John Graden

Would You Make a Good Martial Arts Professional? Take a Quiz and Find Out!

How can you find out where you stand? I've created a measuring tool to help you, whether you are considering opening a school or you own a school and need perspective on your role. You will discover if owning a school is for you, or if you are the right p... Read >

Curriculum Design: The Recipe Book for Your Martial Arts School

I had lunch recently with a fourth dan in Uechi Ryu. We talked about how the Eastern mind-set is so different from the Western, and the confusion that creates for many instructors. Culturally, the East is more about conformity, or as I call it, cloning, t... Read >

The Martial Arts Enrollment Process

In the 1980s, Educational Funding Company (EFC) was the first to have success creating systems to support an agreement-based school. Our industry owes a debt of gratitude to Nick Cokinos and his ability to teach, motivate, and inspire some of the most suc... Read >

Is Owning a Martial Arts School Right For You?

I knew from my first night in white belt class on February 12, 1974, at age 13, that I was going to do martial arts for the rest of my life. I was teaching professionally by age 16 and have been teaching ever since. However, I never wanted to own a school... Read >

Fine-turning Your Martial Arts Curriculum

Let me walk you through the processes that I went through to change the recipe of my curriculum. At first, it's not easy to make wholesale changes to your program. We have a strong connection to many of these techniques and forms. However, once you begin ... Read >

A Tale of Two Curriculums

When I opened my school, I presented the exact curriculum that I was raised on. Among the many problems that created for me was that I had a lot more kids in my school than my instructors did. Martial arts forms, hyungs, or kata were designed by highly d... Read >

Masters on Change

Here are some quotations regarding styles from three of the most influential martial artists in history: "The art does not make the man. The man makes the art." - Gichin Funakoshi "You limit a style by labeling it." - Bruce Lee "The style serves ... Read >

How to Make Cash Outs Work to Your School’s Advantage

If you can keep a steady flow of new students coming in, an ideal situation is high cash outs and high monthly billing. This is being accomplished by some schools that take a somewhat unconventional approach to their cash out and upgrade strategies. This ... Read >

Can You Really Teach Confidence?

Schools today talk a lot about teaching confidence. They have words of the week and life skills training, which is great. I wish my instructors had taught me about goal setting when I was a kid. But I don't think confidence can be taught. It's too experie... Read >

How to Determine Your Retention

In consulting with school owners for more than a decade, I can pretty much predict how the initial conversations will go. I ask how many students the client wants and then how many he currently has. When he gives me his current student count (usually high... Read >

Tuition Strategies: EasyPay and Electric Fund Transfers

Larry Dokes's EasyPay billing company pioneered the electronic funds transfer (EFT) in the early 1990s. Larry was an early mentor of mine and has helped me a great deal. Based in Belton, Texas, EasyPay specializes in smaller schools in smaller markets. Ea... Read >

The Motivational Daycare Center

As stated in one of my previous articles, I don't feel that the movement towards character development has been bad for martial arts schools. Actually, it's been great. On the other hand, when schools drift away from their core values, they become little... Read >

Agreement vs. Non-Agreement Student Programs

A school is a membership-based business model. The majority of a martial arts school's revenue comes from students' tuition, which is normally paid monthly. A school that attracts and keeps students grows this monthly income. You will have other profit ce... Read >

Why Do It Yourself Billing is More Expensive

To illustrate, let's use 10 percent in total fees as an easy number on the high end for tuition billing. If you could collect $10,000 without using the billing company, but the billing company could collect the same $10,000, no more or less, you might thi... Read >

Launch Your Black Belt Club in Three Steps

I suggest you have your first color belt exam for a new student within the first six weeks. Get color around a student's waist as soon as you can, so they can feel that they have made some progress. I use the gold belt as the first belt instead of yellow.... Read >