Free Library for Jiu-Jitsu Academy Owners

Free articles and a ten-phase book on opening, running, and growing a Jiu-Jitsu academy. Pricing, retention, curriculum, systems, and the owner's own head.

• The Lesson
  Eight pieces have walked from the whole curriculum down to the dials inside a single rep. This is the bottom: the lesson, the smallest unit in which all of it i
• Blending Teaching Methods
  Blending Teaching Methods: The Most Effective Way to Reach the Whole Room
• Practice Design
  Inside every teaching method there is a second set of decisions that usually get made by habit instead of on purpose: how you actually run the reps. Whole or in
• The Teaching Methodologies
  There is more than one way to teach Jiu-Jitsu, and most coaches only use one. A tour of the methods you can actually put to work on the mat, what each is, who i
• The Constraints Led Approach
  Everyone in Jiu-Jitsu seems to have a position on CLA. Almost nobody has said plainly what it is. So let us stop arguing and answer the question properly.
• Mapping the System
  A system lives partly in your head. A map is what gets it out, so you and your students can follow it through the noise.
• Curriculums and Systems: Understanding the Difference
  The four methods answer one question: what order do you teach in. There is a second question, and it is the one that separates a good curriculum from a real sys
• The Four Types of Curriculum
  Linear, rotating, flow, and positional. What each one is, how it works, and how each holds up against what we actually know about how humans build skill.
• You Have Classes Not a Curriculum
  Walking in and asking what everyone wants to work on today feels advanced. It is quietly one of the biggest reasons your students leave. The case for having a p
• Never Negotiate Your Price
  Every deal I ever cut, I regretted. The person who talks you down is telling you exactly who they are before they have paid you a dollar. Here is why holding yo
• Your Competition Team Should Not Cost You Money
  Most owners treat cornering at tournaments as an unpaid labor of love. It is one of the best investments you can make in the business. Here is how to price it s
• The Money Sitting on Your Shelves
  What inventory tracking is, why running out and over-buying are the same mistake, and the monthly count that ties your shelves to your bank account.
• The Twenty Dollars Nobody Wrote Down
  What a cash log is, why it protects your staff before it protects your money, and the reconciliation that ties your drawer to your bank.
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 10 Grand Opening
  • Defining your brand identity and messaging, and keeping them consistent everywhere
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 9 Operations Planning
  • Staff and hiring, starting with the front desk, and classifying people correctly
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 8 Equipment Sourcing
  • Mats: tile versus roll-out, the vinyl cover option, wall mats, and local versus direct-from-overseas sourcing
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 7 Buildout
  • Who manages the buildout, and the tradeoffs of each option
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 6 Floor Plan
  • The supporting spaces around the mat, starting with ADA and accessibility, then lobby, bathrooms and changing rooms, viewing area, pro shop, refreshments, off
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy Chapter 5 Lease Negotiation
  • The provisions worth negotiating: rent structure (gross versus triple net and CAM, including the fixed-CAM trap), the use clause, recorded restrictions that s
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy Chapter: 4 Site Selection
  • How members actually find academies, and why that drives where you should be
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 3 Financing and Budgeting
  • The financing options that actually exist, from savings and SBA loans to CDFI lenders, equipment financing, investors, and personal credit
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 2 Forming the Company
  • The S-corporation election, and whether it will save you money
• Opening a Jiu-Jitsu Academy: Chapter 1 The Business Plan
  • The seven questions your pre-launch plan must answer, from market to when you can pay yourself
• The Bi Weekly Pricing Model
  A look at the billing model we use with the academies we work with, and at my own. How it steadies an academy’s cash flow, makes membership easier on the member
• The ADHD Academy Owner
  Why so many academy owners are ADHD, what the wiring actually does, and how to build the structure that lets it serve you instead of derail you.
• Contracts Were the Wrong Default
  On member contracts, the old industry norm I followed for ten years, and why I now believe they were always the wrong tool for the job.
• The Business Plan Your Academy Actually Needs
  What a real growth plan actually is, why most academy owners are operating without one, and how to walk away from sixty minutes with one of your own.
• How to Host a Seminar and Actually Make Money
  The operator's view on negotiating, timing, marketing, and staging a seminar that produces real revenue and builds the culture of your academy at the same time.
• What Every Cancellation is Trying to Tell You
  Cancellations are the richest source of feedback an academy ever generates, and almost no owner extracts the value from them. This is a piece about how to handl
• How Systems Replace You
  What a standard operating procedure actually is, the mechanism by which it lets an academy outgrow its owner, why most owners resist building them, and a comple
• How I Broke the Plateau
  Most academy owners do not fail. They get stuck somewhere between five and fifteen thousand a month, in a place that is just stable enough to keep them there an
• The Seven Phase Growth Operating System
  What actually happens in each phase of building a durable academy, why the phases run in this order, how marketing and investment scale as you grow, and how to
• The Loneliest Job in Jiu-Jitsu
  Most academy owners spend their entire careers solving the same problems alone, in private, convinced the struggle is theirs to carry by themselves. It does not
• The Three Financial Statements Every Academy Owner Should Be Reading
  A working tour of the documents that tell you what your business is actually doing, why owners avoid them, and how to read them without needing an accounting de
• The Quiet Good Jiu-Jitsu Does
  The deepest argument anyone can honestly make about why this practice matters, and the one piece of it almost no one names out loud.
• You Are Almost Certainly Underpriced
  Why most academies undercharge, who you are actually competing with, and what it takes to charge what your academy is worth.
• Affiliation: Need or Want?
  What twenty years across three modes of affiliation taught me, and the question every academy owner should ask themselves honestly today.
• Asking for the Sale
  Why most academy owners will not, and why the prospect needs you to.
• The Intro Class
  The 20 minutes that decide whether a prospect signs up, and whether they stay.
• The First 5 SOPs to Write for Your Academy
  What standard operating procedures are, why they decide whether you can scale, and the five every academy owner should write first.
• The 9 KPIs to Track Every Week
  What they are. What they mean. Where each one lives in your academy.