Question for Teachers and Longtime Students

[Heruka]

I would one day like to teach kung fu as a profession, but one concern always arises everytime i start making steps towards that goal. Can i teach kung fu and make enough income to survive without "selling out" as they say to bring in enough students? I am a serious kung fu practitioner and i cant really see myself effectively teaching more than a handful of students each class without sacrificing the attention they deserve and need to progress. The only way i could see it working is to have many classes each day filtering the student base through only handfuls at a time.

But really how many students are needed at a reasonable price? Say you have 60 students taught at different times throughout the day and on rotating days of the week and you charge a reasonable $50 a month. Thats only $3000 a month. Subtract rent for your studio and you arent left with much. So tell me, how do you sifus out there survive on just teaching?

[norther practitioner]

Look at rents around where you are...

figure in how much you need to make to live.

Insurance.

Other overheads (gear, ads, etc.)

Also think:
100 students divided into 6-8 classes is still a good ratio.

[dwid]

Be a man.

Get a real job and teach in your free time.

;)

[Heruka]

Man 100 students sounds like a lot, but i guess if thats all i do all day, its not too bad. Classes could be about 1.5 hours with 10 or 12 students in each class. That gives me 5 or 6 pairs to work with which seems manageable to give them enough attention. that is still close to a 9 or 10 hour work day. The most i could see myself charging per month would be about $75. I have been to classes that charged $100 or more a month and i feel that such a price would really prevent some dedicated students from be able to study.

[Heruka]

dwid, i hear ya man. But there are teachers out there that do it full time and im just trying to see how thats possible without sacrificing quality. I mean, is being somewhat famous and traveling and doing seminars for $500 a pop the only way to do it?

[SanSoo Student]

Around my area karate classes and tkd classes are around 60-75 bucks a month, and then most school let you come as many classes as you want since the fee is so much.

Of course I don't train around my area, I train in Muay Thai mostly now.

Hope my info helps.:(

[dwid]

I was just busting your chops, man.

I think the problem is that good martial arts teachers will almost always be underpaid. You can probably do okay, but you're not going to be wealthy, and you'll probably be hard-pressed to set enough aside to ultimately retire comfortably.

It sucks, but the financially successful teacher who hasn't sacrificed quality is by far the exception to the rule.

[stimulant]

if your good and have a good reputation and good kun-fu then YES!


my shifu has only ever taught kung-fu for many years (partly as the communists banned him from getting a job many years ago when he was in china).

he makes an ok living, not bad in fact, and he certainly hasnt sold out!

[Liokault]

So does anyone have any idea just what the rent would be like on a hall/studio that could be used as a full time training place in north america? obviously it will vary alot ut how much are we looking at having to make just to cover the rent?

[Cachete]

my sifu teaches in his house :P

[Arhat of Fury]

In most case(unless your totally corporate) you will teach for the love of teaching and not for the cash. And usually have a wife that works full time. Unless you teach an abundance of kids.

[norther practitioner]

We were paying 3850/month at our old place....

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by norther practitioner
We were paying 3850/month at our old place.... dayyyum! :eek:

[TenTigers]

The reality if teaching is this:
there is a difference between being commercial and being proffessional. You don't have to sacrifice quality.

There will always be an inner circle of hardcore, dedicated students-those are the ones-others will come and go, they will pay your rent=face it, I have students who are dedicated and can't pay-they have a scholarship-you give a little, don't be greedy, it's not about the money-that will come-ONLY if you have good exciting classes, and a well planned curriculum.
Students quit for two reasons(barring they move, get sick and die, or lose their job) they are either overwhelmed, or "underwhelmed" meaning it's too challenging, or not challenging enough. You have to work with them to decide their individual needs and make it work-I give mini-privates, no charge to get them ccaught up, or I work on special things just for them, whatever works. They need to know that you care. read that again, say it out loud.
EVERY STUDENT HAS A SIGN AROUND THEIR NECK THAT READS,
"LET ME KNOW YOU CARE" otherwise, they will slowly drift out and leave.
Here's another rule: 10+1 =for every one person who voices a complaint, ten others said nothing and left.
You are the last to know. Then it's too late to do damage control.
Listen to your students, check your ego and hear what they want.
That doesn't mean give them Ninja parties, or no stance training, but keep them motivated. Remember those few hardcore guys (you are probably one of these) are self=motivated, and are there for the sheer love of Gung-Fu, no matter what-but you need to teach everyone. Sometimes the ones who aren't dedicated in the beginning can develop into your core students, but if you don't work with them, it will never happen.
A hundred students don't walk in the door in a week. As you sign up one, three leave. Lock the back door. 30 students at 100 a month is 3000 dollars a month-minus rent, electricity,heat in the winter, AC in the summer-there is maybe a two week window when you don't use either-don't bank on it.=phone, yellow pages (go small-these ads are very expensive and can put you under=fast) any supplies, insurance, your initial set-up, and whatever else comes up.
Start small, don't bite off more than you can chew-teach part-time at a dance studio, get a student base, THEN open up. That way you start with students and you won't close next month, when all these bills come in at once. Oh, did you remember your own rent, car, insurance, utilities,..um food? You do eat, don't you?
Am I scaring you? I hope not. I have had my school for about 20 years or so, and there is nothing I would rather do. I love going to "work". And I don't have to worry about putting anything away for my retirement-'cause us Gung-Fu guys teach until we drop dead at 120!
Find the guys who are doing it and making it work-model them-(that means copy) Tat Mau-Wong, Yang Jwing-Ming, Steve LaVallee-he teaches Kenpo-BUT-his guys are good, they work hard-his Black Belts go through months of bootcamp before they test-three mile running, situps, pushups, they are not a belt factory, and he has three schools with about 500 students in each one-do the math. He's not driving a rambler.
Good luck, call me if you need to.-Rik

[mortal]

Seminars!

[norther practitioner]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
dayyyum! :eek:


That's why it is our "old" place....

[TenTigers]

empty cup-nice idea..but.........do NOT do this!!!!
I also thought this would be great. I'll buy a house, gut the first floor and make it a kwoon, and live upstairs with my family. Perfect. um, nope. perfect recipe for disaster. I don't know how long you've been into Gung-Fu, or teaching, but from experience-(over 30 yrs in MA, over 20 yrs teaching) there are alot of flakes that sign up at Martial Arts schools. Some are psychopaths, some are violent, some are just plain weird-(did you ever look at the people who go to Rennaisance Fairs, or Star Trek conventions?)
You do NOT want these people coming to your house. What if they have an outburst or other incident where you need to expell them from your school? Do you really want all these strangers coming to your house? Yeah, it sounds nice, but unless you are going to hand pick a select small group of disciples, I would think twice.

[GLW]

You need to do a serious business analysis...

First, realize that your mainstay of group classes only happen at night after working hours.

People tend to NOT come to classes on Friday, Sunday, and some are very picky about Saturday - you need to know what times work for people.

So, with a Mon-Thur - 4 evenings a week for major classes.

Now you have to figure in what time classes can start.

20 years ago in my city, you could start classes around 6 PM - people could make it by then from work...

Now, it is closer to 7 PM. Now you CAN do kids classes earlier. So you have to determine what a workable class schedule is

In reality, you have time for a maximum of 2 adult classes in an evening and at that you are teaching until 9 or 9:30.

The next group is kids. They are in school until 4 so you can have a kids class that begins around 4:30 PM until 5:30 or 6. If you do the thing of a bus and pick them up from school, you can charge more and increase students...but you have the insurance expense and the expense of a van.

Daytime....you can only get those that don't work - retirees, housewives, people that work nights... Limited population.

You have to be able to teach something they can do like Taijiquan.

Add all of that together and you get a maximum number of class hours per week.

Now you have rent, utilities, phone, advertising, and INSURANCE (trust me, you need insurance).

You also have to consider the space you have....

If you do the math and need an average of 20 people in a class...but your facility is crowded with 15, you will fail from the beginning.

You should NEVER count in private lessons in your calcualations on income. Those are for more money but they should be considered extra...something you can't depend on.

When you do all of the financials and - if you still want to do it, you then have to decide how you handle payment - contracts or none, refund policies, etc...

You have to keep the business aspect completely separate from the teaching aspect. Quality of teaching has nothing to do with whether or not a person paid their fees....

Finally, the realities of the world is that you pretty much have to have an easy class and then a die hard class to stay open. You can't be commercially viable teaching everyone like they will be inheritors of the style.

It is VERY difficult to make big money teaching.

[shaolinboxer]

Deciding to teach full time is running a small business.

So besides being a kung fu teacher you also become:

Bookkeeper
Promotions Specialist
Memebership Manager
Customer Service Agent
Quality Control Manager
Janitor
Secretary
Lease Holder
Liable Party
Construction Worker/Contractor
Supplies Manager
Utilities Manager
Security Guard

And then you have to be in the right physical condition and state of mind to teach all of your classes.

Perhaps if you are interested in teaching you might become a full time school teacher? You can run after school programs for kids and / or adults and get the summers off for training and traveling. Physical Education can be a great career, and you can teach all the way up to the Doctoral level. You'd be amazed at how similar teaching martial arts can be to phys ed if you develop the right kind of program. And if you teach in colleges you can actually offer full courses in your martial art of interest. I recommend this route because it's working out really well for me. It's much more financially beneficial than running a small private school full time, there's less liability and no overhead. And did I mention the three months vacation every single year? I am in the process of getting a master's degree in phys ed and my focus through the entire endeavor has been the martial arts. Physical educators really respect the arts and are looking for more of us to join the cause.

[Heruka]

Lots of nice responses guys thanks. I wasnt looking to make big money as some of you seemed to think, i just wanted to see how it was possible to do it for a living...having enough to get by relatively comfortably. Without making some pretty big sacrifices, it seems like it would be pretty rough.

dwid,.....i know you were. :)

[dwid]

empty cup-nice idea..but.........do NOT do this!!!!

I don't think teaching out of your house is too bad an idea. My original Bagua instructor, Dr. Fred Wu, taught out of his house for many years until he passed away.

He had a way of dealing with the losers. They didn't practice, and didn't really retain material, so he'd keep teaching them the same thing week after week. You'd be amazed at how quickly someone gets tired of paying for the same lesson over and over. It actually got fun after a while guessing at how long some of the new students would last.

[Gargoyle again]

Extremely important!

Don't go in with the assumption that you will have control of how many students to teach or how many will be willing to join your class. I have seen a couple of schools go under because they just "naturally" assumed that students would be beating down their door to learn a martial art. They ended up not being able to attract even a minimum number of core students to pay their overhead costs.

Don't project your love of the martial arts onto the general public. Truth is, >99% of the people out there don't have the slightest desire to join a martial arts school.

Assume from the beginning that you will need to scrape and claw to even get a half-dozen students that stick around for more than a few months. It will take years to build a core student/instructor base and establish yourself. Then, if you are really good and really fortunate, you might reach the point where you can set a number on how many students you take in and teach.

From what I've seen, maybe 1 out of 10 people that sit in on a class or try out a class will stay to write a check and join. 1 out of 10 of those will still be around in 6 months. 1 out of those remaining 10 will ever stick around to become a senior student or black belt level.

I came from such a school, where when I joined it was very successful with multiple locations and we had to actually turn away students for lack of room/time available. Over the years it dwindled and faded (for many various reasons). We limped along for a couple of years with only 3 or 4 people in our group, then faded off into the mists of time.

[Losttrak]

Good luck. True martial artists (people with talent and drive) are few and far between. It takes someone who is willing to put the art above everything else and train... a rare thing from what I have seen. For myself, I have a job and teach on the side.

Take a look around. All the great masters had a dream of training great martial artists... Over time as people come and go and after all their work is lost (people moving away, quitting, injuries) teachers start to give less and less. Soon, they are content to standardize their curriculum and rake in the money. Its sad but true. With all candidity, I would have been better off meeting my old teacher about 10-20 years earlier.

[yu shan]

You should have certainly learned from the quality of information given here.

Maybe try starting small and test the waters. I`ve seen too many new teachers run out and get head up in debt.

I have a full time day job (27 years) pays the bills, provides insurance etc. I teach at night, two hour classes, mon thru thur. I rent space, low overhead with no headaches(no bills). The money I make is extra for my family, really helps. My students are happy and with few drop outs. One tip, get a few students well versed, so they can help you with teaching newbies.

I say go for it, and good luck.

[TenTigers]

Go for it
live with passion
never let other people's failures and fears prevent you from building your own personal monument

I love what I do. It is my passion. When you die, do you want to have any regrets? Not me. I don't want to look back at my life thinking what I could have been. Do it.
ok, here's one for ya...people do different things for different reasons. Some peopel become cops to help others, some do it for the badge and the gun. Some peopel become doctors to heal, others do it for the money, Some people become Martial Arts teachers for the power trip, others for the sheer love of their art.
If this is you, then do it. The world needs more teachers who teach from their heart, who have a love and desire to kindle that fire in others. I have been teaching for over 20 years. I have adults come up to me in the street to tell me that I taught them when they were kids and that I gave them so much confidence, that it affected their lives in such a positive way. I have had parents intears, thanking me for teaching their children. You touch people's lives. You have the opportunity to make a positive impact on someone's life-FOREVER. You get to give back. Do you have any idea how big that is? This is on a pure spiritual level, nevermind making a living. This is way beyond that. I touch people's lives every day.
Is this what you want? Can you put aside the macho bull**it, the posing, the posturing, the tough guy attitude, the need for respect, or whatever, and teach from your heart? The by all means, you have to do this. If you are this person, then there are far too few of you in this world. Make a difference in someone's life.

[yu shan]

Absolutely 100% agree with you TenTigers "Make a difference in someone`s life" works for me!

[Liokault]

But making a differance to some kids life wont pay the electric bill!

And can you not make a differance in life working a normal jon days and teaching at night, while at the same time not worrying if you can pay utilites?