, but just simplifying your process at having a core offer in front that invites people and eliminates a lot of time waste for you and allows you to really run the organization a lot smoother and really talking about your front end marketing process, of getting people through the door. And I hope it’s not me that picked up on these subtleties because I listen to these interviews and there are things that just come through where I am like, wow, that's awesome! But more than just picking them up, I hope you take these to heart and apply them to your business, because if there's no transformation, then it doesn't help. And I know that in these last 20 episodes, there have been really, really great interviews, there's been some core, fundamental information that could be the key factor that makes your business successful. Or, and if you're really successful, take it to that next level, just applying these few, simple steps and really optimizing your business. Now, we are moving into the new year: depending on when you are listening to this episode, there are lots of things happening and people are sort of wrapping up for the end of year and people are getting ready for the new year. Depending of course on when you are listening to this episode, but no matter where you are, if you need help with this marketing stuff, we do this on a day-to-day basis and we help martial arts businesses grow and go to the next level through marketing automation and marketing systems. And when I say marketing automation, I don't mean fancy things where you've got to press the button and you get all this automation stuff coming out – no, it’s really a case of automating your outreach so that you make more conversations and speak to more people. Because at the end of the day, you're going to have to speak to people before they join, you know? Some people are going to take up an offer online and so forth, but for the most part, there's going to be some communication involved... | |||
| 19 – Fari Salievski: Having Your Martial Arts School As An Avenue For Investments | 06 Dec 2016 | 00:38:21 | |
Should you rent your martial arts school premises or own it? Fari Salievski believes in the latter and funds his investments. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Are you owning your own building? That nice car that you drive, do you actually own it? If your school is so successful, your school should become really an avenue to invest. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of Martial Arts Media Business Podcast, episode number 19. I have with me today Master Fari Salievski from KMA, a champion martial artist in Sydney, although they have several locations around Australia. An interesting martial arts business conversation, about ownership, owning your actual school and not renting, using your martial arts school as a vehicle to fund investments. We talk about 34 years in the business and how things have changed and brought things like recurring bullying and things that have obviously taken for granted today but getting that process started way back in the day. Now, discussing the topic of ownership, I’d like your feedback. We talk about ownership, obviously the physical school, and that got me started on something that I haven't really spoken about, which is owning your digital assets, which is a very very important component when you build out your website and your Internet properties, but it’s one that is completely missed in most modern day training, so people don't really focus on it. But at the end of the day, if you’re building a business for longevity, you want to own digital assets, as you might want to own a building – or is it something that you do not agree with? I know there could be a lot of contradicting opinions on that, whether you should own something or rent something. At the end of the day, is ownership really better? Yes, mostly, but some people say it’s not. So what's your take on that? Blow the show, and you can do that with every show basically and this one at martialartsmedia.com/19 – right below the transcript, you can leave your name and email address and fill in a comment and start a debate. If you have any questions, or something that you don't agree with or agree with, then raise that and let’s discuss and evaluate a few options. I know for me in my marketing business, I don't own a physical location because I don't need to – I can work from home, which is awesome and that's the way I wanted to have it set up in the beginning, that I can work with remote staff and work with people from all over the world, which is what I do. I have only one person in Perth that I work with, everybody else is located in different parts of the country or different parts of the world. So that's from me, but when I talk about ownership, am I into digital ownership? Oh yes, I want to own every single property and put my primary content on a website that I own, and this is a topic that I’ll dig a bit deeper into and elaborate more on. This episode, we’re getting right there, stuck into the business. You're going to get a lot of value from this, or it’s going to create contradicting opinions, who knows? If it does, whether it does or not, leave a comment below the show notes, martialartsmedia.com/19. That's it from me, please welcome to the show – Master Fari Salievski... | |||
| 18 – The Art Of Martial Arts Coaching With Paul Schreiner From Marcelo Garcia Academy | 28 Nov 2016 | 00:33:05 | |
Paul Schreiner is not your average martial arts coach. Discover how he articulates the art of jiu-jitsu and shares working with Marcelo Garcia. Paul Schreiner is not your average martial arts coach. Discover how he articulates the art of jiu-jitsu and shares working with Marcelo Garcia. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Developing expert knowledge or expert ability is your own process of discovery and taking ownership for your learning. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to another episode of the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 18. I have with me today Paul Schreiner. Now, Paul Schreiner is a coach at Marcelo Garcia's Academy in New York, and if you recall episode 13 with Jess Fraser from the Australian Girls in GI, Jess was talking about Paul within all her traveling around the globe of training at different clubs and learning jiu-jitsu. Paul Schreiner was the person that left the biggest impact, that stood out for her with his unique coaching abilities and being able to articulate his learning and making an impact on someone, getting his message across of, not just teaching different techniques, but also being able to explain the art and the transitioning of the different moves and so forth. So this is a very in-depth conversation, I enjoyed this. This is not so much about the business side of martial arts, although as a martial arts business owner, you will get a lot of value from this, just learning from about how they go about things and working with Marcelo Garcia and just the pure passion for martial arts. There's a lot of gold in this episode. Now, of course, for more of the business stuff, you can head over to martialartsmedia.com/plan to be exact. We give away a free martial arts business plan for online media, which kind of defines how you can market your business, what you should focus on. It gives you a bit of a holistic view of how you can approach online marketing and covers a lot of the pitfalls that people are facing right now with marketing, doing one marketing strategy and it's not working, or it stops working and this gives you a bit of a holistic view and approach of how you can approach marketing your business and get your leads. Now, as always, the show notes, transcriptions and all links mentioned in this episode can be found at martialartsmedia.com/18, that's the number 18. And I want to keep this short and jump straight into the interview, so please welcome to the show Paul Schreiner. GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me is Paul Schreiner. Now, if you recall on episode 13, I interviewed Jess Fraser and Jess was discussing, within her travels, training at Marcelo Garcia Academy and the one person that stood out for her as a coach was Paul Schreiner. So I wanted to get Paul for an interview and just have a chat about his involvement in jiu-jitsu, his coaching methods and so forth. So welcome to the call Paul... | |||
| 17 – Growing Your Martial Arts School With External And Celebrity Instructors | 22 Nov 2016 | 00:29:38 | |
No time to groom martial arts instructors to grow your martial arts school? Con Lazos hire's externally if they're a match. Martial Arts celebrity Richard Norton most definitely makes that list. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION The main thing here is that we teach from a total love perspective. What I mean by that is, we have to love everything about what we're doing. Hi, this is George Fourie and welcome to martial arts media podcast, episode number 17. I have with me today Con Lazos, from Fusion MA. And we talk about a few interesting topics, that being going back to the whole teaching aspect again as an ex teacher, using those principles in teaching martial arts, but also something a bit counterintuitive to what most people recommend, and that is, instead of just grooming instructors from the ground up, but actually employing people from external clubs and external expertise to come and coach at Fusion MA. And that's the blend that is really working well for him and he's got various experts on board, other than himself. One famous and well respected martial artist from Australia, Richard Norton, who, if you're not familiar with, was the fight coordinator and stunt coordinator for “Suicide squad“ and a whole bunch of other movies, so you can check that out on Google, you'll find a whole lot of information about him. And we discussed a bit working with Richard, but more so, talk about Con's vision and how he likes to impact youth and students through training martial arts. Now, if you've listened to a few episodes, you know that I've always been asking, please leave us a positive review on iTunes and I've been sending you to the link martialartsmedia.com/itunes. But I have to apologize, because somebody brought it to my attention that it’s only halfway to leave a review when you go to that link and iTunes does not make this easy, they make it pretty confusing. So the link is correct, but it’s not the last step to leave a review. So when you go to martialartsmedia.com/itunes, you've actually got to click on another link and you'll see there's a sort of a red, fiery, I don't know what you call that, picture of me, with a logo of martial arts media. And just below that, there's a blue button that says, “View on iTunes.“ Now, you actually have to click that button “View on iTunes“ to open up iTunes and then you're able to leave a review. So, apologies for not giving the whole swell of how to get there, but that's basically it. martialartsmedia.com/itunes, click on the “View on iTunes“ button and you can leave the review. And why do I ask for this? Because, if you're getting value out of this show, that's all that we could really ask for in return. Leave us a good review that makes the episode stand out within the iTunes directory, so it gets noticed more and it helps us get the word out about the martial arts media business podcast. So if you want to help us in that way – much appreciated. As always, transcriptions and links mentioned in the show can be found on our website, martialartsmedia.com/17, that's the number 17 and that will take you to the page where this podcast episode is hosted. Alright, let's jump into this interview, and please welcome to the show – Con Lazos... | |||
| 16 – Justin Sidelle: The Lifestyle Of Running A Martial Arts Business In The Tropics | 14 Nov 2016 | 00:25:03 | |
Sun, surf and martial arts? Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt Justin Sidelle shares the laid back lifestyle running their martial arts business. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION And on top of that, being in such an environment that's that healthy and that welcoming, your training goes through the roof. You perform better, you learn better, you learn faster. Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to the Martial Arts Media business podcast, episode number 16. Today, I cross international waters – again. Well, it's not really international for us so much, because it's just Bali, and Bali and Perth, that's about a three and half hour flight, but I'm speaking to Justin Sidelle. And Justin Sidelle is the head coach at Bali MMA, the head jiu-jitsu coach at Bali MMA. Now, if you recall episode 13, I had Jess Fraser on, from the Australian Girls in GI and she mentioned that Bali MMA is her home gym, although she jet-sets and travels around the world. So I wanted to get in touch with Justin and just have a chat with him about his lifestyle: living in Bali, being able to train jiu-jitsu, which he loves and living in the tropics and just living an awesome lifestyle and living a very laid back life and doing a lot of good things within the Bali community. But first, just a quick update, more a notification, if you're not aware of it, depending of course on where you listen to this podcast, if you listen to it on your iPhone or through your Android type device like a Samsung or so forth, or on the website. If you listen to it on the website, you might have noticed it, but we give away a martial art business plan for online media for martial arts business owners and it's basically a plan for the online media side of things. It's looking at the different components of digital marketing for your martial arts school, so what you need to basically cover all the elements. There's a lot of information out there, you've got to do this on Facebook, and you've got to do this on Google and you've got to have SEO, but this is kind of giving you a holistic view of all the components that you need to have a prosperous martial arts school, but not only that, to make sure that you're not single point sensitive. Let's say Facebook fell off the map today: can your business still sustain and can you still market? Do you still have ways and means to actually get in touch with your people? So it's just looking at things from a holistic point of view and all the elements that you need to cover. It's on the website, you can download it on martialartsmedia.com, or if you go directly to the link, it's martialartsmedia.com/plan. Download it, check it out. That will put you on our email database and we'll also send out weekly updates from when we release this podcast and such. That's just it from me. I want to get into the podcast now. I've got to tell you as well, this was always going to be a problem: talking to someone in Bali, I knew the internet wasn't going to be the best, we ended up talking on the phone and there was a bit of a delay, which kind of overlapped a few times. All in all, the interview is awesome, you're going to get a lot of value from this and it might even spark you, light a fire under you to go take a nice tropical holiday with some awesome martial arts training. So, without further ado, please welcome to the show – Justin Sidelle... | |||
| 15 – Martial Arts Advertising Ideas: Google Adwords vs. Facebook Marketing | 07 Nov 2016 | 00:06:36 | |
Looking for martial arts marketing ideas? Google Adwords and Facebook ads are the big players. George Fourie shares the core differences. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Good day everyone, it’s Facebook marketing, SEO: should you be doing all of this for your martial arts school, what should you be doing, what shouldn't you be doing, what is the differences, can they work together – let's discuss. I'm George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com. In this video, I'm going to be talking about Google AdWords, should you be doing it, how does it compete with something on Facebook, what is SEO and all these fancy things. How do they work together and what strategies should you be looking out for where you implement this different marketing on these different platforms. So let's look at a comparison. Google and Facebook. Google: firstly, Google has a whole different way of advertising and marketing, because when you go to Google, you've got the intent. You've got intent to find a solution for a problem, you're looking for something. On Facebook, you're not looking for something. You're interacting, you're being social with your friends, you're looking at funny cat videos: you're doing something else than looking for something of martial arts or what it is that you're looking for. So Google has intent and Facebook is more like an interruption type of marketing. You've got to keep that in mind on how you're interacting with people, because if you think about it, it’s going to take someone 6 to 8 interactions with your brand before there's any form of conversion. And that conversion is not necessarily joining up, that's a conversion of leaving an online inquiry, or picking up the phone and trying to engage with you as such. So the key thing to keep in mind: on Facebook, for example, if the first interaction is an ad, you have risked potential of turning that person off and not being able to take that relationship further, whereas, if you have relevant content for them, something that might interest them and from that lead to an ad afterwards, which is something that you can do, then you have more chance of converting that ad, that person into a lead, by following a different sequence. Same as with Google of course. With Google, it’s a bit more direct, because somebody is searching for something, so an ad will show up, telling them, “This is what you've searched for,” and if your ad matches what they are looking for, that message-to-market match, then they're going to engage with your page and they are going to more than likely convert. With both these platforms, you've got to bear in mind that there are multiple touch points. It’s not just going to take that one click and that one view of the ad for somebody to actually convert. So you've got to be covering multiple platforms, and this is where you can have them both work together. This is how you're going to save money eventually on marketing. If you think there're 6 to 8 times that there needs to be an interaction before somebody's going to convert, how are you interacting with your prospect 6 to 8 times? How are you getting in front of them? Offer, offer, offer, offer, or content, value, content, content, offer? You've got to play around with how you are approaching your people so that you are starting by building a relationship and then slowly working towards the conversion. Let's get back to this multiple touch points. A recent study – and thank you, Ezra Firestone, for this, mentioned that people start a search query on mobile and then they finish the transaction on a desktop... | |||
| 14 – Hakan Manav: Martial Arts World Titles, Movies & A Thriving Business – The Ultimate Martial Arts Success | 31 Oct 2016 | 00:35:37 | |
Hakan Manav, 5th degree Taekwondo black belt and world martial arts champion, shares his life journey of success and their thriving martial arts business. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION It all started back in that day, we went overseas, we opened our eyes, we invested in ourselves, we sought knowledge outside of the martial arts industry, as well as within the industry, and then it was just one step at a time and consistent growth. Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 14. Today I have a very inspiring, very versatile, talented young man on board and this gentleman is truly, truly a gift of multiple talents, and what I mean by that is, first up, he's born into martial arts, he is an amazing martial artist, his skills are just beyond, it’s another level. If you follow any of his social media accounts, he spends most of his time in the air. His tricking ability is beyond this world, his skills are just phenomenal, you've got to see it to actually absorb what it is he is capable of. And when it comes to the business side, their family own and operate one of the most successful martial arts schools in Australia, if not the most successful. And that, of course, depends on how you measure success, but what I can tell you is that their main location has a total of 1450 students, they have another 5 set locations of 200 students each approximately and they have systems and a staffing in place that allows them to operate 7 days per week. So whether or not that is your goal, look, there's value in what these guys have learned along the way. And the guest that I'm talking about of course, after much suspense, Hakan Manav. Hakan shares his journey from humble beginnings, having to live up to the expectations of his dad's reputation, Master Ridvan Manav, and just his journey going from where they started out with basically nothing and building up this organization and feeling that pressure from a young age and dealing with that. We also touch on his moving career, how an Australian talent show opened multiple doors for him, so much to share in this conversation on multiple levels. As always, depending on where you're listening to this, you can find the show notes and everything else mentioned within this podcast, you can find at martialartsmedia.com/14, the number 14. And that's it for now, I want to get into this interview – enjoy, and welcome to the show Mr. Hakan Manav... | |||
| 13 – A World Class Australian Jiu Jitsu Jetsetter’s Perspective On The Perfect Martial Arts Gym | 25 Oct 2016 | 00:55:00 | |
She travels the globe, dominates tournaments and is the driving force behind Australian Girls in Gi. Here's BJJ Black Belt Jess Fraser's story. | |||
| 12 – Why Martial Arts School Owners Fail At Marketing “Tactics” | 17 Oct 2016 | 00:08:37 | |
Struggling with marketing your martial arts school? Maybe it's not your fault, but rather the key elements that are missing. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and in this video, I'm going to be talking about why most martial arts school owners fail at marketing “tactics”. Ok, so why do most martial arts school owners fail with marketing tactics? Now, I put emphasis on tactics because it's kind of like being the one trick pony martial artist. There're a few viewpoints on this, but I hope this analogy sort of gets to where I'm going with this. Imagine you're doing martial arts and all that you do is, you've got one punch – that's all you do. Or you've just got one kick and that's all you've ever learned, you've only learned that one punch or that one kick. What happens if you break that one arm or you break that one leg or something happens? Now your whole game plan, your whole everything that you can do in martial arts is pretty much nonexistent because your one trick has been eliminated. And I see this happening a lot in marketing. I've been doing this survey, this two-minute survey on the website to gather what pain points people are having about different aspects of marketing and with their business. And something that's been coming up a lot is people saying, let's say Facebook for example: how they started doing Facebook advertising and they're running all these ads and it's awesome and they're getting all these leads and it just dries out – what happens? What happened, it's worked once and now it doesn't work again. Well, there's a lot of things that come into play with that and you can't just be that one trick pony that only does that one thing. Now, this is something I'm going to hammer on all the time, but go to Facebook right now: have you ever been on Facebook ready to buy or ready to join something? Have you ever gone down that track, especially for someone you're seeing for the first time, a brand that you're not familiar with – have you ever looked at it and said, wow, I just want to buy this! I don't want to look at my friends anymore, I don't want to look at funny videos, cat videos, or whatever it is that you're doing. It takes a lot for you to break that element and switch off and go, ah, I actually want to buy something. Unless it's of course super targeted and super relevant to something that you want, but for the most part of it, you're really doing interruption marketing... | |||
| 11 – How You The Martial Arts School Owner Can Help Us Help You | 10 Oct 2016 | 00:06:29 | |
George Fourie takes a different twist on this episode with a 2-minute survey request for martial arts school owners that promises a big return. George Fourie takes a different twist on this episode with a 2-minute survey request for martial arts school owners that promises a big return. *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hi guys, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and this week, we've got a bit of a different twist to the show. Okay, so we've got 10 episodes down, we are at number 11, this is number 11. But this episode is going to be more a request from you than a give. So, there's been a lot of giving, we've done a few interviews with some great guests, we shared a few in between the tips and now I'm going to turn this on to you. So, I want to know where to take this podcast, which direction I should be going. And I'm also preparing a web class, an online web class, where I'm going to be teaching all the different aspects of online marketing that we know work when building your business through the means of the internet. So, the purpose of the web class would be to give you a good education on what you can be doing to get leads in through the door, how you can convert better by means of your website and when you speak to people, how you could automate these things on the back-end through follow up sequences and things we do with our services. And then also, how you can retain your students by doing these automated processes and having a way to provide value to your students over and above just from what you do in class. So, in order to do this, I need to know from you and get a better understanding of what is the bottle mix in your business? What is it that you are struggling with as such? In your day-to-day operations, what are you struggling with specifically, and I mean specifically, not just, we struggle with lead generation, we struggle with retention – that gives us nothing to work with, so I need as much detail as possible. I'm trying to figure out what is the biggest obstacle to keeping you where you are and not taking you where you want to be. And I want to see what we can do and how I can help you take that from the position where you are and take you to the next level through the means of online processes, online marketing and providing that link. So, not to go off topic here and not to mumble on: basically, what I'm requiring from you is two minutes, two minutes to complete this survey, to tell me what it is that you are struggling with, the problems that you are having in your business, give me a better idea of where you are at now and the obstacles that you are facing. At that point what I can do is, I can look at everything that we provide and I can teach you. I can teach you means, what it is that we can do to help you if you want to do it yourself of course so that you can take this training. And if you've got someone that does this stuff for you or you do this yourself, that you can do it, or that you are educated to make a right decision if you do want to hire someone to do all these services for you. But the only way to make those choices is to be educated, and I want to provide that education for you, but the only way that I can do that is to know exactly what it is that you are struggling with. That brings me to this episode. My request to you is, take two minutes, please. If you go to martialartsmedia.com/survey, there is a short video. You can actually just skip through the link, take the survey and it's going to take you about two minutes. Fill it out as detailed as possible. You can keep this completely anonymous, so if you don't want to leave your name and if you don't want to leave your email address, that is fine. But all that I really really want is some honest answers. On the flipside, though, if you have some pressing problems and you would like me to contact you personally, get on the phone or get on the Skype call, I'm more than willing to do that if I'm going to get a more clear understanding of the problems... | |||
| 137 – [Martial Arts Business Case Study] How Amanda & Wayne Increased Their Revenue By $200K In 12 Months | 07 Nov 2022 | 00:36:57 | |
In this martial arts business case study, Amanda Saliba and Wayne Ardley share how they increased their revenue by $200,000 in 12 months. IN THIS EPISODE:
TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. Today, I'm doing one of my favorite episodes to create, which is a case study. A case study documenting a client's journey from when they started working with us to where they are now. Today I'm speaking to Amanda Saliba and Wayne Ardley, all the way from Melbourne. And I love this episode simply because Amanda is so committed, has big goals, and same as Wayne, still in the workforce, positioning out of that going full time into the business. And in the time that we've spent working together, they've increased their income with an additional $200,000 over the last 12 months. What I love about this is that we zoomed out on this journey. You know, we love to talk about marketing on the show, attracting the right students, increasing sign-ups and retaining more members. And sometimes the emphasis is on getting more students, getting more students, but we all know there's more to that, right? There's the retaining, keeping the students, which is the biggest part, really. And well, you can't have one without the other. So this case study really documents the journey of staying with the course, you know, not looking for the quick fix, doing the work. You know, we are on coaching calls every week. Amanda's always on the coaching calls. There are lots available, Amanda's always on all of them, and does the work, implements, makes the refinements, and really commits to the journey. And that's really what it takes. So I love doing this interview. You definitely gonna get a lot of value from this head over to martialartsmedia.com/137 if you'd like to download the podcast transcript and the resources mentioned in this episode. And that's it. Let's jump in. Amanda and Wayne, welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business Podcast. WAYNE: Hello. AMANDA: Thanks for having us, George. GEORGE: Cool. So I wanted to bring you guys on the show, and this is one of my favorite interviews to do because we get to talk a bit about a customer journey working together and the awesome results that you guys have managed to do over the last 12 months, which is really, really exciting and look forward to diving a bit more into the details on that. But just before we kick things off, if you don't mind sharing just a bit of an intro, who is Amanda? Who is Wayne, and what do you do in the martial arts space? | |||
| 10 – Should You Use A Facebook Profile Or Page (Or Both) For Marketing Your Martial Arts Gym? | 03 Oct 2016 | 00:07:23 | |
Many Martial Arts Gym owners use a personal Facebook profile for their marketing. But what are the consequences of doing this? IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com. In this video, I'm going to be talking about should you have a Facebook profile for your martial arts business, or should you have a Business Page and what's the difference: should you have both, what should you be doing in this scenario? Ok, so should you have a Facebook Profile for your martial arts business, or should you have a Facebook Business Page for your business? I think that kind of answers it: of course you should have a Facebook Business Page, but let's explore the options why. Now, first and foremost, if you have your business set up in the Facebook Profile section, which is actually just for a normal person, then that is actually against the terms of service for Facebook (see section 4), and they can actually shut your account down. If you're building authority on this account and you engage with people and your members most importantly, the last thing you want is your Facebook account shut down, so you do need a Business Page, instead of the Facebook Profile. Let's also look at the obstacles this is going to cause. If you look at a Facebook Profile, it's a lot more personal. So for me to be able to connect with you, I need to add you as a friend. And it's a bit hard to be a friend with a business as such. You can be a friend with a person, but to be a friend with a business – it’s a bit awkward. So what you've got to look at from that point: if I'm a prospect and I'm trying to find out more about your business, now I've got to engage with you on a personal level, which I don't want to do yet – I just want more information about your business. That is why a “like” is so much easier, because I can just like your business and I can follow your updates and find out more information about you, whereas, if I had to add you as a friend – which we are not friends, I'm just searching for information about you, it’s so much more personal. There's just a bit of an awkwardness of actually adding someone as a friend who's not your friend and you just want to find out if this is a business that you actually want to engage with and if you want to take up training. So you definitely want the Business Page. Now, the Business Page has advantages and initially, it has some disadvantages because Facebook would prioritize your posts from a profile versus a Business Page. Now this gets a bit technical, but there's a thing called EdgeRank. And EdgeRank is basically Facebook's ranking mechanism, how they decide which posts show up in your news feed. So yes, it doesn't mean that if you post something on Facebook that it’s actually going to show up: it means that Facebook still has a look and prioritizes and sees, OK, well – what should be showing up in your custom news feed? And of course, if you had a sister that just had a baby, or there's a wedding anniversary or your friend has a birthday or something, these are things that are going to show up in your news feed, rather than a business promo special. And this is why it’s so important to have engaging content and be telling people stories. And this is where blogging and things like that come into play. So it’s not just about putting offers up and doing specials and so forth... | |||
| 9 – Brannon Beliso: Replacing Contracts And Belt Testing Fees With Service And Martial Arts Merit Badges | 26 Sep 2016 | 00:40:43 | |
Brannon Beliso shares his versatile life of being a musician, Ted Talks and teaching life principles through martial arts merit badges. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION You need to have a very clear vision and vision is based upon purpose. Once you understand what your purpose is, then you create a vision to facilitate that. Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to the Martial Arts Media Business podcast, episode number 9. Today, for the first time, I cross international borders and have an American guest on board, all the way from San Francisco, Mr. Brannon Beliso. Now, of course, I'm still going to be interviewing multiple Australian martial arts school owners, but the aim of this podcast is to interview guests from all over the world, anyone who is a leader in the martial arts industry that is doing great things and anybody that we can learn from. And professor Brannon Beliso is definitely on the list of one of the great leaders within the industry. I was familiar with these one merit badge systems before I knew who Brannon was, which is basically a system, a reward system for kids. And we're going to touch a bit on that, which you might probably be familiar with already. But more importantly, we're going to talk about Brannon's philosophy on martial arts, how he got started, basically living on top of his dad's martial arts school premises when he was a kid and how he's focused on the servicing side, on providing a great service and modeling different companies on providing a great service to the martial arts industry I can assure you, lots to learn from Brannon in this episode. Show notes and transcriptions are available on martialartsmedia.com/9, the number 9. And I would love your feedback: anybody that you recommend that I should be interviewing, any feedback on what we can improve on this show. And if you want to support us, the great way to do that is to head over to iTunes, which you'll find the link to this episode martialartsmedia.com/9. Find the link that goes over to iTunes and leave us a comment and a review. Five-star reviews help us to get up there in the rankings, but an honest review is much appreciated. That's it from me for now- please welcome to the show professor Brannon Beliso. GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me my first American guest, professor Brannon Beliso. Brannon Beliso is all the way from Sacramento, is that right? BRANNON: San Francisco actually, San Francisco. GEORGE: San Francisco, all right, I got that wrong in the first few seconds of the interview. All right, we'll definitely flip it from there. Now, you might be more familiar with Brannon's program as well, which is currently called one merit badges. This is the first thing I remember from when my son started martial arts, he's getting all these badges that were really impressive because it’s got all of these successful words and complimenting words for skills and things that they achieve in their classes. And now I actually meet the man behind the whole system, which is Brannon Beliso. So, welcome to the call. BRANNON: Thank you, thanks for having me George, I'm grateful to be here. GEORGE: First up Brannon, let's just go back to the beginning for the people who are not familiar with you – who is Brannon Beliso? BRANNON: Well, somebody the other day labeled me: I am a multifaceted modern-day renaissance man. And I went, wow! I've actually got a couple of books I'm working on, a children's book, I've got an actual self-help type enlightenment book coming out. As you know, I have one merit badges, which will soon be called kids love life skills, that's in 300 or 400 schools across the globe and it's very big in Australia. I own two martial arts schools, one in San Francisco, one outside in a suburb. And we have about 900 students between the two locations. But it's a very unique business model and I'm sure that with you and a little bit… I had a big music career in Asia about 20 years ago. I've owned several other businesses. I love to create, I love to impact, I love to make a difference. Anything that allows me to do that, whatever medium offers me that, you'll find me there... | |||
| 8 – Sean Allen: The Importance Of Martial Arts In Physical Education | 18 Sep 2016 | 00:44:28 | |
A business to match your lifestyle while teaching the importance of martial arts in physical education? Meet Sean Allen. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
*Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION What I've done is, I've completely changed my martial arts curriculum to answer today's problems. And it might not defending yourself against a right-hand punch in the face. GEORGE: Hi, this is George Fourie from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to Martial Arts Media podcast, episode number 8. Today's exciting guest I have for you is Sean Allen. Now, with this story I wanted to go full circle, because if you remember my first episode, my first three actually, the first interview with Graham and Phil from the WA Institute of martial arts, which was split over three episodes, you might have picked up that they actually purchased the school at that point from their initial instructor, and that instructor was Sean Allen. And although Sean grew the business to about 5 or 600 students at that point in time, before he sold it off, that's not what success means for Sean. And I found it fascinating that much like myself, Sean has based his entire life around building a business that suits his lifestyle and not the other way around. And Sean is truly living a successful life for himself, he's moved down south, here in Western Australia, down south being Margaret River area, with just amazing surf spots, where he gets to surf every day and teach a very small, niche group of people, but really where he gets to express his personal values and teach kids the life lessons and skills to deal with problems and life situations through his martial arts, and through his martial arts classes. You can find all the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/8 and all the transcriptions are available from this interview. If you get any value out of this episode or any of the others, please head over to iTunes, you can find the link below this episode. Head over there and just leave us a review. Five-star reviews help us get up in the rankings, but an honest review is much appreciated. With that, I want to leave you, and I’d like to welcome to the show Sean Allen. GEORGE: Good day everyone, today I have with me, Sean Allen. Now, honestly, I don't know Sean Allen too well, but I've heard his name around the industry for quite a while. Now, my podcast started out initially interviewing Graham and Phil from the WA Institute of Martial Arts. And if you've picked up on that story, before it was the WA Institute of martial arts, the pretty much purchased the school. And the original owner was Sean Allen. So I wanted to go full story and go back and interview Sean, because when I use to train at WAIMA, Sean Allen's name popped up a lot, and it was always these one liner words of wisdom that came from Sean Allen, and I never knew who Sean Allen was. Now, other than the start of WAIMA, before it was WAIMA, I'm going to get into that story, Sean Allen has vast experience in martial arts and has now moved over to Margaret River, where he's living the lifestyle. I always see his surf pictures and things pop up on Facebook. I want just to introduce Sean and get him of course to share his full story. So, welcome to the show, Sean... | |||