Hosting a visiting instructor

[jthomas1600]

I live in a midsize town an hour south of Houston and there are only a few gyms that offer any kind of grappling. Ours is a fledgling mma club. The owner refers to it as a club because he doesn't consider himself (with only a few years of experience) to be an "instructor". That's just a little back story. A few years ago when I was working in Brazil I was able to train at Luiz Paulo's school in Niteroi. I have kept in touch with him in the years that I've been back. He's planning a trip to visit in June. Luiz has said he's interested in moving to the states, would like to have a school here, retire here etc.

Anybody ever had an opportunity like this? What did you do (or would you do) as far as asking him to teach a few classes? Anybody have any experience putting together a seminar? How did you advertise and organize?

I know there's quite a few here who are instructors/school owners. If you were traveling some place new scouting/visiting thinking about opening a school what would you be looking to do? One day I plan on having a realtor show us some commercial properties and of course we'll visit Houston, Galveston, etc. How about visiting some other schools similar to your style or is that pretty irrelevant?

I probably have more questions, but that's good for now.

*edit* I should add that one possible outcome (one that I like and have talked to my coach about and would love to see) is that he would be (or send one of his students to be) the BJJ coach at our school as a place to start his US operations.

 

[K-man]

Simple visiting is not a problem. I often try to find a local place to drop into if I'm on holidays. Most places are very welcoming, the exception being the Aikikai headquarters in NY. Don't limit your visits to your own style though. Take the opportunity to look at different areas. Always offer to pay. In Australia they will often say, "don't worry about that". In the US they will usually, from my experience, take the money.

Asking him to take some classes is not an issue. Depending on how many classes you want him to take, he may expect to get paid or he may just do it free. Just make sure before he teaches, exactly what he expects. I once had a huge problem on that one.

Organising a seminar is a little different. With a seminar I would assume your visitor will be paid a fee. If you agree on a price before hand and fail to get the numbers you can have considerable out of pocket expenses as a number of my friends have experienced. Unless you have a real desire to promote I would leave the seminar scene alone. However, if you did decide to go ahead, I would choose a neutral venue and visit all the local MA schools to personally invite them to attend. Then you could print some promotional material and ask various stores etc. if they would display it for you. If the guy is well known you may even be able to get some time on a local radio show or some coverage in a local paper.

As to his moving to the US. Too many variables for me to answer, but offering him your school as a base to start his new life sounds good to me in the situation you have outlined. :asian:

 

[jthomas1600]

OK, here's what we've decided to do. When Luiz visits from Brazil he will teach a class/short seminar (about 2 hours) at our school four consecutive days and we will charge $30 per night or $100 for all of the classes. This seems pretty reasonable to us as $30 is not much more than many schools charge for a "mat fee" and $100 for 8+ hours of instruction is pretty good. And if anyone on here is from the Houston area we would love to have you come drop in for one of these classes (or all four) and check us out.