MA Business Success 70: The Million Dollar Model For Your School

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Phil: Good day, team! Welcome to another amazing podcast. My name is Phil Britten.

Graham: I'm Graham McDonnell.

Phil: And you've joined us on the couch for Martial Arts Business Success. And look, we're talking about something that Graham and I actually invented, not invented, created, I guess, literally, on Monday, and it's called the Million Dollar Model. The Million Dollar Model. Now, what we've been able to do is really trying to look back at all our success in the eight years and see how we've been able to create million-dollar schools. And basically, what I'm getting at is our two smaller schools are 400, 400 plus a little bit, members and they're making over a million dollars. Our big school is double that as well. So there's something in what we do that is some sort of recipe and we'll try and figure out what was it, what are the successes, what are the challenges, and how do we do it. So, what we did was something very important. We reverse-engineered every single of our businesses.

Graham: Guys, before we give you all the tips and strategies, let me just ask you a question. How would it be in the, I guess, incubation period of you becoming a professional martial artist or running your own business, somebody came up to you and said, "If you follow this recipe, you will be able to create a school that will give you the lifestyle you want, financial dreams you want but make over a million dollars in martial arts but not have to be chained to the desk, so to speak." Now, I guess, to give you guys a bit of an insight into a little bit of background why, why I sort of say this quite often for our coaching clients, I used to be a chef, a bakery pastry chef, and I often go back and say, "Look, if you want to bake a cake, you've got to follow the recipe. How you decorate that cake, well that's up to you."

So, in other words, as a business, we've got the recipe on how to follow to be able to create a million-dollar school. How you decorate, in other words put your own personality into it, that's up to you. But that's why we've got this killer recipe that we've been testing for the last eight years and we have found that although, from the outside looking in, you think, "Jeez, I couldn't do that!" it's actually methodically...if you follow it, you'll get the results and it's been proven time and time and time again. So again, guys, we're going to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into that, but if this sort of sounds interesting you've got hit us up, guys. You've got to email us or hunt us down and we'll certainly share the rest. We don't have time to do everything today.

Phil: Yeah, the actual model itself is still in its creation mode but I was so excited to be able to do this. Right, I wanted to share with you a little bit of it but also give you the chance to...you know, what Graham said about the cake. You might not like our cake. Know what I mean? Our cake is our cake. It gives us the results we want that may not be to your taste, so to speak. So if your cake is a little bit different, meaning you don't want to have a million-dollar school, you don't want this, you don't want that, well how can you create your model? How do you create your blueprint to get the success you want? And the first thing you need to do is begin with the end in mind. Every time. Whenever we've started our other schools from scratch, we always began with the end in mind.

We worked from a timetable that would last for 400 students. That was capable for 400. Rather than go, "We're opening doors and we're only going to offer these classes." No way! That's limiting. That's a limiting thought, limiting belief. We created a business and a timetable that would service 400 plus members. Then we worked it backwards to today, to the day that we first opened. So reverse-engineering is very, very important. You might have heard it around the town but it's important. And business plans, well that's really what it is. It's a business plan. It's a sexy way to say business plan. If you want a business plan, reverse-engineer the end game and come down all the way down to today and that's your freaking plan.

But what you've got to remember is, how much do you want to make? How much do you want to put back into your business? How much do you need for rent and leasing agreements, etc.? How much staff do you need? How much are you going to pay the staff? How much is tax going to be? So you really need to play all those things into consideration. You are never going to know exactly. It is a recipe and you can add a little bit more in here or take away a little bit more of that, but you need to start with a figure of all these things. Four staff at this amount to be paid, plus I'm taking this, plus I'm going to reinvest this, plus this for tax, this for the cost of the lease, and then start working back to today where it'll be we go like, "If I've got four full-time staff, a receptionist and I'm doing this for what?" A year before that, it would be "Jeez, I only had three full-time staff and a part-time receptionist." All the way down to today.

Now, sounds like a big thing but Graham and I knocked it over an hour. We're still going, and we really are driven to help get this blueprint out to you for yourself as well.

Graham: Guys, don't let this scare you. And I think that's something that for a lot of people we had contact with in coaching, traveling the world, it's the unknown, that fear. That fear of success. Sometimes people will be comfortable in their little sort of backyard dojo or their small school hall, or even running a professional school. But they talk about this glass ceiling and they're not willing to break through it because it's that fear, that burning the bridge, burning the boat, as Phil has said on many podcasts previously. You've got to just go, "Look, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it." But also too, when you dream big, what's the mistake with dreaming? Okay. So seriously, open your mind up, create. Just let it flow and think, "What would it be like to run a school of 500? Jeez. What would I need? I've never seen a school of 500 before. What about 400? What about 300? What about 200?"

And again guys, as Phil pointed out, what's your model? What's your cake? What's your recipe? But also too, what's it going to be like in five years' time? What about 10 years' time? What about 15? And I know a lot of what we do, the decision we make is because we want to leave a great legacy. We don't want to be a problem. We don't want to leave a bankruptcy bill or a liability. We want to leave a legacy for our staff, our families, and whatnot. So, therefore, we dream a lot bigger and yet we have the same fear as probably what you guys think but we then methodically work back on taking away those unknowns so that fear, instead of being one giant thing, is minimized down to a small, calculated risk that we take to make it work.

Phil: Yeah. Let me put it to you like this. I think most martial artists when they get into business, they're just so stoked that they're going to do it for a living, like, "Man! I'm going to do martial arts for a living!" They just get into it. And the problem with that, if you just get into it with no plan, with no destination, you end up getting chained. That's the problem with getting chained to your business.

Graham: Yeah.

Phil: Because there's no bigger picture, there's no outcome, there's no endgame for you. And at the end of the day, I want to be able to still get my business out there and have people run that business for me and me go off and do the other things that I want, when I'm in that season of my life. You know? Age 40, 50, 60. Unfortunately, we're coaching some people who are at the end of their career in martial arts and there's no vision for them to get out because they haven't built that vision. They haven't built that model. So I think it's important that you're...it's sort of like this. Imagine you wanted to go on a holiday, all right? And you wanted to go to, let's just say, Fiji, but the pilot didn't know how to get there. And he was just flying his plane in the sky trying to figure it out. Now he may, you may get there, but there's a very, very good chance you're not going to and you'll end up in a place that you didn't want to go.

The same thing happens in martial arts, in business in general, is that people start off with the passion and the drive and the get-go and then they end up in a position that they never intended to, they never wanted to. Chained to the business, kids hating them because they never stay at home with their families, with their kids. Not earning the money. Not being able to travel. And they regret everything. So, it's so important and we're passionate about this because doing our new Million Dollar Model on Monday, I think it's just reignite a little bit of passion about what we've been able to achieve and how we can help other people do the same, as well.

Graham: Guys, just ask yourself a question, do you have a curriculum or a guideline on what you need to do to move to your very next rank as a martial artist? Do your students know what they need to do to move to their next rank as a martial artist? I'm sure you're nodding your head or saying, "Yes" in the car, depending where you are. Well, do you have that same structure for you as a business owner to get you to the next level, the next rank, of your business? Well, that's something we created because we know...50 members. We know what it takes. That's white belt. Yellow belt's 100 members. We know what we need to do. So it means that we're able to work towards that systematically and not be afraid of what's around the corner because we know exactly what's coming up and we just train ourselves in the business and we are ready for that next challenge when it's presented. Same as martial arts, okay?

You don't just do a black belt rating [SP] the day one, you do a certain amount of training to get you that point. Same with this model, guys. So again, that's my thing. Really think to yourself, do you have a plan, as Phil said, to go and grow your business beyond where it is today?

Phil: Yeah. And I'll just finish with this part here is, what if something goes wrong? What if something doesn't go to plan? Like, you wanted to go here but this happened. Well, guess what, it's just a plan. It's not etched in stone. You don't...that's where most people fail is that they get a problem, they go, they're just banging their head against the freaking wall. You've got to be flexible. You've got to be like bamboo and flex in the wind and bend. You know? And go...you've hit this point, "All right, that's not going to work anymore. How can I still get to where I want to? Do I go around, over, or under, rather than through?"

Graham: Yeah.

Phil: So just a good thing to remember. So gang, look, just to finish with, as we are still in the creation mode of our Million Dollar Model, and there's a few things that we want to add in there before we can get it to you, if this is of interest to you, if you want to see what this model looks like, we'd love to give it to you but we don't know who wants it or not. So email us at [email protected]. show your interest and we'll get that out to you as soon as we've finished, gang. All right?

Graham: Don't forget it, team. Share this podcast. Share this video. You can go back over the library and stuff. Share it because at the end of the day we want to change the world and we need your help to do it by getting great content out to all those people that sometimes are stuck in a rut and this could be the one thing that changes their direction and helps them succeed. So that's your responsibility, guys, get it out there.

Phil: All right, gang, take care.