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Black Belt Business Coach

@caseywashack

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Gym Owner 💪 BJJ School Owner 🥋 Podcaster 🎤 Author 📖 US Marine 🇺🇸 Husband , Father

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Your students aren’t all the same. Your pricing shouldn’t be either. One membership for everyone limits your students growth and limits the business’s ability to grow as well.

#bjj #martialartsbusiness #jiujitsulife #bjjbusiness #bjjlife by @caseywashack

Your community won’t save your gym.
You can have great coaches, great vibes, and great culture, and still lose students every month.
Not because they hated it.
Because they didn’t feel seen.
The quiet ones. The ones who never complained. The ones who just… stopped showing up.
That’s the retention problem nobody’s talking about.
New episode out now. Link in bio. 🎙️
#BJJ #JiuJitsu #GymOwner #Retention #RollingForever MartialArtsSchool by @caseywashack

Date night with the Mrs. by @caseywashack

I met Teresa in October 2005. Seven months later, my brother and I opened our first gym.

Opening a gym was my dream, not hers. She had her own career. But she never made me choose.

She painted walls.
She moved equipment.
She helped decorate.

All because it was my dream and she loved me, so she was going to be part of it.

We got married in April 2007, about a year after the gym opened. Every bit of my time and attention went into that gym.

For the first four years, I didn’t make any money. Teresa’s paycheck paid our bills.

As newlyweds, she spent her weekends at walkathons and charity 5Ks, working the booth with me. Her career, my dream.

I wasn’t succeeding.
I was failing.
I had nothing to show her that said this would work.

She believed in me anyway. She must have seen something I didn’t.

She carried me for four years. She didn’t have to. A lot of that was on me. I was hard-headed, I had no mentors, and I didn’t know how to run a business.

If someone in your life is carrying you while you build your school, they’re paying for every lesson you refuse to learn.

Get help sooner.
Not just for you.
For them.

#bjj #bjjbusiness #jiujitsu #jiujitsu4life #bjj4life by @caseywashack

15 years ago, I was awakened by a little girl jumping on me saying “Daddy wake up!! Let’s play!”

I woke up from that dream with my heart racing and knowing I wanted to meet this little girl.

Fast forward and today we celebrate your 15th birthday. I can’t begin to tell you how much I love you so I will spend my life trying to show you.

Many people never get to realize their dreams but everyday I get to, because you were mine.

Happy birthday Charlotte. by @caseywashack

We asked Char what she wanted to do for her birthday, and she said all she wanted to do was train.

So with her focused on her super fight coming up and being close to her birthday, we decided to celebrate her birthday early with a trip to Austin for some jiu jitsu, shopping, yummy food, and some outdoors time!

Thank you @simplemanmartialarts and @10patx for your hospitality and open doors! We look forward to coming back!

Thank you Austin, Tx 🫡 by @caseywashack

In July, my dad passed away.

It was sudden. But I was blessed with something a lot of people don’t get: a few weeks by his side before he went.

I didn’t have to check my phone in that room.
I didn’t have to leave early to cover a class.
I didn’t have to choose.

The gyms ran smoothly without me. The classes were full, new members were joining us, and it was business as usual.

I think a lot about the owners who would have had to choose.

Because if your gym only works when you’re in the building, a moment like that becomes lose-lose.

You stay at the gym and miss the goodbye.
Or you go say goodbye and come back to a business that’s sinking.

Nobody plans for those weeks. That’s the point.

You don’t build systems for the good weeks. You build them for the weeks that break you.

#bjj #jiujitsulife #bjjlife #jiujitsu #jiujitsuschool by @caseywashack

In 2011, my brother and I priced a six-week program at $275.
Small group training three times a week.
Nutrition.
Mindset.
Seminars.
Everything we had.
We wanted to change people’s lives in six weeks.

And we kept it cheap on purpose.
At $275, we figured hundreds of people could afford it. We’d help more people.

Then I told one of my personal training clients about it. He was paying me $90 a session. He wanted in, so I gave him the details.

He asked my brother and me to breakfast.

At that breakfast, he called us idiots.

He said he paid us more in one week than we were charging for six.
If our training clients switched over, we’d be out of business again before we were back in business.

Then he said this program was worth more than anything we were giving him in personal training.

And he’d pay $2,000 for it on the spot.

That scared me to death.

On the drive back, I told my brother: Monday morning, I’m telling our 5 a.m. boot camp it’s $1,000.

Monday came.
Three people signed up on the spot.

Four weeks later, we had 32.

I thought the low price was about helping more people.
It wasn’t.
It was about protecting myself from hearing no.

I see the same thing in jiu-jitsu schools every week.

Owners who’ve spent decades on the mats earning what they know.
Then they price it like a few cups of coffee a week.

That’s not generosity.
That’s fear of hearing no.
So they charge less, give less, and struggle.

Charge what your knowledge is worth, then deliver so much value that the price feels small.

#jiujitsucommunity #martialartsbusiness #bjjbusiness #jiujitsubusiness #jiujitsuschool by @caseywashack

I was a blue belt, paying $100 an hour for private lessons with my jiu-jitsu coach.

One day I wanted to work on my judo, so that’s what we did. For a full hour I threw him. I’m about 200 pounds. He’s about 150. For the next 60 minutes I threw him, over and over. “Better. Harder. More hip. Do it again.”

At the end he got up slow. Stretched. And said, “Man, I’ve got five more of these today.”

That’s the moment it hit me. He was charging me $100 an hour to be my throw dummy. Five times a day, that’s his body taking a beating for every dollar.

I told him “charge six people $40 an hour instead. You make more. And you’re actually doing your job, coaching and critiquing, instead of hitting the mat 200 times.”

He didn’t want to do it. “No one’s ever done it. That won’t work in jiu-jitsu.”

Here’s what I asked him back. “Why don’t celebrities train in the big group classes? Because they want undivided attention, real detail, critique on everything they do. And they’ll pay for it.”

Most of your students aren’t celebrities. But some of them want exactly that, more attention, more detail, and they’d happily pay more to get it. Right now you’re forcing them to choose between a packed class and an expensive private.

Semi-private is the middle ground. It’s better for the student, better for your body, and better for your bank account.

Most schools are leaving all three on the table.

#jiujitsulife #bjj #bjjlife #martialartsbusiness #jiujitsu by @caseywashack

October 14, 2005, I met Casey for the first time, on a blind date.

After our second date, I told my mom I was going to marry this guy.

Nine months later we were Engaged! Nine months after that, Married!

We have been inseparable since, through the good times and the trials that should’ve broken us.

21 years later we still celebrate our “last first date.”

Cheers 🥂 by @caseywashack

A school I’m coaching added 12 students in 30 days.

They spent $0 on ads.

They had a little over 100 students when we started. Cash was tight. No real marketing budget.

So we didn’t start with ads. We started with the people already on the mats who already loved the gym.

Every member got (2) VIP passes. Each one was worth a free month.

Not a free class.

A month.

Most people won’t walk up to a friend and say, “You should do jiu-jitsu with me.” It feels weird. But “Hey, I’ve got one of these and I thought of you” is easy.

The VIP pass isn’t the offer. It’s a permission slip to start the conversation.

30 days later, 12 new students.

Best part is, those new students each get (2) VIP passes to hand to their friends and family… and so on… and so on

This is where I start with almost every school. It costs next to nothing, it brings in cash fast, and it gives the owner a win in month one.

Your next students are already on your mats. Give them a reason to bring someone.

#bjj #jiujitsulife #jiujitsu #bjjschool #jiujitsubusiness by @caseywashack

It cost us over $55,000 a month to run our gym in 2008. By 2010, we could only pay a bill when the notice turned red.

Phone. Power. Internet. Water. We waited until they threatened to shut it off, then paid just enough to keep it on another week.

One of our training clients paid six months up front, about $5,000. We put all of it toward the electric bill. We were still $13,000 in the hole after that.

My brother knew we were done. I didn’t. I kept saying, “I’m a Marine. I don’t quit. We’ll figure it out.” We’d already foreclosed on our house to keep the gym alive. There was nothing left, and I still wouldn’t call it.

Then one night I had a dream. A little girl jumped on my chest and said, “Daddy, wake up, let’s play.” I woke up and told my wife I wanted to start a family. She said, “Casey, I can’t afford to support you and kids on my paycheck.”

That was the moment. Not the $13,000. Not the red notices. The thing I was most proud of, that I don’t quit, was the exact thing keeping us trapped.

I drove to our competitor, put my keys on his desk, and said, “This is yours if you want it.” They took over the gym and cleared our debts. The catch: we had to stay on as trainers for a year. So I stood in my own building and watched them scrape our name off the glass.

If you’re holding a struggling school together on pride right now, telling yourself you don’t quit, I need you to hear this. Sometimes quitting the thing that’s sinking you is how you save everything else.

How does the saying go: “Nothing changes IF nothing changes?!”

Update: “my dream” is in this picture with me.

#bjj #jiujitsu4life #bjj4life #bjjschool #jiujitsu by @caseywashack