One of the biggest shifts you can make as a martial arts academy owner comes down to building your academy on an unshakable foundation.

It will also be one of the hardest shifts you can make, and that’s why most academy owners won’t do it.

An unshakeable foundation comes from implementing systems that stand the test of time.

Good systems ensure your academy operates at the highest standard even when you’re gone.

The problem is, developing systems is time consuming. A strong system takes a lot of thought work to create.

Then once you’ve got a concept of a system the trouble of implementing it and getting your staff on the same page starts.

The amount of work it takes to make this shift is too much for a lot of academy owners.

But the pain you’re going to experience without systems far outweighs the amount of work it takes to implement them.

Trust us, we know.

What Are Systems?

The first question many people ask us: what is a system?

Simply put, a system is a formal, repeatable process.

Formal means it’s written down or otherwise recorded.

Repeatable means it’s being used daily in the situations the system has been designed for.

If you follow a curriculum for any of your classes, that’s a system.

It becomes formalized when other coaches are using the same curriculum for their classes.

Life Without Systems

We can tell you first hand how difficult life can be without systems in place in your academy.

We spent the first 16 years of operating our schools without formal systems implemented.

We still found success in those years. We had 5 schools and all of them were profitable.

But as we expanded the cracks from having no systems started to show.

This was most evident in our sales process.

Leads would come in from the website and no one would call, text, or email them.

People would book their first class and we’d write their name and info down on a sticky note and leave it on the front desk only for the note to get lost.

Potential students would show up for their orientation and no one would be there to greet them because no one was expecting them to be there.

Then when it was time to sell a membership we had people using sleazy tactics to sell memberships. Some staff would have a strong close rate and others were abysmal.

We just chalked it up to some people not being able to sell well instead of admitting we were dropping the ball in training.

We lost countless students and tons of money because we didn’t have a process for following up with new leads, booking their first class, and selling them after.

Systems Will Set You Free

Systems can be a pain to set up and implement, but systems will also set you free.

Take our primary owners, Eliot and Amal.

Both of them are majority owners in our schools. Their main source of income is revenue shares from the schools.

Neither Eliot nor Amal are responsible for the day to day operations in any of our academies.

In fact, both of them teach about 2 classes a week and that’s it.

Of course they’re both still involved in bigger picture items, like when and where we’ll open a new school.

But other than that they teach their classes, travel the world, enjoy their hobbies, and spend time with their families.

The schools continue to run at a very high level because there are systems in place that make sure everyone, from the front desk to coaches and even our cleaners, know exactly what their job is and how to do it.

If staff ever forget or lose track of a process, they can always review the documents we’ve built to see exactly what they need to do and when.

This gives Eliot and Amal the ultimate freedom, but it also allows the General Managers and leaders in the schools to operate at a higher level knowing that their direct reports are set up to succeed even when they’re not in the school.

The Hard Part About Systems

Like I said before, systems will set you free but you have to be willing to put in a lot of effort to get them set up.

Oftentimes implementing a new system will mean upending the way things are currently done in your school in favor of a more formalized and efficient process.

It can take a ton of time to even conceptualize a system for any part of the academy.

Once you’ve done that you need to get it written down.

Then you have to start training your employees.

Some won’t see the point. Especially if the school is doing well.

“Business as usual” is always easier than dramatic shifts–even if that shift is better for the school in the long run.

You’ll need to convince your staff that these changes will make everyone's lives easier and help the school be more successful.

And if your systems aren’t going to do either, then why would you implement them?

Once you get buy-in and staff start seeing the system in action, it will be easier and easier to get everyone trained up.

Besides implementation, you have to realize another difficult part about systems: they’re not “set it and forget it.”

Even your best employees will fall off after a while. The path of least resistance is the easiest path for anyone to take.

From time to time it will be necessary to evaluate your staff’s performance, assess if they’re aligned with your systems, and re-train them when they’re not.

It doesn’t have to all fall on you to do this, either. That’s what managers are for.

Life With and Without Systems

Developing and implementing systems is a difficult and long term process.

Most people don’t want to do it for this exact reason. They’d rather have someone do it for them or not do it at all.

You get to decide what you want.

Systems will set you free.

And without them you’re going to be held captive by your academy.

You’ll either be the one doing everything to make sure it’s done right, or you’ll be at constant odds with your staff because they aren’t meeting your expectations.

But without a formal system to follow, how are they supposed to consistently uphold the standard?

You can choose to live an open and free life knowing that the academy will run fine without you, or to be stuck in the academy everyday living in constant fear of taking even a few days off.

Don’t know where to start?

Every single one of your systems is available to our Academy Accelerator Members, including our sales process, class curricula, and employee training courses that we use to train our employees everyday so they can run our systems.

Try a week for free and see how you can take what we use and make it your own.