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Here's from the Introduction:

What is funny is the number of times that I or one of my clients hear from one of the many of the “Bozo Explosion” of guru’s and consultants that the results we talk about are lies or, that they are “unicorns” and unrealistic.?? The reality is the results we are achieving happen over and over again with schools ranging from Krav Maga, BJJ, MMA to traditional Tae Kwon Do and Karate-Do.?? And, as I mentioned before we can prove it with an endless parade of examples.

At a recent event held near my home here in Colorado new participants were shocked to hear me dissect one school doing $95,000.00 a month (only martial arts,) and another doing $123,000 a month ($92,000 a month from traditional Tang Soo Do) and walk through why with their current effort and traffic they could be $200,000.00 a month schools with no more staff, no more square footage and no more expenses for marketing.?? I believe if was very eye opening for all.?? By the way the breakdown’s from that meeting is also in process of becoming a book of it’s own as well as a school developmental program to be released this fall as well (assuming the “stars align.”)

Anyway, this has been a wordy introduction but I just wanted to make sure that you received a little bit of background about why you should take what’s contained herein seriously and how you should think about it’s implementation for your own school.

In addition to all of the above.

Behind the scenes it has dawned on us that I’m a “Unicorn” so to speak having filled schools quickly with a huge burst of students so many time including my first ones.?? We realized in talking behind the scenes among my team:? Jeff Smith, Bob Dunne, Greg Moody, that most schools even if they grew to 400 or 500 students, did that slowly over many years.?? When the drop dramatically they know no other way that the very slow rebuild replicating what they accomplished the first time.?? If that’s you, then here’s an overview for add 100 students to your school QUICK rather than slowly.

Anyway, on to a step-by-step plan to get you back to where you were and, then grow far beyond your wildest expectations.

The first counter-intuition point to remember is this:? It’s easier to grow by 100 in 2 or 3 months than it is to do it over 10 or 12 months.??? Why would I say something that on the surface sounds a bit ridiculous?

Well, for most schools they’re losing 7-10% per month.?? You know, drop-outs.?? So if you try to add 100 over 12 months you’ve got to enroll 100 + whatever you’ve lost.?? If you do it in a month or two you’ve only got to replace a month or two of drop-outs not a whole year.?? So if you want to go from 200 to 300 students you can go on a MASSIVE Whirlwind of activity in a month or two then be back to working on reducing your dropouts and only needing 5 or 10 new students per month to hold it there.

Back to when I did turn-arounds, that’s exactly what I did.

I just repeated the Grand-Opening plan and by month 3 focused on renewing them all not on having to pump in as many as humanly possible (at least once I got to my target number/school capacity.)

Now, how do you do it?

Well, certainly NOT by reducing prices.?? I want to with adding 100 students, jump my gross revenue by $30,000 or more.? Can’t do that on ? price specials and other junk enrollments (+ those drop-out more quickly.)

What I do is create a marketing plan.?? Everything that’s in this book.?? However, I put massive emphasis on stuff that can be BIG Homeruns.?? Then I sketch out what minimum, likely, and “home-run” results would be for each.??? Once I’ve done that I assume that a bunch of them are going to crash and burn so I do enough stuff that the MINIMUM RESULTS is going to hit about double what I need.

How do I sketch out “home-runs?”

Well, in part it depends upon if you have CASH or, whether you need it to be predominantly labor.?? I’ve done it with both.?? Frankly labor’s a bit more predictable but, exhausting.

So, let’s assume that you don’t have a stack of cash to throw at lots of direct mail, 30 second and 120 second TV spots, Infomercials and other expensive stuff.?? Regarding online marketing I can certainly “RAMP-UP” stuff like pay-per-click but only as much as their “click-inventory” accommodates.??? I can also ramp up social media such as Facebook but what will happen if I’m not careful is that cost per lead will escalate to a point where I’m spending double or triple the money for the same lead flow – not a good strategy.

So what can be BIG Home-Runs without a BIG BUDGET?

Well, my biggest homeruns over the years were:

1.??????? ?Programs directly with Elementary Schools.?? Back when I released my first “Extraordinary Marketing” program back in 2000 I called this the “One Idea Worth $500,000.00.”?? In reality I’ve had owners who aggressively implemented tell me that it was worth MILLIONS not half a million, but that’s another story.

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There are at least 3 iterations of systems that have worked incredibly well, and a few others that can be very worthwhile.?? The 3 in order of volume of new students are:

a.??????? After-School or Before school enrichment program.? 6 lessons before or after school promoted well including with a gym-teacher for the day for all the students.?? The numbers are 20% & 30% meaning 20% of the student body more or less sign up for the program (a school of 500 gets 100 signed up) and 30% meaning that 30% more or less of the participants end up enrolled in our school (with the above example 100 registered equals 30 enrollments.

b.??????? Gym-Teacher for the Day without the enrichment program.?? I’ve heard others refer to this as “school-talks” but, that’s really apples to oranges comparism.? The keys that make this work is:? first teaching the entire school not just one or two classes (300 or 500 kids not, 20-60) and, getting permission slips so that we have full contact information.???? With this with a school of 500 kids we’d get 80% more or less permission slips back or, 400 and, would like end up with 10-20 enrollments after significant follow-up on the participants.

c.??????? What I’ve called over the years our “Children’s Hospital” fundraiser.?? With it you host a fund raiser with a well recognized and well regarded local charity.? Create an offer (something like a month of lessons + unform for $29 – think Groupon Offer) then you get the public schools and private schools to distribute them for you.

You won’t get the same level of response as the other two methods, but I used to print these in lots of 100,000 and get out to every Elementary School that was withing 5 or 6 miles of one of my schools.

2.??????? Movie Theater Promotions with BLOCKBUSTERS.??? I’ve had so many students pouring into my schools from some of these promotions that we just couldn’t keep track of the volume.?? A client in Dallas did 850 Leads in two weekends when the latest Star-Wars movie was released.? Another in Harlem did 250 leads from the opening of one of the big Avengers movies.?? I could go on and on, but it’s a great source – if and only if handled properly.

3.??????? Other live events.?? As a for-instance one of my schools has an event called “Westminster Days” it gets 5,000+ people to show up over a two day period.? At that event (when done properly) they’ll get 200 to 300 leads.??? Another location has a Halloween event at their “butterfly pavilion” where they’ve been know to generate 100+ leads in 5 hours.?? A client in Mankato, MN when to a marathon for 4 hours and turned it into 60 enrollments (which turned into way over $100,000 cash a month later.)

I could go on and on but, look for big events with YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.? Then set up a book, use a prize wheel, follow our script, and then follow-up on the leads.

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