MA Business Success 77: Implementing Change

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Phil Britten:
Hey, what's up! Phil Britten here, and ...

GrahamMcDonnell:
Graham McDonnell as always.

Phil Britten:
You're joining TIMA, the Institute of Martial Arts on The Martial Arts Business Success podcast. We're coming at you with episode number 77. Well, it's been a while that we've been doing these which is fantastic, getting a lot of great feedback from a lot of our viewers which is fantastic.

Hey, just before we get cracking, I just want to let you know, if you didn't know already, we've been able to open up a brand new free online course for anyone who wants to, I guess, get some tips, some tools, and strategies, and start implementing in their business. So we opened up a free course called the Introductory Martial Arts Boot Camp. If you go to our website, tima.com.au scroll down, you'll see that free course there and in there we've got some great instructor assessment sheets that you can go and download and then straight away assess your instructors. We use them all the time with our instructor training. We have our yearly calendar which is a plug and play, you'll be able to see exactly what we're doing month to month every year; that we do, it's really one of those ... It's the backbone of the martial arts business, isn't it?

GrahamMcDonnell:
Oh, yes.

Phil Britten:
The calendar. Also, some checklists for your reception, as well. It's all free, video course, get in there, have fun. Download it, let us know what you think and just enjoy that access, guys.

GrahamMcDonnell:
Well, we've got a cracking episode tonight and it's all about creating change or making change, implementing change, in your business; and the fear behind that that stops a lot of people. I know that with 77 episodes under our belt we've given some great content, great material, we've had lots of feedback of people listening but some people just don't apply it because they're afraid of the unknown. They're afraid of taking that step.

How do we approach change? I know we've done some pretty serious change coming for 2017 and beyond with all of our businesses. Phil, what do we do when we first tackle it, you know?

Phil Britten:
Gee whiz, change, yeah. I think, now, we are in a different mindset that what we were at. Meaning that we've changed so many things and improved things so many times that even the thought of change doesn't scare me anymore. I guess that it comes down to an educated risk, an educated change. You're not just going to go "I'm going to go this way." It's like "Well, why the fuck would you do that?" You need a reason behind it. As long as it's like educated risk or educated change, and you've done all your homework, it should be almost a no-brainer.

I think when it comes to change within your business you've got to ask yourself these couple of questions like "Is it going to improve my students' training, life, and ability and skill level? Is it going to improve the business? Is it going to improve the bottom line of our business? Are we going to lose money or are we going to make money?" If you can say "Yes, yes, yes," to all three then that's a no-brainer. If you say yes to two and one's a no, then you have to think about that. If you say no to two and only one yes, well, that's a no-brainer, as well; it's like "Well, I don't think it's worth it."

I think it comes down to an educated risk of change, asking yourself those three questions, and then making sure that it is an improvement and not a detriment.

GrahamMcDonnell:
Yeah. Look guys, there's a quote, and again, we can't quote here, paralysis by analysis. It's nice to learn, it's nice to research, but at the end of the day if you don't pull the trigger and do it, what's the point? I certainly know that if we talk about like a fee change for example, we have on many times gone "Look, the fees need to be increased. How many students will we lose if we increase the fee to X?" Again, that's the thing, is we need to understand what are the risks? What are the detriment to the business that we are happy to, I guess, wear, so that we ca grow to the level that we know we are. I know that we have spoken many times about this, the decisions we make today, and not for the students that are currently training, they're for the students we'll have in three years time. Again, it's important to understand that we have unfortunately on the receiving end, had our students that we've gone "No, we cannot change this because of X," this particular student. Given it six months and then the student's left, and then you scratch your head, just go "Why didn't we make that change then and there?"

Unfortunately, I'd like to say that we keep students for ever, but that's not the case. You, as a business owner, you need to be steering the ship, not at the mercy of your students, but you need to be a leader and make decisions, as Phil pointed out, that are going to benefit the student, benefit your instructors, your team, benefit you and your family. At the end of the day you guys have got tick, tick, tick. That's the first process. How do you then communicate the change to the masses, to your students, to your staff? When is the right time to bring that in, do you just do it off the cuff or do we plan for that six months? What have we done?

Phil Britten:
I know we've recently changed something quite heavily in our processes what we do. It was definitely a few month process. It was like the initial "Hey, we're trying this out," and not throwing an idea. "Some great things are coming," it's like preempting, and people are going "What is it? What's going on?" There's almost a hype, almost an excitement about the change because you mention it in a way that it's going to be an improvement to everything.

GrahamMcDonnell:
There you go.

Phil Britten:
Yeah, then as you slowly get close and closer to the D-Day of the change, you're slowly letting more and more information come out. Being able then to absorb the feedback, and possible criticism about the change. Then as you're doing that you're navigating and sort of massaging how we're going to reveal the actual change itself.

GrahamMcDonnell:
Guys, just to give you a bit of a background, what we've done. We had a grading system where we used to do graduations once a month. As of 2017 that graduation process will now move out to once every three months. As you can imagine, there's going to be a few people in those gaps there going "Oh, I was due to graduate at the end of this month, now I have to wait two more months." For some people that is a major decision in their martial arts tuning, for others it's just a small step. What we've done, though, the benefit to our students and the community, and our multiple schools, by coming together for this major event, far outweighs the one or two people that are going "I missed out on my belt," right there and then.

Again, we'll make sure that those guys get looked after, though, those people who have got those challenges or complaints. But, at the end of the day, we've gotta go "Look, pull off the band-aid, it has to be done. These are the changes." We made this change, communicated this, three months into the end of last year. So, October we started to let people know, November, December, for active change this year January 2017. They're the things, from a timing point of view, it was a pretty major one, we did this on the change of the year; so that was a little bit easier for us today.

Phil Britten:
I'm going to give you another example because I think if we can give examples of it then maybe you can understand how we would do it. We've just got off a coaching call with a good friend of ours, Jacko, from Kalgoorlie Kickboxing, he's one of our coaching clients. He runs a school where they run by the terms, by the school terms, during school holidays he shuts down. If you're from America or overseas it might be a little bit different, but if you're in Australia you can understand what I'm talking about, we have school terms and school holidays, all that sort of stuff. He's been running a certain way for so long and most of his students aren't on direct debit. It's really crippling him because he doesn't have that consistency turn-over and income and he's always chasing people, it's an administrational nightmare.

What my suggestion was, was one, to change ... If he wants to be a full-time professional school and earn a decent income that gives him the life-style and, obviously, the students what they need ... One, he needs to change from just being a term operated school to a full time school, running throughout. Now that's a big change in itself. What I said to him he could possibly do is open up a limited timetable during school holidays; so there are options to train, but it's not the full extent timetable. That's soft on the instructors and soft on the school itself. First off, we looked at the timetabling and made sure that he had time to give students access during school holidays. Now we can offer a full yearly membership option on direct debit. So, don't tell the current students about this yet, you base it, again ... You would actually update them like we would do, say there's exciting changes coming, give them all that feedback three months out.

Then, have the fee structure and the direct debit and the way that you want it just for the new members. The new members know no different and they're the easiest ones to sell on, because, again, they know no different. You sell the new students on the new fee, on the extended timetable, no-brainer.

Then, what I would suggest ... What I suggested to Jacko to do, is then either, again, notify by letter, by ... If it's a small school you could meet with all your existing members over a few months, one to one, and let them know of the new fee, the new way that we're doing it. You want to make sure that it's done like this: one, you can stay on the same fee amount and only train during the school terms, not the school holidays, but we're going to move you to direct debit because it's easier for our business to run. It's less administration, we can focus more on the student rather than chasing the money. There's a win for them, not a loss. It's the same fee, it's a win for them because we can focus on them more. Or, if you would like to go on what the new members are doing, they're training throughout the whole year, you have this option here. We're giving them options, stay at the same but just go direct debit, or, go to the new fee, train throughout. It's up to them.

Then, what I would do is as the year's gone past, is then as when you renew them you renew them on the full thing no matter what. It's a slow change, it's a win change, and that's how I would do it in his school. Everyone's school is going to be a little bit different and if you have to implement something different, but the key to this here, I guess what Graham is saying, is the strategy behind it. This slightly 'iceberg syndrome' they see the thing on the top and then all the hard work underneath the water. It's the same as this. No one will see all the letters three months before, before the change happens. The thing is, new members don't know any different so that's where I would start.

GrahamMcDonnell:
Look, it's one of those things where you've just gotta start. You've got to make that decision for yourself and we kinda go back from the circle, is that fear. That fear that holds you back, that "I can't do this, I can't do this, da da da." Again, that's what we're here for, we're here to support you guys. If you have any questions regarding that we'll give you a nudge and a push and let you know how we would tackle it. Again, team, if you've got questions around that or making any changes, [email protected] that's where our specialty is, is helping people overcome those hurdles and finally they get over and realise "Wow, it wasn't that hard after all!" Or it was minimal hiccups along the way, "Geez, why didn't I do that 10 years ago?" Again, that's a huge one.

I know, Phil, you touched on not just going through from a direct debit change, a curriculum ... not necessarily a curriculum change, more of a timetable change, for Jacko. What about changing curriculum? Changing in class content, or adding in new programmes, stuff like that? Again, is that the same process we go through about telling the students? When do we release it, how do we kind of do that stuff for us guys in particular?

Phil Britten:
Yeah. It would be all the exact same process that three months out sort of, I guess, bringing the students aware the exciting change, there's going to be improvements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. No matter what happens, in all situations I think the thing here is when the change happens it has to be a win. If you can stack the win, like value stack it, like it's ... If I was changing the curriculum and belt system for Graham and he was an orange belt, flat orange belt, with the new curriculum change I'm going to ... For your level, because I'm adding in tips, maybe we didn't have tips, we're adding in tips, he was just a fresh orange belt, I'm going to make sure he feels like he's getting a value stack with the change rather than a value decrease like "I'm being pushed behind, I'm now left behind and I'm not getting any value. Why me? This is crap." As long as it's a win, win, and if you can stack the win over win over win over win, then everyone's going to be on his side anyway.

GrahamMcDonnell:
Yeah, for sure. One final thing I guess when it comes to change and implementing change in your business, look after your team, and make sure your team understand the benefit of the change. If a student goes to them and asks them why you're changing and why you're improving things, and they go "I don't know," you're now creating that sort of uncertainty. It's really important that you communicate and ask your team their opinion, "What challenges do you guys see?" From us, from the directors, the owners, we see this is how it should look. They're front line and they may have a slightly different spin on things. Which, together you guys can build it, they have some ownership, then release it to the masses, to your students, and they're right behind you pushing this momentum. So, any improvements, any changes, make sure that you let your staff know, they've got a little bit of buy-in first and foremost, and then implement and away you go. They'll certainly see the success weighing through.

Phil Britten:
Fantastic, Graham. I want to give a shout-out to Hyper, mate, what are they doing for us?

GrahamMcDonnell:
We have partnered with Hyper for ... Geez, five years now we've been working with the guys; both [inaudible 00:13:34] and Jason and the team behind them about programmes and offers and bits and pieces. That helped us with our bully buster programme for different Hyper classes that we have running in our school, both the tricking, the athleticism, with that; but also the fight club programme which is in our schools now, which is a great add value programme. What we've done, we thought the best way to do this is to bring it to the masses and give you guys the same opportunities we have and really allow you to get on board. If you want to find out a little bit about what Hyper is about, and what they do for schools, they really do add value, build, help you guys bring in a different niche audience. I recommend that you go and search Hyper, okay? They've got a couple of different programmes there but the Hyper Pro School is really the one where you want to get into. Check it out, there's a couple of different components in there.

As a reward to us, as friendship to us, they've given you guys a great opportunity to get a discount on that. There's a hundred dollar discount per month. What you need to do though, if you decide that this is a right fit, you need to put in the code, which is TIMA, T-I-M-A, and you'll get the discount applied straight away. Again, guys, go and check them out, we work with the guys in depth and we love their programme which is why we're happy to promote them and give you guys that same opportunity. Hyper, guys, get in there and the code is TIMA, T-I-M-A, and the rest is history, guys.

Phil Britten:
Cool. For the rest of you gang out there that are enjoying the content that Graham and I are giving, being part of our Eco-system, if you like the content on podcast you're going to love the information that we have on our online courses. I spoke about the free course which is some great access, it's like the 101 of business, if you want more substance, if you want lesson plans, set-ups, if you want event plans, if you want ... I mean, the kitchen sink! We have an online course called The Complete Martial Arts Business Solution. It's anything and everything we could think about to grow your business. Normally it's $99 a month to get you access on that, but because you're a podcast listener I want to give you five days for $5, so five days access just for $5. It's called Try 5 For 5.

If you want to get access to that, check out what's underneath the bonnet, see all the great stuff in there, head to our website tima.com.au go scroll down, check out The Complete Martial Arts Business Solution and type in the code, the promo code where you get asked, Try 5. T-R-Y and the number 5. Try 5 and you'll be able to get five days access just for $5. I don't think you can get much better access than that.

I really wanted to, this year, 2017, really give people the access that they need so they can see the value that we have underneath and behind the closed doors and then start implementing and get results in their business. No excuses now, you've got a free course, you've got Try 5 for 5, you have no excuses. Get in there and have a look, gang, and we'll see you ... Let you listen to us on the next podcast. Ciao.

GrahamMcDonnell:
Take care.