Years ago when I first started teaching martial arts classes on my own, the first thing I did was write out a detailed curriculum for each belt rank.

These days, if I were to start all over again, the first thing I would do would be to write out a detailed marketing plan... then after I filled my school with students, that's when I'd write out a detailed curriculum. :)

Now, the reason I say this is because I see martial art school owners and would-be school owners make this mistake all the time - putting curriculum design and other considerations ahead of revenue generation. 

When you're starting a business, you simply don't have the luxury of focusing on anything else BUT revenue generation... not if you want to survive and grow.

However, once you get over what I call "the start-up hump", then it's definitely going to be time to start looking at your curriculum. Definitely. 

Because as your classes grow and your school grows, you simply cannot be disorganized... not if you want your school to continue to survive and grow.

There are several reasons for this, but I'll speak to the most important ones here:

1. Retention - I spoke about this in the most recent email series I did on retention. Consider that, at least in your student's eyes, you are being paid to keep them interested. So if you want to keep your students around for the long haul, you have to be on your game, each and every time you step out on the floor.  

I know, I know - in (insert origin country of your martial art here), students don't have to be entertained to maintain their interest and focus on training. Well, think about your audience - you probably don't live in country "X", so you need to be aware that your students likely expect to be entertained and motivated to stick with their training. Speaking of which, that brings me to...

2. Boredom - Boredom is the bane of student retention. Bore your students and without a doubt, you will lose them. But as they say, variety is the spice of life, and it's also the spice of your classroom. So, by having an organized curriculum, you can ensure that your lesson plans are varied and consistently NOT boring.

I can remember back when I started doing traditional martial arts in the mid-eighties. Classes were incredibly boring, and it's only because I was such a nerd for martial arts that I stuck with it. Every day, I knew exactly what we were going to do in class... warm-up and do calisthenics, practice basics for 30 minutes, do kata or poomse, and spar.

There simply was no variety in training, and I think that had a lot to do with the high turnover rate and low attendance in my instructors' classes. It's not at all that the quality of instruction wasn't high, it's just that doing the same things the same way week after week after week is bound to cause a student to get bored eventually.

I determined that I wouldn't subject my own students to the same, and did everything I could to spice up my classes without going full-on McDojo (you never go full-on McDojo). And, it worked - I eventually was able to get my attrition at under 3%, partially because my classes were always fun and exciting. So, having an organized curriculum can ensure that you don't bore your students to tears and lose them in that critical first year of training.

3. Classroom Management - As your classes grow, you're going to find it harder and harder to manage your students. Traditionally, the answer to this issue (and it's a good problem to have) is to either add more classes and split them up into smaller groups, or to hire more staff to help you manage your classes.

Either way, it's expensive to do this. If you add more classes, eventually you're going to have to hire someone to help you anyway, because the more classes you teach each week, the less time you have to do other things (like marketing to keep those classes full). 

And, of course hiring more staff is going to have an impact on your pocketbook, and it's often a challenge for owners of growing schools to afford even one extra instructor on staff.

However, by segmenting and organizing your curriculum properly, you can avoid having to split classes or hire staff too soon. In fact, I used to manage classes of 25 kids and multiple ranks myself! And there's no way I could have done it without having a properly organized curriculum

So, there you have it - three very good reasons why you MUST have an organized curriculum in your school. Now, over the next week or so, I'm going to share some strategies with you on how to more effectively organize your curriculum. 

Hopefully, these strategies will help you grow your dojo and make your life a whole heck of a lot easier. Stay tuned, because I know you're going to get a lot of benefit from this email series.