When Mike Stewart first appeared on the Red Belt Podcast in 2024, he ran two schools and one affiliate. He now oversees six Rising Tide academies in Maryland and is working on a seventh. He owns three, and three are affiliates. His main location does seven figures a year by itself. His second is close to that mark, one affiliate is on pace to pass it, and his newest school expects about 200 members by the end of its first year.
Stewart is nearing 20 years as an academy owner and is one of the few guests invited back on the show. His approach to growth is structured but people-first.
Turning Would-Be Rivals Into Affiliates
Stewart compares a familiar problem to Star Wars: the owner trains a talented student, who turns into Darth Vader. His answer is to stop holding people back and build them a path.
When a black belt, brown belt or even a purple belt is ready to run a school, Rising Tide gives them its CRM, accountants, attorneys, real estate contacts, sales systems and curriculum. When one affiliate opened near his main location and took 20 or 30 members along, Stewart says his school replaced them within a month. He compares it to grafting a branch from a big tree. The original tree barely notices, and with care the branch grows into a tree that bears fruit of its own.
He is also blunt with staff who are thinking about ownership. His first year, he made no money and lost money in some months. He advises negotiating lease abatement, starting in a modest space and avoiding early debt for cages, rings and showers. Done right, new owners should be paying themselves within three or four months. Many of his best people, including his headquarters manager, earn more than most gym owners and decide that staying makes more sense.
Pay for Performance, Not Comfort
Rising Tide pays its full-time staff a healthy base plus commissions and bonuses. Stewart lets them keep 100% of private lesson and camp income, as long as the client is a paying member. If the client isn't a member, the gym takes half. The rule pushes coaches to bring private clients into the membership, which Stewart thinks is better for the student anyway. In his view, nobody gets good from private lessons alone.
He would change one thing if he could start over: "I would make their bases significantly lower. I would make their commission and their performance-based pay significantly higher." He has seen employees get raises, benefits and security, settle in, and let their performance slide.
Host Brian "Barn Cat" Debes has had the opposite problem: commissioned staff who chased sign-ups and neglected students once they joined. He switched to high base pay with no commission. Stewart's fix is to pay renewal commissions on a sliding scale that rises as staff hit monthly renewal targets, so the focus doesn't stay on the front door. New staff also don't get commission right away. They work through a trial period on base pay first, and when commission starts it begins at a reduced rate.
The reasoning is lifetime value. Some of his students have invested $30,000–$40,000 over 15 years, while acquiring new ones keeps getting more expensive. His goal is retention strong enough to support a waiting list, taking five to ten qualified new members a month.
Running a Tight Weekly Meeting
Stewart has learned to give staff clear deadlines and criteria rather than the long leash he prefers himself. He has only three direct reports, his gym managers, and when something goes wrong he goes to them rather than correcting front-line staff.
Every week's meeting covers sign-ups, dropouts, delinquent accounts, lead flow and student issues. He expects detailed CRM notes on every member, especially anyone who hasn't paid or attended in months. To keep it from getting dry, he mixes in things like asking everyone to share a personal win and a gym win, and he asks the team to hold him accountable too.
He also holds at least two one-on-ones a year with each key player, often over dinner, including a personal and business SWOT analysis. He warns against automatically promoting your best salesperson to sales manager or your best coach to head of coaching, and against getting so close to staff that correcting them becomes awkward.
The Five Buckets and the Case for Events
Stewart thinks owners overcomplicate the business. He reduces it to five areas: marketing, a real sales process, great classes on a consistent schedule, culture and events, and a retention and renewal process. Almost everything else falls under one of these.
Events are where he and Debes have both changed their minds. Rising Tide holds a regular Sunday open mat at every location. About once a quarter, it closes the others and hosts one large open mat. The most recent one raised $3,000 for a coach with cancer and drew around 150 people from at least ten schools. Stewart sets the tone at these events: keep the intensity moderate, protect injuries, and never use the event to recruit other gyms' students. He also hosts kids' parents' nights, team outings to members' fights, in-house tournaments and member clubs such as archery, and he's considering a chess club.
His case for the lighter events: "Two things can exist at the same time." He believes a serious academy can still have a bounce house and tacos. With social life moving online, he thinks the gym can become the new social club.
Standards Are Part of the Culture
Stewart is clear that a good atmosphere doesn't replace good jiu-jitsu. He thinks how many people stay after class (only around 5–7% at his school) says little about a gym's health. What matters is whether students are improving. Members who arrive early, in uniform and ready to work get extra coaching from him, including weekend trips to competitions. Members who treat the gym as purely transactional don't.
Key Takeaways
- ✓Give departing instructors a structured affiliate path with your systems instead of treating them as traitors.
- ✓Consider lower base pay with stronger performance pay, and reward renewals as well as sign-ups.
- ✓Keep weekly meetings focused on sign-ups, dropouts and delinquent accounts, and require detailed CRM notes.
- ✓Limit your direct reports to managers and hold them accountable for their teams.
- ✓Events, from big open mats to member clubs, are a core retention tool, not a distraction.
- ✓Set clear standards. Students who meet them should get more of your time.
Listen to the Full Episode
The full conversation also covers Stewart's move away from 13-hour days, the role AI will play in running a gym, and why he thinks owners don't have to be broke. Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube. Red Belt Software helps martial arts school owners build the systems behind student retention and growth, so they can spend more time on the mat.