by Michael Heinz, SBG New Braunfels
“Don’t open a Jiu Jitsu School. It’s a horrible business.”
6 years ago, I was at a Henry Akins BJJ camp in Costa Rica. I was at a crossroads in my life and considering how I might pivot to something new. I had been a professor of Rhetoric living in South Korea for the last decade but was considering a move back to my country of origin, the US of A. Like a lot of people reading this, I was wondering about opening a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school. I did not know if I was right for the task or if the task was right for me. It’s a big question, and I asked a lot of people at the camp for their opinions. One smiley guy who would in time turn into a long-term friend looked at me square in the eyes and said, “Don’t open a Jiu Jitsu School. It’s a horrible business.” That smiley guy owned several restaurants and a BJJ gym, so his comment definitely stayed with me. It made me think about what my goals were and if this was the best way to achieve them. In the end, I opened a BJJ gym in New Braunfels, Texas; two weeks before the worldwide lockdown; and by the end of the year, I had over one hundred members and was in the black for all but the first couple of months.
I caught up with the smiley guy who gave me such authentic and appreciated advice, and he was genuinely surprised to see how successful my gym had become in such a short period of time. He gave praise as authentic as his concerns years ago. “Mike, that’s awesome! No one ever signed up for a Jiu Jitsu school by accident. You’re doing something right.”
I’m writing this blog to be of assistance to the many dudes and dudettes who have considered opening up a BJJ school but aren’t sure if it’s the right fit for you. I hope that my insights can help you avoid some of the challenges I faced, but moreover, I hope I can help guide you to creating the gym that is right for you and a frame of reference for thinking appropriately about your efforts.
Hobby Gym or Commercial Gym?
The first thing we need to figure out is what your goals and values are so that we can determine what you need to focus on to be successful and how you should define success.
Shoot from the gut when you answer these questions. Your first response will align with your baseline feelings on the subject.
1- Yes or No: I have a lot of money I want to invest into opening a gym.
2- Yes or No: I like dealing with people and I’m good at managing drama between people.
3- Yes or No: I don’t value having a lot of free time.
4- Yes or No: I prefer to measure success in numbers, not ideals.
5- Yes or No: I’m okay to be blamed when something isn’t my fault. I just want a chance to make things right.
6- Yes or No: Jiu Jitsu is a brotherhood. People should be able to drop in anywhere, anytime. Let’s just roll.
7- Yes or No: There are special communities that need Jiu Jitsu, and I’d like to be the one to give to them because they are currently underserved.
8- I’m very particular about the style of Jiu Jitsu I like.
9- I want to hire a bunch of people to do all the stuff I don’t want to do, and the only thing stopping me from doing so is money.
10- I’d like to escape the 9 to 5 because I value my personal freedom. Let me do what I want when I want.
Look back at your answers. If the first five questions had you hollering yes, you’re on your way to operating a commercial gym. If questions six through 10 appealed to you and gave you more deep feelings of “yes,” you are best suited to operating a hobby gym.
What’s a hobby gym?
A hobby gym is my catch-all term for gyms with a primary goal other than money. They can still make money, but most decisions are made to maximize the realization of non-monetary goals.
Here are some examples of hobby gyms:
-Owner has a day job that pays for his bills and feeds his dependents, but he thinks it’s important to teach BJJ for self-defense.
-A gym that provides a place for military veterans to train and deal with PTSD.
-A garage gym run by a guy who just likes to train and has a small group of tight-knit people there.
-A gym that specializes in competition and doesn’t have programs for non-competitors. It is very selective about who can join.
Hobby gyms can produce an income equal to an average salary or maybe a bit higher than that, but in general, they likely require supplemental income from some other source to take care of dependents. Hobby gyms are perfect for two types of people: people who value personal freedom and people who have a particular desire to serve others.
What’s a BJJ commercial gym?
A commercial gym is a business and, as such, measures its success strictly along monetary achievements. Profit drives the majority of the decisions at a commercial gym, but it does not mean all numbers matter. Most businesses profess certain values, and while some hardcore socialists may scoff at that idea, the majority of businesses I’ve observed close hand have certain goals beyond profit. My point is you can make money with your gym business and pursue goals non-monetary in nature, but the degree to which you pursue such will often lead you away from high profitability; and there’s nothing wrong with that as long as you are clear with your own assessment of performance markers. If getting Jiu Jitsu to cops is a goal, make sure it’s tracked in a number you can measure change against and give it weight when comparing it to financial numbers.
That being said, a commercial gym is all about trackable performance goals and understanding consumers’ needs. Commercial gyms need to be adaptable and need to make money and sense. A commercial gym is most likely going to start as a small business and should be taken lightly in terms of the effort required for liftoff. If your goal is to work less, don’t become a small business owner. Business is about leveraging investment of time and money to make more money than a salaried or hourly position is likely to make. You are leveraging time and money, so many dreamers without a lot of money will find themselves needing to leverage time or effort more so than money initially. Of course, you can leverage money to start a big business if you have it, but most BJJ folks are unlikely to be in that position. So don’t confuse the strategies of those with considerable means with the rest of us. A celebrity can start a cosmetic line and not need to leverage a lot of time or effort because they have lots of money they can leverage. All that being said, you will need to leverage some amount of money to get a commercial gym off the ground.
With some definitions taken care of, let’s delve into improving your gym. We’ll look at three things that will help any gym and three things unique to a commercial gym.
3 Things that will Improve a Hobby Gym or Commercial Gym
1- Curriculum and On-Ramping Beginners
A BJJ curriculum is a challenging topic because most gyms, for the sake of sales, will want to have an open enrollment process. Very few educational environments have to teach in this manner. You have to assume for any particular class that some students have not attended the previous class. This leads to something of a scattershot approach and reasonably leaves students confused about progress and the general progression of the art.
One solution would be to create start and stop dates like a college course and mandate attendance, previewing materials, and perhaps offering a reward for completion of a course. I’ve never done this or seen a BJJ school do this, but I think about it all the time because I’m fairly certain it would lead to greater improvement for students. The problem is, BJJ is a hobby for most, so mandated attendance is unlikely to be well received. Additionally, asking students to wait till a class begins would definitely lead to lower sales when new students come to try BJJ.
Alternatively, I think you have to embrace the scattershot nature of BJJ instruction but consider the value of having an on-ramp program for beginners. An on-ramp program will still have a scattershot quality in that every class will have to be accessible to a brand-new student, but the topics are limited to the fundamental building blocks of the art. Depending on the orientation of your school, that could vary greatly. My on-ramp program is called Foundations, and I describe it to new students as the best of BJJ for surviving an assault and potentially fighting back. Once students have attended a set number of on-ramp programs, they are invited to come to the advanced program, which is still scattershot in orientation in that students need not attend previous classes to attend any particular class. I tend to group class topics on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, so we might work on mount top for two weeks or one week. I’ve done one-month topics, and I think for serious competitors, it produces big gains, but for casual hobbyists, it tends to discourage them from attending if they’ve been out of the gym for vacation or something similar.
2-Schedule and Burnout Control
I often hear new gym owners suggest that the schedule is everything. This may appear so when you look at a well-established gym that can offer seven days a week and classes from dusk till midnight. However, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and when you start a gym, you are likely to coach the majority of the classes. Of course, if you’re considering this, you love BJJ, so you can be forgiven for believing that coaching seven days a week, eight hours a day, sounds like heaven. Burnout is real, my friends. BJJ requires the use of your body in some capacity. You will get sick, you will get hurt, and you will get tired. Treat these as inevitables and plan accordingly. Backup coaches should be available most of the time. The gym shouldn’t have to close because one person (namely you) isn’t available.
Burnout isn’t the only reason not to pack the schedule immediately, though. Larger student numbers per class sell memberships. People want to be a part of something big. It feels edifying and encouraging. In a big class, you can find friends, lovers, and future family. Not everyone at the gym is there just for the Japanese pajama choke party; some people just want to meet people outside of their work and family life, and that’s not super easy to do. Hobbies like BJJ give people a chance to meet people and immediately bridge a certain intimacy gap due to forced physical proximity, and as a result, I think people bond faste.
3-Quality of Instruction
This is one of the factors that requires constant improvement. If you’re starting your own gym, it’s likely that you are mostly on your own in terms of learning, so I highly recommend making use of the very site this blog is hosted on: BJJ Fanatics!
The access that you have to world-class instruction is a matter of investment and effort. This should be a no-brainer for hobby or commercial gyms.
If you’re looking for a great beginner curriculum for takedowns, I most humbly suggest:
3 Things Essential to the Success of a Commercial Gym:
1-Location and Decor
Location is a tricky one for BJJ, while a central location is generally a plus for a business, BJJ has a unique location problem: size. A commercially viable gym should have two mat spaces minimally to allow for concordant classes to be run during the peak business hours of the late afternoon/early evening. You’ll need at least 3500 sqft but 8000 sqft is more ideal. 8000 sqft of prime real estate is likely to be too expensive for the revenue of a BJJ gym and prime real estate is unlikely to provide top dollar benefits to your gym. Prime real estate for a business usually means that it provides high visibility that leads to foot traffic but the good news is foot traffic is not a consistent performer for a niche market like BJJ.
So BJJ can and does thrive in suboptimal locations for a lot of other businesses. You want it to be easily accessible but foot traffic and visibility are not key considerations. BJJ schools should consider these factors in order of priority: space, accessibility in terms of distance from residential areas, and ease of parking. Everything else is relatively unimportant because new students will be driven by online marketing instead of visibility and foot traffic.
An adjacent factor in the success of a commercial BJJ is the decor/look of the facility. If the place looks impressive, people will sign up. People want to spend their time in a beautified environment, not a basement dungeon with some old gnarled wrestling mats that stink. Lighting, paint, and some style will go a long way. I’m a big fan of Fuji mats because of the clean look they provide along with great options for branding with your logo. If you don’t possess particularly good taste, the guys at Fuji mats will help you to make your space look first class.
Just try to think about how you feel as a consumer when you walk into a shop that looks really nice. You want to go there, you want to be there. Everyone wants to spend their time in a nice place. For a commercial BJJ gym, great decor will go a long way towards ensuring profitability. If you don’t have the skills, hire an interior decorator to do it for you. That’s what businesses do.
Here you can see what my gym looks like:
2-Marketing
One of the biggest single investment factors for the success of a commercial gym is marketing. BJJ is a niche market, so Google and related search engines are the key drivers of prospect development. A commercial gym needs a steady influx of new students because student attrition is unavoidable. People will move, get injured, and simply have a change of heart. You cannot change that, but you can invest in Google ads to capture people who are actively seeking a BJJ gym.
I use Dream Agility AI and highly recommend their services if you are serious about growing a commercial gym.
Hobby gyms need not apply to this one. Instead, have a steady social media presence posting at least once a week. If you don’t need a large influx of students, marketing costs are too prohibitive to be done with limited investment. Go big or go home.
3-Demographic Alignment
After a year of operation, a gym should be able to identify key demographics about their membership. What age range is coming as leads, and what age range is signing up most frequently? These are the two things you need to successfully identify. If there is a mismatch between lead demographics and sales demographics, it means your program is not meeting the needs or desires of a viable demographic. If you realize that you are getting a ton of kid leads but not signing them up, maybe your kids program is not very good.
I did not expect my program to lean heavily into kids’ programs, but my area is a very family-friendly area. As such, I had to pivot and accept that 60% of my leads were for the kids program, so I overhauled my kids’ curriculum and put far more energy into curriculum development for kids.
If you choose not to pivot towards your demographics, there could be some good reasons for not doing so. For example, maybe you don’t want to teach kids at all or don’t want to teach kids below a certain age. That’s perfectly fine, but the reality is that to the extent you wish to be commercially successful, the more you should lean into your demographics. A college town is likely to have more college student leads, and a retirement community would likely have more older students. Where you choose to open your gym is ultimately up to you.
I would also caution even hobby gyms about the perils of trying to create gyms around overly specific demographics with a poor track record of general interest. For example, women’s competition gyms are relatively uncommon for a reason. There’s just not that much interest relative to men’s competition gyms. If building a women’s competition gym is your life’s passion, it’s a hobby gym goal for sure and perhaps a noble one, but you shouldn’t have hobby goals and expect commercial results. If you have a hobby goal, align your efforts and investment accordingly.
Concluding Remarks
There’s a lot more to be said about this topic, and if you want to hear more, feel free to reach out or stop by the gym to chat:
