Booths / Tents at other peoples events can be a great way to get a lot of leads fast. Especially if that events audience aligns well with your schools audience.

But, like all things, you can’t just set up and hope people come to you. You need to get noticed.

The idea of a lead magnet is not just a online concept, but it is equally important at in person events as well.

Step 1 – Get Noticed

When you set up your booth / tent, you’ll probably have a table. Someone should be at that table, but you also want someone out in front pulling people in to that table.

So in any setup there are two roles. Someone to talk to people at the table, and someone to bring people to that person. If it’s a larger event, a couple of each is a good plan.

What you don’t want to do is approach people by just going up to them and asking them about joining your gym. 

Someone handing out free stuff, telling them about a draw for something (not martial arts related), someone in a mascot costume, etc. Someone that can get attention.

We’ve found for kids branded foam swords work really well. Having someone with an armful of them and chasing down kids. It also helps to have 100’s of kids waving around foam swords with your school name on them all day long.

Step 2 – Free Stuff

Brochures are the obvious, but also show up with stickers, temporary tattoos, pins, balloons, etc. Ideally something that won’t fit in a pocket or purse (ex foam swords, novelty hats, etc.)

We’ve also done a cotton candy machine. (They get people to come to you really well, but they are messy and take someone dedicated to them) Which work well at outdoor events that aren’t too busy.

Step 3 – Talk to Them

Once your puller gets them to the booth, there should be someone there to talk to them and give them some free stuff. You don’t want to spend too long with each person as it should hopefully be a continuous stream of people coming to the table.

Build a little rapport, see if they have any interest in what you do, and if so get them to enter a draw (giving you name, email and phone number).

The draw can be anything. But if you go outside of what you do (ex. Win a free iPad) you will get lots of leads that have no interest in your program. A 6 or 12 month membership gives a lot of value, and attracts people that have at least some interest.

Step 4 – Be a Photo Op

Festivals mean parents with cameras posting to social media. Getting your booth / tent in more peoples feeds is a good thing. As well as drawing more people to your booth.

Having a mascot is great, a simpler solution is just some really cool props. We like to take swords, having a giant Master Sword (Legend of Zelda) sword will draw in lots of kids that want to hold it and get a picture. 

Step 5 – Be Interactive

Take some soft pads, boards, a 2x2m section of mat if you can. Some foam swords (not the giveaways, ones you can train with) and let kids do something interactive. We’ve had line ups of kids waiting to do a 60 second round of hitting pads at events. 

Not only do they enjoy it, it draws more attention.

Step 6 – Tiered Offers

Once they enter the draw, have a really cheap offer and a better value offer. Both only active for the length of the festival. You can do sign ups at the table, but also have a QR code they can scan and a flyer for the promotions.

This might be a 4 or 6 week + uniform promotion for a substantial discount as your value offer. And a 5 classes for $10 as a really easy offer if they aren’t ready to go for the bigger offer.

Step 7 – Follow up

After the event, you draw the winner and contact them.

Then you contact every other name in the box as “runner ups”. Which could be a 1-week pass, or an invitation to a special introduction to jiu-jitsu event / workshop. Whatever your school can handle. (Don’t try and flood 50 people in 1-week trials into your classes unless you can handle that many). A mass intro might be a better option.

This one is going to start hitting.

Parents fill in the lead form, but they aren’t looking to start now, they are looking to start in September.

They come in, they do the trial, we go to sign them up… and… “We are away a lot in the summer, we are looking at things for fall.”

So what do we do?

The answer should not be offer to touch base in September.

Here is a really simple option:

“Great, let’s get you signed up for September to make sure you have your spot saved. You won’t be billed until September, and if something comes up before then just let us know.”

“And since summer classes are a little smaller, what we can do is if you buy his uniform now, you can finish the summer free, billing still won’t start until September. That way if you can only make a few classes here and there it’s ok and he/she will be better prepared for a full start in September.”

Back-to-school season is a great time to hold an open house. But… people generally don’t get too excited about a “open house”.

So we never call one that. That’s “internal language”.

We through an Easter Egg Hunt in the spring and an Anniversary BBQ in the fall. And we max out registrations on both in no time.

A successful “open house” should bring in 100’s of leads, dozens of paid trials, reactivate some old members, and if you want to, some paid in full memberships.

They are free events, but we do require registration to keep our capacity under control. And we do want that contact info as well.

The Fall BBQ / Open House serves a few purposes:

• Builds community, this is big. Community fuels retention.
• Brings back the summer freezes. No one wants to miss a big party, so we get them all back right as summer comes to an end.
• Brings in referrals. We encourage members to bring friends, family, etc.
• Brings in new members. We invite everyone on all of our lists first. Members, former members, trials, leads, birthday party attendees… Lots of people that thought about it or experienced us at some point but weren’t ready to sign up then, but September is a great time for it.
• Gets us noticed. You can’t miss us, there is music playing, giant inflatable bouncers, everyone is outside as well as in the building. Lots of photo ops for people to post on social media. 

What we market it as is a free anniversary BBQ or a back-to-school BBQ.

We have multiple bounce castles, We rent a giant grill and buy 1000 hot dogs. We have a cotton dandy machine spinning (this year we are going to need 2 machines), drinks, chips, etc.

They play games in the gym, we do quick martial arts lessons with any new kids. Our students do some demos.

All free, but they have to register.

We raffle off some prizes. Including getting to soak their coaches with ice water in the dunk tower.

It’s an open house, but one no one will want to miss 🙂

Events are by far the best ROI on “ad spend” we ever get. Whether it’s big free community events, birthday parties, tents at festivals or anything else. The most important thing is being a part of the community that everyone sees.

The Kids Jiu-jitsu program is the only program designed to help grow your kids program and make your school explode. Book a free discovery call to see if we are the right fit for your school: https://app.calendarbridge.com/book/fQB4gaf

I really dislike it when someone asks about running a gym and the responses all say the money is in the kids classes. It’s not. The money is in making a positive impact.

When we focus on making a positive impact on our community money just tends to follow.

With kids programs we can make huge impacts on our members. A small change young can create massive life long effects.

If we focus just on money, people sense that. It creates a negative environment. If we focus on making a positive impact, people sense that too.

If you’ve been in this sport long enough, you’ve probably seen several people that think they, as white belts, are better off just watching Danaher videos and going to open mats rather then having a coach.

It’s possible that they have just experienced bad coaching… but more likely they just don’t understand the value of a coach.

Every professional athlete out there will have a coach. At higher levels, they are likely to have several. A top pro can easily be spending more on coaching than most people make.

Coaches come with an outside perspective. They see things from an outside perspective, keep us on track to our goals, and focus us on the right things at the right times.

As coaches we need to make sure we aren’t just presenting information, but actually providing coaching to our members. Get them doing the right things for them, at the right times. Not just spamming something they saw on a instagram reel.

Our business is no different.

Most of us started our gyms as white belts in “how to run a gym”. I’m pretty sure 26 years ago when I first opened I wasn’t even deserving of a white belt in running a gym. Then we muddle about and learn a little as we go making tons of mistakes and implementing all sorts of bad ideas an experienced gym owner would correct us on immediately.

The Kids Jiu-Jitsu Playbook has a goal of trying to help with that. Less than 6-months ago we opened our doors, sharing lots of what we do as free content. And in that time this group has blown up to nearly 1300 members!

I have had many business coaches over the years, and they are a big part of why my gym is where it is.

So now it’s our turn.

Book a free consult call. If things feel like a good fit, the VIP membership is there to give you our experience in our own gym and working with others. To help you 10x the investment and get your school to be a successful business.

Book your call here: https://app.calendarbridge.com/book/fQB4gaf

ps – We only have a few more spaces in the VIP Coaching group before the price goes up. So get in soon and keep the founders rate for life.

Summer is a good time for a little self-development. Here is 5 book recommendations for running a successful kids program from outside the martial arts world, but very applicable to it.

Talking to kids

• The Whole Brain Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

Business ownership

• The E-Myth revisited by by Michael E. Gerber

Coaching

• Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore

Sales

• $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi

Customer Service

• Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara

Here’s the summary version of our structure for creating referral drives

1 – Immediate Results – Don’t wait, as soon as the friend signs up everything happens right away. Creates excitement in the class and gets everyone wanting to join in.

2 – Loot box mechanics – There is a reason video games use these. People love surprises, and love the chance to get lucky. It gets the whole room in on the excitement as well. Spin a wheel, pop a balloon, open a mystery envelope/box, etc.

3 – Make it visible – It should be impossible for a kids to walk in and not ask “what’s that” during a referral drive. And then, “How do I get to do it”. Everyone should see it every time they come in the door.

4 – Make it an event – Tie it to a holiday, set a end date, make it something special. I prefer drives to evergreen events as evergreen events tend to just become background noise and get forgotten.

5 – Combine it with bring a friend events – Parents nights, bbq’s, workshops, anything a member can bring a guest too.

6 – Prizes are public – Bring them up in front of the class, get everyone cheering, they do the thing (pop a balloon, spin the wheel, etc.) in front of as many people as possible.

7 – Make it easy to share – guest passes, invitations with qr codes, etc. Give everyone the things they need to actually invite people.

8 – Communicate with both kids & parents – Both the kids and the parents need to know and understand it. Talk about it in class, send out emails, talk about it with parents, etc.

9 – Recognition matters as much as the prize – Prizes are great, but recognition can influence retention and building momentum. Sometimes the recognition is more important than the actual prize in terms of growth.

10 – Recognize referrals even if they don’t join – Even if a friend doesn’t join, if a member brought them in they did us a serious solid. That deserves some recognition. If they go through it all and the friend doesn’t join and they get nothing, not even a bit of recognition they are unlikely to put the effort in again.

Not quite 5-months in, and the Playbook has seen some incredible growth. Far more and far faster then I had hoped for (good problems)

1200+ members in, and it’s still growing fast.

This has meant some pivots, some adjustments, and a lot of listening to what everyone struggles with and needs.

And after a bunch of requests for strategy calls, and a bunch of one-on-one calls, I think it’s time I listen and go with it.

The truth is, doing things 1-on-1 is really the best way to get results by far. We can customize things to your exact situation and troubleshoot accordingly. It gives an accountability piece to it as well that providing information alone just doesn’t do.

So I am revamping the membership tiers, and opening a very limited number of spaces in the new Advisory level VIP tier. This tier is bi-weekly 1-on-1 calls so that we can grow your kids program to 200+ kids!

First few spaces will be only $297, and if what we do doesn’t get you at least the 2 new members you need to cover that… well, something went very, very wrong and if you followed my advice I owe you a refund. It will go to $397 fairly soon, so get in early as one of the first movers!

Want to see if it’s right for you? Book a free strategy call here: https://app.calendarbridge.com/book/fQB4gaf

Summer is a really, really important time for growth. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

But summer is when a lot of parents decide what their child will be doing in September. So if we wait until September… well, they may have already signed up somewhere else.

Martial arts tends to do trickle in registration, but a lot of parents are used to registering for things in advance (team sports, swimming lessons, etc.), and with September being one of the most important sign up periods for kids programs, we need to be ahead of things.

The summer marketing plan I’ve been posting about is a great starting point, and if you want to work through it, book a free call with the link on the side bar 🙂

The other thing to do in the summer is to start planning and refining existing programs. For kids programs… if you aren’t running birthday parties or are only getting a couple parties a month, this is the time to look at those.

Birthday parties are one of the few times people pay to bring you leads. They are absolutely huge for growing kids programs. The full scripts and plans we use are all in the classroom. Typically parties drop off during the summer months, so a launch or re-launch of your birthday party package in September is a great time to revitalize it. Again, book that call, we run nearly 200 parties a year, we’ve made every mistake and have a solid system that works.

But the biggest thing for Summer… don’t take the foot off the gas. Summer is what makes September set us up for the whole year.

For more on how to crush the summer months, join our free community here: https://www.skool.com/kids-jiu-jitsu-playbook

n martial arts, we all know to hit combos. One thing sets up the next, and then the next until the thing we want lands.

Same thing happens in marketing and sales. We stack different pieces to get to the end result.

So what does a stack look like?

Our current one we are launching for June:

• Bingo Battle event -> generate referrals & reviews
• Referral contest -> win prizes if a friend or family member signs up
• Train for the Summer special -> make it easier to sign up and take away the summer objections of going to be gone for several weeks.
• Tent at local festivals -> Feed more leads into our system and build more awareness
• Birthday parties, parents nights, kids graduation -> again, more leads & referrals
• Paid ads -> generate more leads
• Last week we had a whole bunch of moms on the floor for Mothers day -> leads for the women’s class
• July / August attendance based contest to help with summer pauses and drop off.
• Big community BBQ at the end of the summer to help bring everyone back

Over the summer months, we pull in a ton of leads and will get a lot of people on train the summer promotions. All those leads will lead straight into our back-to-school drive in a few months. With all the summer camp attendees that are non-members added to that list as well.

Marketing results rarely happen early. July and August comes from what we do now, in May and early June. What happens in September comes largely from what we do over the summer.

If you want help building a layered growth plan, join our group for free and book a free strategy call!