Martial Arts Gym

[julien]

I'm thinking of opening a full-time martial arts gym, the commercial kind, with nice mats, punching bags, shower rooms etc. One problem I'm facing, apart from finding a suitable location, is instructors. I have 20 years of Karate and Kickboxing and I can teach a few classes but I am probably going to need at least 4 or 5 more instructors to teach my classes.

My question to all you MA or MMA gym owners/instructors is this: How does a gym owner normally pay full-time instructors? 1)Fixed salary?, 2)Per hourly basis or 3)Basic salary + commisson/pro rata based on number of students? What do you guys do? How do you keep a commercial MA/MMA gym profitable and avoid having to spend a huge portion of costs on instructors?

Any advice will be great, tks!

[Patrick]

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Patrick

[JiuJitsuNation]

From what I've seen salary is common. Weekly or monthly. Keeping it profitable is something else. Location and marketing are key. There are more people wanting to do boxing or muay thai and jiu jitsu individually than there are people who want to do mma. However selling them the whole package seems to be around 30 percent of the business. People want to be associated with a mma gym which is the appeal but you will find when the doors are open that people will find a class that suits them and then stay there. In general anyway. Also providing other goods and services will help keep the doors open. These gyms have a high turn over.

[gimgamgommetje]

I do have ideas about this.

I own a small commercial gym (little over 200 students)

I teach the majority of the classes myself.

I have a number instructors teaching the kids classes in our own program for children.

The instructors only teach 1 class a week or every few weeks.

They do not get money but I do give them free instructor training and get them to do courses such as first aid etc that builds their resume and are usefull in their daily life. Most of all they enjoy working with the kids.

Sofar it's not hard to find volonteers

They are not a very big cost for me. When the gym becomes bigger I might need to hire 1 instructor for a few hours an evening and someone to help with facilities such as cleaning, answering telephone, manning the counter selling drinks etc.

In my case it was helpfull to start small and grow into it.

I hope it works for you as well. In that way you can start without taking extreme financial risks.

If you want to start as a big commercial gym I think you should get some solid advise on finances and marketing etc before you start.

Good advise is a good investment to start with.

[isshinryu5toforever]

If you're going to do this in New York City, you might run into a lot of problems. Rent, insurance, utilities, licensing, etc. New York is not a cheap place to do anything. Opening a martial arts gym would be difficult. This isn't to dishearten you at all. I think it's a wonderful proposition. You just need to step back and look at this dispassionately. Look at it realistically, from a business standpoint. Can you afford to put in that cash? Do you need a business loan? How long can you afford to bleed money? You're not going to make money at first. You'll stay afloat by putting in some of your own cash. Well, maybe a lot of your own cash.

You might want to look at the way Fighthouse Studios in Chelsea operates. Go there, go to a class, talk to the instructors about how things work.

Here's a link to their page:

http://www.fighthouse.com/index.html

You can do this one of a couple ways. The first way is the way that fighthouse does things. They own the space, they let others teach out of it. The others that teach out of it, pay them rent, and they get to make some money as well through their class sizes.

Another way is to own an actual gym, like a Gold's. Maybe even buy into a franchise if you can get the startup capital, and then have floor space where you teach martial arts classes. This isn't ideal, because I'm sure we all think of Tae Bo, but you could run a martial arts school out of an actual gym. The gym keeps you open, the martial arts school lets you do what you love.

Or, this would be extremely difficult, find other people looking to open gyms, and open one together. You share the space. You split up the schedule in as equal a manner as possible, and you create a partnership. This can be dicey at best, because of martial arts politics, but it could probably be done with a lot of trying.

[sensei8]

isshinryu5toforever has a very solid grasp on the who, what, where, when, why, and how across the board. You want a successful gym/business? Then the only thing that's viable in todays market, imho, is the use of CONTRACTS!! They help you to ensure that you've positive revenue flowing in. Most, if not all, gyms use contracts, and they use them without question/reservations.

Me, myself, and I, personally, can't stand contracts because they are so binding, and one has little chance of getting out of the contract. Remember, a binding contract is written by a lawyer, and in that, once you've signed on the dotted line, you're there for the duration of that contract. Whenever the contract is up for renewal and you've not opted out exactly as required, guess what? Your contract's renewed whether you wanted to or not, and you've got another year or so of payments.

Having said that. In todays roller coaster economy, contracts might not be an option as to if one should or should not have contracts for your customers because the bottom line of any P&L statement is PROFIT OR LOSS! You want to ensure positive revenue flow, therefore, contracts might become a vital necessity!