EFC – Educational Funding Company Ltd UK & Ireland

Master Vince Cassar

At the last EFC Summit in Florida, during the banquet, Keith Thompson, John Lynn and Mike Allen suggested that it would be a good idea to have me talk at the next EFC Meeting of Minds in the UK, on how I managed to grow the Cassar Academy of Choi Kwang Do by 300% in just 17 months, during the worst recession in living memory.

My first reaction was, “no way!” I thought to myself, “What on earth could I talk about that the other speakers haven’t already done so brilliantly. Besides that, I’m a rookie school owner and still have so much to learn and grow myself.”  Someone had mentioned to Mike that when they had asked me what I did to achieve this, I just said, “I didn’t get in my own way” and he suggested this would make a good topic for my talk. I don’t know whether it was the atmosphere and excitement of the evening or Keith, John or Mike’s enthusiasm and encouragement that swayed me but by the end of the night I agreed.

The Meeting of Minds in Wales last year was a fantastic weekend. John Lynn and his amazing team put on a great event and were the perfect hosts; Keith and Debbie Thompson were again Guest speakers. The last time they were in the UK was 4 years ago and that was my first ever EFC event. After one of Debbie’s sessions I got the chance to have a chat with her and as we parted she said “you’re going to do very well, I’m going to keep an eye on you”.

Hearing that from Debbie Thompson had an amazing effect on me. I went home and couldn’t stop thinking, if someone like Debbie Thompson says that I can be successful at opening a full time centre then maybe I can, all I’ve got to do is get out of my own way and stop thinking the way I have been and start thinking the way the top school owners do. At this time I was teaching Choi Kwang Do part time and only had about 75 students.

I want to share with you some of the thoughts I used to have back then.
1.    My school is different from theirs
2.    Won’t work with my students
3.    Won’t work with my style
4.    My students won’t pay that
5.    Hard to find new students
6.    Successful schools are in better areas
7.    Can’t find the right staff
8.    Can’t find the right property
9.    Don’t know how to run this type of business
10.    Marketing costs too much
11.    Advertising doesn’t work

When I look at this now it’s so clear to me why I wasn’t growing my school, I was standing in the way of my own success, I had to get out of the way, start introducing all the EFC systems and change my way of thinking. So this is how I did it, I just started saying to myself:
1.    If the top schools can do it then I can
2.    How do I introduce this to my students?
3.    Doesn’t matter what style I teach, it will work
4.    I must increase our fees/gross as our classes are great value
5.    Look for lots of different ways to increase enrolments
6.    Our success has nothing to do with the location of our school
7.    I have great staff
8.    Contact all the real estate agents and find a location for a full time centre
9.    Use the EFC systems and manuals and start learning the business skills I need to run a professional Martial Arts centre
10.    I must start spending at least 10% of my gross on marketing
11.    I must Increase advertising streams

Once I started doing this, then everything began to fall into place. We found a location a year later. 6 months after that on May 4th 2008 we opened. Our gross at the time was under £5,000.00 including tuition fees, gradings and sales. Just eighteen months later our gross is £22,000.00 a month with a steady increase of 2.5% every month. We now have 340 students and the Cassar Academy of Choi Kwang Do is rocking! All the students and team are very excited about what’s happening and we have very big plans for the year ahead. Thank you EFC, Debbie and Keith Thompson, Dave Kovar, Nick and Donnalynn Patakos, John Lynn and all the other great people that have not only helped me develop the skill needed to succeed but also change the way I think so I will never again stand in my own way!

I would like to say that I have only been with EFC for a very short period of time but I am extremely happy with the level of service that you and your team provides. The constant update on news and information is superb, the team always reply very quickly and I am really enjoying the network of emails. I am in no doubt that my academy will grow due to the support that EFC provides on a daily basis.

Thank you very much for all the effort.

Gary  Lee Goodrum

GLMAA

Dave Pawson

The spring fling has been a motivator to do what we should always be doing by making us more proactive in getting new students and then looking at how we retain them. We are now more focussed on asking for referrals from our existing students and also asking for referrals when any prospective student comes in to ask about lessons.
After last year’s Spring Fling we decided to keep doing the same type of promotions and gradually refine what it is we are doing on a daily basis, and to implement ideas that we have picked up from attending Meeting of Minds, X-Factor and more importantly the EFC convention.
Retention has been an area we have focussed on by giving more exciting lessons, ensuring stats are kept on a daily basis and enquiries are chased up if they fail to show and reschedule the appointments. Text messaging is one area we have really focussed on to give confirmation of appointments made, and then the day before we text a quick confirmation that we are looking forward to seeing them the following day. We have also completely redone the reception area, highlighting the EFC awards we have won on the wall facing the entrance and giving the whole area a wow factor when new prospects come in. This has as a result given us new students, our existing students are now referring people to come down and experience what they are doing in a family run environment, where they can forget about the credit crunch, and get a good workout and mix with positive individuals.
We are now actively continuing with the same level of intent to increase our numbers and are looking forward to the Meeting of Minds and the EFC Conference in Miami.

Sifu Chris Edghill

Just a letter of thanks to the EFC and especially to my Accounts Manager Liz Jones.

Liz contacted me and asked if I wanted to join the Spring Fling, I said it’s not really worth it for me as I don’t really advertise and not done so for about fifteen years. Liz said go on give it a go, after a little more persuasion I decided to. I sent out letters to all of my students for bring a friend. I gave out posters and gradually new students started to join. The EFC gave me a lot of backing and also much pushing basically making me walk the extra mile. Not only have I increased my student numbers the kick off is great. The more students I have the more I seem to be getting. Some times you can become complacent with what you have, it’s always worth taking a step back get out of that whole and give yourself a good kick up the backside.

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In October 2003 I had a meeting with my instructors.

I had been running a martial arts club since 1989 and at the time of the meeting had 7 students to show for it. I didn’t have a clue why we were losing our students but most never seemed to stay around.

I sat down with my instructors and put it all on the line. I was sick of teaching students and giving them 100% just for them to leave. I had not had any time for my own training and felt that I was giving up my training for nothing. I wanted to fold the club!

My instructors talked me out of closing but I had a condition. If we were keeping the club open then we were going to do it properly. I had one of EFC’s leaflets so gave them a call and we went up to Nottingham to meet Mike Allen and Ken Robson.
At this seminar they spoke about how a martial artist can actually run a school full time.

We could not believe it and decided to give it a go and in November 2003 joined the Educational Funding Company and became “The Chi Wai Black Belt Academy”.
To begin with I only taught adults but the EFC put me in contact with the right people to organise instructing children. Read more…

Just a quick email to say thanks from both me and Jayne for all the help you and Steve have given over the last year.

I have just done some calculations on how the School is doing in total, the main school plus the Taekwondo class etc and since the end of March we have grown just over 40%, monthly revenue increase of £1395 per month, as a yearly figure that is £16740. That is truly amazing from our side, the Spring Fling really had a major impact and was the best investment of £25 this year.

We still have another 3 2nd intros lined up this week of which I am sure we will sign up a minimum of 2, and a good set of intros lined up next week.

Again thanks for all the help and support

Regards

Dave and Jayne Pawson

From the day that I found out about EFC, I knew it was the way forward for me and my school.  It was kind of nerve racking to start with – will people stay with me if I swap to all these new ideas.  This, however, has been outweighed hugely by the amazing growth my school has seen since joining with EFC going from 50 students to over 200 in just 2 years.  EFC has been there to help me every step of the way in my career so far, and I know that Mike and his team will continue to be there for me in the future.

Dear Mike and the fabulous EFC team.

We’re open! And we own it!

Buying a commercial building in the UK is one of the toughest obstacles we have faced.

First of all it was nice and easy, we found a building we could afford and arranged a commercial mortgage to buy it. Like I said nice and easy, just like purchasing a home.

The obstacle was the planning application. Our local council has stringent rules for what the building is used for and has certain policies regarding it.

Our Building was categorised as SUI GENERIS. This means that the property has been vacant for some time and has not been assigned a commercial USE.
We quickly submitted our planning application and which was refused on the grounds that we are not community orientated, and that we did not fall into the planning office guidelines. Martial arts, not community oriented! We couldn’t understand the reasoning behind it.

We had several meetings with the planning office and finally hired a planning consultant and submitted another planning application for change of USE.

This time the planning office submitted details of the planning application online on their website. We noticed that people could leave comments on the application, supporting or rejecting it.

We rallied our student body to leave positive comments on the website. A few weeks later we received a phone call from the head of planning, stating that they had received over 150 comments from the community supporting this venture, and that the application was going well this time round. He also stated that he’s work load has just increased as he has to respond to every comment giving them the decision on the application.

This made me smile. Later that week the planning application was approved.

Virginia and I would like to thank you Mike for all the effort and support you have given us. EFC has been the cornerstone of our success and we are very grateful.

If anybody wants more information we can be contacted through the EFC.

Kind Regards

Chris & Virginia Ellis