My Martial Arts School Failed, Here’s The 2 Lessons I Learned

When it comes to social media, everyone likes to share their wins. 

This isn’t that kind of post. 

I get it, you share the wedding, never the divorce. You share losing weight, but never when you gain it back. 

Nobody wants to be a “downer.”

But this post is going to be different. 

This is where I share my failure, and the lessons I learned from it, so hopefully you too, don’t make the same mistakes I did. 

In late 2022, I was sitting around the kitchen island at 9:30pm eating dinner, and my roommate Alex approached me (changed the name for privacy).  

He wasn’t happy at his job, and he saw first hand what I was building with my martial arts schools. 

He saw the impact I was making, the lifestyle I was living, and he was curious about it. 

He was my roommate first, but we became friends. 

We talked while eating chicken stir fry for 2 hours.

He had a job that seemed very cool from the outside looking in,  but he wanted to do something that  made more of an impact, and had higher earning potential. 

So I preached the benefits of entrepreneurship, especially in the martial arts industry. 

He had zero martial arts experience, but he knew we train people from scratch. 

But before we jumped into business, I wanted to make sure he actually liked our culture. I invited him to try an adult class. 

The more he tried classes, the more he dug his heels in, the more questions he asked  over dinners about getting involved professionally. 

2 months later, I invited him to join one of our instructor certifications, not for becoming an instructor, but instead becoming a Program Director, which mainly helps with enrolling new students and customer service. 

He kept coming to class. He kept asking questions. He kept memorizing the scripts I gave him. 

At the same time, I was working on recruiting Stephan from South Africa. If you don’t know the backstory, to keep it short, we spent $12K and 100’s of hours drafting legal paperwork to recruit a world champion martial artist to get an Extraordinary Person visa to come teach with us in the U.S. 

According to the attorneys, it seemed Stephan had all the requirements to make it happen, and it was only a matter of time. I even paid extra to have the process expedited. 

Only 6 months after our initial talk around the kitchen island, I told Alex we might have an opportunity for him. I was recruiting Mr. Stephan who would be the Head Instructor, and Alex could be the program director. 

It seemed like a perfect “business” marriage for our martial arts schools. 

We were moving fast. 

That next week, I went to a neighborhood with great demographics, about 45 mins away, and started looking for locations. 

Less than 2 weeks later, we made a deal with a local church, who agreed to rent us space. 

Here was the plan, I was going to help him launch using the Triangle Codex organic marketing strategy, and he was going to teach the beginner classes while we waited for Stephan’s visa to come through. 

That way, when the head instructor got his visa, we would already have a student base and tuition coming in the door. 

For the next 6 weeks, I drove 45 mins (one way) and setup programs at the local schools and daycares- just like I teach my clients to do. 

Our first mass enrollment, we got 8 new students. Full tuition, no trials,  teaching on a tiled floor in a church rec room 3 days a week.  

Rinse and repeat until we had the max amount of students Alex could handle on his own. I enrolled the new students, and he taught the classes. 

He would drive through rush hour traffic, after his day job, to teach classes on his own. The days he wasn’t traveling to teach, he trained and assisted teaching at one of my other schools. 

At first, we were excited and patient, waiting for the visa to come through for his partner. 

But the months kept sliding by, and we were still waiting. 

I implored him to be patient, because he was going to have such an incredible partner. The lawyers said we should have a decision soon. 

Because we wanted to give him more financial opportunity, and to make sure he stuck around during the “tough” times, we allowed him to buy equity in the new business. 

He almost emptied his bank account and invested $25K. 

The timeline kept getting pushed, now we’re 9 months after our launch, and he’s still driving in rush hour traffic AFTER his day job, waiting for his partner to hopefully get his visa and come help him. He’s working 60+ hours a week. 

What happened next rocked my world. 

I opened my email.

“Your visa application has been DENIED!” 

Although we thought we  fulfilled all the requirements, the government office didn’t agree. 

The attorneys wanted us to re-apply, but Alex and Stephan felt dejected. He wanted to quit. 

I told Alex to keep waiting, and that it would be worth it. 

“This is what entrepreneurship is like,” I explained to him, it’s not easy, and there’s always curveballs, which is why most people can’t stomach it. 

I implore him to stick it out.  

5 more months go by, we re-submit an updated application.

Rejected again. 

Alex had reached a breaking point. We had so many talks where he almost quit, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted to throw in the towel. 

The truth is, at that point, I didn’t think we would ever get the visa for his partner. 

So I gave him his money back, and we had to tell the students we were closing. 

This was heartbreaking. Not only for those students who were promised a new school was coming, but also for Alex, who dedicated all this time and energy. 

He decided he wanted to get a regular, stable job. I sold him on the idea of entrepreneurship, and I failed on that promise. It was too late to get him to change his mind, and I don’t blame him.

We respectfully parted ways, both distraught by the failed experiment. 

But what happened next, 4 months later, I didn’t see coming…  

I got a SHOCKING call from Stephan at 11pm at night on a Friday… “Mr. Brenner, my visa was approved!!!!” 

After the initial shock wore off, I thought maybe it was a prank. He said no, it’s real. 

Then I told him he must be reading it wrong, “ ARE YOU SURE?!”

He was sure. 

And now we just needed to finish some paperwork, and get him a plane ticket. 

At that point though, the school we planned for him to work at, had already closed, and Alex had another job. 

 But luckily, I had a position for him at one of our other locations, so it all worked out. 

But for me, closing that one location, and letting my roommate / friend down was embarrassing and a big hit to my ego. 

And now looking back, here’s the 3 hard lessons I learned… 

1. Don’t count your eggs before they hatch. 

Yes, speed is king, but I put Alex in a really tough position, hoping that the visa for his partner would come through in the estimated timeline. It ended up taking almost 4x as long as the lawyers estimated. 

Though he was part of a “team,” he felt isolated by the long drives and teaching by himself. Feeling alone is probably the hardest part about starting your own business. 

2) The feedback I got from Alex was that he didn’t like the feeling that I was his boss.

 He felt we were roommates / friends first, and he couldn’t stomach me being  his boss. I felt like I was never “bossy,” and just his partner,  but that was his perspective, so clearly I played my role poorly. 

In a world when everyone shares the ups, and never the downs, hope this helps you in some way.