I feel that I have developed the mindset of being a (martial arts) professional who runs a (martial arts) business. This mindset has gotten me blacklisted at several schools, and a pink slip at a youth organization for which I used to work. However my ‘crazy ideas’ have been verified by some of these organizations, or at least I seem to be doing some of the same things they do.

Still, the answer for me so far is “No,” you don’t need to join a martial arts marketing association to be successful. At risk of sounding like an arrogant know it all, I don’t think that these associations will teach me anything I don’t already know. That said one of the early lessons I’ve learned is to always question, and to examine carefully. I’ve always assumed that meant to start with yourself… So at some point, I’ll probably shell out the cash to check out NAPMA, MAIA, PMA, etc. to see if I’m missing something.

But if you are a person who wants to be a professional martial artist and/or school owner, you do need to educate yourself. Although it is possible to now earn a bachelor’s degree of martial arts in America, I still don’t know of any college or university that offers martial arts marketing degrees in America or overseas. Though I am not a member of any of these associations, I say “Bravo!” to those who offer any improvement to the martial arts, the business, the industry.

This has been entertaining to say the least. Thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Here is what I know. On New Years Day, my brother Mark was “let go” of his job at NAPMA by Oliver. Happy New Year Mark.

That officially brings an end to the Graden families’ influence on the company I created with great pride in 1994. My brother had been with me from the beginning and stuck it out after Century sued the company into bankruptcy and “acquired it” from me.

Rob Colasanti left NAPMA over a year ago. Rob was my first karate student when he was 15 and my first NAPMA employee. Kathy Marlor, who was senior consultant at NAPMA during my reign has been serving at a similar role at Member Solutions until she too was released last month. Merry Christmas Kathy.

In meeting with my students and family, I have a clear insight as to what is going on at NAPMA. They have implemented a three year rotating curriculum which recycles 36 months of old boxes in a loop. What was once $99, is now $399.

I have no idea what is going on at MAIA, other than getting a call from a Duane someone who said he used to work there and now is getting sued by Century. Welcome to the club.

MATA is being overhauled for the third time in six years. The MartialArtsTeachers.com site will now be a free information and news hub where you will find my podcasts, articles etc…

The member side has been moved to MartialArtsSchoolOwners.com and is on a more powerful platform which will help us serve our members even better.

I no longer have any involvement with Pro-Star Mixed Martial Arts.

First quarter 2010 I will role out a new curriculum program that will be unlike anything the martial arts has ever seen. You will be blown away at how easy this will be to manage and teach. Within three months you could have locations all over town teaching this program to a market hungry for it.

I hope everyone has a great New Year. I’m certainly excited about it.

Thanks,

JG

Thanks for sharing with our readers and I’m sorry to hear that. Keep us posted.

Ryan

The first mailing I received had an “Explosive School-Growth Guide” that is approximately 90% testimonials and NAPMA advertisements. The rest was selling me on what NAPMA was *going* to do for me. I would have expected this information as part of the sale… and maybe that’s the idea. I bought 2 months of NAPMA sales material.

A DVD was included which was part of a Steven Oliver seminar. This had some interesting information on it. Nothing particular new to me… but could be very useful for someone else. There was enough information to whet the appetite and give some powerful ideas. The DVD was respectable. The “guide” is an embarrassment.

Today, May 3, I received an email announcing:
This Month’s “Maximum Impact Teleconference”: Wednesday, March 4th, at
2:00pm Eastern Time

Ah, the speed of technology. Right now I am wondering whether to bother waiting for the second mailing before canceling. I would warn anyone that asked me — given my experience so far. If I were to follow NAPMA’s example, I suspect I’d have some very disappointed customers.

Steven Oliver said on his DVD that you need to be a Master Teacher first before being a marketeer. The reasoning is that if you are not, and marketing brings people to your door, customers will find out you are a fraud. Good solid advice.

Well, NAPMA marketing has brought me to their Marketing Dojo door. So far the mats are smelly, bathrooms are dirty, and no one is at the front counter.

But I’ll let you know how it goes…

In the days Mr. Graden owned NAPMA, it was at the forefront of the industry in terms of marketing and business. I witnessed Mr. Graden create life changing content for martial arts schools both large and small.

When Century acquired NAPMA, I was still handling all the consulting and, had just sold all of the first 100 or so NAPMA Squared programs after its debut. The absence of great leadership left in the wake of the takeover and upcoming turmoil motivated me to follow Mr. Graden in his new endeavor – MATA. But while MATA was in its infancy stages, I could not compare companies on an even keel. I had to choose which had a better future.

I viewed Mr. Graden’s vision of an internet-based information and marketing company as revolutionary. Why deliver a box of physical material (DVD’s, CD’s, Ad-slicks, etc.) and charge over a hundred dollars per month when you can receive 10 TIMES the material, at ONE QUARTER the cost by downloading the same content from the internet?

That was the main difference… NAPMA (at the time) charged over a hundred per month including shipping, and delivered a physical box, while MATA charged $24.95 and sent you nothing… instead MATA gives you access to a website where you can download much more material… instantly. So of the three, I would have to recommend MATA, hands-down. (In the interest of full disclosure, I had already sold my chain of 7 martial arts schools and was looking for the best company to partner and launch a gym-based martial arts franchise/ licensing system I was working on for over 5 years. So my decision to choose MATA was influenced in part by this.)

I have not had the pleasure to work with NAPMA since Stephen Oliver acquired it from Century. But I spend all day, every day talking to school owners… So I have heard the rumors about Mr. Oliver using NAPMA solely to promote his MHK Franchise. First, Mr. Oliver has never been shy about the fact he’s trying to sell you something. For one salesman to another, I give him credit for having the guts to never apologize for being a good at marketing, and we should follow his example of constant promotion. Do I agree with the assertions listed above? No. For some reason, many school owners will pick up a NAPMA box, or MaPro Magazine issue and read 90 pages of great content, and 10 pages of franchise promotion. Instead of focusing on the 90 pages of great content, they only remember the 10 page “sales-pitch.”

When Mr. Graden and I started Pro-Star Mixed Martial Arts, at first, we were accused of similar self-promotion – using MATA to promote Pro-Star MMA. Even though this was not the case, Mr. Graden and I decided to separate MATA and Pro-Star completely to eliminate the appearance of impropriety. Perception is reality. I focused completely on Pro-Star while Mr. Graden focused entirely on MATA. We separated offices and divested ourselves from the other company. So far, it’s worked great.

But I’d like to offer yet another choice for everyone… MATA/ NAPMA/ MAIA offer information and provide general consultation. But often, they produce conflicting advice. So in order to take ALL GUESSWORK out of running a martial arts school, we created Pro-Star… (Here comes my sales pitch now!)

Imagine taking the discipline, respect, and modern ranking system from traditional martial arts, and coupling it with modern Mixed Martial Arts Techniques in a Rotating Curriculum Format….

Imagine the ability to log onto a website, and see EXACTLY WHAT TO TEACH, Year 2, Term 5, Week 7, Class 2, Minute 11-20! That one, ten minute segment may have anywhere from 1 to 5 streaming videos lasting from 30 seconds to 6 minutes! We’ve FILMED 3,000+ video segments in the last couple years and we’ve only begun adding lesson plans for Year 3 of the curriculum…

Now imagine having a FULL Business System and Marketing Strategy that coincides exactly with the Curriculum…

This is exactly what we’ve done with Pro-Star Mixed Martial Arts! And since we’re still in the phase of accepting “Founding Members,” school owners have the ability to get in at less than HALF OFF what we will charge when all 5,000 videos are completed and perfected.

And the best part is, you DON’T HAVE to change the name of your school, or even change your base curriculum. You can use Pro-Star MMA as an ADD-ON PROGRAM or as the curriculum to teach to your BBC!

So my advice… Go with MATA for inexpensive and great information and consultation, and go with Pro-Star MMA for EXACT directions, step-by-step on what to teach every class, and what to do EVERY day to make your school grow beyond your wildest dreams! I can’t begin to tell you how recession proof MMA is turning out to be, and how EASY this material is to teach. The BEST instructors to teach MMA to the “masses” are instructors that BEGIN in a traditional martial arts curriculum… NOT guys who began as high school wrestlers! (“Masses” is defined as: Anyone who does not have dreams of fighting in a cage in 6 weeks.) A good teacher can teach anything they know well, and we’re proving this every day by taking guys with 10 years traditional martial arts experience but little to no grappling/ kickboxing experience, and in 6 months, they are taking students to NAGA competition and THEY ARE WINNING! Some have “chosen” to even train amateur fighters, and they too… are winning. Some of our guys get 200 inquires about MMA in a single month, FROM THE INTERNET ALONE! MMA is NOT another fad like cardio-kickboxing or Krav-Maga. There are BILLIONS of dollars behind MMA right now, so it’s not going anywhere in our lifetime…

NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER BEEN DONE BEFORE IN THE HISTORY of MARTIAL ARTS… So we have lofty goals of changing the face of the industry forever with Pro-Star MMA. The only question now is… will you inquire about Pro-Star before your competition does???

As you can see, I’m very passionate when I KNOW something WORKS. Call or email me and I’ll be more than happy to spend a half hour on the phone with you to explain exactly how the entire Pro-Star MMA Curriculum, Business System, and Markeing Strategy works. In the meantime, check out our sample videos on Youtube.

Thanks,
Joe Brignoli
CEO, Pro-Star Mixed Martial Arts

Sorry for the delayed response….

I would absolutely recommend NAPMA for a single location with a few caveats:

1) if you plan on joining NAPMA (or any information source) and don’t use the materials and implement the systems – then DO NOT do it – the only thing that you will accomplish is your frustration level rising and your blood pressure going up. Then the other part is that you will blame NAPMA (or whomever) for the failure of the system or information.

2) keep in mind that the systems will take you to whatever success level you chose and that is solely up to you. Even if you have no desire for a multi-school operation, the materials can increase the quality of what you offer to your existing students as well as systematize your current operations.

Here’s the bottom line – most of us started schools because we loved martial arts, not because we are great business people. To that end – our business skills are not quite where they should be and the school suffers and eventually shuts down. UNLESS we go back to school to learn marketing and business skills.

It’s like Michael Gerber talks about in The e-Myth — we are bitten by an “entrepreneurial seizure.”

That’s where NAPMA comes in to play as our virtual business university.

NAPMA provides information that can take you to a business Black Belt to go along with the Martial Arts Black Belt that took you many years to earn. Except this one is a whole lot less painful!

Give it a try if you haven’t and get the 2 month free trial – IF you implement it will be worth it.

All the best,

Rob Tucker
6th Degree Black Belt, Master Instructor
Director of Sales – NAPMA
RobTucker@NAPMA.com

First. Since the ownership transition the biggest change in NAPMA has been several people who have in fact run single and multiple schools through boom times and recessions and through “martial arts booms” and slack times. Unfortunately many of the organizations and consultants suffer from one of several problems.

1. Ran a school many years ago and teach dated ideas that don’t work in the current environment, or

2. Never ran a successful school and teach theory or translate other people’s ideas while adopting them as their own.

3. Experienced short-term success and then start selling their ideas.

Frankly, rule #1 is never take advice from someone who hasn’t done what you want to accomplish.

Second. NAPMA is NOT focused on BIG schools or Multi-School owners. It is VERY focused on attracting intelligent, highly motivated owners who aspire to run both a high quality school with strong profitability.

I’ve written extensively including in Martial Arts Professional Magazine that “Bigger Isn’t Always Better.”

We do teach maximizing student value, improving student service and student longevity, while teaching marketing skills and techniques that are in fact working in today’s market.

Third. “NAPMA’s” only to Promote Stephen Oliver?? I’m not sure where that would come from and, certainly it’s a strange comment. I created “NAPMA Squared” while John Graden was still owner of NAPMA, it was picked up by Century, and under their ownership “morphed into” “Maximum Impact”

The NAPMA Squared Program then Maximum Impact portion of the program was created by me and I was always the primary author.

Actually since the ownership transition I have brought in a variety of my “friends and associates” adding contributions from a wide-range of contributors from Jeff Smith, Terry Bryan, Paul Hartunian, Lee Milteer, Dan Kennedy, Dave Kovar, Bill Clark, John Hackleman, Jhoon Rhee and many others.

Toby Milroy and myself have added contributions to NAPMA’s regular newsletter mostly by answering submitted member questions.

NAPMA’s range and quality of contributors far exceeds anyone else in the industry and continues to expand.

Fourth, RE Pricing. Frankly NAPMA, MAIA, MATA and others are laughably inexpensive. What’s important to consider is “Return on Investment” to get a 10 to 1 Return on Investment (HUGE BY ANY STANDARDS) all a school would have to do is add $2,000 a month in revenue.

Long before I had any contract with or ownership in NAPMA (while a Board of Director’s member of Educational Funding Company) I told anyone who asked to do as I did and be a member of everything since only one good idea a year would create a huge ROI from membership.

Anyway. The conversation can get windy. We offer everyone TWO Free Months of our Maximum Impact Membership with over $2,000 in free bonuses including 24 interviews ranging from Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy to Jhoon Rhee, Jackie Chan, and Joe Lewis.

Stephen Oliver, CEO
National Association of Professional Martial Artists

Do yourself a favor and listen to what they say – it took me to 3 schools and 1200 students in 18 months….