The empty hour

Welcome to the Saber Life Challenge. I'm Sifu Edward Armstrong. I built the Light Sword Training Academy with my wife and co-founder, Sifu Julliana Armstrong, and for the next five days I'm going to show you how a school like yours adds a light sword program to a floor you already run.

Five days. One lesson a day. One thing to do each day. Nothing to buy this week.

Let's start with the problem you already have and probably stopped noticing.

The empty hour.

Walk your schedule with me. Monday at four, the floor is dark. Tuesday at eleven, dark. Saturday after noon, dark. Every school has these hours, and every one of them costs you the same rent as a full class. You have already paid for that hour. Nobody is standing on it.

Now look at who is not in your building. The twelve-year-old who will not spar because he does not want to get hit. The forty-five-year-old mother who drops her son off and sits in the car for an hour. The adult who tells you he is not a fighter. The fitness member next door who has never set foot on a martial arts floor and never will, because to her it looks like a fight.

Those people are not saying no to you. They are saying no to the only class you offered them.

Three kinds of buyer.

Here is the first thing I learned that changed how I run a floor. When someone picks up a light sword, they want one of three things, and the class you give them has to match it.

One, competition. They want to spar, to be scored, to win something. That is the smallest group and the loudest.

Two, fitness. They want to sweat and move and feel good, and they want it to be fun, because they have already quit the treadmill. That is the largest group, and it includes the adults who "are not fighters."

Three, entertainment. A birthday, a team-building afternoon, a night out with a group of friends. They want a memory, not a rank.

Most schools build one class and hope everyone fits in it. The competition people stay. The other two groups try it once and leave, and the owner concludes that nobody wants it. Nobody wants the wrong class. Build three, and the empty hours start to fill with people who were never going to buy your core program anyway. That is a new revenue line without a new lease and without new students taken from your current classes.

Find a need, fill a need.

That is the whole business philosophy, and it is the same one you already run. Your town has kids who need to move, adults who need to unwind, and families who want one thing they can do together. A light sword class serves all three at once, because a nine-year-old and a sixty-year-old can stand on the same floor and neither is at a disadvantage. Pause the video and write down one household you know that would show up together if the class existed. That is your first student.

The three things owners say to me.

"I'm not trained in this." Right. Nobody is. There are no light sword instructors in your town, which means the day you can teach it, you are the authority. There is a certification path, and it is a real one, with nine forms, and only our headquarters certifies. But you do not need it to run your first class. You need a Day Pass, and we get to that on Day 3.

"I don't have the capital for gear and a building." You have the building. That is the point. A light sword is a polycarbonate blade with an LED inside and a rounded tip. You do not need mats, cages or a locker room. You need the hour you already pay for.

"I don't have the time." You are already there during the empty hour. The question is whether you fill it with a class or with paperwork.

[EDWARD, one minute] A parent who told you the class became the highlight of their child's week, or a service member who came in after a bad day and left smiling. Your words, no base names.

Where this goes.

Everything I teach you this week was worked out on real floors. It started in Virginia Beach in 2015, and I want to be straight with you about the numbers, because that is how we do things: every figure I give you is a documented result from our founding operations or a clearly labelled illustration, never a promise, and your results will depend on your floor and your effort.

Today's one action.

Open your schedule. Write down every empty hour on your floor this week. Next to each one, write which of the three buyers already walks through your door at that time of day: a competitor, a fitness member, or a family. You now have your first class list before you have taught a single swing.

Tomorrow I show you how to fill that hour without spending a dollar on marketing. It is called Operation Plug-In, and it is the reason we never had to build an audience from nothing.

I'll see you tomorrow.