Many martial arts school owners obsess over new sign-ups while students quietly walk out the back door. Mike Stewart has built his business around closing that door. Stewart is the owner of Rising Tide Academy in Maryland, a Jiu-Jitsu school with multiple locations that he co-owns with his brother, who has been his business partner since day one. He grew up in Taekwondo, began assistant teaching at 12, and worked at a traditional school through high school.
After a rough period away from martial arts, Stewart found Jiu-Jitsu and opened his own program as a white belt in a rented community center space, while selling frozen meat door to door, an experience he calls a sales master class. By brown belt the school was already large. He has taught full-time for close to 15 years.
Red Belt Podcast host Brian "Barn Cat" Debes, who met Stewart through a business mastermind, asked him about his specialty: retention and annual renewals.
Retention Starts With What the Student Needs
Stewart's guiding principle is one he repeats often: what the student needs is never at the mercy of what the instructor wants. That applies to curriculum, where upper belts can get bored of teaching basic escapes and sweeps and want to show beginners flashy techniques, and to scheduling. He once taught adult classes at 8 p.m. because it suited him as a night owl. Students didn't come, so classes moved to 5 and 6 p.m., with kids classes running at the same time so parents have no reason to skip.
It also applies to fitness. Many adults come to lose weight, so Stewart believes owners need basic knowledge of nutrition, sleep and strength training, or a staff member who has it. And every class should be a real workout; a class that feels like a lecture hall is, in his words, one nail in the retention coffin.
Selling Like a Doctor, Not a Salesperson
Stewart defines sales as guiding someone to the right decision, and he treats it like a medical diagnosis. A bad doctor hears "my arm hurts" and hands out a cortisone shot. A good doctor asks which arm, where, and what kind of pain before deciding on treatment.
In practice, that means drilling past surface-level answers. When a prospect says they want to lose weight, most staff check the box and move on. Stewart's team keeps asking: why is that important, what happens if nothing changes, what does success look like in five years? He calls this a "pain funnel," moving from big rocks down to the sand and pebbles of real motivation.
He also warns against selling lineage. Most prospects don't care who your instructor is; they care whether you have a plan for their problem. He sums up his school's promise in one word, freedom: from obesity, anxiety, bullying or the fear of not protecting your family. He wants the right students, not every student, and has fired salespeople who followed the script but were only pretending to care.
The Renewal System: Start Three Months Early
The biggest renewal mistake, Stewart says, is waiting too long. Imagine a member who signs up in January, attends through April and then disappears. If the first call they get is in December asking them to renew, they'll rightly feel ignored. His system has several layers:
- ✓Attendance follow-up. If a member hasn't trained in about two weeks, someone reaches out by call, text, email or DM. The tone is "What's going on? Is everything okay?", not a guilt trip.
- ✓Flexibility. For family issues, injuries, relocation or a divorce, Stewart pauses the membership and adds the time to the end. He still collects the revenue, and the member sees that the school cares.
- ✓Extra help. A student who keeps getting hurt or feels apprehensive might be invited to come in 30 minutes early to work one-on-one.
- ✓Early renewal conversations. Renewal talks begin at least three months before an agreement ends. When the podcast was recorded in February, his staff were already working on May and June renewals, and anyone expiring the following month had already been contacted.
Starting early means no member is assumed to be a sure thing. Stewart notes that the student who trains every day is sometimes the one who surprises you by saying they want to take a break. Early conversations also make forecasting possible, avoiding the month when you sign 35 new students and lose 32 without seeing it coming.
The easiest person to close, he argues, is the one you've already closed.
Track Net Growth and Reward Renewals
Stewart wants owners to stop celebrating gross numbers. What matters is net student growth, net profit and attrition rate. "If you're not tracking these things, you're guessing," he said.
He pays instructors commission on renewals as well as new enrollments, slightly less for renewals because they take less work, with a sliding scale that rises as staff hit higher numbers. His reasoning: you can't pile renewals onto a team already handling attendance calls, appointments and classes and expect great work for free. Debes takes the opposite approach, folding sales into competitive base pay; both agreed what matters is staff feeling fairly paid with a path upward. Stewart also lets instructors keep their private lesson, camp and seminar income from Rising Tide students, because he views those offerings mainly as a retention tool.
Developing Ambitious Staff Without Losing Them
Stewart hires internally for almost everything, going outside only when he needs high-level specialists, such as for his newer Muay Thai and MMA programs. He says his managers earn considerably more than the average school owner, which gives him the freedom to be away while classes run.
He learned a hard lesson when a former manager tried to take students from a smaller location. His fix was getting clear on every team member's goals and building a growth plan. For instructors who want their own school, the affiliate program offers a supported path. He reported that the first affiliate location reached about 250 students within 10 months of opening, using his systems for leases, mats, staff training and sales.
Key Takeaways
- ✓Build schedules, classes and support around what students need, including fitness and weight-loss help.
- ✓Use diagnostic sales conversations that dig into each prospect's real motivation.
- ✓Contact members after roughly two weeks of missed classes, and offer pauses instead of cancellations.
- ✓Begin renewal conversations at least three months before agreements end.
- ✓Track net growth and attrition, not just gross sign-ups, and reward staff for renewals.
- ✓Give ambitious instructors a clear growth plan so they build with you rather than against you.
Listen to the Full Episode
Mike Stewart's conversation with Brian Debes also covers delegation, kids classes and marketing that actually converts. Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube. If you want attendance alerts, follow-up and renewal tracking that keep students from slipping through the cracks, Red Belt Software helps martial arts school owners improve retention and grow.