Shihan Michael Cote runs Cote Karate Studio in Nashua, New Hampshire, and has been doing martial arts since 1978. He also opened a second studio at his own residence, in his basement, which he reckons is about the hardest room anyone could be asked to fill.
"It's not easy to get bookings at just, they see the ad, they drive by, oh it's a residence and they're not comfortable coming in. But if Madscope can book and make this happen, they can make it happen anywhere."
Shihan Michael Cote, Cote Karate Studio, Nashua NH, in a video testimonial on the Madscope channel.
A basement studio at a private house is about as hard a test as a campaign gets, and his did the job. But the useful thing to take from any first month isn't the result. It's the order the numbers arrive in, because an owner who only counts the last one spends the first fortnight reading the wrong scoreboard.
Enrolments are the fourth number, not the first
Master Wallace Westall runs TKO in Florida and read his first month out in order:
"I started getting, I think in the first month I had 200 leads, which is just an incredible amount to try and handle as a solo manager owner. About half of those leads were set up for an appointment, and about half of them showed, and of those that showed we closed quite a few and ended up adding about 35-40 people our first month."
Master Wallace Westall, TKO, Florida, in a video testimonial on the Madscope channel, at 1:39 to 2:22.
Count the stages. Leads, then appointments, then attendance, then enrolments. Four numbers, and the one owners stare at is the fourth. His "about half" is his own estimate rather than a report, and we've left it as he said it, but the shape is what matters: by the time a body is on your mat, three earlier things have already had to happen, and each one takes days.
Master John Gartland, who runs Victory Karate Centers in New York, put the same chain in absolute figures:
"284 opt-ins, 132 booked appointments, 14 weeks to produce 132 appointments, so that averages us out to almost 10 a week, nine appointments a week."
Master John Gartland, in a video testimonial on the Madscope channel, at 2:26.
Two hundred and eighty-four people gave their name and number. One hundred and thirty-two booked. That leaves 140 who didn't, and here is what he says about them rather than what a marketer would say:
"Even if they didn't book an appointment, they just weren't ready at that time, but there's an interest. We're going to continue to cultivate and nurture those leads until they are."
Same video, at 2:54.
Those 140 aren't waste. They're the largest asset the campaign produced, and they belong in your CRM with a reason to be called again in March.
Week one: count opt-ins and how fast they're reached
There's one honest number available in week one, and it's how many people put their details in. Everything else is too young to read.
The second number, which barely anyone tracks, is how long it takes each of them to hear from a real person. Cote is blunt about why that matters:
"You just have to understand that bookings are important, but you need to call as well, and then make sure that you do a good relationship with the person over the phone. You send them a text, but the follow-up is very important."
Cote, same video.
He's right, and it's worth being plain about how it works here. We find the families, get them booked and remind them to come. You welcome them, run a great first class, and enrol them. The relationship Cote is describing starts before the class, too: once a family is booked, a text from the school itself is what makes them feel expected. A family who books on Monday and hears nothing from the school before Thursday is a different family from the one who got a text from the instructor that evening.
So week one's scoreboard is three lines, and none of them is an enrolment:
- How many opt-ins came in, and what each one cost in ad spend.
- How long between the opt-in and the first attempt to reach them.
- What proportion were actually reached, as opposed to called.
If those three look healthy in week one, the month is working, whatever your enrolment count says.
Week two: ask what changed, every week
A live campaign doesn't sit still. Ads get changed, images get swapped and audiences get adjusted as the results come in, and that's the job being done properly. What matters is that you hear about it.
Westall had lived through the opposite with other suppliers:
"They're good for four or five weeks and then they kind of drop off."
Westall, at 1:06 of his own video.
A fade at week five with no explanation is an agency that got you started and stopped working. You tell it apart from a campaign being actively improved by whether anyone told you what changed before you asked. So each week, ask two questions: what changed, and what's being done this week. A good agency answers both before you pick up the phone.
Weeks three and four: bookings, then shows
By now the chain is running end to end, and the gap that matters is the one between a booking and a body. That gap is its own problem rather than a rounding error. The reminders are ours. The lever on your side is how quickly somebody at the school texts the booked family and makes them feel expected. We've written up what actually moves a show rate separately, and what happens between the trial and the signature after that.
The failure nobody plans for: it works and you're not ready
Jessy Austin runs Lima's Total Revolution Training Facility in Lima, Ohio. He had sat at 60 to 70 members for years, already top of Google, with boosted posts returning nothing. His expectations going in were modest:
"Going into it, my expectations were, man, in the first month or so, if I could have maybe five leads a week, something like that, something consistent, maybe after it gets going eight leads a week, I'm like, we can make that work."
Jessy Austin, in a video testimonial on the Madscope channel, at 2:21.
What he got instead:
"In the first 45 days, we had signed, I think, 35 to 40 members. We literally had to hire two appointment closers. We had to hire another assistant coach just to keep up with it."
Same video, at 2:36.
He then asked us to slow the campaign down. And he closes the video with the sentence every owner in week two should read before they get to week four:
"All this was on my fault, because I should have 10 to 20 more. I just wasn't ready for it at the beginning. So when you make that call, be ready."
Same video, at 9:09.
He is saying the campaign outran his school and it cost him students he could have had. A different owner wrote to us from the same spot and reached for the other lever:
"I had no idea that we'd be this full this quickly… Our next step is to hire more coaches, which we already started on as of two days ago. For now, we won't be needing to run ads or capturing anything new. I'll pause the card on file."
A school owner, in a message to Madscope.
Two owners, one month in, both constrained by mat space and staff rather than by leads. If your first month goes well, this is the wall you hit, and we've written about what to do when the intake outruns the timetable.
The admin that decides whether week four counts
The least glamorous thing in this article is the one most likely to cost you an enrolment in your first month. From the owner quoted earlier about who signed up first, writing on the day his first lead came in:
"Could you send the Leads a link to sign the waiver when the booking is confirmed. This is important, as we will not be able to admit the child to training if the waiver is not filled in. It is easy to fill out online and takes 3 minutes for parents."
A family drives over for a class their child isn't allowed to join. That's a show you paid for and an enrolment you won't get, and it's fixed by putting the waiver, the medical question and the photo consent into the booking confirmation instead of on a clipboard at the door. Do it in week one, while nothing's happening and you've got the time.
Where we sit in this
We're paid when a student walks in, so nothing in a first month pays us until the chain reaches your mat. That's our bias and you should read this page knowing it.
It cuts an honest way, though. An agency on a monthly retainer is paid the same whether anyone walks in or not, which is exactly why the week-five fade Westall describes is a viable business model for the people who run it. We've laid out what each payment model actually rewards, and what a marketing contract locks in if you're still choosing.
If you want to talk through what your own first month would need to look like, book fifteen minutes. Bring your class timetable and an honest answer about who's free to text people back the same hour. Those two things decide more of month one than the ads do.
The short version
- Score week one on opt-ins, speed of callback and contact rate. Enrolments are the fourth link in the chain and can't move yet.
- Ask two questions every week: what changed, and what is happening about it this week. A good agency tells you before you ask; a fade at week five with no explanation is the one to walk away from.
- The leads who didn't book aren't waste. One owner's 284 opt-ins produced 132 appointments. The other 140 are a list with a reason to call in three months.
- Be staffed before you start, not after. The owner who signed 35 to 40 members in 45 days says plainly that he lost 10 to 20 more by not being ready.
- Put the waiver in the booking confirmation before your first booking, not after your first family drives home unable to train.