Black Belt Banter: Martial Arts Business Podcast

#16 | The Hidden Power of Hosting: The Student Benefits of Hosting Your Own Martial Arts Tournament

• Jimmy Hong • Season 1 • Episode 16

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Want a tournament that builds leaders, delights parents, and actually runs on time? We sit down with Master Jay Lee—tournament director for the U.S. Open Taekwondo Hamadang and CEO of U.S. Taekwondo Center—to show how school owners can turn competition into a retention engine and a reliable revenue stream without sacrificing safety or sanity.

We break down why starting in-house protects your culture and quality, then map a clear path to scaling. You’ll hear how Hamadang-style events shift the focus from head-to-head fights to festival energy: creative board breaking, power breaking, high kick, spin hook, family forms, pairs Poomsae, and crowd‑pleasing demo team competitions. Master Lee explains how to weave prep into everyday classes—using belt‑test forms as entries, dedicating short segments to specialty skills, and offering optional Poomsae and sparring sessions—so training stays fresh while students gain confidence and purpose.

We also get tactical about operations, budgets, and branding. Learn when to host based on school calendars and travel patterns, how to choose venues that let you control concessions, and why punctual, professional touches change the narrative for families. We outline sponsorship tiers that cover hard costs, trade‑in‑kind deals that stretch budgets, and pricing structures that reward early registration while keeping things simple with a flat board fee. Plus, you’ll get a blueprint for building an organizing committee—roles, workflows, and pathways for black belts to referee and lead—so you’re not carrying the entire event on your shoulders.

If you’re a martial arts school owner who wants safer first steps than all‑day sparring brackets, this is your playbook for a tournament that teaches leadership, builds community, and grows profits. Subscribe, share with a school owner who needs this, and leave a review to help more dojangs run with excellence.

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SPEAKER_03:

In this week's episode, we'll be answering this question: Is hosting your own martial arts tournament a good idea? Welcome to Black Belt Panther, the best podcast to help your march arts school increase profits and generate substantial revenue. I'm Jimmy Hong. We are joined by Master Jay Lee, the president and CEO of the U.S. Taekwondo Center, home of the legendary 1988 U.S. Olympic head coach, Grandmaster Sing Lee. A six-degree cookie one black belt, Master Lee continues his family's proud tradition of excellence in martial arts. He's also the tournament director of the U.S. Open Taekwondo Hamadang, an international event that brings together thousands of participants each year. He was also the tournament director of the official World Taekwondo Hamadang in 2025 in Anaheim, California. With decades of experience as an event organizer and tournament director, Master Lee knows firsthand what it takes to run a successful tournament and what pitfalls to avoid. Master Jay Lee, welcome to the show. We're thrilled to have you with us today. Let's kick things off with a bang. In your opinion, what makes hosting your own martial arts tournament a good idea or not such a good idea for school owners?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, sir, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here on the podcast and share whatever experience that I have. I think it definitely hosting a tournament can be beneficial if it's done the right way. And I think it boils down to the purpose and mission of your organization. I think for our philosophy, we believe that Tekwondo is really a vehicle for personal development. And personal development, obviously, we know Tekwondo, it teaches self-defense, physical fitness, exercise, stress relief. But the greater lessons that Tekwondo shares is the respect, the discipline, the goal setting, perseverance, confidence, etc. And so that's why I believe that if you run a successful tournament, it can be really beneficial for your school, both retention-wise, experience-wise for your students, but also it can be a substantial revenue generator for your school.

SPEAKER_03:

Mesly, 100% agree. A tournament is exciting, it's fun. Parents, students, they they could have a great experience. But but they could also have a reverse negative experience as well, especially if they're going to other tournaments that you don't have control, quality control in. I've been to your tournaments, your tournaments are top-notch. It's run your staff. I don't know how how many times they run each year, but it's run efficiently, it's run on time. Lots of students and their parents have a great experience, but that's not always the case going to every tournament. It can have an adverse effect, it could have an opposite effect. They will have a negative experience. And when they have a negative experience, they come back and associate to that negative experience to your own school and their own training. Has that happened? Or do you know what I'm talking about? Or is that an outlier here, Master?

SPEAKER_00:

100%. I I think that that's a common experience, not only for other schools, but I've experienced that myself. I might have I've had students go to outside tournaments and maybe it's not organized well, or maybe the referees are not qualified and they haven't had an experience, and it impacts their overall training at the school, and inevitably it can lead to people wanting to quit. And so we've even experienced that early on in our stages of organizing our tournaments. We we've made the list of all the mistakes you could possibly make, we've made them. And so definitely that can occur. But I think there's a couple of variables that are important when you're having students go to tournaments. So, number one, if they're going to go to an outside tournament, I think you have to make sure you're vetting it, making sure it's run by someone who's credible and that their officials are credible. But then also it's part of expectations. Having your students go in with the right mindset is critical when they're going to outside tournaments because if they're a first-time competitor versus somebody who's trying to, you know, earn points to get a national ranking, et cetera, those expectations are different. So I think it's responsible, it's the responsibility of the school owner and the coach to set some expectation for the students. But then also the other side of it is understanding that Taekwondo has evolved over the years. I mean, we when we first started in the 80s with competition, you know, I'm fortunate my father was the first Olympic coach in the 88 Olympic Games. So I've seen the athletes at the highest level. And in Taekwondo in the 80s, it was all about sparring. But over time, Tekwondo has evolved that it obviously has Pumze, which is highly popular all throughout the world. But what we've experienced with the Hamadang style competition is that rather than people competing against each other, it's almost like we're competing against ourselves. And so, in if you have a in our tournaments, we run Hamada style events in addition to the traditional sparring, the traditional pumze, but we have creative board breaking where students can break up the five boards however they want. You have power breaking where students have the opportunity to do a power skip sidekick or a power back kick, and you also have the power knife hand, and then you have the high kick competition, you have the spin hook competition. So there's a lot of these types of competitions that people can participate in where they're not gonna actually fight with another student and get injured. Obviously, any competition, there is some inherent risk of getting injured, but the likelihood of somebody getting hurt doing a power breaking is vastly different than if they're sparring somebody who has a high-level experience and your student is a novice, then there's a high probability that student's gonna get hurt. And so I think it also depends on how you structure your tournaments, can help impact the outcome to making sure that the students have a wonderful experience. For us, in addition to the individual events, we have a lot of team events. And so uh that's really what makes Tekwando unique, and that's one of the things that we share with all of our students is that this is the only thing that families can participate together as a family unit. If my son or my daughter play soccer or volleyball, parents are just relegated to being coaches and they're on the sideline. But in Taekwondo, you can truly all compete together. So they have we have family forms where we do traditional, they can do a creative form. So there's many different ways that if you structure your tournament, you can still get the competition aspect of people setting goals, working hard to it, learning and understanding how to win and lose without the risk of people getting injured.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm sorry, I have a quick question. For in the Taekwondo industry or taekwondo school owners, we we know what hamadang means, but we do have a lot of our audience that are in different martial arts, whether they're Brazilian jujitsu, karate, kung fu. Can you explain a hamadang tournament versus a regular sparring tournament, fighting tournament?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, absolutely. So hamadang in Korean means more like a festival. And so in traditional hamadang, there's all the competition except for sparring. Now, over time, sparring has become part of the hamadang. And for our tournaments, we also do Olympic style sparring. But the hamadang means festival where students can all participate together and they're really sharing in each other's growth and improvement. And it's it's just a different environment when it's that type of competition as opposed to just sparring, where sparring can be very competitive and heated at times.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, regular regular Taekwondo tournaments, there's two just two events, forms in the morning and then sparring the rest of the day, right? So you're saying in hamadang, in hamadang, there is no sparring, but there there are forms, right? There are forms competition. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00:

Right. So so in in the hamadang, we've started to add sparring. So sparring can be in the hamadang for our in-house tournament. We do offer sparring, we do offer offer regular traditional pumze, and then we offer all the other different types of board breaking competition, creative forms with and without weapons, and then we also have a demo team competition. And I think that demo team competition is really starting to grow in the United States where it can show highlight a lot of the fancier things that people can do in Taekwondo. It shows the choreography, the creativity, and that's one of the really popular events that we have in our tournaments.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, the the demo team competition is super exciting. I couldn't believe the quality of the demos and and the aerial kicks that these students were doing. I was there at the Anaheim at your Anaheim tournament in July of this year, and they were very impressive, Master Lee. And I'm not just talking about your school, I'm talking about all the schools that were competing. It was amazing. I don't know if everybody got to watch, but there was a American got talent a couple years ago, and the World Tech One though, I mean I'm sorry, Cookie One demo team was competing, and they won. It was a very exciting thing. If you didn't see it, you gotta go check it out. But these demo team competition was just as exciting, and they weren't done by the professional athletes. These were regular students in their community at the local school computer practicing, but they did some acrobatic advanced level techniques, Masoline.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, sir. I mean, it's pretty exciting what these teams can come up with. And you have this movement in the United States, the demo team is really starting to grow, and I think that a lot of people are putting a lot of time into it. And so it's definitely exciting to see, and it's fun to see all the creative, creative things that people can come up with.

SPEAKER_03:

But for school owners, to create a demo team, specific demo team, to have them practice at their school separately from the regular classes, and invite certain uh athletes and certain students to be like, hey, I want you to be part of the demo team, they have something to uh work on, to strive for. They go to competition and and show off the performance. I mean, that could be a very good retention, uh character building uh challenge for students to continue on their journey to black belt and and leadership club, is it not?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh 100%. And you know, there's a lot of schools that if you have a demo team, it doesn't mean you must go and compete in a competition. I mean, demo teams are great for retention and for marketing the school in general. You can go out and do performances in your community. For us, the demo team competition has been the demo teams for our school has been really essential for our retention, the growth of the school. The way we structure our teams is that I used to operate five locations, and in each of the locations, we have what's called a recreational demo team. And so each five locations, you have their own separate demo team, and then we have a higher-level team where we take some of the best athletes of all these teams, and that team practices separately, and that's our team that goes and represents our school at the USAT National Championships and other national championships throughout the country. And so for us, the way we structure our demo teams is that you must be a member of our Black Belt Club program or our one of our higher programs. Over the years, we've tweaked it where some years we've done a tryout process, sometimes it's done by selection by the master instructors, but there is some kind of vetting process to be a part of the demo team. And when we have people join our demo team, they make a one-year commitment from January till about the end of November, middle of December. And so it is an additional fee to be a part of the team. We do have trainings a couple of times a week, and then we have our higher level competition called our championship demo team. So it's the equivalent of having like a junior varsity varsity. So this is a feeder program to feed up to the higher level. And so right now, as I operate too, the process is still the same where we have the demo team that's still the recreational level, and then people can aspire to be to the higher level. And the way we structure our demo team is that our recreational demo team will still compete in the state championship and they'll still do some outside tournaments, but as it relates to going to representing us in the country in a national tournament, it's our higher level team that goes.

SPEAKER_03:

So what okay, so that that that's actually great advice. You have higher competition that goes competes nationally. What do the rec level do besides regional? Do they do any other demo team or is that is that is that it? Or do they go?

SPEAKER_00:

Great question. So our our recreational demo teams in our school we do color belt testing five times a year. So our recreational demo teams will perform at the color belt testings, and then there'll also be local events that they'll participate and put on performances, and then we do have them compete at the state championship as well. I believe that competition is great for Tekwundo students. I think that Tekwundo is all about self-improvement. And what competition teaches students is it number one teaches them goal setting. I aspire to compete at this event at this time. It teaches them discipline. If I want to achieve this medal at this tournament, I have to be disciplined and practicing. And I it teaches them leadership. We teach our students in our creative board breaking as an example. They have to set up the five different boards before they break. And what we tell our parents is that our kids are always taught to be obedient, right? Listen to your mom and dad when you go to school, listen to your teacher, when you come to Taekwondo, listen to your instructor, listen to your master instructor. And kids are always taught to be obedient, but there's certain times in our children's lives that they learn how to then be in charge and take charge. And so in our school, we have the kids come up and they say, Hey, I'm gonna do a hammer fist here, I'm gonna do an axe kick here, I'm gonna do a roundhouse kick here. So the kids are really showing their leadership skills and building their confidence in that way. So that's an example of how we share with our families in our school how competition leads to confidence and leadership. And then we also have to teach our kids how to win and lose. I think that's one of the things that is often lacking our society. And some some people say it's the teacup generation, that the kids they're just so fragile. Anytime something doesn't happen, they break down and cry. And I and I believe learning how to win and lose is an important part of life. And you know, life is not fair, things are not always gonna go perfect. And often kids are never taught how to lose. Not that we want them to lose, but we want to learn, we want to teach them that if they lose, they don't win a competition, then you gotta work harder to achieve that next thing. And I think that's a very important life skill. And then the other benefit that we see in our schools as far as organizing our tournaments is that it helps build community, it helps build community service. I mean, we are very fortunate in our school, we have tons of students. They they serve on what's called our organizing committee. They each take a different section of our tournament, and it it really shows their community service to the school, to the community, and then also builds their leadership skills as well. So I think there's tons of benefits of hosting a tournament, but it has to be done in the right way. It has to align with the mission of your school, the philosophy of your school, and then you have to structure things in the right way, and it can be highly successful.

SPEAKER_03:

I completely agree with everybody. I'm just so sick of every kid getting every child getting a participation award of some kind. I mean I mean with when there's like seven kids competing and everyone gets some kind of a medal, as it's just ludicrous, Masalie. I mean it doesn't even it devalues the first, second, third place of of the competition and just everybody getting a participation. It it really irritates me for some reason, Masley. But I mean this is fascinating because we're actually talking about I was gonna give you a participation medal for putting on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

I have so many of them I never got their goal participation medal and and I have a room full of so I'll show you next time.

SPEAKER_03:

But it's fascinating because we're I wanted to talk about you know hosting a a tournament as a as a school owner, but you're absolutely right. It's it's the the experience of your students that that's very impactful for the school. But but going back to the the hosting part. Okay, so for someone who is just starting off and and thinking about hosting a tournament, what do you recommend? What do they need to do first? What are some of like main criteria that need they need to make sure it's checked off before they even attempt to think about doing it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I think there's a lot of different layers on if you're gonna host your own tournament. I think that the first thing is when you when you set up a tournament, you have to set it up at the right time of year. I think for our schools, what we always do, we're actually starting the process now, October, November, December. I'm planning out the entire 2026 calendar. So I think that's the first thing is setting at a time that's gonna be convenient for your families and community. I think the number two thing is making a decision if you're gonna do this as an in-house tournament or a tournament that outside Dojahnists can participate in. So for me, I host two types of tournaments per year. We have one that's open to the public that others outsiders can come to. And then the second one, which we have coming up in a couple of weeks, we always do it in November, is our in-house tournament. And that's just our students only. So that's the next step is figuring out how you want to actually run your tournament. Then from there, I think determining where you want to, how many events you want to do, what you want to focus on. For me, I have probably close to 20 different events that people can sign up for. So you have the traditional sparring, you have traditional forms. We actually also do sport pumze, we do pairs pumze, we do family pumze, and then we would the the list goes on and on. But as a school, you have to decide if you want to just focus on sparring. Do you just want to focus on forms? Do you just want to do board breaking? Um, that will next determine what kind of size of your competition, you know, how many rings you're gonna have, how many referees you're gonna need, how you're gonna set up your committee of volunteers and the structure of your tournament. So it all goes back to what is your purpose of running this tournament. For me, I believe that having our students compete is great for teaching them life skills. I think it's great for retention, I think it's great for community. So as a school owner, if you believe those things, you if you know what you want to identify as your your goal as of out of having a tournament, then you can structure the tournament in the way that is gonna match your goal and vision of what you're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_03:

So when you have all those categories that your students can participate in, what is your class like? Are they are are all the classes are in preparation to the tournament, or do you have extra do you provide extra classes for them to prepare for the tournament and you have regular class going on? How does that work?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a really great question. And so the way we structure our school is that um I I talked earlier a little bit about how we structure our demo team. So I essentially have two demo teams. I have a recreational demo team and then I have a championship demo team. And these are the only students that can go to outside tournaments. In addition to that, we have a sparring team and then we have a PUMSA team. So we essentially have four different teams. So these four teams, they are the only ones that go to outside tournaments. They all have separate trainings throughout the week. And then part of the agreement when they join our program in January is they commit to competing in XYZ tournaments that we have decided we're gonna go participate in. And so for our in-house tournament, that's one of the requirements, is they're gonna compete at this tournament. And so that's one of the ways those four team members prepare, but then that that only makes up maybe 10% of our student population, 5% maybe. Then there's the rest of the percentage of the school. And so how we prepare for that is that we're actually doing a lot of the same things that they're gonna do at their belt test that they would do at the tournament. And so, an example is that they're gonna do pumse for their upcoming belt test in December. And so we tell the students, hey, we're gonna practice this pumse for the belt test, and then you can do the same pumse at the tournament. So you're really accomplishing two things at the same time. And then we can also let's say we are practicing one form for the entire class, and then we teach it, and then we can split them up into groups. So then we'd have an instructor go with these kids, and then we have a family go over here, and then mix in these moms over here, and then these dads over here, and so then we'll give them 10 minutes to practice that pumza. And then they're helping prepare for their belt tests, they're learning their pumza, but then also we're showing them hey, look, doing this as a team, doing this as a family unit, it can be a lot of fun. And so that's also practicing for the tournament at the same time. Another example is that in the creative board breaking that we do, the students can break up to five boards however they want. And every belt test for us, we have our students break a board. And so, what we'll do is right now, we're we're in the middle of that process. I'll just make sure that we we make a routine that the whole class practices and include it in that routine, one of the board breaks is what they have to do for their belt test, anyways. Um, so that way they can prepare for the creative board breaking. We'll also practice for high kick, we'll have the whole class practice, just how to do a running, jumping, front kick. And eventually students are all gonna need to learn that. So, so in other words, we'll we'll take parts of a certain portion of the class and practice their curriculum, which is also secondarily practicing for the tournament. And then we'll also take some time at the last 15 minutes of class and we'll break out and say, hey, if you want to do the power knife hand, you go over here, you want to do the high kick over here, you want to do the power breaking over here, we'll have our instructors float around and coach people through on improving those skills. And so that's how we prepare the mass of our student population to compete. And then if you have students who want to do the the Pumze or the sparring class, we also do have a Pumze and Sparring class that are outside of the team. So if you're if you're not a member of the team, we just have specialty pumse class, specialty part sparring class, so then people can choose to take more of those classes if they want to compete in that specific event for the tournament.

SPEAKER_03:

That that's fascinating because it you're adding additional curriculum that the students could challenge themselves and and and practice for. It's not just your regular blue belt curriculum, but you're adding additional challenges, additional curriculum for them to strive and and keeping your curriculum fresh and and for the students to to get better and compete in very fascinating, Master Lee.

SPEAKER_00:

It's a hundred percent true. I mean, there I don't remember who came up with it with somebody smarter than me, but they say, hey, if you're not gonna be able to do so many people that I thought you were giving me a participation medal.

SPEAKER_01:

Come on. You get a participation medal on the on the intelligence factor, Master Lee.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm I'm having difficulty just kind of sitting up straight and talking at the same time. But anyways, uh, somebody said that one of the important factors when you're teaching a class is disguise repetition, right? You want to disguise repetition, they're doing the same thing, but you're making it different for them, so it seems more exciting. And so for us, tournaments are really critical for our retention. I mean, we you know, the reality is if you're teaching for us, we teach taekwondo, but the difference between Tegok 4 and Tekok 5, it's not that different, right? And so we're in Q4 of the year, and so October, November, December, families they they start getting busier and busier. Like we took our son to a trick-or-treat event last weekend. We're gonna do another one this weekend, then we have trick-or-treating stuff. It's October, it's like the last it's all about Halloween. Then then you go into Thanksgiving, then you include Christmas. So people are have involved with other family stuff. This keeps them motivated to stay inside the dojang because you're preparing for this tournament. We do this in-house tournament one time per year. So I think it's really critical for the retention piece to challenge students, give them other opportunity. But um, for our teams, I have a lot of teenagers and and kids in their 20s who are doing the backflips and doing all these things, but the reality is not all of our students can do that. And so for us, the other great retention piece is that our black belts have to referee at our tournaments, and that opens up a new place for them to grow and learn and experience and lead and become leaders inside of our dojang. So I think that if if it's done right, competitions can really be essential for retention of your school.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, you're using uh the tournament experience and factor to for the benefits of your students. A lot of school owners that I talk to, they refuse to participate in tournaments. Not not not even thinking about hosting, but participating because they're afraid of the negative experience that their students are going to have in participating at these tournaments. Okay, so hypothetically, let's say uh an average school owner who has about 200 students or singles a single location, but doesn't have multiple locations, thinking about uh hosting a tournament for for this exact purpose of retention or you know, challenge, give them some type of competition for their students. Do you recommend that? Is that a big enough student base? Do they invite other schools? Do they open it up? What what's your recommendation on something like that?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I definitely think having 200 students is very feasible to do it. And I think that I think probably the first one if if I was organizing a tournament for the very first time, I would suggest doing an in-house tournament first. It allows you better control to control the variables. And I know that no matter how you plan something, things are always unpredictable, things you have to be flexible. But I think when you you start bringing in outside organizations, it can lead to some challenges. So if I were advising somebody or telling myself that's what we did first, is we we did an in-house tournament first, and and I was fine with 75 to 100 athletes. But I think with the student 200 student population, I think that's definitely more than enough. I think that you can structure it in a way that you limit the number of events that you host. But I also want to comment on what you said. I mean, I I think that there are definitely negative sides of running a tournament. There, there's a lot of time and effort that goes into it. You have to manage those expenses and have to manage the people really well. So um it's definitely not all glamorous, but I think again, if it's done in the right way, I think that the the what you get back is gonna be more than what you put into it.

SPEAKER_03:

It if you're running okay, so let's go with your suggestion of doing it in-house first. Do you recommend they do it at their school location or do they rent out a facility, like a chip?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I think, well, if you're in California, then you gotta rent out a facility, right? Because California is like one or two thousand square feet. And so I think it depends on the size of the school. But um, I I I think we've been fortunate that our our schools have enough square footage that we our our very first in-house tournament, we did it inside of one of our locations.

SPEAKER_03:

And your location is five, six thousand massively.

SPEAKER_00:

So right now, my one location is nine thousand square feet, the other one is 7,500 square feet. But when we did a sort of thing, which is huge. It's very large. We're very fortunate for sure. But if you have a 2,000 square foot space, then it's probably gonna be very difficult to do that. And you know, you can rent out a gym or or or something like that. But it it goes back to one of my original points of setting it at the right time of the year. So an example for us is that if if you want to get a high school gym at this time of year is really tough because the high schools they have to prioritize their own sports. You know, if they have a volleyball or basketball season, if that team does well and they may have to go to the playoffs, they're gonna not allow you to use the space. So making sure if you are gonna use a high school or a middle school gym scheduling at a time that you know that they will commit to you. And then and having the right space, I think, is also depending on what your goals are. I mean, there's there's of course additional revenue streams when you're running a tournament as well. Like if you if you rent the gym, then they'll just let you have the gym and you could do whatever you want in there. So that means you can sell concessions, you can um have a sponsor fee to have a vendor come out and do food trucks, you can share in the revenue, etc. But if you if you rent a place that has a proprietary um use that you must use their food and beverage services, you must use their kitchen, et cetera, that'll impact your revenue and your costs will go up as well. So I think if you're starting out for the very first time and you're just running a smaller in-house tournament, I would suggest just doing it at a local school where you can control all those things. You can try to keep your costs down, um, and and it'll help make sure that your event is successful for the very first time.

SPEAKER_03:

And it doesn't have to be in high school, it could be middle school or even elementary school. Definitely. Definitely. Well, would you recommend something in the summer when there is no school going then? Uh yeah. Because during summer school, you know, I mean, there's summer classes, but it's not as busy as, as you said, winter sports.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I I think definitely hosting it in the summertime can be very beneficial. And it also depends on your community. In Colorado, our kids are getting out of school at the middle of May. And I know in the East Coast a lot of them are not until middle of June. And so for us, you know, we we often do our tournaments in July, and it it has its pluses and minuses because in July, you have a lot of families who are traveling out of town for the summer vacation, but at the same time, it doesn't have as many conflicts. So for us, June could be okay, July could be okay. August is not okay for us because some of our school districts are actually starting school at the beginning of August. So I think it really just depends on your community, how the school calendar is laid out, and how you feel your student population interacts in the summertime. So for For us, you know, I have two locations. One location is a little more affluent community than the other. That more affluent community, we see a bigger dip in attendance because they have the means to go on vacation more often than the school that doesn't have as much. So it really just depends on your community. But those are some of the factors that you should look at on when you decide to have your tournament. And then of course the next step is if you do believe that in the future you want that tournament to include outsiders, you should begin with the end in mind. You should plan to say, okay, well, I can't just think about my school. What's going to be good for the rest of schools in the area if I want them to compete? Because you don't want to have it say, okay, let's just use an example. Put it on Memorial Weekend. And then the next summer you put it over 4th of July. And then next summer you put on August. If your goal is to get consistency of outside schools to support and consistency for your students, you should try to pick a time of year that'll always be around the same time of year.

SPEAKER_03:

What about what about the the let's say go back to the original hypothetical of that 200 student counts, single school owner? What about if they have a because we all know each other? They have a friend in a nearby area, right? Or they have two friends in a nearby area. Can you do you recommend just keeping it still in-house or inviting your friend school or two schools and be a three school in-house tournament? Is that the same thing? Or do you because then you're essentially tripling your your your particip participants in your in your world tournament, or do you still recommend keeping that in in-house?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a great question. I mean, I I I'm probably not the right person to answer that question because I've never considered doing it that way. So so I don't have first hand experience on if that can go well or if it doesn't go well.

SPEAKER_03:

Because you know, you know that other master of story, he's he's your friend, right? And you have a relations with them, a positive relation. So it would almost be like the in-house. It's not somebody just you randomly invited.

SPEAKER_00:

It's true. Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that it can be done successfully if the relationship is good and the the expectations are clear and you write down things so there's misunderstandings. But you know, that there's also some people have said, hey, you you don't want to do business with your friends because if something doesn't go as planned, then you could have a conflict with your friend. And so I I've never done it before. I'm sure there's tons of people who've been very successful at it. Just theoretically speaking, I would if you do go down that right, my suggestion would be is just make sure you put things in writing to make sure there's no misunderstandings because you know, when money gets involved, you you could have a misunderstanding. And and you know, no friendship is worth five, ten thousand, twenty thousand dollars. It's just making sure those expectations are clear so so you work together as a as a team.

SPEAKER_03:

I just want our audience to know the type of tournaments that Master J. Lee operates. I mean, when he's talking about sponsors, he's not talking about some high school little sponsors. He he brings in just sponsors, concessions, revenues that it's not just from the participation fee, but all sorts of uh extracurricular that he involves with.

SPEAKER_00:

Can you elaborate on that, Masvalie? Yes, sir. Well, just so you know, I mean, we we do do smaller level sponsorship as well. So it's not all big. It depends on which tournament we're talking about. Like as an example, our in-house tournament is is a pretty small sponsorship level, but our national tournaments can be much higher. And so I'll start with the big and then I'll go down to the low. So for our bigger sponsorships, we provide uh a sponsor packet. And so we have a presenting sponsor, we have a gold sponsor, then we have a silver sponsor, and then we have a bronze sponsor. And the presenting sponsor, they'll have an opportunity to at all of our tournaments, we have an opening ceremony, and we have this parade of athletes where students will all come in together, and then we'll have a big demonstration team performance at the US Open Hamadan. We've had people like the Korean Tigers or one of the top universities from Korea. And so we we have an opening ceremony, we have this captive audience of thousands of people, and so the presenting sponsor will have an opportunity to to address and promote their company at that time, and then all of our marketing materials will have them as listed as the presenting sponsor. So you'll have the badges, the program book, all the signs throughout. It'll it'll be presented by Kia as an example.

SPEAKER_03:

And so um and Kia was actually one of the sponsors.

SPEAKER_00:

Kia was one of our sponsors. I mean, there was one year.

SPEAKER_01:

Kia is a huge, huge company.

SPEAKER_00:

Huge company, yeah. Like one year we we we we worked with a nonprofit and they gave away a Kia car, and and we raised some money for local nonprofits selling selling raffle tickets for that. So it was pretty cool. I mean, it was back back in the day where they had, I don't know if you guys remember, they had those those Kia hamsters. Do you remember that? Yeah, and I mean you're old, so you should remember that, right?

SPEAKER_03:

I remember it so well because they're promoting the card to Seoul.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, the Kia Soul, that's right.

SPEAKER_03:

And they had the hamsters dancing around.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And and so one year we had that, and then you had the Krick Kia hamsters riding the Kia Sol out. They drove it out, and then we we we uh drove the winner, and somebody won a Kia Sol. So I mean that's do you know do you know who won it? It wasn't me, I could tell you that. But if it was free, I would drive a Kia Sol. But it it it it it was a pretty cool experience. So we we we have you know, the the presenting sponsor will have an opportunity to promote their product. In that case, it was a Kia car. We drove it out, the hamster came out, and then part of that package is we did a trade-in-kind sponsorship. So they part paid a portion of cash, and then they allowed us to, they gave us 10 Kia vehicles, and and we gave those to our officials and and referees, and they drove around our officials picking up from the airport, driving around in a Kia, in one of those new Kia cars. So it's kind of like a test drive. It allows people to use the product. So we we'll do a presenting sponsor, and then we'll in the gold level, uh, we'll we'll name all of the rings after the gold sponsor. So if you have 10 rings, then you'll say, This is the Kia ring, this is the Hyundai ring, this is the Samsung ring. So we we name the rings, and then they'd have an ad in the program book, and so different levels of it's on our website and our social media, email campaigns, things like that. And so just based off of the tier, they'll get fewer of those benefits. And so that's how we've done it on a national scale, where we've you know gotten literally thousands of dollars in sponsorships, but we'll do the same thing for our local in-house tournament and we'll just do the levels at a much lower price. And it it's been for the locals.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, I'm just thinking aloud here, you can invite your local realtor, your local business to put some type of banner on at your location, whether it's the gym or your or your March Hearst studio. 100%. Yeah, I mean, I I think doing it at a local, smaller scale.

SPEAKER_00:

100%. And and I think that some of the best targets are, like you said, a realtor, like you said, you know, a plumber, an electrician, an automotive place, because the reality is there's so many of those types of people in an industry. And realtor is one of the biggest ones, right? There's thousands in your community, and you don't know who to pick. It's all based off relationship. And so we allow them to have booth space, and we we have a goodie bag that goes to all the athletes, and so they can put whatever promo product in there. But the biggest value is that they can interact with our student population because you know, realtors, that there's just so many of them. So, how do you pick? You pick it based off of relationship. And and we've been fortunate that most of our sponsors are our current students, so it helps build trust, like, oh, I I trained with that person, or or my son trains with them, and so it creates already inherent trust and rapport because they have a common relationship together. And so, one of the other things I want to share about the sponsorships is that we also do a trade-in-kind. So, as an example, we are doing it this year at a at a high school gym, and that allows us to bring in our own food and beverage. So we can sell it on concessions, and then we bring supplies. So, one of our sponsors of a trade-in-kind sponsor of our gold level is Texas Roadhouse. And so, Texas Roadhouse, they provide us food for all of our staff and volunteers and referees, and and it allows us to reduce the expense of cash outlay for running a tournament. It provides exposure for their company, and and their cost is less than what retail is, and so it's a win-win situation. And so we have a lot of situations that where we have trading kind sponsorships. Another example is that they just open a new Planet Fitness near one of our locations, and we we got them to donate 500 bottles of water, and they always say Planet Fitness on it, and but it allows us to save on our expenses by just getting those water bottles and it promotes their business as well. So anytime we do any kind of sponsorship, we definitely want to make it a win-win scenario. Obviously, it helps our school by reducing expenses or bringing in additional revenue to us, but we also want to make it do right by our sponsors. We want to make sure that our sponsors gain from it and and gain clients from it, but they they also need the continuous exposure as well.

SPEAKER_03:

The picture that I'm getting is that when you're when you're running a tournament, it's it's very professional. The uh the participant gets a goodie bag with materials, you know, sponsors lined up. I was thinking more like, oh running an in-house tournament at this local elementary gym. They're just coming in, they participate, they leave. But you're saying, hey, make it professional. Bring, you know, call some food trucks over so that they could have something to eat, get some bottles of water with with sponsors on it. Make it professional so it it feels a bigger event than than what it could possibly be. Is is that uh a correct assessment there?

SPEAKER_00:

100%. I mean, we we want to have a standard of excellence in everything that we do. So our facilities have to be exceptional, our staff have to be exceptional, our events have to be exceptional. We want to make sure that we are operating on time. I think that that's one of the common phrases people here in the taekwondo industry is they say, okay, is it gonna be on schedule or is it a taekwondo schedule? And the taekwondo schedule that's always one or two hours late. And so our goal for our team is always to change the philosophy behind that. We want to change the paradigm. We're gonna operate on time. One of the biggest things that we we really harp on for our team is that if we have a start time of 9 a.m., we want competition starting at 8 55. So we want to make sure students have a positive experience throughout, whether that's having qualified referees, starting on time, staying on schedule, and and just the swag that they get by participating in the competition itself.

SPEAKER_03:

Fascinating. So these 200, 250, 300 single school owners, they can do it in-house to start off, get learned a rope, see what challenges, and then and then scale up from there. 100%. Master Jay Lee. That that's that's great advice, though, because there's so many schools out there that don't want to send their students to just some unknown tournament and they can control the atmosphere and the experience of their own parents.

SPEAKER_00:

1000%. Yeah. I mean, you you want to the reality is our students are our family and our customers. And so we want to make sure that we they we know they're gonna have a positive experience. So I think that that's a really critical piece that if you if you're gonna go to outside tournaments, make sure you have them receive the proper training. If they're gonna go to a more competitive environment like sparring, as an example, because some of these sparring athletes, they're putting in 20, 30 hours a week of training. And if you're just not doing that, you're just not gonna be competitive no matter how athletic your kids are. So you want to put them in a position to succeed. So if you if you can make a tournament that's a little bit more recreational in style, then it allows everybody to succeed. And we want our students to have a positive experience. And I definitely believe that these can be you can start with your end in mind. My goal is to have an outside tournament where we include everybody, and I can have 500 athletes, then I'm gonna start with an internal. This year I want to have this many athletes, and then the next year maybe I'll invite one or two of my friends, and then the next year maybe I'll invite these friends, and then maybe I'll open it up to the public. And so it definitely should have some kind of vision for where you want to be and steps on how you want to get there. And one of the other things that we do in our school is that we have what's called an organizing committee. And so the best way I try to explain this to some of our families who choose to get involved is that it's kind of like the military in the sense that you have officers in the military and then you have enlisted soldiers at the military. So if you have an everyday volunteer, that's the equivalent of an enlisted soldier. Our organizing committee is like an officer, and our officers, we have different, we have an organizational chart, and we'll say, okay, this is the tournament committee. And inside the tournament committee, you'll have a chair and a vice chair, and maybe two vice chairs. And then underneath that committee, then you have the ring managers, and then underneath that you have board holding, and then timekeeper, scorekeeper. So then each committee has its own set of responsibilities. And so we we have a process where we we want to always train people to move up in those work charts because the reality is people are willing to sacrifice and volunteer their time. I mean, we are so lucky in our school that we have so many adults and students who are willing to sacrifice and and really lead outside of classes to put on events like this. So we've been fortunate in that regard. But having that structure is important because if you try to do it all yourself as a school owner, then it's not going to be worth it because it's going to take too much of your time and energy. So you want to make sure you have a team that's going to help support you and and you want to trust them to be responsible for their own, you know, department.

SPEAKER_03:

That's that's great advice, honestly. Great advice. Okay. Last subject and and then let's close the show. Uh what is the break-even thing? If if a school owner, let's let's go back to that hypothetical of 200 students. Uh, what number of participants does that school owner need or how many participants to financially at least break-even? Because we're talking about two things. We're not just talking about hosting a school for for the the net profit or income generating, we're talking about uh hosting a taekwondo, I'm sorry, martial arts tournament to keep retention, challenge their students, all the other stuff that's associated that can be associated with that, the benefits of that, and not just financial. But obviously, you don't want to operate at a loss as well. What is an average fee that they can charge? What do you recommend that they need? Is it 50 students? Is it a hundred that needs to participate? Can you give us a rundown on that?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a really great question. And you may not like this answer, but again, I think it all goes down to your purpose and your mission. Like for me, the additional revenue, yes, it's helpful, but I see the value far beyond that in the in the way that it leads to student retention, it leads to upgrades to higher-level programs, it leads to more people being involved in our teams. So I think that's where the real value is. But obviously, you can generate thousands of dollars as well. I think it depends on how you structure your tournament because there's always gonna be some fixed costs and they're gonna be some variable costs. So some examples are um fixed costs are the the rental of the venue, the staff hours, and then the variable costs are gonna be cost of boards, cost of medals, cost of office supplies. That all is dictated based off of how many athletes you're gonna project to have. And so um, for us, we we always looked at it in the very beginning when we started doing these tournaments. We said, hey, this is not gonna be a one-off thing. We're gonna continue to do this for years. And so all school owners know this that the more you buy in bulk, the better your price is. And so for us, because our vision was we want to do this forever, then we we went ahead and bought 5,000 borers, or we went ahead and bought 3,000 medals because it helped our unit cost. I understand not everybody's gonna go down that path, so you can always control the cost by you know doing a little bit of a smaller medal that you might do three years from now and and projecting to play it safe so you don't buy too much. So I think that to answer your question, it depends on how you want to run it. But you can be conscious of your budget to make sure that you are running a profit and you can definitely raise some money in a sponsorship level to help cover a lot of your fixed costs. I I think that's one of the things that you know you could look at and say, hey, if my if my rental cost of the gym is$3,000 and then the staff hours and this is going to be$3,000. So that's$6,000. Then you should make it your goal that you can get$6,000 of sponsorship to cover your hard costs. And then that way, all the extra stuff that you have a little bit more variability to, then that can be your profit. But to me, the the greatest value is just the longevity of your students, the enthusiasm you get from your students after they compete. That's where a school learner, in my opinion, should be viewing is that those students who participated now are those folks more excited and ready to upgrade to a better program.

SPEAKER_03:

So that's that's fascinating, Master Lee. The the I'm in the West Coast, coastal area. So the tournament fees are higher than than most of America. What about mid-America? What are average tournament regional, not national, regional tournament fees like$50,$100? What can these school owners expect to charge if they host an in-house tournament?

SPEAKER_00:

I think if they're starting just on their own, I think maybe between$50 and$75. I think if you host it outside, I think I would suggest doing some market research, seeing what other tournaments are charging to understand. But for us, our tournament, I believe, is$80 right now. And that so we do two tiers of pricing. We have an early pricing, which is$80, and then we have a higher level pricing after it hits the early bird pressure, it goes to$90. And so we we tier out our pricing structure that way, and then we have an additional fee for extra events, and so that price will also go up based off the time of year that they register. And then for us in our tournaments, I I know there's different philosophies on how to do this. I've been to a lot of tournaments, like a lot of the USAT events, they will help their martial arts supply vendor and say, hey, you must buy all your boards from this supplier. And you know, these companies are charging an arm and a leg because they have to cover their sponsorship costs. For us, we just include a board fee. So they don't have to go buy boards. So we charge an extra 10 bucks if you're going to do any board breaking event. It just covers all the costs of your boards. That to me is more worth it because I'm not worried about making a big profit on boards because, again, the value for me is the longevity of a student, but then also saves time. If I had, you know, any tournament you have people who are doing this for the first time. You can give them directions in an email, you can make a video, you can talk to the parents about it, and then inevitably they're gonna show up and say, I forgot what I'm supposed to do. So you save time by not having to have, oh, you forgot to go buy your boards, go buy your boards over here. So that's just my philosophy. I think that having people buy boards can be very uh much a profit generator, but for us, we we wanna we wanna have efficiency for our tournaments. We want things to run on time.

SPEAKER_03:

And it doesn't matter, is it the price the same whether they do one event or multiple events?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so we have the first event, let's just say, for example, the first event is 80 bucks, then the second event will be 15 bucks.

SPEAKER_02:

On additional.

SPEAKER_00:

Correct.

SPEAKER_02:

And 15 extra for each additional event.

SPEAKER_00:

Correct. And then it it increases once you pass the early threshold time for the early bird pricing. And then one of the one of the other things that I think has become very industry standard of a lot of industries, not just martial arts, is that you charge a processing fee. Like you go to Ticketmaster or you go to whatever, there's always a processing fee. So that's something we implemented a couple years ago. We we use a third party to do our tournament itself. So they they register through that tournament and it runs the software during the tournament. Um, and so we we charge a processing fee to cover that cost and cover the credit card processing costs because we don't do anything at the door. We don't do any check or cash. Everything has to be registered online because that's one of the the leakage points when running a tournament is if you're if you have incorrect data, if somebody registered with the wrong name or the wrong belt, you wanna you want to get that stuff before the tournament starts, not when they show up at the ring.

SPEAKER_03:

Using that third-party software, is that expensive for a small school owner or is it reasonably priced?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a percentage price. So like they charge five five percent. So, you know, it's all based off of the revenue, but you can always build in that cost, whether that's a processing fee or maybe just increasing the price by five bucks or whatever that that is. But that would be my recommendation is to try to pass those fees on to the the consumer. I think it's become more and more a norm in our society, and I think it makes sense.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we're a subscrip subscription-based society as well. Everything we do, we we pay in monthly subscription. So you're absolutely right about that. Well, uh, let's finish there, you know. And audience, thank you for joining us today on today's episode of Black Bell Panther. A huge thank you to Master Jay Lee, president and CEO of the U.S. Tech Wilderness Center, for sharing his wisdom and experience on the big question. Is hosting your own martial arts tournament a good idea? If you found value in today's conversation, make sure you subscribe or share this episode with your martial arts community and leave us a review. It helps us keep bringing you insights from leaders like Master Jay Lee. This has been Black Belt Banter. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you all in the next round. Thank you, sir.