by Matt Pasquinilli and Dennis Schaefer
Keep your interior design uniform, attractive, and simple. It should not look like your home or some arts and crafts store. Don’t pick up outdated or broken furniture from garage sales or the side of the street. Find comfortable, easy to clean seating that will promote the idea that you are professional in your approach to operating your business.
Tip 11 – Keep Your Trophies at Home
Build yourself a trophy room in your home to display your trophies, but don’t clutter your school with them. They break easily, gather tons of dust, and are usually only meaningful to you. New prospects won’t care if you or your students win tournaments, they really only care about how you can help them accomplish their goals. If their goal is to win tournaments, show them your scrapbook of photos and news stories about your past glory.
Tip 12 – NO LAWN FURNITURE
Please do not use molded plastic lawn furniture. It looks and feels cheap and will give new prospects a bad first impression. Invest in real office furniture. Most cities have resellers of used, well-maintained office chairs that have a lot of life left in them and look good when you are getting started in your business. Find them online or in the phone book.
Tip 13 – Keep Your Bathrooms Clean!
Start with your bathrooms. You must have someone wipe down the surfaces of your bathrooms everyday. Use a good disinfectant to keep it smelling clean. The boy’s bathroom must be mopped everyday because boys pee on the floor. We like to mop the girl’s bathroom everyday, too, because it makes it smell nice and clean. Clean bathrooms are a sign of a professional business and will set you apart from most of your competition.
Tip 14 – Keeping It Clean
Hire a cleaning company for at least one day a week. We have janitorial staff members who are responsible for cleaning the school five days a week. We have a lot of members and if we don’t have the floors vacuumed, trash emptied, and the furniture dusted every day, our business quickly looks sloppy and uncared for. When we started the school, we used a commercial cleaning company once a week. It was inexpensive and allowed us to focus on teaching and professionally managing the business. Go visit any of the businesses you support and respect and look for dirt and clutter. You won’t find any in the businesses that are booming and offer great customer service.
Matt Pasquinilli is Executive Director of the non profit Asian Arts Center Taekwondo School in Dayton, Ohio. Dennis Schaefer is a professional martial artist living in Oakwood, Ohio. www.aacdayton.com
