Starting a Martial Arts Dojo in 2022: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ever wondered what you should do to start your own martial arts dojo? Now is the perfect time to get started, with Jennifer Waters’ useful tips. Jennifer Waters is a lifelong martial artist and competitor, and helps martial arts school owners scale their martial arts schools to 7 figures a year. She got into her family business at the age of 17 years old and within four years, their martial arts school had gone from 5-figure revenue to a 7-figure yearly revenue. Check out her tips to have a successful dojo startup!

The first and most important factor to consider before opening a martial arts school is the location. If you want to charge a premium price for your services – which is highly recommended you do – you need to first ensure that you are in a neighborhood or location where you can charge those premium services. An easy way to find a good location is to take a look at where national brands have set up locations. These big brands (such as Target, Starbucks, etc.) have already done millions of dollars worth of market research, and they know where the good areas for business are. Obviously, you will have to pay a premium price for a good location, so another useful tip is to only buy what you need, not what you think you are going to need. It will be easy to run a program for hundreds of students out of a very small square footage (with the right systems behind you); you’ll find you don’t need a large space for it. Also, you don’t need to have a long term contract for the location, because you might need to move to a better location as you go through some explosive growth.

The next thing you have to prioritize is the marketing. Even after getting a good location, you cannot depend on walk-in traffic. It is necessary to ensure that you are getting leads – hundreds of leads – every single month, and what all you need to do to generate those leads, and so on. Before signing a lease or contract and starting with the business paperwork, you need to set aside a marketing budget, and have a marketing strategy in place.

The third factor to seriously consider is your sales ability. Selling any product includes the branding, the advertising and the sales. Do you have the experience or the ability to sell a service – something that is supposed to come in the future – to a consumer? If not, you need to consider what skills you are going to acquire to make sure that you can simply and effectively communicate what you’re offering. It is essential you have the skill set to compel a customer to sign up with your program and pay you a high-ticket premium price for your services. Always decide what the offer is going to be before you sign the lease – planning and strategy is the first step you need to complete!

Now that you know all about Waters’ useful tips and pointers, it will be a lot easier to get started. Congratulations for thinking about opening your own dojo in 2022, and all the very best!

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