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John Lindsey
1st December 2003, 22:38
Allie Alberigo has been a good friend of mine for many years. As a full time martial art instructor, he has been highly successful at not only teaching martial arts, but making it a profitable career. Starting with a small, 600 foot studio, he has grown into running 5 schools in the NYC area and grosses over 1 million a year. What impresses me about Allie is that he has been able to be successful while teaching traditional Japanese martial arts. He has not had to overly change the curriculum to satisfy the needs of his students. Many successful martial art studios put “business” before “budo” and in my opinion, has lost the essence of what the Japanese arts are.

Allie has agreed to host this forum and to share with you his strategy for building a successful martial art school. I

Forum Rules

1. Please only post questions related to running a martial art school.
2. Allie will try and answer all of your questions. He will most like be responding during the evening. Don’t expect an immediate response

Paul Steadman
2nd December 2003, 00:21
Hello John & Allie,

I havn't posted on e-budo for over a year, this thread has sparked an interest in getting back on-line!

Allie, some of my questions may seem rhetorical or downright stupid, but I'll take any information on board and apply it.

1- Do you recommend a business plan?
2- Do you have a business systems in place?
3- Do you have a dojo operations manual?
4- How much do you charge for tuition, gradings, workshops & seminars?
5- How do you organise tuition collection; via a collection company, cash transaction on premises, EasyPay (EFT), coupons/envelopes etc?
6- Do you have pro-shops at your dojo or sell co-branded merchandise via a catalogue?
7- What is your mark-up on the wholesale price of your merchandise?
8- Do you have staff that teach/run the branch dojo?
9- If so, how do you train, motivate and pay your staff?
10- What do you think of organisations such as EFC, NAPMA, Andrews Int'l and the material they offer?

I am also curious as to how one might be able to balance running a successful viable dojo being able to meet its financial and corporate governance obligations while offerring excellent cliet services and teaching traditional budo, without turning into a so-called "McDojo?"

Oh, I nearly forgot. Do you have a merketing plan, and what type of advertising and media do your prefer?

Sorry about the machine-gun approach, with the 'twenty questions,' etc. When I discuss the above with my collegues, instructors and mentors here in Australia I usually recieve a blank expression followed by a quick change in conversation topic.

Regards,

Paul Steadman

John Lindsey
2nd December 2003, 00:23
Paul,

Could you post your great questions to the forum, and not on these rules :). I should have closed it off to prevent this. You may want to split up your questions into different posts, maybe 2 or 3.