MA Business Success 57: How to Create a Successful Team to Grow Your Martial Arts Business

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Transcription 

Phil: Good day team. Welcome to Martial Arts Business Success. We're here with the one and only Dave Kovar. I'm Phil Britten and...

Graham: I'm Graham McDonnell.

Phil: And today, we're gonna be talking about how to build a world-class team, and let me tell you that we've had a chance to train and be around Dave's team, and they are world class. A reflection of someone's business is the students that they have, and a reflection of the students is the instructors, and I think it all begins and ends with the training of your staff and instructors. So, hiring, firing, growing, training, we could be here for days, but within 12 minutes, we're gonna give you the best that we got on how you can build your team. Whether you're a one man band or got three, four, five people on your team. So Graham, what've you got?

Graham: Where do we start? I just said, you know, this is the hard part. Some of the goal is what...you may have been listening. You may not have a team just yet, you may not necessarily have an instructor pro, a leadership pro, where do you start? If you were to be a one man band or even a school that doesn't have a program in place already, what are the right steps to take?

Dave: So first and foremost, you guys have been too, but I've been the one man guy, I was that...had everything literally for nine years, I did everything. All my own cleaning, all my own enrollment, and I was really bad at it, by the way, all the teaching. So I've been there, and one of the mentalities that I had early on was the old phrase that was in my head is that, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." You guys remember that? That's really dangerous and limiting because there's some really good people out there. So I think when it comes to building a team, wherever you are, there's three steps and they're simple but they're not easy.

And I'll kind of talk about each one a little bit. Hire the right person, train them right, and then treat them right. Really, if you can do those things, you're gold. So hire the right person, that's the starting point and what I see in our industry and I'm sure you guys have seen as well, is people are too caught up in how to cover class tonight, "Oh I need someone right now, and desperately right now." So they're looking out in their advanced class to find someone to cover class versus...And there's not a lot you can do about that. But there's a lot you can prepare for two years from tonight, and that's gonna be coming for sure.

So I think the first thing is to think long term. So you gotta look at this, you know, there's some things you can do in the short-term to figure out your problem now, but regardless, right now you're planting seeds. So we call, "Plant seeds early and often, and that they're gonna sprout later on." So for example, if you're in class and it's your second class and I take a look at you and I go, "Man this guy, I think he has the right vibe." I'm gonna walk up and say, "Hey, Graham, man, I just wanna say I really enjoy having you as a student. Have you ever thought about teaching martial arts for a living?"

Graham: Geez, no. Not at all.

Dave: "Hey man, you've only had two classes but you have the right energy, I think you'd make a great one. So, I want you to look at this as not just a hobby, but look at it as a possible, like night school, like a possible production, and what I'm looking for is, I'm looking for you to be really consistent in attendance, try hard, and just kinda help out and be alert. And we'll talk in the future."

Graham: Appreciate it.

Dave: So that's it. I've given that talk I don't know how many times. Now what's gonna happen is you plant 10, one's gonna bloom, but here's the cool thing, the worst thing that happens is you're a better student because of the conversation. There is zero downside to doing it. And so it's never too soon to have that conversation. You have that conversation for the first time, and you have that...for me, in my case, my instructor, I'll never forget it. I was a blue belt, I was 14 years old, and we had this private lesson system. It was Saturday afternoon and I was kicking back in the lobby and I hear him say, "You can't make it."

And he hangs up the phone and he looks around the room and I already can read his mind, one of the instructors couldn't cover his private lessons and he's looking around the room for someone to cover his lessons. And I see him look at me and I can read his mind, he's saying, "Dave, no he's too young. Not him." He was starting to realize there's no one else to go to, so he looks over, he takes a breath, he goes, "Hey, Kovar, any chance...I want you to cover a class. I got a private lesson." So my first class was this 35-year-old, just giant of a guy. So he says, "Come on back here, let me show you how to kick some." But something...I did everything wrong. But something gelled for me, that was it.

So, making sure that you create those moments. And so that's one thing. And another great source of generating new members is, honestly, it's old students. We call it quitting for the fumes [SP]. And that's car fumes and perfect...cars and girls. You know, 15, 16, 17, you get a drift off in that direction, and now I'm 22, maybe I left as a brown belt, maybe things aren't working out for me, I'm working…you know, mowing the lawns or something. We've hired a lot of people that way. We've looked at our inactive list and said, "Okay." And like I said, it's a numbers thing. You're not gonna...not everybody that you call is gonna be a fit, but if you don't pick up the phone...

Phil: So that's it...you would actually go through your inactive and physically call those people?

Dave: Absolutely. We haven't done it for a long time because we're not in the same expansion mode, we've got other systems in place. But there was a time when we were really rapidly growing, and we had more schools than we had instructors and we utilized...That's why we, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. That's why we came up with that, and it worked really well for us. And the other thing is that most guys don't really...I'm sorry about that guys, don't really have a leadership program in place. And you constantly gotta be grooming those young teens, because sometime they're gonna be old enough to do this. And so that's the hire right.

By the way, if you don't have a big selection, sometimes you're forced to hire somebody that wasn't really who you were looking for, like the best of three or four choices. And that's really a mistake. There's a great quote I read, it was "Crisis in a sloppy situation" which means, it's better to be light staffed than to hire the guy that doesn't fit on the team. And you just gotta keep looking until you get the right guy.

Phil: Absolute gold here. If you guys don't understand that. Don't just hire out of just desperation, and just try to make something fit. You've gotta really be clear and have clarity over where you wanna go, and what you wanna do. So we're talking about the hiring and developing. What else do we have in there, sort of, journey for building stuff?

Dave: So let's just say…other things, if you're gonna hire from the outside, you know that's hard, but if you're gonna do it, you gotta make sure they drink your Kool-Aid. They gotta buy into your system as a martial artist, otherwise, it never works. You're just a mercenary. And then the next part is train them right. Now that seems obvious, what does that mean exactly? Basically, what that means is, most guys don't spend the time training their people, so they establish bad habits. So you get somebody coming to your school, the clearer you can be...because I would like to think that most people they're gonna hire, that the people they hire want to do well. They wanna do well.

You're not gonna hire some guy...and plus in our business, you got three years to interview them. You know what kinda person they are. You know what I'm saying? And so they wanna do well, but if you don't bring them in and let them know clearly what their expectations are, all right. And then, not just that, that's the easy part but then help them establish the right habits. Because a guy wants to do well but if you don't teach him how to answer the phone correctly, and you don't drill on it first, what happens? He starts answering it his own way, and pretty soon he's deviated from the norm and then you have to go, "Wait a minute." And you have to reprogram a bad habit. So train them right, he's out of the gate, be really specific and clear as to what you want him to do based on their job description.

And then the third step, you treat them right and that is...Hey man, there's some guys you can treat perfectly and they could still leave you in the lurch. And there's some guys you could treat like crap, they will be with you forever. But most...but the majority of the people, if you treat them right and you don't give them a reason to leave...you know what I'm saying? So what we really try to do is we try to have an environment where guys really like coming to work and all the things that goes into that. And I always ask myself, "Who would I want? How would I want my boss to respond and react with me?" And I wanna be that guy with my team. And you’ll go to battle for them and whatever you gotta do to...if they're the right person, to keep them motivated and on track.

Phil: We had a good conversation earlier today about physical training but also I guess, development training, the area being focused. So what are your expectations with your guys, with the sort of physical aspects of their journey? Because I know when you become a martial arts instructor, you think you gotta train more.

Dave: But that's not the case.

Phil: Not even close.

Dave: Yeah, well we require all our guys to train as a team once a week at least. Most of the guys will get in a second training session with myself or another team member every week but the one...we find that less requires better than more required that you don't do. Does that make sense? But the best staff training is staff training, you know, that’s it because that bond that you get when you're out there sweating with your guys, that transfers over. And all of us man, we all love martial arts, there's times we don't feel like training. Who care...It doesn't freaking matter if you don't feel like doing it, you do it anyway. You're always glad you did, when you're done, you always go, "Man that was good." So we try to keep that, then we try to really keep the martial arts at the core of our business. So martial arts first, teaching second, business third, that's kind of the way I look at things. And that just seems to help overall in that.

Graham: So, I was just gonna interject on the second part of that one. So you had the physical aspects, then what about the systematic training, behind the scenes, the business, the job roles, do you role play?

Dave: Absolutely. It depends on the job description but everybody role plays on general stuff. Obviously, how to answer the phone, how to give a tour, how to give the first lesson, how to...if you're gonna work on booth or something because everybody's gonna do that at some point with the processes of that, and what the desired outcome is. And then it's more specific, like we have a path for instructors, it's very detailed, very specific. We have different levels and different hoops they have to jump through and complete with a written test, oral test, physical test, problem-solving along the way, for them to earn...complete with CPR certification, background checks. If you're not doing background checks, you freaking got to do it. You're really liable like I got kids, you got kids, you don't want them going somewhere [inaudible 00:09:46].

And so that's basic stuff, that every other business on the planet has known but somehow we’ve been a little slow, we have a lot of kids, we can't be, we got to do that. You guys should be CPR certified, first aid certified, and all those steps for us to become a certified instructor. They have to earn a program director module. It's the same thing. We spend a lot of time on developing in our student service modules, so to speak, for enrollment.

Phil: Fantastic. So absolute, dynamite [inaudible 00:10:13] with a training aspect. It seems to me a trait among successful business owners that they get their staff to train physically. They don't neglect that. They can't afford not to train, really. And then consistent training in their job role, whether they're front house, at the counter where they're answering the phone, program director, instructor, you can't afford not to just be at [inaudible 00:10:34]. You have to have structured, quality training to help to be a world class team.

So I think just to finish on...we'll touch on the subject that we don't really like to do, but as the business owner when you have staff, sometimes you have to do it, which is firing people. At some point...we got a great quote, "What you tolerate, you get." And unfortunately, sometimes staff members can be like a cancer in a business. So it's important that as business owners, we cut that cancer out nice and quickly, but that's gonna be a wrong and a right way of doing it well. So Dave, in your experience, obviously, you've had to let some people go before, is there a nice way to do this or…?

Dave: Well, so first and foremost, "What you [inaudible 00:11:10] what you get," has kinda been a mantra. My business partner went to a seminar about a month ago and that was the takeaway. But, yeah, well, it's never any fun. So there's a couple things. So we have, with the three Rs. The three Rs are retrain, relocate, replace. So anytime someone's goofing up, not doing a good job. I always assume responsibility first. "Hey, Phil, I'm sorry I didn't explain to you very good that 4:00 means be here at 4:00, it doesn't mean be here at 4:15. My bad for not being clear about that. " But, you know, retrain. Guess what? Relocate. "Guess what Phil, clearly 4:00 is not gonna work. We're gonna start you at 5:00, can you be there by that?"

And if that doesn't work, replace, get somebody else which is easy to say...well you guys have seen...people tell you this and I've seen it and I've been there, where you have no one else to replace. So you're reliant upon this person who's mediocre because your bench isn't full. But, when it does come to that time, obviously, documentation is everything. It's one of those things, I go, "I don't wanna have to write up the talk that we had." But you gotta do it. So if I have to do some kind of reprimand with you, after we have this, and we're really clear about the process and then, depending on the level of reprimand, that happens a couple of times, well we're gonna actually write it out. And if it gets to be where it's like a warning, like job, then you're gonna sign that thing.

You don't have to have them, at least in where we are, you don't have to have them...I don't have to have them sign every time I talk to them but I got to document every time. So there's a real clear trail. And then my experience has been, and it's never easy, but if you can have this talk and minimize the emotion as much as possible, and not have it be you, you, you. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's a...I guess let them down easily as you possibly can, but still being honest. And it's a fine line, it's never fun, but you can make it worse. It's never easy, but if you do it wrong it can be really freaking rough.

Graham: Some absolute gems again, some wise words in there. So you obviously heard about building your bench strength and what you need to do, but also at the backend, just being clear of those three Rs I thought [inaudible 00:13:16]. I've got them down ready to go for our business, which is great. So, again, appreciate your time Dave, it's been fantastic.

Phil: Excellent team. Well, that's a wrap for this particular podcast. Again, this is podcast number two with Kyoshi Dave Kovar. We have got another two coming up and in particular, a pretty cool subject matter. If I was to start again or if I had my time again, what would I do differently? I mean, we don't wanna take away from what we've done because we are who we are because of what we've been through but I think we can kick off next podcast with, for anyone out there thinking of starting a school, from someone who's had 37 years’ experience, what would they do today, to start that business? So stay tuned guys, and we'll be back with you very shortly.