Almost Everything I Learned About Marketing I Learned in a Karate School!
For a little more than 10 years, from the mid-eighties to the late Nineties, I was in the karate business. I built one small school in San Marcos, California, into a national chain of 400 schools, starting with just $5,000 in cash and big dreams. Later, I published my own magazine and owned an advertising agency. While my marketing knowledge increased rapidly along the way, I never forgot the lessons learned in that first small karate school. Nor did I ever forget that the real goal of marketing is to produce income!
All I Ever Wanted to Be Was a Golf Pro!
But one small detail held me back from a career on the PGA Tour: lack of talent! I was good, but not nearly good enough. As fate would have it, my life-long love of cars paid off one dreamy afternoon as I waited to get off work. I sat on the bag rack outside the clubhouse in the balmy Florida air, having not seen a car for four hours. Suddenly I heard a loud whining noise and a silver 308 Ferrari screamed into view at the bottom of the driveway. Ignoring the posted speed limit by at least 40 mph, it quickly stopped before me. I removed the clubs from the passenger seat, the only place they would fit, and attached them to a golf cart.
The stocky, mustached owner got out and handed me a tip.
“Nice car!” I beamed.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said and drove off to park.
As it turned out, the man in the Ferrari was in the karate business, and we ended up swapping golf lessons for karate instruction.
The Turning Point to Greatness
I bought my first school in San Marcos in 1986 from an older instructor who was moving to a larger town in an effort to grow his business. Not surprisingly, he failed. Meanwhile, I turned his old school into a modest success, making enough money to pay my car payment and rent. However, I soon realized that whatever I was making was not enough, and so I did what everyone in the karate business does when faced with that situation: I opened another school!
In late 1987, I bought a second small karate school in Irvine, California, with no money down from a doctor who had invested in the business and just wanted his name off the lease. The first month, the business lost $1,000, the second month, it lost $1,000, and the third month, it would have lost another $1,000, except I was already broke.
Sure, the phone rang occasionally, but the weeks came and went with little real progress and zero profits. Finally, one day, in utter despair, I sat down with a yellow pad and began some serious soul-searching. First, I asked myself what I was doing wrong. The simple act of writing questions down on paper can bring amazing clarity. I quickly realized, that the first thing I needed was paying customers. I also realized that I knew nothing about marketing.
Most business owners never think like that. Most immediately point to the medium rather than the marketing itself. The newspaper doesn’t work, TV doesn’t work, and the web is just worthless hype! Rarely, if ever, do they consider the simple fact that their marketing SUCKS!
I came to that exact realization one morning in 1987. After acknowledging that I didn’t REALLY know the first thing about marketing, I rushed to the local bookstore and bought all eight of their marketing books. I was amazed to learn how changing a simple headline could produce a 500% increase in response.I ordered 20 more books! I was like a man possessed... highlighting, underlining, and taking notes. I soaked up information like a sponge After taking it all in, I designed new ads to run the second week of January.
Bingo!
The phone rang off the hook. I signed up 30 new students in a single month, as opposed to the five I typically signed up! I was ecstatic but realized there was still work to be done. If I could get such a massive increase in response just by studying the marketing gurus, perhaps I could capitalize on these leads even more by improving my sales skills. I purchased tapes from the likes of Tom Hopkins. Suddenly, instead of closing 2 out of 10 leads, I was closing 8, and it didn’t cost me a dime more to do it!
Next, I turned my attention to customer retention. By the end of the year, customers stayed an average of six months instead of three!
At 28, my second year in business, I was running a tiny karate school in a suburban strip mall with $128,000 in my pocket-$121,000 more than my previous year’s income. Six years later, I had 125 franchise schools plus 275 affiliates nationwide and made millions.
There is no quicker way to grow your business than by improving the RESPONSE of your marketing. A single campaign can vault your business to the top of your industry!
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