How To Start Your Own Martial Arts School

In general, there are two types of martial arts school. Those who are set up in a professional way to make money, and those who are community funded, not for profit, have dedicated students and teachers, yet ultimately fall apart due to lack of income.

To briefly summarise, loving martial arts is pretty much a prerequisite for opening a school, but not enough to make it last. If you don’t look after your money, it won’t look after you and the doors will be forced to close.

However, it is not all doom and gloom, as starting your own martial arts school can be a rewarding experience both spiritually and financially. There is nothing else quite like doing what you love day in and day out. If you are able to run a martial arts academy successfully whilst loving what you do, it will not feel like you’re going to work every day.

Previous Business Experience

Whilst it’s certainly not 100% necessary to have previous business experience, it can certainly be helpful. This is because you must think of your martial arts academy as a business first and a hobby second. If you’ve ever ran a small, community funded gym before, you may know the inner workings of how to run a place, but not needed to make a profit. These two things whilst somewhat similar, are so incredibly different.

The chances are, if you’ve already created one successful business, you’re easily able to make more using the same fundamental knowledge. This is mostly why we see the same people excel in different areas of life. Once you’ve mastered one art, you have the ability and experience to do the same thing again in an entirely different discipline.

In short, previous business experience can help you a lot in terms of success. This will not be the driving factor behind whether you succeed or fail, but it can certainly influence the outcome.

Making A Business Plan

If you haven’t started a business before, a business plan is pretty much everything listed below. It is likely that if you require a loan from a bank to start a martial arts school, this is one of the things they will ask for. You’re able to download business plan templates from the internet if you have no idea what to do. However, in general, almost everything is covered in this post.

Almost everyone who has ever created a successful business has made a plan prior to opening, and even if they didn’t have it written down, everything was in their head.

If making a martial arts school is your first time in business, we strongly suggest that you make a business plan so you’re well aware of all costs and eventualities before opening your doors. The last thing you want is to be underfunded or have no students.

Finding A Location

Other than finance, there are not too many things more important than the location of a martial arts school. Whilst you can change the location of your gym from time to time, it is expensive and not all of your members will come with you.

This is not the only reason why it’s important to get the location of your gym right.

Ideally, you do not want to be in a place that has a large population of elderly people, since they will have no interest in signing up to a wing chun academy. Secondly, you do not want the population to be too poor or too rich. Both of these demographics will not really have too much interest in martial arts, especially if it is a traditional form.

Lastly, the location has to be somewhat accessible with a place to park your car. As a bonus, if you’re near a busy road and can place a large sign outside of your gym, this is a real plus. Free advertising is very difficult to find and if you can draw people in off the street, this will go some way to getting yourself off the ground initially.

Red Tape

Something that should never be overlooked before opening a martial arts gym is red tape. Depending on your country or state, there may be restrictions about what you can and can’t do in certain areas. In all honesty, when compared to other businesses such as nightclubs or restaurants, the restrictions on martial arts schools are very minimal, but you may need specific paperwork for your local area.

This can be anything from a business license to insurance documents or simply a permit to operate within the area between certain hours of the day. This is not something which can be articulated in a few words as each city around the world will differ greatly, with some having very few or no restrictions at all.

Personal Skillset

It should go without saying that you should really be an expert in a martial art such as karate, judo or wing chun if you want to set up a school. It’s no use being a mid-level practitioner and hoping that people will pay you for instruction – they likely won’t.

Second of all, to succeed in the world of martial arts, you really need to be passionate about it. Whilst there will be some exceptions to this rule, they are a rarity. Besides, you can likely make a lot more money in others forms of business than martial arts. If you don’t care about training students, it would be much better to make something that can scale upwards and generate more income.

If you do operate at a high level in any martial art, this is pretty much the minimum requirement for starting a school. It will take a lot more hard work in many other areas to make it successful.

Finance

Set-up Costs

Setting up a martial arts school can vary in cost depending on what equipment you need. If you’re opening a BJJ, Judo or Aikido school, you likely only need some floor and wall mats since you won’t be using anything else. Boxing and striking gyms will need pads, as well as speed and heavy bags, which can add up in cost quite quickly.

Provided you do not have to renovate too much, setting up an academy is considerably cheaper than setting up something like a restaurant or retail store, so this is a real benefit to martial arts businesses.

A ballpark figure for setup would be anything from $10000 upwards. If you do not have this amount of money to start with, it’s going to be very difficult to get the ball rolling. Furthermore, if you do not have additional funds to dip into until you’re cashflow is regulated. This can be a very dangerous game.

Rent

Rent has its own category because it will likely be your largest expense in some way. Compared to other businesses, it is not too expensive to run a martial arts school since there is no specialist equipment and/or supplies.

It would be a very good idea to research and understand the concept of cashflows in business, since this is likely what will make or break you. There is a good chance you can get enough members within the first few months to cover the cost of rent if you do everything correctly. This alone will not allow you to cashflow. If members are paying fees on the 4th of every month and rent is due on the 1st, this can cause significant problems. You must plan most of your finance around your biggest cost – rent.

Marketing

Marketing for a martial arts school is almost always local. You want to try and find the best possible way to reach everyone in your local area for the lowest cost. This may be local facebook advertising, instagram, google ads, or a more traditional method such as flyers. There is no right or wrong way to market, but you must keep track of everything and see which way works best for your business.

In terms of marketing strategy, if you’re new to this area, it’s best to take a cautious approach at first. You can try a variety of different things as long as the cost remains low. There is no problem with aggressive marketing tactics and budgets, provided you know what you’re doing. The last thing you want is to annoy people or spend money on something which isn’t bringing in a return.

Insurance & Waivers

Insurance and waivers can never be overlooked, yet often are. This is especially true if you live in America, which is not the worst in the world for people suing but does rank #5. If you are not insured, even just contesting a lawsuit can become extremely expensive and could shut down your entire business no matter how frivolous it is.

People should accept personal responsibility if they are training martial arts and getting injured is sometimes the way it goes. However, not everyone sees things this way – your business must be protected at all times from people like this.

Other Overheads

The consideration of all costs is why a business plan is so important. It may take you several days or weeks to come up with all the overheads you can think of. But they must be written down and accounted for. If you can’t afford your light bill, nobody is going to be able to train in your school.

In general, these kinds of overheads will be very small, but add up quickly – which is why they can’t be ignored. A single expense is very unlikely to make or break a martial arts school, but there can be a mulitple of singlular straws to break the camels back.

Enrolling & Retaining Students

Enrolling students for a month or so is a relatively easy task. This is mostly done by marketing as often a martial art will sell itself. If somebody sees an advertisement and is curious to see what hapkido is, the chances are they will come to your gym at least once. Then if they like what they see, will sign up for at the very least a short period of time.

The difficult part of the job is to retain students. If a student sticks around for many years, not only do they become a close friend and part of the gym community, but they are also a huge financial asset. Retained students always pay and are likely to continue paying until they become dissatisfied with what you’re doing. You should do everything you can (within reason) to keep loyal students happy. Whether this means freezing fee increases for them or simply making sure they feel appreciated, you must try and do it.

Mindset & Effort

Your own mindset is going to be the biggest battle when opening a martial arts school. There will be many times when our own mind tells us to quit in life, but when chasing goals, you must ignore it.

In reality, whether a martial arts school is a success or not is mostly going to be about the effort you put into it. This is not a singular entity, but more of a cumulative score of everything mentioned above. Opening a martial arts school can be a big risk, but a great reward both socially and financially. Like everything in life, you have to take a risk to get a payoff, there are no two ways about it.

How Much Can A Martial Arts School Make?

The profit margin for martial arts schools is not bad at all compared to other businesses. You will find that the turnover is a lot lower than things such as restaurants, retail shops and nightclubs, but the expenses are also lower to compensate for this.

In general, a good statistic would be that 40-50% of your turnover will translate to net profit. This is based on the school not having a particularly high rent and teaching many of the classes by yourself so that expenses are not inflated.

This is not easily achieved but can be done with hard work and determination.

For example, if a building costs $1200 per month to rent and you have 80 students paying $50 per month. This amounts to $4000 in turnover, when you take off other expenses it is possible to have $1800-2000 left over as profit. Ideally, if you could double or triple all of these base numbers it is possible to make a good income from a martial arts school.

After this the sky is the limit, you can possibly franchise and make various other schools in the surrounding area.