A huge mistake that many martial arts academies make is using long term contracts for their members.

Whether it’s 6-month, one year, or more - contracts are holding your business back and
preventing your school from reaching its full potential.

For some, this may seem like a crazy hot-take.

Contracts tend to be the norm in martial arts.

We get it. We used to make new members sign long term contracts as well.

One of the best things we did was doing away with anything except month-to-month agreements with our members.

Sure, contracts can provide security for companies, as they lock in a commitment from clients.

If you’ve adopted this model as a martial arts school owner, we don’t blame you. 

You’ve invested your entire life in martial arts.

You’ve put every last penny into your first school.

Maybe you’re even sleeping in the janitor’s closet to make it all work like Amal Easton did.

When a new student walks through your doors, you don’t want to lose them.

Your livelihood and your family’s well-being depend on your students sticking around. Everyone’s counting on you.

You also know the transformative power of martial arts, and you want to make an impact.

You might think you can’t do that in a day, or a week or month--you might think you need 6 months or more.

So once you get them on the hook, why not lock them down?

The problem with contacts is that they simply don’t work.

They don’t work because inevitably people will break the contract and end their membership.

What are you going to do when this happens?

You can lawyer up and take them to court to get the money they owe you.

This costs you a ton of time and some of that money you’re trying to recoup.

Then it happens again and again…and again.

Now you’re spending more time on the phone with your lawyer than you are running your academy.

And whether they signed a contract or not, people hate when businesses try to force money they don’t want to spend out of them.

Even if you’re in the right, get ready for terrible google reviews and lost business due to disgruntled former members.

On top of all that, if someone doesn’t want to train at your academy anymore, why are you trying to take their money?

Focus your energy on the people who do want to be there, and hold yourself accountable to make their experience so good every time that they want to keep coming back and paying their membership fee.

A contract alternative

At Easton, instead of a contract, we have our students sign an agreement that states they’ll give us 30 days notice prior to cancellation. If they want to cancel they can.

We even offer to give students their money back if they purchase the trial month and want to cancel within the first 30 days.

This creates a risk free proposition for potential students to sign up after their first class.

It also puts the onus on us to create a great experience for them so they continue to a full membership after their trial period.

When you believe in your product month over month, you don’t need to lock someone in who doesn’t see that value.

We’d be lying if we said that we keep 100% of students on their trial month or after.

We lose plenty of students everyday. And while every member matters to the bottom line, we don’t waste any time chasing down people who don’t want to train with us any longer.

Instead, we can invest time in curating a great experience for members every time they walk into the academy.

And even though we do lose students as we go, we sign up and keep significantly more than we lose.

Our focus is putting on great classes, having amazing and clean facilities, and making sure students feel welcomed and cared about when they are at the academy.

Because of this it’s not uncommon for our students to tell us that if we raised the tuition price to $1000/month, they would find a way to make it work.

That’s the goal. Care so much about your students that they choose you no matter what.

Maybe you’ve already eliminated contracts from your academy’s practice, or maybe your business model still relies on them.

Either way, you should be working to earn long-term loyalty from your members and build one amazing academy after another.

Start by putting the same faith in your school that you did in martial arts.

You believed in martial arts so much that you opened a school to teach it.

When you have a product you believe in, you don’t need to lock people in.

A contract gives you, the owner, an out.

It gives you an excuse to not bring your best every day, and it’s by bringing your best that your school truly becomes the best.

Choose to become the school that gives its students the option to fall in love with it and become lifelong learners – not just locked in until their contract is up.

You know your value, and those who see it aren’t going anywhere.