Two women of color

Doing Karate

Take over the neighborhood studio

At the end of the day, the business is to get students in and teach them the craft, but when old friends, Diandra Thompson and Liza Fernandez, both currently 4th degree black belts, took over their instructor’s studio, it turned out there was more to learn. 

Diandra shares the insights she has accrued with three years under her belt of co-owning San Francisco’s FTK Martial Arts with San Francisco SBDC’s support.

On being women-owned in a male-dominated industry

We had to prove that we know what we were doing and what we were talking about. We’re in a society where people recognize that girls can do anything a man can do, however, it’s a certain caliber of girl who likes to fight and sweat. When we were doing research to apply for a grant with the City of San Francisco, we learned that there is a small percentage of female owners of martial arts studios – maybe just one or two others in the San Francisco area!

On the Realities of Running a Business

When you think about owning a business you might think that you’ll make all this money and it’s going to be great, but you have bills and rent and you have to put the money into the business. We got into the business without a lot of planning so there are a lot of things I wish I had thought about earlier, like studying price points. For example, even though we thought our field trip prices were expensive, we discovered that we were charging less than any other day camp! Our SBDC advisor encouraged us to charge what we were worth.

I also wish I would have known that the hours running your business don’t stop – you take your work home with you. Not just paperwork, but also the to-do list and you worry about your kids outside the four walls, you worry about what’s going to happen. I wouldn’t change it though. We have a group of kids that are talented in and outside of karate and we are better people for knowing them.

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On the Industry Then and Now

Our instructor instilled in us a really good sense of community when we were kids – every Halloween we had a haunted house, our promotion ceremonies were potlucks so we got to know each other, we had secret Santas. If we invited him, he did his best to attend our other functions, like basketball or football games. At tournaments, we’d hang out afterward, go eat and congregate. We still do these things and people appreciate it, but the culture has changed and more kids leave right after tournaments to go home – the sense of community is different.  

“Being mentally prepared to run the business was something I was unprepared for.”

Diandra Thompson, Co-owner of FTK Martial Arts

On the Industry Then and Now

Our instructor instilled in us a really good sense of community when we were kids – every Halloween we had a haunted house, our promotion ceremonies were potlucks so we got to know each other, we had secret Santas. If we invited him, he did his best to attend our other functions, like basketball or football games. At tournaments, we’d hang out afterward, go eat and congregate. We still do these things and people appreciate it, but the culture has changed and more kids leave right after tournaments to go home – the sense of community is different.  

On Marketing Pre-pandemic Vs. During the Pandemic

Marketing is word of mouth since it’s so up and down right now. We have a strong core group of parents who create a support system that looks out for us. We have parents who throw fundraisers for us. They don’t stop their monthly payments even though we might have to close. Before COVID hit our marketing was flyers, push cards, outreach into the schools in our neighborhood, but word of mouth has been our lifesaver.

On Keeping Your Head Up

It’s hard to look on the brighter side during the pandemic, but at the end of the day if you look down, you defeat your business. Our parents believe in what we’re doing and our instructor is there for us, too. When you have people backing you up it’s hard to want to quit.

On the San Francisco SBDC

It’s been nothing but a positive experience. [Our advisor], Molly O’Kane has been a saving grace – she helped us a lot, making us aware of things we never would have known. She helped us to get a grant that allowed us to remodel the studio.