Advice on starting a school from the ground up?
First and foremost, most of my posts on the site are kind of me joking around. This is 100% me being genuinely serious and asking for help.
Bobby Rivers and I have been "hotboxing" since before hotboxes existed. We learned how to analytically think about Jiu Jitsu from Eddies videos/books/seminars and then ventured to other instructors as well. At a certain point, I sought out a local gym for more training partners and then Bobby realized the value and followed. We helped this gym up it's game (and vice versa) and exposed them to things that helped it's competitors in competitions. These people became our good friends and training partners and thus all of us having phenomenal success in tournaments/mma for several years. Unfortunate circumstances/ego battles inevitably ensued as we eventually became viewed as a threat to business and I was put in a situation where I had to pick the gym or continue training with Bobby. Though I love and valued my training partners, I stuck with one of my best friends and the person who introduced me to BJJ and chose to continue training with Bobby.
Since then, it has been back to very, very small mat space with limited training partners which has had it's pros and cons. In reality, the reps and techniques we have been able to dissect over the last 6 months have probably upped my game more than in the entire last year and a half leading to that departure from the gym. The realization is that at this point, other local gyms are not needed. All we need is mat space, time and the sky is the limit. We've come to a point where we have multiple local people hitting us up discretely for fear of being banned from the gym. Some wanting privates, several saying as soon as we have a consistent schedule and room for them, they are 100% on board.
Now comes the hard part. Finding a reasonably priced location as neither of us are in a financial situation to fund a failing gym. I've stumbled upon a warehouse with no central air or bathroom though it has water hookups. Merely a slab with walls and a roof that I can afford. Worst case scenario is if some makeshift bathroom cannot be setup, possibly having a port-a-potty delivered as well as having industrial sized fans keeping air circulating (Lower Alabama summers are very hot with extremely high humidity, not too different from Brazil if people were to start complaining).
My whole thing is, the gym has to be able to support the majority of the bills we will have and once the dues coming in are more than bills coming out, the first priority would be finding a more suitable location. My other concerns are health code violations, business licensing, insurance as well as anything else that I'm forgetting or just plain unaware of.
I know many moons have been extremely lucky to come into situations in other gym/athletic facilities where many of these political/financial issues were not a problem as they were already handled by the business owner. This unfortunately will not be the case for us. There are 4 or 5 other gyms in the area we will be competing against. This does not scare me because I feel extremely strong about the product we will be offering, anyone who has trained or seen us compete can vouch for this. This will be a jiu jitsu school only at first with the main goal of purely being self supporting and providing a better training environment for ourselves and others who deserve it as well. If anyone has good advice, things to be aware of, steps to take to ensure success or at the very least, limit the amount of failure, I would be forever indebted.
Please help me learn from any mistakes you all have made as well as any killer ideas that helped you succeed. I feel based on the amount of local interest we have, the skill set we have developed, the credibility we have in our area, that the time is NOW to make something happen. I just want to make educated decisions and have no one else to turn to for advice other than our 10th Planet brothers and sisters. Please, please drop some knowledge. PM me. Facebook me. Get my phone number, whatever. I've been 10th Planet since day 1 in jiu jitsu and have over 20 medals, absolute trophies, sub of the night plaques. Bobby has naga belts (i'll be getting mine later this year) and tons of medals as well. We just want a fighting chance to really make this thing work the first time, pass what we have to others, create even more killers (we have a couple in development) and make this blow up. With Sean in Gulf Shores, us in Mobile, the gulf coast will be on complete lockdown. (get it, lockdown heheh) I really appreciate any legitimate responses though. Please just help a brotha out.
