MA Business Success 59: How to Become Successful at Your Martial Arts Business

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Phil: Good day, team. Phil Bitten here from Martial Arts Business Success and I'm here for our forth and final podcast with the amazing Dave Kovar and as always, my business partner/partner in crime, Graham McDonnell.

Maybe I was going to call him something different then, you know, but no one will ever know. Well we've got a great topic here as our forth and final one. You know, what is the difference between success and failure? Are there some common threads that Dave's seen in his illustrious career as a martial arts practitioner, coach, you know, someone who's been around the world and really probably in my mind, has probably seen more about martial schools and instructors and students than I ever have and probably ever will and same to you as well.

But, there's going to be some sort of common threads between the successful people and the people who aren't quite so successful, or potentially failing in business.

Dave: Right, right. So you know, it's an interesting question because I was at a seminar a couple of days ago and we had a bunch of people here right, and I asked, I looked round the room and I asked, "How many of you guys are having your best year ever?" And there was 43 people in the room okay, representing about 25 schools. Fifteen hands went up. Like so, meaning, you know, half the room is having their best year ever. That's really cool. Then I asked, "How many of you guys are having a pretty good year?" And almost every hand got up, there was a few that didn't, which tells me well, why? Because these guys are all proactive, they're spending their Friday, Saturday, you know, showing up and you know, learning, right?

Then there's another network that I'm involved in, they're really good martial artists. Like they're kind of old school and they kind of... I'm not involved with them in a business sense, they actually every now and then ask me to talk at their events. But I love these guys, I've known them forever and all these guys are just telling me how terrible the economy is you know, how they can't...right? And as I was talking in the car, they fiercely defend their mediocrity. Like...and I have this one guy, he's a friend of mine, I love the guy, he's a solid martial artist, mediocre teacher, but he'll tell you, "I've had a school for 32 years. I've 32 years of experience teaching." He really doesn't. He has one year that he's repeated 32 times.

So I think the difference between success and failure is first off kind of the what I see in schools that are successful versus that aren't. And by the way, there are schools that are mediocre that are still in business, but the reason why they're still in business is the guy has a full-time day job, or their dad owns the building or their wife has a good job. If you're going to support your family teaching martial arts, you have to friggin be good. In the States, I don't know how it is in Australia, I'm guessing it's the same, there was a time when we could be mediocre and still be successful, but those days are long gone. You just can't friggin do it anymore.

Graham: Look, this is actually something we discussed not so long ago with the changing climate and getting clients and people coming in more educated, you can't be substandard, you can't just be okay, you've got to really bring it...

Dave?: Yeah and it's kind of, like, the classic quote, you know, "The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra," right. "The enemy of excellence is good enough," all those things. But they're not just words, you see them and they really make a difference.

So back to success versus failure; first off is the mentality of being open and receptive, right? Not being afraid to fail, because really, you know, have you ever failed? It's going to happen in the future, but, you know, it sounds so cliché, but you keep swinging man, you keep getting up. And so, that's what I see is a kind of tenacity, you know, successful people are generally not afraid to take some chances, not afraid to take some risks and hopefully they learn from those right? and then also, you kind of have to...you are responsible for your business. I'm responsible for my business, you can't put that on anything else. And I see guys that are maybe failing, in terms we're using this, they're telling you all the reasons why it's not their fault. You hear it all the time, that doesn't happen in my town, can't do it over here… or "The factory just closed… the economy… the unemployment rate's higher than it's has ever been." You know, all that can be true, that can all be true, but there's not a friggin thing you can do about it. So what you do is in that environment, if you're not going to give up, then quit friggin whining about it and roll up your sleeves. Don't use that as a crutch, because we've all experienced that.

As Tony Robbins says, "Stand guard at the door of your mind." Like if you're worried about the economy and that affects you, friggin quit watching the news. You know what I'm saying? Just ignore it, because if

the unemployment rate is 12%, guess what that means? 88% of people are still working. So you have a market shrunk a little bit. You know what I'm talking about? You know and then the other thing is that really have a friggin program that's worth paying the money for! Steven Covey says, "You can't talk yourself out of a situation you behave yourself into." and the deal is that if your classes are only mediocre or pretty good... to me, it always starts on the mat with the instructor-student relationship and is that... If it's not A+, why not? You know what I'm saying? Because if it's B+ I get it, maybe you just lost an instructor, someone's on vacation, somebody's filling in, you can have a little low point. Maybe you shouldn't, but I understand that. But if it's consistently B+, you're going to have a hard time being successful. So you always focus on making that.

Graham: It's fair that you say that. I know there's something that myself and Phil do especially with the staff is there's a situation that’s occurred and we talking about the one forward, three back. In other words, you made a point at the result, you're going to look back at yourself and say, "Okay, how do I correct this? What happened? And did I do it well? And blam, blam, blam." That's the result, but let's look back at yourself and go, "What did I do or what did I not do to come to that point? And how can I make sure that it doesn't happen again?"

Phil: I just want pull out two stand-outs from listening to Dave here speak is one: it's okay to fail. I'll say it before Graham does, he's the king of quotes, is the acronym is “First Attempt In Learning" and failure is only failure unless you don't learn from it. So that's one. And the second thing I picked up was more from NLP is cause and effect, is that there's the people in the world that are on the side of effect and they're blaming everyone and anything around them for the reason they are where they are. And then there's the smaller population, the more successful people who are a cause. Now, not that they may have caused the economy drop, or may have caused something of, but if you come from a mindset of cause, then you're going to take more ownership of the position you're in, therefore take charge on what's the next steps as well. So there were two takeaways there that I got. So Dave, have you got anything else in a way of, I guess in your time that you've traveled around, some other failure points or things that people should be... ?

Dave: I think that there's also just the time factor. You know, I'm amazed by how many people are complaining about their school not doing well, and they don't show up until 10 minutes before class and they leave right after. I know you guys know what I'm talking about, it's all that prep time. And honestly, yeah, you may get to a point where you can check in

and you have your team running, you know, you don't have to work very hard, but you have to work your ass off for a really long time to get there. If you're going to be self-employed, you only have to work half days, right, first 12 hours or the second 12 hours, you got to put in the time and a lot of guys aren't willing and you've got to be willing to...like stuff like for me, like, I've done, I'm not exaggerating, well over 1,000 school assemblies in my career. I don't do much any more, but you know, 70-100 a year for years and years, right? And I can't tell you how many times I'm going to a school assembly and it's 8am in the morning and I know I'm going to have a bunch of rowdy kids and you know the drill. And it's all good. Once I'm there, I'm always happy I did it. This mantra that I heard, "Successful people will do what unsuccessful people won't." "Successful people will do what unsuccessful people won't." And that kind of gets me there. That gets me out of bed and once I get there, once I kind of turn it on, hey, I leave, I'm always glad I did right? So it goes back to what we talked about in one of the earlier discussions, is the ability to be self-driven and introspective and you know, our ability to get ourselves to do what we know we should and spend more time working on our business than in the business.

Graham: Wow, look, some brilliant stuff there. I know that we talked about success and failure, but really we're looking at habits, successful habits to set yourself up. And you know, knowing Phil all too well, what he does in the mornings, if he wants to get a workout, he gets up before the sun's up and makes sure that it fits into that day and that's a successful habit and that trait. Something we always do for us is, continually learning. Continually assessing where we're at and then improving yourself, checking, whatnot. And you know, blame is definitely something that we don't entertain. We look at results and then right, how can we improve this stuff? There’s going to be things that take into factors that are out of your control as we've just discussed, but it's creating the successful habits and that belief - as you pointed out before, - the belief that you can accomplish anything and that you're in it for the right reason. So any other habits that you guys have seen, do?

Dave: Well, I do what you've just said, the quality of your life is in direct relationship with the quality of habits and routines and rituals that you have in place. I always tell people man, and I do it with myself probably not as much as I should, but it is to really analyse my day from dawn to dusk.

What habits? And so the quote is, "Good habits are easy to make but hard to live with. Bad habits are hard to make but easy to live with." By

the way, the line is very blurred between our personal life and personal habits and our career. You know what I'm talking about? Like training this morning, is that play time, is that professional, who knows? It's all of the above, right? And so, is what I'm doing on a regular daily basis going to help me get to where I want to be? And I think that I'm amazed by the disconnect that really smart people have between their habits and their success.

Phil: Yeah. I think you definitely got to align...and I guess, we are in a specific industry, we're doing what we love. A lot of us were just students of martial arts. We didn't go, "I want to be in business." We have degrees on our belts, but not in business. So we turned our passion into something that's profitable because we think it would, we'd be able to train more, therefore our training drops off and then with running a business it’s check-in, check-out. But at the end of the day, you've got to have all the habits, you know, are you eating right, are you sleeping right, are you getting up earlier if you have to? Are you working on your business, are you getting stuck in the business? So I guess my sort of takeaway is to have a bit of a snapshot of your day, your week, your month, your year and I would ask you to ask yourself, "Is this the type of day that I want to live? Is this the type of week, month or year that I want to have in my life? And if it's not, you've go to have some changes, because, you know, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. I think we may have a little bit of a quote-off and Graham is the king of quotes, but I think Kiyoshi Dave Kovar might have a few more up his sleeve than Graham does.

Graham: This is brilliant, I know there's one that we take on board a lot, okay, you say it to yourself, "Take care of the days…”

Dave: and the years take care of themselves."

Graham: I guess we certainly have got some very similar habits together. I think it's something that's forever evolving, so if you guys who are watching or listening in to this, really sort of take stock of where you're at and also identify areas that you're not so strong at, and work on those. Don't just sort of play to yourself like, "Okay, I'm doing great over here," and then collect the things you're not good at. As a martial artist, what do we do? We work on the areas that we're not so good at, not just our strengths. So, that's my challenge to you guys, that if there is an area in your life that you're not successful at, whether it be personal, business, whatever it may be, take some stop, take some

time, put some attention on it and find the right people to help you develop that in a short amount of time.

Phil: Well, guys, we've had four amazing podcasts with Kiyoshi Dave Kovar and I always go out of my way to connect with Dave and someone who has experienced in areas of martial arts and business, you know, it's just amazing to be around that type of person. I think, even, we've spoken about it before, if someone's already doing what you want to do, align yourself with them. And Dave, any parting piece of advice for our viewers, listeners, watching here and you know, if you were going to give one sort of wise “guru” piece of advice…

Dave: Well now the pressure's on. Listen to these guys, they know what they're doing, they'll steer you in the right direction.

Graham: Appreciate it.

Phil: No problem, thanks very much, Dave, and look, guys, if you've enjoyed these podcasts, please share them on. We just want to get the word out there, you know, help you build the business of your dreams and also, at the end of the day, give yourself the life that you deserve.