So this week we're finishing up the series on why dojo owners fail, and I've been talking about marketing mistakes. Monday I wrote to you about inconsistent marketing, yesterday I wrote about sending the wrong marketing message...

And today I'm going to write about unprofessional marketing.

The DIY Dojo Owner

When I started my first school, I had absolutely no extra money for anything. I was starting from scratch, I was dead broke from working a string of minimum wage jobs, and I had a stack of debt a mile high.

So, I had to do everything myself. 

I wrote my own ads. I created my own fliers. I did the design for my own ads. I distributed my own marketing materials.

I also cleaned the school myself, did my own books, answered the phones and returned messages, taught every class on the schedule, did all the intros, and opened the school each afternoon and closed it late in the evening every night.

This was all while working a full-time job to support myself, so I could roll all my profits back in the school. And needless to say, I ran myself ragged doing it all.

In short, out of necessity I became a DIY dojo owner. I did EVERYTHING myself. And unforunately, it took me years to figure out that I didn't have to do everything myself...

...and it also took me years to discover that maybe I wasn't the best person to be handling some of those tasks in the first place, either.

How I Learned This The Hard Way

A few years back I took the Myers-Briggs personality test and found out I'm an INTJ, which stands for "Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judging." My personality type is rare, and what it boils down to is that I'm a bit of a tinkerer/polymath who is only saved from serial dilettantism by being driven to excel at the many interests I pursue.

In other words, I tend to hop from interest to interest and I try to master whatever interests me. Combine that with the typical martial arts instructor's control freak tendencies, and what you end up with is someone who thinks they can do everything better than everyone else around them in their business.

This makes for a business owner who is very poor at delegation and who tends to micro-manage. It also makes for one tired and stressed out individual. 

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having a strong work ethic and grinding to get what you want. However, the problem with not being good at delegating is that no one person can be an expert at every single task necessary to running a business.

And by not delegating or farming out those tasks that you suck at, you end up hurting your business and stunting your business growth.

Your Ugly-Ass Marketing Is Killing Your Dojo

I almost made that the title of this article today... honestly, I did. And it's because I see school owners making the same mistakes I once made all the time.

I look back at old ads and fliers I designed, and I cringe. After spending years (unnecessarily, I might add) learning the ins and outs of graphic design, web design, and ad copywriting, I can easily see the many mistakes I made with those ads from the past.

Quite frankly, they were ugly and unprofessional. And the only reason why I succeeded was because I did A LOT of marketing, and I knew how to do one thing right back then, which was putting together a decent offer.

Yet, I wonder what might have happened if I had spent some of those early profits on hiring a good graphic artist to help me design my ads. I'm sure my dojo would have grown that much faster, because the unprofessional look of my ads was hurting my school.

Why You Can't Get Away With Presenting An Unprofessional Image Today

Consider that everyone shops online now, and the first thing someone is going to see of your dojo is your online marketing, be it your website, Google + Business listing, Facebook page, or YouTube videos.

Also, consider that there are at least a half-dozen other school owners in your area who are competing for those same eyeballs. That means competition is fiercer than ever, and generally whoever gets the best marketing in front of the most eyeballs first, wins.

Which is why the level of professionalism that you present online matters so much more today than it did in the past. In years past when we only had a few marketing channels, all you had to do was buy the biggest ad in the local paper to win that war.

But not anymore. Now, you have to manage multiple marketing channels while looking like a champ doing it.

This is a hard truth that a lot of school owners refuse to face. Many of the school owners I meet are control freaks like me, who think they should be doing everything in their school themselves.

And I've seen that attitude kill more than one martial art school over the years.

There's No Excuse, Because Presenting A Professional Image Has Never Been Easier To Do

But now, we're living in an age where both online and offline marketing has become so competitive, that the quality level of small business design and image has been elevated considerably.

This is partially due to the digital revolution, because with increased computing power graphic design programs and software have become amazingly complex and powerful. What used to take a skilled commercial artist 10 hours to do by hand, a graphic designer can now do in under an hour.

That in turn has made graphic design cheap and ubiquitous. Meaning, anyone can afford to hire someone to elevate the level of professionalism in their ads, website, and other marketing materials.

Yet, the average school owner who comes to me struggling will present with the following: