Yep it’s that time of year again in the northern hemisphere…

Summer.

When summer arrives, the weather heats up and class numbers take a dive…

Kids are off school and on vacation with their families.

And for a lot of martial arts schools in the USA, June/July can be challenging financially to say the least. With class numbers dropping to about 60% of the regular attendance, many people are thinking… “Well, if I can just make it through these next couple of months, we should be good for the rest of the year.”

Intermittent cash flow is the biggest killer of small business.

So what can you do to help boost your bottom line during the summer months?

There are lots of things you can do to structure your karate school to have better cash flow, which is outside the scope of this post, but right now if you’re desperate and are thinking, “Man, I’d like to make an extra $1,000 this month!”, then listen up because here’s a surefire way to do exactly that. In fact you can make double or triple that if you get onto it early enough.

This is what I’m doing starting next week.

While many students are away, there are a bunch sitting around doing nothing but playing video games and driving their parents nuts. If you ask any parent, just about all of them are looking for things for their kids to do during the school break.

Hello Karate Summer Day Camp!

Basically I’m running a 3 day (4 hour per day from 9am – 1pm) summer camp. It’s at the dojo and with a week to go until it begins we have about 10 students signed up for it already at $90 per head. In your area maybe you can charge more?

Over the course of the 3 days my students will be learning things that we don’t usually cover in class, like judo, jujitsu, and fma stick fighting. The price includes equipment and is also open to friends who don’t do karate.

This is a great way to boost your June/July figures, get more students on your floor, help out the families who are looking for something to put their kids in, and teach your students some important skills that you don’t usually cover.

I can hear some instructors saying, “That’s fine for you if you know that extra stuff… but I don’t. So what can I teach?”

To those people I say, “You don’t have to be an expert in all of those areas. You just have to know more than your students, and be able to teach 3 hours or so on each topic. Heck, you could learn enough on YouTube this afternoon to teach for 3 days!”

There’s a famous saying that reflects this concept…

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s not to say that you should teach low quality garbage technique. I’m simply saying that you are an expert in the martial arts who has probably learned a few things outside of the regular things you teach. You can teach those things plus a few others you can learn online within a couple of hours… and *presto*, you have enough content for a 3 day summer camp.

Get to it! Before it’s too late…

– Jason