Running a martial arts school requires many hats. One of those hats includes administration including tracking employee time, student contact management, marketing, sales, scheduling and course curriculum development, and of course teaching martial arts.My bet is you like teaching more than sitting in an office taking care of the management of your martial school. The bad news is if you run a martial arts school you must spend some time administrating your business. The good news is you can now get some pretty cool software that speeds up and in fact enhances your administrating tasks.The key administrating tasks include:Student contact management
Marketing
Sales and revenue generator
Employee management
Scheduling and curriculum developmentIn a nutshell, the best martial arts business management software is a platform that is integrated and takes care of all these administrative tasks. This way you avoid duplicated data entry and in fact can leverage the existing data.What do I mean by leveraging existing data?Harnessing software as it should be harnessed means minimizing input time and maximizing production. For example, one big task involved in running a martial arts school is student contact / info management. You must maintain student information. Another big task is scheduling. You must schedule your classes and perhaps private lessons.You can leverage your client contact information with scheduling by having the two data sets integrated. So, if you input a private lesson, you can easily access your client contact database from your scheduling software so with a click you update your schedule rather than input client information from scratch.Let me give you a better example. Suppose you have email software that is integrated with your scheduling software. When your schedule is revised or a student signs up for a slot, you can program and integrate the email marketing software with your email marketing so that your student receives reminders about the scheduled appointment or class.These are just two of many time-saving examples you get when you get the right martial arts business software.Before I list the 5 must-have features, the over-arching requirement is that your software have all these features so integrations is built-in. This way you harness the benefits of leveraging your time and resources.What are the 5 Must-Have Martial Arts Business Software Features?1. Robust Scheduling SoftwareYou need scheduling software that does the following:
Integrates with a robust email software
Is centralized so when you make a change in the schedule, it’s replicated wherever you have your schedule digitally posted (i.e. other computers and your website(s))
Enables auto-pay so that you can collect money up front digitally. This alone pays for any software upgrade. Money up front processed automatically is much better than chasing money.2. Robust Student Contact ManagementYou want a centralized database where your student information is retained. It’s a lot of work managing student profiles, contact information, payment information, etc. When you have it in a properly constructed database with fields, you leverage your data input in many ways by integrating the database with other administrative tasks. It’s also easier inputting new data and/or revising existing data.3. Payroll ManagementMartial arts schools often have several teachers earning money at different pay rates. It’s not fun tracking how much each teacher is owed over with inadequate software (Excel anyone – I don’t mean to badmouth Excel, it’s excellent – it’s simply not designed for tracking such data).4. Sales and Revenue GenerationCredit card processing that integrates with your client contact database. Moreover, you want credit card processing you can do on the computer rather than separate hardware. It’s much more convenient.
Enable online payments and auto-billing. When someone schedules classes online, why not collect money automatically and immediately. The less time you spend processing and chasing money, the more time you have to build your business and do what you love – teach martial arts and develop courses.
Gift Card Capability
Gift cards can be a wonderful revenue generator. Make it easy for your students to get friends and family into your school with gift cards.
Retail and E-commerce: If you’re not selling gear, apparel, gift cards, etc. then you’re leaving money on the table. Moreover, having gear and apparel available for your students is a nice customer service touch.5. Marketing CapabilityOne of the best ways to get new business and generate more and ongoing sales from your existing students is using sophisticated email marketing. Don’t rely on gmail or Outlook. Get an autoresponder email system that integrates with your student contact database and scheduling software.You want to customize your email messages to prospective students and current students. You also want to auto-generate email messages as much as possible – such as new class openings, class reminders, private lesson reminders, etc. When you integrate your email software with your scheduling software, you can significantly ramp up your communication with students with very little time or effort.If you don’t have a fully integrated software system for your martial arts business, then chances are you’re duplicating work and not leveraging as much as you can to reduce inputs while increasing outputs. The email marketing and contact database integration alone gives benefits sufficient to warrant the cost of more sophisticated software.However, when you add in credit card processing, auto-billing, and e-commerce opportunities, you can seriously grow your martial arts business while spending less time in front of the computer and more time in class with students.

What are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime? So asked my 9 year old grandson.

As I thought of the question the local Green Grocer came to mind. Because that is what the greatest change in shopping in my lifetime is.

That was the first place to start with the question of what are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime.

Our local green grocer was the most important change in shopping in my lifetime. Beside him was our butcher, a hairdresser and a chemist.

Looking back, we were well catered for as we had quite a few in our suburb. And yes, the greatest changes in shopping in my lifetime were with the small family owned businesses.

Entertainment While Shopping Has Changed
Buying butter was an entertainment in itself.
My sister and I often had to go to a favourite family grocer close by. We were always polite as we asked for a pound or two of butter and other small items.

Out came a big block of wet butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. Brought from the back of the shop, placed on a huge counter top and included two grooved pates.

That was a big change in our shopping in my lifetime… you don’t come across butter bashing nowadays.

Our old friendly Mr. Mahon with the moustache, would cut a square of butter. Lift it to another piece of greaseproof paper with his pates. On it went to the weighing scales, a bit sliced off or added here and there.

Our old grocer would then bash it with gusto, turning it over and over. Upside down and sideways it went, so that it had grooves from the pates, splashes going everywhere, including our faces.

My sister and I thought this was great fun and it always cracked us up. We loved it, as we loved Mahon’s, on the corner, our very favourite grocery shop.

Grocery Shopping
Further afield, we often had to go to another of my mother’s favourite, not so local, green grocer’s. Mr. McKessie, ( spelt phonetically) would take our list, gather the groceries and put them all in a big cardboard box.

And because we were good customers he always delivered them to our house free of charge. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun as old Mr. Mahon. Even so, he was a nice man.

All Things Fresh
So there were very many common services such as home deliveries like:

• Farm eggs

• Fresh vegetables

• Cow’s milk

• Freshly baked bread

• Coal for our open fires

Delivery Services
A man used to come to our house a couple of times a week with farm fresh eggs.

Another used to come every day with fresh vegetables, although my father loved growing his own.

Our milk, topped with beautiful cream, was delivered to our doorstep every single morning.

Unbelievably, come think of it now, our bread came to us in a huge van driven by our “bread-man” named Jerry who became a family friend.

My parents always invited Jerry and his wife to their parties, and there were many during the summer months. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed these times. Alcohol was never included, my parents were teetotallers. Lemonade was a treat, with home made sandwiches and cakes.

The coal-man was another who delivered bags of coal for our open fires. I can still see his sooty face under his tweed cap but I can’t remember his name. We knew them all by name but most of them escape me now.

Mr. Higgins, a service man from the Hoover Company always came to our house to replace our old vacuum cleaner with an updated model.

Our insurance company even sent a man to collect the weekly premium.

People then only paid for their shopping with cash. This in itself has been a huge change in shopping in my lifetime.

In some department stores there was a system whereby the money from the cash registers was transported in a small cylinder on a moving wire track to the central office.

Some Of The Bigger Changes
Some of the bigger changes in shopping were the opening of supermarkets.

• Supermarkets replaced many individual smaller grocery shops. Cash and bank cheques have given way to credit and key cards.

• Internet shopping… the latest trend, but in many minds, doing more harm, to book shops.

• Not many written shopping lists, because mobile phones have taken over.

On a more optimistic note, I hear that book shops are popular again after a decline.

Personal Service Has Most Definitely Changed
So, no one really has to leave home, to purchase almost anything, technology makes it so easy to do online.
And we have a much bigger range of products now, to choose from, and credit cards have given us the greatest ease of payment.

We have longer shopping hours, and weekend shopping. But we have lost the personal service that we oldies had taken for granted and also appreciated.

Because of their frenetic lifestyles, I have heard people say they find shopping very stressful, that is grocery shopping. I’m sure it is when you have to dash home and cook dinner after a days work. I often think there has to be a better, less stressful way.

My mother had the best of both worlds, in the services she had at her disposal. With a full time job looking after 9 people, 7 children plus her and my dad, she was very lucky. Lucky too that she did not have 2 jobs.