kempoangel

Our studio has made an interesting shift in the last 6 months and we are rolling with and loving the change, so thought I'd share it here. The majority of our student base used to be kids under the age of 15 and we offered extra programs like DEMO team and even had a tumbling/acrobatics instructor. We had a bumping business, but our love of martial arts had us yearning for more adults. Kids are great, but adult students are more rewarding from a martial arts stand point - in my opinion. Our tumbling/acro teacher left suddenly, shaking up the kids program at our studio. At the same time we happened to be expanding the Eskrima program (and promoting our Kempo, Tai Chi, and Choi Lai Fut programs, each of which is headed up by a master level instructor in the discipline)...our kid enrollments dropped drastically, and our adult enrollments started increasing little by little. Once we realized the shift that was taking place we decided to capitalize on it and updated our website and marketing to reflect the studio as an adult training space - which it actually had been all along. The kids had sort of taken over the place. We even sold our Wavemasters and replaced them with heavy bags and a huge stack of tires that we use for weapons training. Our studio is bumping once again, but our kids program has shrunken down to only those exceptional kids who truly love martial arts and whose parents understand that we will not be easy on the kids. They are held to very high standards. These kids are a blast to teach and they can do incredible things! We have been telling people in no uncertain terms that we are NOT a karate day care center, even turning some potential students away because they felt our program was too "hard core". Just yesterday we lost a potential child student because the parent did not agree with us that a 7 year old boy should not be using baby talk voice all the time. I cannot tell you how satisfying it has become to recognize that not every potential student fits our school and that the instructors do not have to bow down to the wishes of parents who dislike their child being disciplined at the studio. Just thought I would share because this has been an extremely liberating experience and I am proud to say that we are not a karate day care center, a McDojo or a belt factory.

Just saw your message and I hope this gets to you before you sign papers and make a huge financial commitment. I am a former instructor for USSD - the company ZULTIMATE came from. ZULTIMATE is running the exact same scam as USSD was (and continues to run). After paying $15,000 for a supposed instructor training academy the instruction abruptly slowed down and the personal attention that came before I signed papers dried up. The moment I started running my own studio I realized that I had signed away more than I realized. USSD (and ZULTIMATE) pay their instructors as 1099 independent contractors (which is illegal) and require instructors to work crazy hours with no over time pay, no lunch breaks. 6 to 7 days per week plus many additional required (but not compensated) events. Not only was I injured in the special "instructor training", but I witnessed fellow instructors being viciously beaten for arriving late to a meeting or not keeping their student numbers up. Luckily, I had already earned a business degree, which I drew on often as I was running a studio. The "business training" from USSD/ZULTIMATE is miniscule compared to an actual college education. I now run my own successful studio independent of USSD and although the time I spent there has helped me, I can honestly say that it is my actual business degree that has heed me to keep my business afloat despite the many false accusations and physical threats from USSD. So, my humble opinion is this: being a martial arts instructor as a career is awesome, but relying 100% on ZULTIMATE to educate your child assuming that they have his interests in mind is foolish. They have a history of burning through instructors and they don't care. Please be careful!!!!