Zack,
Let me preface my comments by saying that I do not presently nor have I ever owned a martial arts school. I have thought about it and even planned for it but never actually made the plunge. However, Business and Entrepreneurship have been a passion of mine since I was in High School. Anything I say here is my opinion based on my studies and experience. Your situation is your own so feel free to take or leave anything I say.
As far as your original question, I think that if you believe you can do it (you mentioned that you do have faith in yourself) and your instructors believe you can do it then at the very least from a technical standpoint you are ready. Will you have some parents or potential adult students who do not think someone as young as yourself should teach them or your kids? Sure you will, but probably not as many as you think. Remaining at the top of your game as a practitioner, and having students with excellent technical skills (and attitudes!) can help with some of those concerns. For myself, I base decisions of joining a school on whether I believe the instructor can help me improve myself as a martial artist and care little about how old they are or whether they're 27th Dan in Combat Table Place Setting-Do. From the business side of things beyond what I mentioned above sales and marketing can help.
From reading your post(s) you seem to want to teach and that is important. I have taught classes in the martial arts and in other areas and the most important thing is having passion not just for what you are teaching, but for teaching itself. The question is do you see yourself enjoying teaching your art 10, 20, or 30 years down the road?
Once you have decided that you want to open a school and see yourself as a successful teacher, then you have to take stock of your strengths and weaknesses.
Your time training and the support of your organization are certainly strengths. Having potential access to a lawyer and to family members who are entrepreneurs also belong in the strength category.
Weaknesses are harder to say as I don't know you personally. But from reading your posts you say that your organization are not the best business role models, which is ok. That organization does not have to be everything, there are other organizations out there that can help as far as the martial arts business side of things. You can look into joining NAPMA or MATA. These organizations though seem to focus very heavily on martial arts business and a little less on general business, which you need to know as much as you can about. There are formal options, almost any four year university has a degree program in Business, some even have an entrepreneurship focus within the business program. My alma mater (Western Carolina University) started the first undergraduate program specifically in Entrepreneurship in the country and also has a Master's program. Other schools have also done so now. I cannot speak to the other programs but I know for a fact that WCU's program is top-notch with amazing faculty. Both of those programs are offered online. Most community colleges also have associate degree business programs. Do you need to go and get a formal degree to start a martial arts school? Absolutely not! But the benefits are that they tend to provide a rather comprehensive base level of knowledge in business from sales and marketing to management and accounting. You can take college classes without pursuing a degree to gain knowledge in areas you are weak in or are just interested in.
There are also tons of informal learning opportunities in most places. The community colleges in my home state all offer free or low cost business courses in specific areas like marketing, budgeting, etc. The U.S. Small Business Administration has a ton of excellent free information on their website and has small business development centers (located on community college and university campuses here) in every state as far as I know. These are places where you can go get free advice/consulting from a business expert. There is also SCORE (Service Core of Retired Executives, I believe it stands for) whose website also has a ton of information and can provide mentoring with people that have been very successful in business.
Then there are books. You can find business books on any topic you can think of. Amazon has tons and tons of books specific to martial arts business and most of them are $10 or less if you buy them digitally. Sometimes I don't think I could live without my Kindle! And you don't have to own a Kindle to buy books digitally from Amazon, you can download their free reader program for your computer.
The goal, though, should be to have a good base knowledge on general business. Topics such as entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, management, legal aspects of business/entrepreneurship, and accounting! This way if you start reading more non-traditional stuff, things like new marketing strategies or the idea that you don't really need a business plan or ideas you get from the martial arts business organizations, you have a base of knowledge to judge this stuff against. I'll use the business plan as an example. I personally, though I would not recommend it to most people, do not worry about a formal business plan the way most entrepreneurs are taught too. I use a minimal plan and focus on the operations plan. This comes from what I've learned about business, my experiences, and the confidence I have in myself. But I also tend to like low-cost startups and do not have to worry about impressing a banker to get a loan. I am not saying you should do this but to illustrate the point that once you have a sound foundation you can evaluate and adapt new ideas to suit you rather than trying to adapt yourself to suit the idea. And yes, most entrepreneurs and business gurus will tell me I'm crazy for not dutifully and painstakingly creating a perfect business plan. This is why I do not recommend it to the new entrepreneur. You need to understand and have experience doing business, marketing, and operations plans before you can forego them (in my humble opinion).
I would wholeheartedly recommend that the very first business book you read is: The E-myth Revisited. It talks quite a bit about why businesses succeed and fail. It focuses on managing the technician, manager, and entrepreneur personalities that you have to juggle successfully to do well. The goal is to own a business rather than own a job, which is where most business struggle. You may realize that you are what the author of this book would call a technician experiencing an entrepreneurial seizure. The best advice in the whole book though is the concept of starting a business as though you were starting a franchise. This is not meant to mean that you plan to turn your business into a franchise. Rather it means that you need a detailed operations plan for your business on day one! You need to know how the business is going to run and the goal is to have a plan that is detailed enough that if you went to Rome for a month the business could continue to operate without you according to your standards (for a martial arts business this of course assumes you have an instructor for your classes that could take over the teaching). Distilling it down to two or three sentences does not do it justice. Once again in my humble opinion, it is THE book every aspiring entrepreneur needs to read before anything else.
Business knowledge/acumen usually is not the only weakness either. As others have mentioned, you need to know any laws in your state that could potentially effect your business. You have access to an attorney, which is fantastic! A good general rule, however, is trust but verify. You can get advice or hire people to do a lot of things but you should understand enough to detect things that are not quite right. A good accountant is worth their weight in gold, but you also want to know enough about accounting to ensure that you aren't getting swindled (which sadly does happen).
Always protect yourself as much as you can! Things like incorporating your business can protect your personal assets. You want quality insurance from a respectable company. You can never have too much insurance.
Do you know much about exercise and sports science? A personal training class/certification from a reputable organization may be beneficial. You particularly want to learn as much as you can about stretching. Most of the instructors I've ever had learned all they knew about stretching from their instructor, who learned that from their instructor, and so on. This isn't inherently bad until you find an instructor who knows very little about safe sports training and goes crazy with ballistic stretching. It is very possible to inhibit performance with a poor warm-up/stretching routine if not dangerous.
What do you know about CPR, First aid, and blood-borne pathogens? Hopefully, since you are already teaching some classes you have at least minimal training in these areas. If not, find it! The American Heart Association is the standard for healthcare providers for CPR training and they also have more "layperson" type classes. I would say to try and find a CPR course geared towards Healthcare providers from the AHA or the American Safety & Health Institute. AHA, ASHI, and the Red Cross all offer basic first aid courses. Blood-borne pathogen classes can be a little more difficult to find. If you can swing it, an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) course may be a good idea. You would get all the above and then some. The bone fracture, splinting, and head injury evaluation information from an EMT class could be particularly useful. A basic knowledge of common acute illnesses you would get in this class may also come in handy, knowing the general signs/symptoms of someone experiencing hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) for example or heat exhaustion.
What do you know of the city/town where you would open your school? What are its demographics, median incomes, and your competitors? You want a solid understanding of your direct and indirect competitors. Your direct competitors will mostly be other martial arts schools. What styles do they teach? What are the strengths/weaknesses of those styles? Compared to yours? What about the instructor? Is he a former kickboxer who is weak in forms/kata? Do they offer or not offer weapons training? Are they sport-oriented vs. self-defense or a mix? This is all knowledge that can help you as you grow your business and interact with potential customers. You should never bad mouth another instructor but you can discuss the strengths/weaknesses of different styles or schools in a respectful way. But to do this you need to know about those styles. Personally, I would always recommend people who are interested in multiple schools to try them out. Something along the lines of "I have a week, two-week, month long (whatever) trial program. Why don't you try me out and go speak to Sensei Jones and try his program out at the same time to see which one you like better?" Martial Arts training is a very personal thing. Will a strategy like this lose you some customers and go against what some industry consultants will tell you? Sure it will, but some of those students would probably actually be happier at the other school. You could also try something along the lines of "I understand that martial arts is a personal journey and that different schools are right for different people. Why don't you try me out for three months and see what you think. It will give you plenty of time to try out what we offer and see if it is the right path for you. If its not then I'll personally help you find the school that is right for you." This method get the student in with you a little longer and may have a better chance of them deciding they love your art and want to stick with it. This is a personal business/sales decision but in any case knowing about your competitors helps you find the right school for the individual student, which is important. If I were running a traditional school and a student came to me and told me that he wanted pure self-defense, no bowing, no uniforms, no eastern philosophy; would I be doing him or my school right by giving him the sales pitch and talking him into it? Would I not show more integrity by telling him that I understand what he wants and know that there is a Krav instructor in town that's really good and give him the info for that school? Sometimes I think it is important to think beyond the immediate sale. What if the guy spends a year at the Krav school and decides hey I feel I can defend myself and love the martial arts, maybe I would really like a traditional school. Who is he going to go talk to first? Maybe he loves Krav and his kids become interested in the martial arts but the Krav school doesn't teach kids or he doesn't feel it is right for them. Who is he going to go talk to? I got off on a bit of a tangent there and it is just my opinion. The idea that knowing your competition is important is a solid one I believe. Your choice of sales is up to you, that's just my philosophy.
You also do not have to look at your competition as just your competition. There may be some benefit to getting to know the other martial arts instructors in your area and even working together some. Maybe that kickboxer would be willing to come in one day and teach a class on competition sparring if you would be willing to come to his school and teach some weapons skills. Or maybe both schools could come together to prepare for and attend a big competition the next state over.
What about your indirect competitors? To me there can potentially be a number of them. These are places that, while not a martial arts school, provide some service similar to what you provide. I would count places like fitness gyms in this category. They are not teaching martial arts but things like weight loss, strength gain, flexibility are similar results both businesses clients may see. Is there a martial arts store in your town that maybe competes with your pro-shop business? What do they offer and how does it compare to what you do? Are there potential ways for you to work together? Perhaps you could speak with the owner of the fitness gym and work out a deal where their members get a discount on martial arts training and your members get a discount at the gym.
Where can you add value to your business? In other words what opportunities are out there. I some potential opportunities in regards to your competitors above, but there are certainly any number of others. Maybe none of the other schools offer day-time classes that you are willing to offer. Perhaps a fitness type class. Cardio-kickboxing is popular at a lot of schools. There are other fitness programs such as Cage Fitness or P90x group classes that you may be interested in offering that students would enjoy. This is another area where having some knowledge in personal training may come in handy. One of my old teachers did martial arts themed birthday parties and did well with them. Some places do dedicated after-school programs and summer camps. You might be able to add yoga if you know or can find a reputable instructor. Maybe there is a lack of competitions in your state and going through the effort to organize one could be wildly successful. Maybe MMA is pretty popular in your area and you could add some MMA products to your pro-shop and bring in some additional business there. If you do well in your CPR class you could potentially become an instructor and offer a CPR class once a month with a 20-50 dollar per head charge. Be creative! Always be thinking about how to add value and grow your business. You can do this without compromising your art or your integrity. There is no reason to be afraid of profit, which a number of teachers seem to be so scared of. Personally I think it is based off some weird americanization of eastern concepts of honor. No entrepreneur should be afraid of success, rather you should strive for it. Though you have to define what you consider success. Is success being a single-school owner with enough students to get by? Is it being a single-school owner who can live comfortably (not talking millions here, but not worrying that the bills will be paid)? Is it being a multi-school owner who lives really well? Is it being a millionaire school owner? Define success and strive for it, once you reach it keep it or redefine success. I should note that I don't think you have to add yoga or cardio-kickboxing or the like if you don't want to. I have known what I would consider very successful school owners who are very traditional and teach their art and nothing else or who don't have a pro-shop but order anything the students need. Me personally if I owned a school I would want to give as much value as I could to my students. I would also never compete on price because it is too easy for someone to beat and then you can quickly compete yourself to struggling to pay the bills. Compete on value. Once you know how you want to structure your school you can determine the value of what you offer (roughly) and then charge an appropriate amount.
Since this post has kind of started turning itself into a SWOT analysis I guess I can finish that line of thought. I've mentioned evaluating strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. The last part of a SWOT analysis is threats and you need to evaluate it as much as any other area. What are the threats to your business success? Is the town you plan to start your school a heavy manufacturing area where those companies are closing their doors and shipping labor overseas? Is the economy a threat for you based on the area? Have you heard that a big name school owner in your state is planning on opening a school in your town? Is there a proportionally high number of personal injury lawyers in that town
Now the threats to your success and how you plan to overcome them. A SWOT analysis is a great tool that is a traditional part of business planning but where a lot of entrepreneurs get into trouble is they do one as part of their pre-opening planning and then never do another. This should be a constant, ongoing thing. You are always re-evaluating yourself and your businesses strengths and weaknesses, looking for opportunities, finding threats so you can plan for them.
This has been quite a lot and is only the tip of the iceberg. You don't have to be an expert in everything and I'm not saying to go get a Master's degree, and a personal training certification, and an EMT certificate and all kinds of other stuff before you open your school. But you do want a plan for how you are going to address your weaknesses going forward. If I were going to recommend a course of action I would say sit down and write a list of your weaknesses that you want to address and maybe decide on a rough order you want to address them, read The E-myth, then start looking at places like the SBA or SCORE to start working on a business, marketing, and operations plan. Finally start working on that list of weaknesses with the first thing on your list by either attending classes, finding good sources of information online, or reading books. You can do a lot of this simultaneously.
I'm sorry for the huge post but it just kind of spilled out. I stumbled across your thread and really wanted to reply to it so I made an account here and then waited for admin approval and then was working for a couple days, so I had quite a bit of time to loosely organize some thoughts and once I started writing it just kept going. I probably shouldn't start writing posts at 4 a.m. when my brain isn't fully woken up yet.
I wish you the best of look and will keep an eye on this post in case there is anything I can add that might be helpful. Take everything I say with a grain of salt as it is my opinion and with the warning I noted at the beginning of the post. Really it is important to take everything you are told with a grain of salt as not everything will work for you or your situation.
And if anyone else has a differing opinion from mine, please feel free to note your disagreement and why. Debate is healthy and adds a greater understanding for all!
-D.
