Advice about attracting new students

[John Robinson]

Luis, thanks for the great posts.  My group is very small, we have only been doing this about 6 months, and 2 of those months we had no place to train.  But now we have a "home" and slowly the word of mouth is spreading. 

One thing that I always kept with me in my heart was the years I spent teaching martial arts to kids at another big "McDojo."  While the training methods weren't the greatest, one thing we did was stress the moral values with the kids ... teaching how to be great martial artists and human beings.

This is something that I am stressing with my small group now.  That we are not just training to be good fighters and get in shape and all that, but to become better people.  If we don't, then our martial arts are worthless.  I read something by BJ Penn that he wrote, "The ring is small, but the world is big."

So in my studio we will also be doing things for the community, maybe food drives, or shoe drives for kids in Haiti, or whatever.  To show that we care about our fellow man, and we do more than just spar each other a few nights a week.  And the great side benefit to that is we will get out into the community a little more each time we do something like this, and get known, and bring some attention and maybe some press to the studio. 

[James McRae]

Well said, John.  You might also want to consider doing free women's self-defense classes as a type of charity work.  I usually teach a couple of these a year, since I believe the best way to prevent violence against women is to promote violence against rapists  (if any lawyers are reading this, I'm joking, so don't get excited).