Tune in as George Fourie from Martial Arts Media™ covers Marketing Tips and Strategies for Martial Arts Business and School Owners. Get modern ideas from the digital world for lead generation and retention. Guest interviews with successful industry experts.
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August 19, 2026Episode 17114 min
Martial Arts Marketing is Broken (And What to Do About It)
Martial arts ads, Social media, website, email, SEO - 5 systems going in 5 different directions. That's why growth for school owners feels like a grind. Here's how to do it all-in-one. IN THIS EPISODE: Why hiring a student to "just post" on socials quietly costs you money The broken agency model, and why no school should be 100% dependent on one How a cheap or DIY website becomes your worst-performing salesman, 24/7 Why most school email is only good for landing in spam The truth about SEO guys who rank you for terms nobody searches Why five disconnected systems can never add up to more students, and what an operating system actually looks like instead * If you need ongoing help with marketing your school, go to https://martialartsmedia.com
September 18, 202517 min
160 – Everything That’s Wrong With Martial Arts Marketing
Almost all martial arts school owners are disappointed with their agencies or have a horror story to share. Here’s how I see both sides of the story IN THIS EPISODE: The flawed martial arts agency model of overpromising. The unrealistic "microwave expectations" about martial arts marketing. The power of the marketing-to-mats feedback loop. The strategic mindset shift from focusing on cost to focusing on return. The advantage of an "open book" martial arts marketing approach. And more. TRANSCRIPTION I want to talk about everything that, in my opinion, is wrong with martial arts marketing. This is coming from two sides, from both sides: the agency model, the delivery, the expectations that get promised in the market space, and then on the flip side, how it's perceived and the expectations from martial arts school owners of what it is and what it's not. And then there's the inevitable hamster wheel of disappointment that it just never seems to escape. So, who has not had a bad experience with an agency? Everybody talks about how their agency sucks and they're terrible. Is this true? Yes and no. I feel it's on both sides. Now, in my last videos and a few things that I've distributed, I've mentioned my dislike for the traditional agency model. And I'll tell you a little story. Here's where this started. This is now going back. Oh, it's got to be at least five or six years ago. I always feel like I get timelines wrong.
January 7, 202440 min
147 - Buzz Durkin: The Martial Arts Master For Lifetime Student Value
Discover how Buzz Durkin, the headmaster of Uechiryu Karate, effortlessly keeps martial arts students for as long as 52 years. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: Internal marketing – a strategy used by Buzz Durkin to attract new students Community building within a martial arts school Teaching beyond physical skills and the importance of using the physical curriculum What is AAA theory – Awareness, Appreciation, and Action, and how is it important to martial arts students An overview of Buzz Durkin’s Success is Waiting: The Martial Arts School Owner's Guide to Teaching, Business, and Life book Charging fair tuition for martial arts classes And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here . TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today, I am interviewing a true master in martial arts and business, Buzz Durkin. I was really fortunate to spend some time with Buzz when I hosted our Martial Arts Media™ Intensive event , which was part of the Bushi Ban Power Week hosted by none other than Grandmaster Zulfi Ahmed . As part of the Bushi Ban Power Week, we hosted the Martial Arts Media™ Intensive, and I had Buzz share a talk in regards to retention and keeping students for life and how they basically work all their marketing from the ground up. I was so inspired by the speech; well, so was everyone else. He got a true standing ovation, and I invited him to speak at one of our events online, which is the Partners Intensive. Our members were just blown away by the information. I wanted to bring that over to you as part of the podcast, so I'm going to share a video on this page. If you want to go visit it, martialartsmedia.com/147. Buzz shared a video during his talk showing how every Saturday, how much experience, and how many black belts they have. It ranged from four years to, I think, 44 years of experience, and I can't recall counting. There were at least 20, 30, got to be like 30 people at least. Anyway, Buzz is truly a master at keeping it simple, keeping students for life, and he's got some valuable strategies to share. So, without further ado, jump in all the show notes on martialartsmedia.com/147. That’s the numbers one, four, seven. Jump in. Let's go. GEORGE: Buzz Durkin, welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. BUZZ: It's my pleasure to be here. I'm happy to be here with you, George. GEORGE: Good to see you again, and we'll loop back to that story. But a question I always like to ask first is, what's the number one thing that you do to attract new students into your school? BUZZ: Well, the number one thing we do after all these years that's evolved is internal marketing. We do internal marketing with some social presence, too. We do a lot of posting on Facebook, and Instagram, just about every day or at least every other day. Our main venue for acquiring new students is through internal marketing. Parent's nights out, pizza parties, and birthday parties, where we encourage our students to bring their friends, inviting their friends and school teachers to our black belt promotions. So, we concentrate mainly on the student body that we have and how can we grow that family from within primarily. GEORGE: Very interesting. So, everything from the inside out. And so, when it comes to promotions, you're still sort of doing a little bit of outbound because you're saying with the social and so forth, but the focus is what's happening internally and making that the message to attract more students? BUZZ: Yes. We like to make our students raving fans, and we like to make our students want their friends to study and train with them, whether they’re five years old or 50 years old. So, we try and provide a high degree of value in every single class so that the students will want to talk about what a great experience they had. And like we say, we don't teach good classes here. Every class has to be a great class. And I think the marketing-- I think anything starts on the floor. I think it all starts with good instruction. You have to have something of substance that you're teaching, and you have to do it in an effective way. I think it all ebbs and flows on the quality of instruction on the floor. Everything should spring forth from that, I think. GEORGE: I know you're the master at keeping students, and I want to tell this little backstory. So, we met officially for the first time at Grandmaster Zulfi's Bushi Ban Power Week, where we got to host our event during the Power Week, which was the Martial Arts Media™ Intensive. Buzz Durkin was one of the featured speakers. You shared a video during your talk that I can't recall how many students there were, and I'm probably, if that's okay with you, I'll share it within this podcast, just in the show notes so that people can see it...
February 25, 202312 min
140 – Signing Up New Martial Arts Students With Dead Leads
Turn your dead leads into profitable new martial arts students. Here’s a proven strategy to revive, reconnect and reengage potential students that you haven’t reached out to in a while. IN THIS EPISODE: How can dead leads be a potential source of profitable new martial arts students How a database of leads collected via Facebook Messenger, email, and walk-ins can be a valuable resource to reach out to dead leads How to restart a conversation with a dead lead using the Conversation Carrots The pitfall to avoid when reconnecting with dead leads and what to do instead Using the 9-word email hack or Bullet Boomerang to get more leads and sales And more TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome back to another Martial Arts Media™ Business podcast. Today I'm going to be talking about signing up students with dead leads or leads that you have just forgotten about. Leads that have inquired, they never signed up, or you were having a conversation with them and they ghosted you or just disappeared. Or perhaps you have those old students that left unless they left on bad terms and you don't want them back. But otherwise, just students that left and something life got in the way and you didn't hear from them again and they left. So we're going to talk about a few simple strategies to restart the conversations with those dead leads, all students that have left, super simple but super profitable. Hang around to the end. I've got a great resource for you, a PDF that we call Conversation Carrots. It's one of the most popular resources we have in our Partners Program, a really simple way to engage and start conversations. I'll give you the details at the end of the podcast, and how to access that. All right, let's jump in. All right, before we get into the good stuff, a quick life update for any of you that have followed the podcast for a while and know that I haven't posted much on social in a while and done a podcast, this will take 30 seconds approximately. So I'm recording this in 2023, February, in October last year, we decided to move the family from Perth to the Sunshine Coast. If you're not from Australia, that's equivalent to moving from San Diego to New York, it's that far, and that's what we did. What decided us to move? Well in the mid-last year, we came here on holiday. I was hosting our first Partners Intensive , which is an event that we run for our Partners group. And we came on holiday the week before. Absolutely loved it here, loved the beaches, and just loved the vibe of it. And we decided we wanted to do something new, that I'm closer to hosting events on this side of the country but also close to the states for travel and events that we want to host over there. And so we made the big move. That's it. Now, we're back and on track. The other thing that's been keeping us busy the last couple of months is onboarding new clients and working on a few cool things that I'm going to announce in the next month, a couple of weeks or so. Update done, right? Let's jump into the good stuff. So how does one sign up students from dead leads? All right, so let's look at a few scenarios. You have leads piled up in your Messenger. If you collect leads via Facebook Messenger, perhaps you have inquiries via Messenger or you have them from your website. So you have email leads, and you have them in your database, preferred. We'll talk about that maybe a little bit. Maybe people walked in and you took down their details, whatever the scenario, you had people that were inquired but never joined. Now, if you had to track back the last few months, the last few years, how many of these people do you have in your database? If you still have them, we've got a few cool things that we can do with them and I'll chat about that in just a bit. All right, so these perfect prospects inquired, but they never joined. Now, I guess a dangerous thing for us to do is to make some assumptions about them, that they inquired, but now they're just not interested. Well, it could be, but it could also be just something else that happened that we can't control. Life got in the way. Maybe they were tied up in some other engagement and they just haven't had Covid, or maybe it's something deeper, right? There's a fear of what this whole martial life thing is about and they're just not comfortable stepping up and taking action on starting their training yet.
May 24, 202342 min
144 – Building A Strong Martial Arts Community: Insights From Professional Fighter And Gym Owner Damien Brown
Damien Brown, a UFC fighter-turned-gym owner, shares his journey of transitioning from the octagon to entrepreneurship. He reveals his secrets to success in both the fighting world and the martial arts business realm. IN THIS EPISODE: Damien Brown's journey from a UFC fighter and military man to a martial arts business owner Base Training Centre’s most successful marketing strategy for generating students consistently How short-term commitments, like training camps, work well for marketing jiu-jitsu How to ensure children between the ages of 4 to 13 love jiu-jitsu until they turn 16 Opening new locations by gut instinct and finding the right partners and locations And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Start Here . TRANSCRIPTION My job is to make sure that any child between the age of four and 13 loves jiu-jitsu until they turn 16. If I'm too hard on them and they hate it and they don't like it, they leave. My job is to make sure that I teach them jiu-jitsu but I make sure they have enough fun that they want to stay in jiu-jitsu until they're 16. When they're 16 they get graded as an adult, they start learning as an adult. It's a little bit different. They get to make their own choices. But if I can make them enjoy it that much that they stay from the age of four until 16, then I've now got a long-term member, I've got a kid that's done jiu-jitsu for 12 years that's now going to get a blue belt and go on to be a great adult addition to my gym. GEORGE: Good day. George Fourie here. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I'm joined by a professional MMA fighter, UFC Fighter, and owner of Base Training Centre in Brisbane, Damien Brown. Welcome to the show. DAMIEN : Hey, man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. GEORGE: Good stuff. You've had a complete career between martial arts and your business. But before we get into the good stuff, a question I always like to ask upfront is, what's been your go-to marketing strategy, the thing that you guys do that generates the most students for you on a consistent basis? Consistently or that one thing that's the hook. DAMIEN : Typically, the greatest marketing strategy we had was Facebook Ads. Social media is so big now. If you're not using it then you, you're either behind the times or you're just too stubborn to do it. Potentially, you don't know what you're doing so you outsource it. I'm a massive believer in outsourcing anything that's not your line of expertise. I just think that everyone should be advertising on social media.
November 16, 202247 min
138 – Building A Thriving Martial Arts Business For Generational Wealth
Michael Scott shares the 3 core areas he focuses on for a fulfilled life, and building a martial arts business that fuels generational wealth. IN THIS EPISODE: Are Google Ads getting better results than Facebook Ads? Having an exit strategy when retiring from your martial arts business Your martial arts business as a vehicle to build generational wealth Having an accountability partner you can trust and who supports your goal Why have membership contracts And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here . TRANSCRIPTION GEORGE: Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast . Another great interview for you today. Michael Scott from CMA Campbelltown Martial Arts in New South Wales. So I've known Michael for a little while. We've been working together in our Partners Group. When you meet someone and they're not the front of the conversation, but when they speak, you want to listen because it's always packed with wisdom. In fact, at the end of last year, we did something fun in our Partners Group and we gave out awards within the group, and Michael was named the Wisdom Whisperer, and just for that reason, sits back, observes the conversation, but when he speaks, it's packed with wisdom. Now, Michael talks about the three areas that he focuses on his life way beyond martial arts and actually how he has used his martial arts business as a vehicle to grow wealth and build generational wealth, and talks about investment strategies and things that he does after that. So, you're going to love it.
April 20, 202213 min
130 – How To Attract More Adult Martial Arts Students
If you’re struggling to attract adult martial arts students through your paid ad campaigns, try this instead. IN THIS EPISODE: Do this before running adult martial arts ad campaigns How to cross-promote martial arts to adults Upsell to students without sleaziness The perfect time to cross-promote to adults Do this if your adult ad campaigns aren't working 9 Conversation starters that lead to more martial arts students And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to attract more adult students. How to get more adult students on the mats, and what to do if your adult ad campaigns aren't working. This is a conversation and question that comes up often, and we are going to dive into the details, and I'm going to give you a simple, simple solution on how to do this. You're probably going to kick yourself when you hear it, but it's that simple. But in order to execute the simple strategy, we're going to have to take a bit of a broader approach and give some context about how the whole strategy works and fits together. Make sure you hang around to the end, and I'll share with you a really cool PDF resource with nine different conversation starter strategies that can elevate this process and get you much better results. All right, let's jump in. Not sure what this is like for you, but most successful owners that we work with, and the school owners that have got a fair amount of solid student base, don't really struggle to attract the kids. It's more a question of how do we get more adults training and how do we get more adults on the mat? Now, there is the rare case that this is in reverse. Right? Depending on what type of club you run and what type of style you have, what type of style you teach, maybe your focus is 100% adults and not so much kids. There's obviously the rare occasion. But generally speaking, this is the case. What do you do if you want to attract new adult students? We talk about this in our Partners group often. And typically when we start working with school owners and we start looking at the online process of how we going to attract the right students, increase the signups and retain more members, it's easy to lean towards, the adults is the student base that we need, and so if we want to go run ad campaigns we want to run directly for adults. Now this could be both good, but also not so good, because if you've never actually run ad campaigns before, running it for adults is way harder. Right? It is way harder to run ad campaigns for adults. If you haven't mastered the process yet, then it would be a bit harder. It's always better to start with what's easier, what works, which is campaigns for the kids, and then graduate yourself up to running ads for adults. The only reason for this is just getting used to and accustomed to the system. Well, how do we pick the right ads? What is the right media, the right images? How do we split test them? How do we make sure that we pick the right one so that we reduce our cost per lead? And then how does the whole follow up work? Now, most school owners like yourself don't really have a problem signing people up when they show up and when they're in front of you, but you've still got to get them to show up. Working that whole process of making sure that all the leads that you speak to are actually going to show up, and you can take the whole process from there...
July 16, 202214 min
133 – Should You Have Prices Listed On Your Martial Arts Website? (Round 2)
Here’s my attempt to end the age-old debate about the pros and cons of having your club fees listed on your martial arts website. N THIS EPISODE: The honesty vs dishonesty debate about prices on martial arts websites The pros and cons of listing prices on your martial arts website Getting the best results from your martial arts website How an irresistible martial arts offer boosts your conversions When is it actually a good idea to list prices on your martial arts website? And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here . TRANSCRIPTION Hey, it's George Fourie. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today, I'm going to revise one of my first podcast episodes discussing, should you have your prices listed on your martial arts website? Should you have your club fees listed? If you don't, what should you have listed? And if you do, how does that impact your sales and your conversions? And if you don't, are you just hiding stuff and being all weird? All right. Let's dive in. Make sure you stick to the end, and I'll share with you a cool resource that you can have on your website that boosts your conversions and helps you sign up more students. All right. Let's dive in. Having your prices listed on your martial arts website, should you do it or shouldn't you do it? I see this topic come up often, and I just dug through the archives of the Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast, and I actually covered this on episode number four , my fourth podcast. It was 2016. And I wanted to have a look if my stance has changed on it. And I could say, "No, it hasn't," but I want to give some context to what that stance was and where the exceptions to the rules are. First up, short answer, is it a good idea to have your prices listed on your website? No, it's not a good idea. Now, what I've been noticing over the years is people get really weird when you say that. People go the whole honesty and dishonesty route. People get really angry about this, that if you don't put your prices on your website, you're hiding stuff, and you're not being ethical, and you're being sleazy. And it gets really nasty, which I find really odd and weird. I want to explain the psychology of why it's actually not a good idea to have your prices listed on your website, and it's actually the reverse. If you don't have your prices on your website, you are serving your potential prospects way better. You are able to establish way more value around what it is that you provide. Let's dive into a few scenarios. As a recap of what is discussed in episode four, in the younger version, I had no beard and maybe the camera's a bit better. Hopefully, I've got this podcast thing a bit smoother, more relaxed, and better after a couple of years down. All right, let's just cover one scenario. You've got a mom sitting in front of her computer. She's thinking about enrolling her child in martial arts. In context, she's never done martial arts before, she doesn't understand it, somebody might have told her it's a good idea, somebody might have mentioned it and said, "The benefits are X, Y, Z," or she's done some Googling and researching, or maybe she's got a child that's being bullied. She's kind of figured out that martial arts could be a good thing for her child, but she knows nothing about it.
January 6, 202211 min
124 – Free Trials Vs Paid Trials For Martial Arts: Which Works Better Between Facebook & Google?
Even if you’re biased like I am between free or paid martial arts trials, this might make you reconsider where one might be more useful than the other. IN THIS EPISODE: What’s the purpose of a trial class anyways? Why what happens before the actual enquiry matters When to use a free trial and a paid trial offer? Intent-based vs Interruption-based marketing What differences to consider when marketing on Facebook and Google And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here. TRANSCRIPTION Hey, George Fourie here. Welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ business podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be talking about a martial arts marketing age-old dilemma: free trials versus paid trials, which one should you be using in your social media, in your Facebook ads, your Google ads, your promotions, and so forth. So, I'm going to break it down, and the answer is actually not as straightforward as you might think, especially if you're getting good results with free trials or paid trials, and you are kind of biased towards the other. So, there's actually a place for both. So, I'm going to break down where you could potentially use the paid trial, the free trials, and a bit of the science and the logic behind why you should be using it, at which area in your marketing. Stick around to the end, I'll share with you how to, where you can download our free resource, ‘The Ultimate Facebook™ guide for Martial Arts Schools', that will help you create your next winning ad. Alright, let's jump in. So, before we dive into details of free versus paid trials, I think it's important to just discuss why a trial in the first place? I mean, we're not in the business of free and paid trials, right? We're in the business of signing up students; and if a student stays with us for one year to two years to three years, I mean, that's really where things are at, right? So, why not just go for the marriage proposal straight-up, instead of the drink at the bar? Well, it's really just that, right? We kind of need to start with the drink at the bar. So, what is the drink at the bar? Well, we can use a different analogy for that. But you get what I'm saying, right? So, free trial, paid trial, which is going to work best? Well, it's going to depend on what happens before the trial. So, how are they actually entering into your world? And where are the inquiries coming from? So, let's take the first example. Let's say somebody walks into your school, they walk into your school, and the conversation goes, “Hey, I'm, you know, been walking past the school and had a look at your website and had a look at- I've seen your posts on social media, and I wouldn't mind giving it a try and seeing if it will work for me.” So, what do you do in that situation? Well, you could present your paid trial, if that's something that you do. But what if a person like that is not keen to pay something just yet? And they just want to try it out? And maybe it's not the money at all, it's just, they just want to give it a go. They're just not sure, right? What would you do in that scenario? Is it- should you be enforcing a paid trial? You could… or why not just give away a free trial and let them try it out, right? Because whether they, I mean, the hard work is done – they've actually walked through the door. From there, you know, how they get to being a member, is really up to you and your sales process, and we'll talk a bit more about that as well. In a sense of that, that's where a free trial could work great, right? Somebody walked in, and they just wanted to give it a try..
August 29, 202136 min
120 – 3 Martial Arts Photo Mistakes That’s Hurting Your Brand And Reputation
If a picture says 1,000 words, what are yours saying about your martial arts school? Martial Arts photographer, Francine Schaepper, shares 3 pitfalls to avoid that could tarnish your brand and reputation. IN THIS EPISODE: The costly mistake that school owners make with random photos Why use a vision board to strategize your martial arts photos How to create attention grabbing martial arts photos for Facebook ads Forget ‘message to market match’ – think ‘photo to market match’ The Power of Pictures: How to use them to communicate your message And more *Need help growing your martial arts school? Learn More Here . TRANSCRIPTION There's a lot of mistakes you can make, and we're not talking about technical mistakes here. You know, the how to, that's a whole different story. But the main mistake that I see is that a lot of martial arts schools who are owners don't have a plan when it comes to photography, they have no plan. There's very little purpose behind when they take photos or how to take photos. And then also because of the first two, then there's no message, or there's a wrong message which can really greatly damage your school and your image really. GEORGE: Hey, it's George here from martialartsmedia.com and welcome to the Martial Arts Media™ business podcast. So, I got a repeat guest with me today. Good day Francine. FRANCINE: Hello. GEORGE: Hello Francine. Francine Schaepper from Martial Arts Photography International . We've got a great episode lined up for you today, and we're going to talk about the three martial arts photo mistakes that's hurting your brand. So photos that you might take in the school, training, photos that you're using for ads and promotions and three mistakes that you should avoid and how it could be tarnishing your reputation and your brand. We've also got a great download with this episode with a short little instructional video. So I'll give you all the details on how you can get that. But first up, if you haven't listened to podcast one or two, you can go listen to that and get the full story about Francine. I think we spoke a lot about that and a bunch of other things, but for now, Francine, if you could give us just a two minute background, who you are and we'll go from there. FRANCINE: Okay. I'm Francine. I am a martial artist of 20 years myself. So I've been training in different styles, it's kind of my passion. Well, it's not kind of my passion, it is my passion and I am a professional photographer as well. So at some point it merged. I created my niche and I've been taking photos for martial arts schools for, I don't know, maybe six, seven years. Yeah. I've got thousands and thousands of photos of martial arts and martial artists in my database. Yeah, I love doing it. So it's an awesome industry to be working in. GEORGE: Okay. So let's talk about photos. Now, depending on the state of the union, the state of your country within martial arts where you're at, what I'm referring to is whether you've got restrictions or lockdown or so forth, chances are you might not have a professional photographer on hand that could take photos and a lot of people are just doing it themselves. I mean, smartphones are so good. Actually Francine and I created a course, the Smartphone Photography Masterclass , which is all about taking photos with a phone. So phones are really … it's kind of all you need, but it's not just about point and click, right? There's a lot of things that … it's the little things that can make the difference. And I think what we want to really talk about today is those things that you've got to look out for and avoid. So three mistakes, what are the three top mistakes that you see martial arts school owners make when taking photos that's tarnishing the brand and reputation? FRANCINE: There's a lot of mistakes you can make, and we're not talking about technical mistakes here. You know, the how to, that's a whole different story. But the main mistake that I see is that a lot of martial arts schools who are owners don't have a plan when it comes to photography, they have no plan. There's very little purpose behind when they take photos or how to take photos. And then also because of the first two, then there's no message, or there's a wrong message, which can really greatly damage your school and your image really...
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