# of Leads

# of Trials

Show Rate

# of Enrolments

Attrition Rate

These tell us where the problems are in terms of students. (Not finance, although they are connected)

If you get 100 leads per month and book 60 trials, that’s 60%

Of those 60 if 45 show up thats 75%

And of those 45 that show up, if you sign up 30 that’s a 67% close rate.

100 x 60% x 75% x 67% = 30 New Members

Now if we bring those percentages up by 10% each. A little more follow up on leads, a little more follow up before appointments, a little better sign up process…

100 x 70% x 85% x 75% = 45 New Members

Didn’t need more leads, just a refined process.

To get more members it’s just looking at those 4 numbers and seeing where the most room, the low hanging fruit is. And dialing that in.

It also affects our advertising. If a lead costs $20 in ad spend, and every 30 out of 100 leads ends up a member, I have a cost of acquisition of $66.66.

It also affects our advertising. If a lead costs $20 in ad spend, and every 45 out of 100 leads ends up a member, I have a cost of acquisition of $44.44.

Knowing the approximate “cost” of a new member lets me plan out promotions and advertising.

This does change based on lead source to some degree as well. A lead from a Referral > a lead from organic search > a lead from advertising > a lead from an event. You’re not likely to hold a Easter Egg Hunt, collect 600 leads, then sign up 270 new members from it.

Attrition lets me know another important number. If I have a 10% attrition in a school with 150 members, I need to sign up 15 new members every month just to stay the same.

Or from the other side, if I sign up 15 members a month and have a 10% attrition rate, I would level out at 150 members. (15 / 10%)

Dropping that by 2% to 8% means even if I sign up the exact same number of members, my school will now max out at 187 members instead of 150 (15 / 8%).

A good attrition target is actually 5%, which would be 15 / .05 = 300 members before maxing out.

As you get bigger, attrition becomes more and more of a priority as it becomes harder. It is much easier to maintain 5% attrition in a 80 member school then it is in a 300 member school.

We are very non-traditional in our approach to jiu-jitsu class culture.

But, class rituals are a really important piece of keeping classes structured.

The first class ritual is how you start a class. In martial arts it’s most common to line up, bow in, quick pre-frame of what’s going to happen in this class and then get started. Some schools will recite a student creed.

In other sports it might be a huddle. In a school it might be the national anthem, or roll call. Athletes often have rituals before they go into competition.

What that ritual looks like is far less important than it being consistently present. If multiple instructors run classes, they all start and end classes the same way. Japanese influenced schools may bow on and off the mat. In BJJ many schools do a 1-2-3-clap before breaking from instruction. Slap-bump before starting a roll, etc. Rituals help keep the class working as a unit, providing everyone is using them the same.

It gives the class that state change, that now class is starting and its time to go into class mode.

These class rituals have a basis in psychology, and are things people use everyday in their day to day life. A getting ready to leave the house ritual, a getting ready for bed ritual, a going into a meeting ritual, etc.

In one of our magazines we even teach this concept to kids, and have them think of rituals they use in their daily lives.

A whistle is a great tool. Another important tool to getting a talkative or distracted groups to focus is what I call “call and response”

It can be a verbal response:

“Eyes on who?”

“Eyes on you!”

Or a physical:

“If you can hear me clap once”

“If you can hear me put your hands on your head”

But something that gets kids to respond is going to refocus the group faster then yelling at them or shh-ing them.

It can also become part of your culture, the trained call and responses.

You: “abc juijitsu”

Class: “Rocks!”

If you want attention, get them to respond.

Filling a Empty Class (or Bring a Class Back to Life)

The hardest class to fill is always an empty one.  Whether it is a new class, or one that has been dropping off.

Bringing trial members into a class that is empty is unlikely to result in many sign ups, and will likely result in attrition problems.

So here’s the basic concept on what we do when launching a class:

Pre-Sell a Limited Program

6-Weeks is a good time frame for a twice a week program.  Include whatever they need to make them look like they are a full part of the class.  If that’s a gi, then include a gi in the package.

Stack the value, and put a discount on it that people will be willing to sign up without a trial before hand.

It doesn’t need to make a lot of money, it needs to get people in the class and not lose money.

For us this has been around a $200 price point.  So maybe 6-weeks, 2x / week, includes a uniform, t-shirt, money back guarantee, etc. $197.

I want the cost to not be too detached from the membership fees, but to include enough other stuff to make it a substantial saving.

Start marketing this package 4-6 weeks out with a set start and end date.

The goal is to put 8-12 people in the class.  Not to completely fill it necessarily, but to get enough of a group that it’s a “class” instead of a semi-private.

Now Start Bringing in Trials

Once the program is under way, no more 6-week programs.  But now that you have a class, of people that are in uniforms or have whatever gear they need, now you start booking trials.

But they sign up on recurring memberships, not the 6-week option.

Having a group in there will give you some social proof.  You aren’t selling a empty class, and can start getting full memberships.

3-4 Weeks in, Upgrade the 6-Week Programs to Recurring

Before the program ends, have some incentive to offer the original group to get signed up on a full membership to kick in at the end.  A special rate, A extended free period, additional gear, etc.  Whatever makes sense for the program.

Just don’t wait until the 6-weeks is over and they think its over before you get them thinking about continuing.

Push hard until you get 10-15 people in the class

You need that critical mass to keep retention up and to remove the major obstacle of signing people up into a empty class.

Many classes can snowball once they hit that point, but until they do they have a strong risk of fizzling out. 

Teens for example, our experience has been teens have pretty high retention once there is enough of them.  It becomes a important social piece for them.  They will all end up communicating with each other outside of class and not let each other quit.  Something kids and adults don’t really do.

One thing that distinguishes Jiu-Jitsu from traditional martial arts is that it is not (or at least IMO should not be) about memorization of techniques.

It’s about problem solving under pressure.

We can use techniques to help demonstrate concepts, but the techniques aren’t the end goal. The process is.

Jiu-jitsu is chaotic, there are practically unlimited situations you can find yourself in. It is impossible to memorize them all. Instead we look at core concepts and processes that can be used to solve a wide range of similar problems.

And fortunately, this is what kids do best.

What they don’t do as well is memorization, and then be able to execute those memorized movements under pressure.

Some kids will naturally be good at memorization, but when you focus on memorization you exclude the most creative problem solvers.

Instead our curriculum is based on problems, and the ability to solve them.

So pin escapes stop being 4 escapes from side control, 3 escapes from mount, a few from scarf, some from back control…. and we have over a dozen techniques. Instead basic concepts like Don’t be flat, Get inside control to open an escape path.

So instead of a building a curriculum based on techniques, we build a curriculum based on types of problems that kids need to know how to solve.

Creative problem solving under pressure is a far more valuable skill than memorization of technique. And that is what to communicate to parents, not “We don’t teach technique”, but “We teach kids to solve problems under pressure”.

With adults they can take a lot more control of creating a community in many ways. They can hang out at open mats, they can go out for drinks after class every now and then.

With Kids it is just as important, if not more so. If their friends are in jiu-jitsu, they aren’t going to stop training.

We don’t lose kids to other martial arts schools, we lose them to soccer, or football, online gaming, or wherever their friends happen to be.

So to keep jiu-jitsu as a priority, having them have friends in class is very important.

This means facilitating non-training events and activities regularly to help them build and strengthen those bonds. To make martial arts feel like more then just something they show up for and then leave at the end.

Team sports have wind ups, they travel together, they have post game celebrations together.

We don’t see that as much in martial arts gyms with the non-competitors that make up most of the people training.

So how do we do that with kids?

Parents Nights – Once a month or so, a big party with pizza, games and lots of freedom

Birthday Parties – If they have their party with you, and their friends all see what they do as fun and cool, it will help keep them training.

Large family events – Easter egg hunts, BBQs, Holiday events, etc.

and more.

We need to make jiu-jitsu not just a thing they do, but a part of who they are and a community they feel they belong too.

Does anyone do any unique things to build community and culture in their kids classes?

A very common line of thinking in a jiu-jitsu school is that you need to get more people in the door.

But getting people in the door is really pretty easy. It’s getting them to keep coming back that is where we make or break things.

In order for that to happen, we need to be bringing the right people in. People that are like the people already in our classes, those are the people that already stayed.

The best source of people coming in your door that are like the people that already choose to stay, are those people that choose to stay.

This is why referral drives, bring a friend events, parents nights, community events and, with kids, Birthday Parties can be major game changers in getting a program to grow and retention to be strong.

When you hold a birthday party for a member you have a kid who is already a good fit for your program and whose parents believe in the value of your program. They bring 10-20 of their friends. Kids like them and their closest friends. You get to introduce them all to your facility and your program, with a negative cost per lead… the gym gets paid to introduce them.

Internal events play a big role in growing successful kids programs, make sure to register for the webinar this Friday to see how we do nearly 200 parties in a single location per year 🙂

This age group is unique in a lot of ways from the older ages. Coaches often say they don’t listen at this age, but in many ways this is the age group that WANTS to listen the most, they just don’t always know how.

This is taken from our coaches manual on the characteristics of this age group:

—

This age group loves to move, anything physical they will usually want to do. They are full of imagination and are starting to find their desire for some level of independence and beginning to find boundaries and play with other kids.

They tend to have a hard time with group dynamics at first, and will often struggle with class structure for their first few classes.

Physically they have poor hand eye coordination, they are still developing core strength and gross motor skills. Things like doing a sit-up or hopping on one foot will likely be outside of their ability at first.

They have a low vocabulary and often have a hard time communicating their feelings, as well as understanding those feelings. This can cause them to “act out” when they become frustrated.

Socially they are very self-centred. They are starting to make friends and play with others, but lack experience in doing so, and don’t really understand sharing turns or things very well yet.

They are very big into mimicry. In a class of 3-4 year olds if one child does something, the rest are likely to do it as well. A simple thing like running laps, as soon as one child falls down, the rest will be falling down repeatedly.

With this age group we emphasize core strength and group structure. Once they understand the structure of the class and what to expect and how to be a part of it they will thrive. But it will take them a few tries to figure it out.

Keeping class structure the same helps greatly with class control, and things like obstacle courses are a great way to teach them to follow a process of doing things in order.

This is a lesson I had to learn on some things.

A few years back, we didn’t break boards. We are primarily jiu-jitsu, and kickboxing as a secondary program.

So board breaking was never really part of what we did, and I kinda pushed against it.

I was in a mastermind and it came up as a great way to give a kid a big confidence building moment at the end of a class. But… as Jiu-jitsu, I was pushing back on it being for us and not really fitting with what we do and “jiu-jitsu culture”.

Chris Casamassa (aka Scorpion) set me straight on that.

Our culture is about building confidence, getting kids to do things they didn’t think they could. And for kids breaking boards is really cool and does just that. They don’t know coming in that board breaking is only karate and TKD, they don’t care. They just get to do something really cool that wows them, wows their parents, boasts their confidence, gets the whole room cheering for them and they tell their friends about the next day.

We’ve since upped that to burning all of our boards with our logo and “Welcome”.

But sometimes, the best thing in a kids class is just to embrace the “cool” side of martial arts that kids love, especially if it helps reach the bigger goal.

Last year we ran nearly 200 parties in my gym. I didn’t run them, my Jr Coaches did.

That generated:

• > $80k in revenue from the parties alone
• Nearly 3000 leads
• Filled our classes and summer camps
• Gets us recommended every time someone asks about birthday parties in local moms Facebook groups
• Greater retention – members that have their party with you stay longer.
• Referrals – Ever party is 12-20 people in a intro class, invited by the birthday guest.

Birthday parties can blow up your kids program and instead of paying for leads, you get paid to get those leads.

They are also self-sustaining. The majority of our parties are not members. When we ask them how they heard about us, its almost always a referral. Either from the child having attended someone else’s party, or another parent recommending us.

Our Birthday party system has been developed and systematized so that anyone can do it and deliver an amazing party. Making it a great way for Jr Coaches to gain experience and not needing the owner to do anything.

Next Thursday (Jan 22nd) The Kids Jiu-Jitsu Playbook is hosting its first LIVE session on exactly how we do it and how we market them.

Birthday parties can add 6-figures to your schools top line next year, so you won’t want to miss this.

Must have access to the Birthday Parties module in the classroom to attend. (Down to single digits on remaining founder membership spots)