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Phil: Good day, team. Welcome back to another amazing podcast. This is the "Martial Arts Business Success" and I'm Phil Britten. We've got Graham McDonald and yet again we got Justin Boylan here to tell us a little bit more about training in martial arts over a long period of time and you know, as I sit here with Kyoshi Justin, being trained by him, being mentored by him, you know, he's a wealth of knowledge and experience. And I can only hope that I am training as long Kyoshi Justin and some of the other guys also that train for many, many, many years. I look upon people who do that and some people who can't handle, I guess training in martial arts or participating in martial arts.

And something that we spoke about earlier was about knowing what season in life you're in and playing for that season. So welcome, guys, and we'll get Justin just to basically kick it off and I think last time we talked about how long...

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Phil: G'day, Phil Britten here at Martial Arts Business Success podcast. And today, we've got an amazing, amazing guest, someone who I just asked, "How long you been doing martial arts?" And he said, "My birthday in 1980, so 36 years of martial arts." And we've got Justin Boylan here. And as always and ever, [inaudible 00:00:26], we've got Graham McDonnell as well.

Hey, so, Justin, I really appreciate your time and taking time out of your busy schedule in order to share with us and share with our listeners and viewers. So let's just start, then, so we get moving on it. Now, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you're a very humble person who doesn't like to speak much about themselves. But from a martial arts perspective, how long and how did it all start?

Justin: I started in February 1980, and I had an interest in martial arts for a while before that. I'd been competing in swimming and surf...

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Phil: Hey, welcome to Martial Arts Business Success. In this episode, me, Phil Bitten, and Graham McDonnell is gonna give you some great advice, tips, tools, and strategies on how you can transform your business. Graham, what have we got?

Graham: This one's probably one that I really enjoy, because we do this on a regular basis, how to run powerful meetings. Geez, you know, it may sound simple, but in all honesty, if you've never had a mentor or someone to guide you how to be effective with your meetings that really have your team leave empowered, but productive, without spending an entire day doing it, geez, you're flying blind. So very first thing that we do is have agenda items. Think about the things that you wanna get done, because meetings shouldn't be drawn out and dragged out.

Like we have power meetings, we have short meetings, five-minute meetings. Most off and off we've had managers' meetings that...

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Phil: Good day, team. Phil Britten here from Martial Arts Business Success. I am here joined with Graham as always and also the one and only, for our third podcast with Kiyoshi Dave Kovar. Welcome again.

Mr. Kovar: Nice to be here, guys.

Phil: Awesome.

Well, you know, we've been diving real deep with some great strategies and mindsets and experience from somebody who's been in the industry for many, many, many years and you know, I thought, what better way than to kick off today's podcast would be, if I had my time again, what would I do? Step 1. Mr. Kovar, sir.

Mr. Kovar: All right. I'm all right. And so first and foremost, I think if I was starting a martial arts institute full over right, if that's what I decided I wanted to do, which I would decide, right? And I look back and think of all the mistakes, but I'm not disappointed with the decision I made to be a full-time martial arts professional. And...

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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...

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Phil: And we have the one and only, Mr. Dave Kovar. Thank you for joining us.

Dave: Oh, my pleasure. Glad to be here, guys.

Phil: Well, what an absolutely awesome podcast we have for you guys, the next four. We're gonna be diving into some really good topics, good subject matters from someone who's been in the industry for such a long time. Somebody who's, you know, travelled the world and got the scene, so many instructors and schools. So just an amazing wealth of knowledge that we can then share on and impart to all you other school owners out there.

So in saying that, we're gonna kick it off with topic number one which is how to last 30+ years, and in particular, how long was it?

Dave: So like November 1978 so going 38 years in the business yeah.

Phil: Woo. Wow, that's amazing. So, you know, how to last 30+ years and still enjoy it? Wow! Graham, what have you got?

Graham: Look, I guess starting...

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Phil: We've got another cracker for you today guys, it's all about how do you build great presence around your brand? I don't mean the presents that you get at Christmas time. I mean the presence that you have in your community, in your environment and more importantly it's about your brand. Like how do people see you? Are you blended in with the other Martial Arts schools or businesses or do you stand above? Graham?

Graham: Phil, let's talk about ourselves first and how we did it and then let's just share some of the strategy and things that you guys might want to just be aware of. I know, geez when we first started our company at WAIMA and we joined forces. We really wanted to make sure we stood out, because at the time there was a trillion different Martial Arts studios. Goodness! It's one of those things that you can get lost in the crowd very quickly. Plus, you've also got to make sure that...

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Graham: It's probably across the globe. I don't believe that anybody is sheltered from this, and it’s talking about the economic downturn.

Having spoken with quite a few friends in the industry, everybody's feeling the pinch. Whether they like to admit it or not, it's out there. So, what do we do to weather the storm? How do we get through this, how do we make sure that we keep our staff and our team motivated even when sometimes the numbers are lower coming to your business, or you might be losing people or again, there's your financial burdens put on you, and there's some challenges there. Let's tackle the first and foremost.

Phil: Yeah, I just think I'll mention to you also, when Graham and I first went into business together in 2008, there was a massive downturn. It's just circumstantial, I guess with the relationship we had, the business that we were trying to do, we actually grew...