The Story of how we started a Martial Arts School (part one)

Written by Tim Rook

In July of 2011 I had just come out of surgery on my right hand. Two torn ligaments. As I was home recovering a friend from Manassas sent me an invitation to teach martial arts at their daycare. I had been thinking about the opportunity to go into business for myself since high school. I did have a small business when I was 23 years old and now that I was 27 and had a family I thought it might be my last real chance before things get complicated. So I accepted the challenge and dedicated myself completely to the effort of building the best martial arts school in Manassas/ the world. I put in my 2 week notice at the school I was working for and went full steam ahead in planning and preparations. Here is the story of what it took to become successful and make this dream happen. I want to share the sacrifice, hardships, the support of family/ friends, the whole story of how we built our program.

It is easy to start a business. Just head to City Hall with about $200 cash and you can do it! The hard part is making it successful. In mid July of 2011 I got the call about the opportunity. About a day later I made the decision to start up. From that moment I began writing and planning from sun up to way beyond sun down. I listed all the elements of what I wanted my business to be about. I thought through issues and concerns I have heard from parents throughout the years. I wrote and rewrote my plan every day till it started to make sense to me. The most critical decision I made was when I began a list of things that needed to be done IMMEDIATELY. See, I wanted to catch the Back to School craze which starts in August. So my list helped me figure out the most important tasks. When I finished that list I would create a new list of whats next repeating the process and completing the tasks. Step by step things came together quickly. I made about 1000 decisions a day which drove the force of our opening that much faster. Looking back I can't believe how everything just came together. The puzzle pieces just fit and when classes began and I started really truly making a difference in the lives of those kids that is when I knew this was all inspired by a higher power. I truly feel that I was guided in making the right decisions as everything continued to come together through the first year of our business. We are still not wealthy or insanely rich from our business, but the impact on these kids lives is what makes me want to continue improving our program each and every day.

Our program could not have started without the help of Mary's Dad, Mickey. He has let us live here since August of 2011 rent free. I started our business with only $500 to spare. I bought our licenses and a few ninja uniforms to give to the kids. I negotiated a 10% commission for the daycare and convinced them to let me do the collections and run the program as a seperate business. So we had no real expenses starting out. The daycare had some really old shotty mats that we used. It was sad because they were small fold out mats and we literally duck taped them together. Our classroom started off inside of the Kindergarten room where every day we had to move the furniture around like a TETRIS game just to make room for our small mats space. I cannot believe we fit 10 kids on those tiny mats. Even more so I cannot believe people signed up for a program like that. The service was great for daycare kids because their parents really didn't have time to put them in another activity. Those first families put their trust in me and for that I am forever in their debt. As our program grew Mary and I only paid ourselves enough to take care of our insurance and bills. We barely got food on the table but we always seemed to get by each month. It has been a year and some months since we have paid ourselves anything and I think soon we will be at a place where we can move out of her Dads house and become independent again.

Here is how we got started with marketing our program. I began by posting fliers announcing the coming of martial arts to the daycare. I put up a sign up sheet at the front desk and then held a free summer camp for the daycare. We got about 20+ kids before our first class even began. This helped me know I could really grow this thing. In the first month opportunities presented themselves and I began setting up events. We went to a few schools, the Joe Gibbs Country Fair, and Chick-Fil-A family night where we coined the Action Hero Event! Later we started getting a ton of referrals from our students and parents which meant we must be doing something right. More events started to get set up and in about 8 months we had grown to 75 members! Then the critical moment happened when we were told the daycare was sold. That story I will save for another time but with short notice we relocated our business to a church basketball court for about 3 weeks. I then signed a lease to our own facility and took on a whole new exciting chapter to our saga!

With the new space came a ton of expenses. Our parents really rallied behind us to help us raise about $8000 which all went into rent and down payment of the space. We did not go into debt, however we needed to get new memberships and quick. I began a heavy marketing campaign and from July 2012 to the end of October 2012 we reached 150 memberships! With such an huge influx of new students you would think financially things are evening out however I wanted our business to be stable and run smoothly before cashing out. So I took on more expenses and hired employees, set up payroll, made sure our insurance was correct, I also became licensed with an International Chain called Premier Martial Arts. With that decision came a whole lot of knowledge and help in balancing out systems. The premier program has so many details figured out that things started running smoother. Our parents have no idea but behind the scenes over the last month I have been implementing systems to improve our customer service, our classroom experience, our instructor training, our front desk procedures, tons of new event ideas, I worked really hard to learn and become certified in programs through the non-profit group Premier Kidz Foundation, we are still adjusting our curriculum and with the vast amount of new members I am figuring out the logistics and best way to balance out the equation. We are about 50 members shy of being maxed out with our current one-room location and that is awesome! I almost said, lets pay ourselves a bit, but then realized the tiny mats we were using just wouldn't cut it much longer. Our class was filling up. So after investing $4000 in new mats I created a bigger training floor and surprisingly a month later that space is now full too! We will be adding a few more class times and soon will be maxed out for evening classes.

There are so many different angles and perspectives to give you the full view of what was involved in the start up of our business. I will continue the story of our program later with the challenges we faced including the motivational drive of Mary becoming pregnant and life becoming more real for me as I was soon to be a dad. (To Be Continued).