Founders Club Promotion

One of my guiding principles in life is this: when given the choice between immediate gratification and delayed gratification, always go with delayed gratification. Think about it. Activities that tend to reward you now at the expense of a future cost include overindulging in food, consuming drugs/alcohol, scrolling all day, accumulating credit card debt, and staying awake all night to binge on video games or Netflix. Activities that tend to reward you later at the expense of some immediate cost include exercise, attending BJJ class, eating healthy, saving up to make big purchases, doing your homework, apologizing when you’re wrong, getting to bed on time, and the list goes on. Generally speaking, immediate gratification is bad and delayed gratification is good.

So when trying to design a pricing structure for our first promotion, I went with delayed gratification*. Instead of trying to become profitable as a business as soon as possible (which would certainly help me sleep at night), I’ve decided that steady long-term growth is more important. The plan for establishing a solid foundation for growth is to get motivated training partners in the academy as early possible, cultivate a supportive and rigorous culture, and hopefully the quality of the training atmosphere will lead to organic growth.

How do I get students through the door? Big discounts. That includes teaching BJJ at half price and giving away the Darcio Lira affiliation gi’s. With a little luck we’ll be able to cover expenses (rent, insurance, tax, and the list goes on…), but I have no ambitions of earning profit for my labor this year.

I’ll be donating my time for the sake of delayed gratification in other ways too. Once per week (Friday 11am), Las Positas College students belonging to the LPC BJJ club are welcome to train for free. And I’m in talks with the Adopt-A-Cop BJJ program, which will allow one local police officer to train for free, and others to train at a massive discount (more on this coming soon).

Visit our Founders Club page to learn more about the promotional rates and to claim your discount, valid until Labor Day.

*I should note that I didn’t arrive at this pricing concept entirely independently. This approach was advocated by some experienced business owners. To them I say “thank you” — they know who they are.