| Friend,
As promised, this week I'm going to break down the pros and cons of running a minimally staffed dojo, and also for running a dojo with a larger staff.
Let's start this off by tackling the pros of running a minimally staffed dojo. And by minimally staffed, I'm pretty much talking about the plan I outline in Small Dojo Big Profits.
This basically amounts to having a staff that consists of you, someone to work in the office while you're on the floor, and an assistant instructor. Typically, both the office assistant and the teaching assistant will be part-time in this scenario (although it's easier to keep them in your employ if you can afford to hire them full-time).
So what are the benefits of running this sort of set-up in your school?
For starters, the most obvious benefit is the money you'll save on payroll. For a small dojo, payroll is going to be your biggest expense after rent. By running a dojo with minimal staff you'll save thousands of dollars a month in salaries and wages.
The natural result of saving all that money is that you can take more profit home each month. That also means you can run your school with fewer students, and still make a decent living.
And it means you can work fewer hours in your dojo. Less overhead and fewer students means less classes that you need to teach. And, fewer students means less administrative work that needs to be done each day.
As I said, I set up my second dojo to be the ultimate minimally staffed, low maintenance school. I only taught four days a week, and I only worked in the dojo about 25-30 hours a week.
I managed this by having a part-time office person (my wife) and two assistants to help me out on the floor (one for my after-school camp, and one for my fitness classes).
For me, this is the perfect set-up - but it's not like it doesn't come with its drawbacks. Tomorrow, I'll share what those drawbacks are, and then in the next two emails I'll tackle the pros and cons of having more staff.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
P.S. - Something that bears mentioning is that you almost always have to go through a phase where you're running a minimally staffed dojo when you're first starting out. So, it just makes sense to learn how to do things the Small Dojo Big Profits way. Then, later on if you want to transition to having more staff, you can do so if you decide that's the route you want to go. | 