Starting from scratch

[Lrtucker]

Thanks DWx!

My first warning would be to watch who you do business with. I thought pairing with the dance school would be great, except in retrospect I don't think the owner is all that great at her business and that hurts me. Pairing with the more promintent dance studio would have been better.

The major benefit of the pairing is at least I have a physical location that can be associated with my name.

I would also require a registration fee in retrospect. Had I done this I would have either had less people sign up and not get my hopes up OR more people stick with it. Worst case scenario if they had paid and not shown up, i'd have a little more money.

The thing I would warn against is waiting for the stars to align. In my mind I wanted to wait until I had a large savings or invester, arsenal of mats, bags etc, and the perfect locations. If you feel it is what yo would love to do then go for it. If I had a garage I would have taught out of it with a sign in front of my house and opened the garage door for visual marketting.

TO be good martial artists we had to learn to be fluid. To change as needed. This is no different. I have had to move times, change pitches, and offered discounts. What you have in mind may not work- keep working until you find what does. sounds to me a lot like looking for a submission.

I originally planned for two classes, twice a week. One adult and one kids. Two kids came and one special needs adult who fits somewhere between kid and adult. After a few weeks one kid quit (not a loss because he was a pain, and his mom was too), the other kid took several private lessons and then got injured at school and had to take time off. This left me working one on one with my special needs adult and getting him to his first belt test. A week or so later I picked up a few more adults. My injured kid came back, but now with no other kids I decided that due to her private lesson she would fit into the adult class despite being a few years too young per my standard. I am hoping to pick up some kids over the holiday season and go back to having two seperate classes.

Although I have a niche, I have been going after EVERYONE! I want to focus on adults, but as my Sensei told me when I started considering opening, thier is income in kids. Once I am bringing in a little more income I will try to target. If I had my own location I would have some weights and offer personal training and strength workout in order to attact more fitness nuts. I will limit my kids programs once I reach my quota for adults.

If no one turned up I would keep pushing. Try to offer free lessons, or even teach friends. I offered November for free to students at a certian school because it would at least make the classes look full, not to mention creating work of mouth, and trying to get the kids hooked.

[bushido_man96]

I'd just try to get some interested people into what I have to offer, and get started. After a while, if your stuff is good, word-of-mouth will kick in, and growth will begin.

Growth in the MAs is hit and miss at best, I've found. More and more, I wish I had a place paid off that I could do workouts in, and not worry about paying the bills so much as getting in good, serious students. But such is life.

[Student4Life]

This is a great thread! I'm looking at opening my own Dojo within the next few years.