Owning A School

​It seems like it crosses the mind of a lot of people in Jiu Jitsu to own a school one day. Obviously it did mine. It’s really cool, I can’t see myself doing anything else at this point, but it’s also work. I’m not even in my school that much and I still spend nearly 40 hours per week in the building. That doesn’t account for any office work, clerical tasks, communications, or class planning. Currently retail spaces are going for $3/sqft, so you have to be making $3000/month just to cover rent on 1000sqft. Then you have utilities, maintenance fees, and supply purchases. You’ll probably want some kind of software to keep track of everyone and make your life easier, so add that to your monthly costs. You’ll have different filings and registrations to keep your business up to date…more cost. Insurance for a Jiu Jitsu school is always a kick in the mouth, so keep that in mind. You also will need to figure out how to sustain yourself as a human, which is rude. If in order to do all of these things you need another job, then you will probably have to find someone else to teach some classes and even if you don’t need another job you will probably need help. That could be having someone do front of the house type work or teaching classes. The financial things are just one piece, you also will have a lot of interpersonal things to manage, as well as being the designated training partner a lot of the time. This is not to discourage you from running a school, I think you should, but it’s not just showing up and training, and I’m not sure the reality of it is spoken about enough.