How This Martial Arts School Owner Grew 127K Instagram Followers

168 - The 5A Content System: How This Martial Arts School Owner Grew 127K Instagram FollowersAlan La from Invincible HQ™, grew to 127K Instagram followers using his 5A Content System,without fancy equipment or viral stunts. In this episode, he breaks down how martial arts school owners can escape the "instructor trap" and create content that actually converts.IN THIS EPISODE:Why the martial arts industry is falling behind in marketingWhy "fly on the wall" content beats produced videosThe $20 tool that makes the biggest differenceHow to turn existing classes into weeks of contentThe 5A Content System (Authority, Access, Applause, Ascension, Action)Making martial arts less intimidating through behind-the-scenes contentAnd more*Bring 50 Enrollments Into Your Martial Arts School Every 90 Days Need help growing your martial arts school? Watch Training + Take The AssessmentTRANSCRIPTIONALAN: So I literally started on the streets and, you know, really just trying to find enough students to keep the dream alive. And I’ll be honest, like back then, I didn’t have a massive marketing budget. I didn’t have money, pretty much, but I was fortunate enough to be starting my school right when social media was beginning. And I took that as an option. I saw social media was this thing where it gave me the ultimate kind of equaliser with other massive schools that have been established for like decades.GEORGE: Hey, it’s George. Welcome to another Martial Arts Media™ Business Podcast. Today I’m joined with Alan La from Invincible HQ. How are you doing, Alan?ALAN: I’m good. Thank you, George. Just want to say again, thank you for having me on and look forward to see how I can help school owners and coaches.GEORGE: Amazing. So a little bit of context that led to this interview. So I met Alan at one of our Partners Intensive events in Sydney, and we just had a brief little chat, spoke marketing, spoke ads. It was in between sessions. And then I had a look at Alan’s socials and I was watching some of his Instagram stuff that he was doing. Firstly, if you want to be inspired as a martial artist, Alan’s skill and kicks are just bar none.But then together with that, just watching how he packaged everything and then just seeing the amount of mass following that Alan has, I think it was 127,000 followers on Instagram. So to learn here from Alan as what he does as a martial artist, but also from the publishing standpoint and growing a mass audience, which are three skills that you very rarely see together in the martial arts space. So thanks so much for jumping on, Alan.ALAN: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m grateful to be here.GEORGE: Awesome. So let’s just, I always like to just start from the beginning. What’s a bit of your background? What got you started in martial arts? And we can go from there.ALAN: Okay. Well, first of all, I’m Alan La and I’m the founder of Invincible Worldwide. And most people see me as the guy with a hundred K followers and 20 million views. And they assume that I’ve got some secret marketing degree or whatever. What a lot of people don’t know is that I started out as the furthest thing from what you call the influencer thing. I was a shy kid, just started teaching martial arts in the back of my parents’ house when I finished high school and eventually that grew and then I had to move out to local PCYCs and stuff like that.But then sometimes we’d get kicked out. So I had to teach in local car parks. And so I literally started on the streets and, you know, really just trying to find enough students to keep the dream alive. And I’ll be honest, back then I didn’t have a massive marketing budget. I didn’t have money. Yeah, pretty much. But I was fortunate enough to be starting my school right when social media was beginning.ALAN: And I took that as an option. I saw social media was this thing where it gave me the ultimate kind of equaliser with other massive schools that have been established for like decades. So I decided I’m going to go all in on trying to figure out this social media thing. And I thought that was my way to kind of be heard and get my name out there.I remember then this was like early stages, once a couple of our YouTube videos took off and went viral. I thought, oh, this is amazing, seeing the results. And then I thought, all right, cool. I’ve got this kind of formula and I’ll start playing around with this, experiment with it.ALAN: And then as you know, social media evolved and changes. So I’ve seen it from the early days of YouTube to now Instagram Reels, Instagram carousels and Stories and it’s constantly changing. But what I’ve noticed is that yes, these things change and it’s not about luck, right? I’ve actually realised it’s actually systems and principles. And so I’ve used the same principles to go viral on Instagram as well. And it’s just systems.ALAN: So what I’ve realised is it’s not luck and don’t ...