About NAPMA
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists
Advancing the Business, Profession and Future of Martial Arts Since 1993
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists (NAPMA) is one of the martial arts industry’s longest-established organizations dedicated specifically to the professional development, business success, and long-term sustainability of martial arts schools and their owners.
Established in 1993, NAPMA was created around a principle that remains just as important today: martial arts instructors should not have to choose between maintaining exceptional martial arts standards and building financially successful professional schools. The two should reinforce each other.
A financially strong martial arts school can employ professional instructors, continually improve its facilities and programs, invest in staff development, reach more families, retain students longer, develop future leaders, and make a substantially greater contribution to its community.
For more than three decades, NAPMA has worked to advance that philosophy throughout the professional martial arts community. And NAPMA CEO and Chairman Stephen Oliver, MBA, has been coaching and advising martial arts school owners since 1985—nearly a decade before NAPMA itself was established.
That gives NAPMA something increasingly unusual in today’s martial arts business marketplace: more than 30 years of organizational history backed by more than 40 years of direct martial arts business coaching experience.
More Than Three Decades Serving Martial Arts Professionals
The martial arts business has changed dramatically since NAPMA was established in 1993. The fundamentals of building an exceptional martial arts organization have not.
Long before Facebook advertising, Google Ads, automated funnels, CRMs, artificial intelligence, online reviews, social media, or today’s generation of martial arts marketing agencies, successful schools still had to solve the same fundamental challenges:
- How do you consistently attract new students?
- How do you convert interested prospects into committed martial artists?
- How do you deliver an extraordinary student experience?
- How do you retain students long enough for martial arts to genuinely transform their lives?
- How do you develop instructors and leaders?
- How do you charge appropriately for the value you provide?
- How do you build a staff rather than creating another job for the owner?
- How do you create a financially strong organization capable of surviving beyond its founder?
NAPMA has been studying, teaching, testing, and refining answers to those questions for decades. That historical perspective matters.
The latest advertising tactic can be useful. The latest technology can improve efficiency. Artificial intelligence can make organizations dramatically more productive. But none of them replaces the fundamental systems required to build a great martial arts school.
NAPMA focuses on the entire business—not simply the latest marketing tactic.
Experience That Predates the Modern Martial Arts Business Industry
NAPMA CEO and Chairman Stephen Oliver, MBA began coaching martial arts school owners in 1985. His experience was not developed from theory. It came from operating martial arts schools.
While attending Georgetown University, Oliver managed a Jhoon Rhee Institute location in the Washington, D.C. area. After moving to Colorado, he founded Mile High Karate in August 1983, opening five schools in approximately 18 months — reaching more than 2,500 active students — and six schools within 36 months. By his mid-20s, his organization had grown to more than 3,500 active students and approximately 50 staff members, producing more than $1,700,000 a year in revenue.
Oliver subsequently devoted much of his professional career to studying why some martial arts schools become strong, profitable, enduring organizations while others remain dependent upon the owner’s personal teaching hours.
Since 1985, that work has included coaching martial arts school owners on virtually every component of professional school operation:
- Marketing and student acquisition
- Grassroots and community marketing
- Lead generation and follow-up
- Introductory programs
- Enrollment systems
- Tuition and pricing strategy
- Student retention
- Black Belt progression
- Renewals and upgrades
- Leadership development
- Instructor training
- Staff recruiting and development
- Program director systems
- Financial management
- Profitability
- Multi-school development
- Owner leadership
- Strategic planning
- Succession and long-term enterprise value
That breadth is important because a martial arts school is a system. More leads cannot permanently repair poor retention. Better advertising cannot overcome a weak enrollment process. Higher tuition cannot fix poor instruction. Great instruction alone cannot compensate indefinitely for weak financial management. And an owner working 70 hours a week is not evidence of a successful business model.
NAPMA’s approach is therefore comprehensive: build the entire organization.
The Professional Martial Arts School
The word professional in the National Association of Professional Martial Artists was chosen deliberately. Professionalism does not mean commercialization at the expense of martial arts values. It means taking those values seriously enough to build an organization capable of delivering them consistently.
A professional martial arts school should have:
Exceptional Instruction
Students deserve structured, motivational instruction that produces measurable progress while maintaining meaningful martial arts standards.
Professional Instructors
Teaching martial arts should be a legitimate career path for talented instructors—not merely something they must do at night after working somewhere else all day.
Strong Leadership
Owners must eventually develop instructors, program directors, managers, and leaders capable of carrying the organization’s standards forward.
Ethical Marketing
A school cannot positively influence people who never discover it. Professional marketing communicates the school’s value honestly and consistently to its community.
Effective Enrollment
Prospective students and parents need a structured process that helps them understand the benefits, expectations, commitments, and financial investment involved in serious martial arts training.
Exceptional Retention
The greatest benefits of martial arts are not produced in six weeks. Schools must create the relationships, goals, instruction, progression systems, and culture that keep students training toward Black Belt and beyond.
Financial Strength
Profit is not the enemy of martial arts integrity. Financial instability is. Strong margins give schools the resources to improve instruction, compensate staff, expand facilities, invest in marketing, weather economic disruptions, and serve their communities for decades.
Not Another Martial Arts Marketing Agency
The distinction matters. NAPMA is not simply an advertising agency. It is not built around selling Facebook leads. It is not a software company disguised as a business coaching organization. And it does not believe that one advertising platform, CRM, funnel, script, or artificial-intelligence tool can solve every problem inside a martial arts school.
Marketing matters enormously. But marketing is only one component of a successful professional school.
NAPMA’s philosophy is broader. We look at the complete organization:
Attraction → Enrollment → Instruction → Retention → Leadership → Staff → Financial Performance → Growth.
Each component affects the others. That systems-based approach has been developed through decades of actual martial arts school operations and direct work with school owners.
Built Specifically for Martial Arts
Generic small-business advice only goes so far. Martial arts schools have unusual economics and operational challenges. They combine elements of education, coaching, fitness, personal development, youth activities, membership businesses, professional services, and recurring-revenue organizations.
They also carry responsibilities that ordinary businesses do not. Parents entrust instructors with their children. Adult students trust instructors with personal goals involving confidence, fitness, discipline, self-defense, and achievement. Students may remain with a school for years. Instructors frequently become mentors. Communities form around schools.
That means a martial arts school cannot be managed exactly like a gym, health club, daycare center, dance studio, or online subscription business. NAPMA exists specifically for martial arts professionals.
Serving the Entire Martial Arts Profession
NAPMA’s principles are not limited to one martial art, organization, lineage, or teaching methodology. Professional school owners face remarkably similar business challenges regardless of the sign above the door.
NAPMA’s educational resources and professional-development philosophy can apply to organizations teaching Karate, Taekwondo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, MMA, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, Krav Maga, Kung Fu, Kenpo, Judo, and both traditional and contemporary martial arts programs.
Styles differ. Curriculum differs. Culture differs. The fundamentals of building a professionally managed organization remain remarkably consistent.
Developing Instructors, Not Just Owners
The future of a martial arts organization depends upon the people the owner develops. That is why instructor development has always been central to the professional-school model.
NAPMA Chief of Instruction Grand Master Jeff Smith, a 10th Degree Black Belt, internationally recognized martial arts champion, master instructor, school operator, and longtime coach to martial arts professionals, brings decades of experience to this mission.
NAPMA emphasizes systematic leadership development:
Student → Leader → Assistant Instructor → Certified Instructor → Program Director → Head Instructor → School Leader
The objective is larger than creating people who can lead warm-ups or demonstrate techniques. It is to develop professional martial arts educators and future leaders of the industry.
Business Education Without Sacrificing Martial Arts Standards
One of the most damaging misconceptions in martial arts is the idea that business success and martial arts quality are opposing objectives. NAPMA rejects that premise.
Poor business practices do not protect martial arts standards. They frequently undermine them.
A school constantly struggling to pay its bills has fewer resources for instructor development, equipment, facilities, marketing, curriculum development, and staff compensation. A school completely dependent upon one exhausted owner is inherently fragile. A school that cannot retain talented instructors because it cannot provide professional compensation eventually loses those instructors. And a great martial arts program that nobody knows exists cannot influence very many people.
Business excellence should support martial arts excellence. That has been part of NAPMA’s philosophy since its establishment in 1993.
Proven in the Real World
NAPMA’s educational philosophy is grounded in practical application. The systems taught by Stephen Oliver and the NAPMA leadership have been applied by martial arts organizations ranging from small owner-operated schools to sophisticated multi-staff organizations and seven-figure martial arts businesses.
That experience provides perspective that cannot be gained simply by studying digital advertising or reading generic business books. NAPMA studies the entire lifecycle of the martial arts student and the economics supporting it—from the first time a prospective student encounters the school, to the first telephone conversation, to the introductory lesson, to enrollment, to becoming an active student, to renewal, to Black Belt, to Leadership, and, for some students, eventually becoming instructors themselves.
That entire journey is the business of professional martial arts.
Leadership With Decades of Experience
Grand Master Stephen Oliver, MBA — CEO and Chairman
Grand Master Stephen Oliver, MBA, is a 10th Degree Black Belt and the Founder and CEO of Mile High Karate and Martial Arts Wealth Mastery, one of the martial arts industry’s leading coaching and consulting organizations for professional martial arts school owners, BJJ academies, and MMA gyms. A martial arts school owner since 1975 and business coach since 1985, Oliver has spent more than five decades building, operating, and advising successful martial arts schools. He also serves as CEO and Chairman of NAPMA (the National Association of Professional Martial Artists) and Publisher of Martial Arts Professional magazine. A Georgetown University cum laude graduate, he earned his Executive MBA through the Executive Program at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He was promoted to 10th Degree Black Belt in April 2026 and inducted into the Tae Kwon Do Hall of Fame in August 2026. Learn more at MartialArtsWealth.com and StephenCOliver.com.
A cum laude graduate of Georgetown University with an A.B. in International Economics, and holder of an Executive MBA from the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver, Oliver combines formal business education with more than four decades of direct experience in professional martial arts.
His background includes building a multi-school organization serving more than 3,500 active students, developing professional instructors and staff, promoting major martial arts events, serving the broader martial arts industry, and coaching school owners throughout North America and internationally.
His work focuses on building complete martial arts organizations rather than simply solving isolated marketing problems.
Grand Master Jeff Smith — Chief of Instruction
Grand Master Jeff Smith is a 10th Degree Black Belt, internationally recognized martial arts champion, master instructor, school operator, and professional coach with more than five decades of martial arts experience.
As NAPMA’s Chief of Instruction, Smith focuses on professional teaching standards, instructor development, student motivation, leadership training, retention, enrollment, and the practical systems necessary to translate martial arts knowledge into exceptional student experiences.
Bob Dunne — Chief Operations Officer
Bob Dunne serves as NAPMA’s Chief Operations Officer, overseeing programme delivery, school support and day-to-day operations for school owners throughout the association. He works directly with school owners on program selection, school evaluations and the practical questions that come up between events.
Together, NAPMA’s leadership represents decades of experience spanning competition, instruction, school ownership, multi-school development, staff training, marketing, enrollment, retention, financial management, and business coaching.
Why NAPMA Exists Today
The tools have changed since 1993. The mission has not.
Today’s school owner has access to technology that would have been unimaginable when NAPMA began. Google can put a school in front of someone actively searching for martial arts. Social media can reach thousands of local families. Modern CRMs can automate communication. Video allows instructors to build audiences around the world. Artificial intelligence can dramatically increase productivity.
Those tools create extraordinary opportunities. They also create noise. School owners are constantly being offered another platform, advertising strategy, funnel, automation, agency, or “secret” solution.
NAPMA provides something different: perspective.
After decades in the martial arts business, we know that tools change. Fundamentals endure.
Build a great program. Become exceptional at teaching. Market continuously. Follow up relentlessly. Enroll professionally. Know your students. Build relationships. Set goals. Retain students. Develop leaders. Train instructors. Build a staff. Know your numbers. Maintain healthy margins. Continue improving. And never stop doing the things that created your success simply because you became busy.
Building Institutions That Outlast Their Founders
Ultimately, NAPMA’s mission is larger than helping an instructor make more money. Revenue matters. Profitability matters. Growth matters. But they are means to a larger objective:
Build a martial arts organization capable of changing lives for generations.
An organization with excellent instruction. An organization with meaningful standards. An organization that creates careers. An organization that develops leaders. An organization that contributes to its community. An organization financially strong enough to endure difficult economic cycles. And an organization capable of continuing its mission long after its founder stops teaching every class.
That is what it means to build a professional martial arts school.
The National Association of Professional Martial Artists
Established 1993. Stephen Oliver coaching martial arts schools since 1985. More than three decades advancing the professional martial arts industry.
Better Schools. Better Instructors. Stronger Businesses. A Stronger Martial Arts Profession.
Frequently asked questions about NAPMA
What the association is, what it publishes, and how it differs from the coaching company its publisher also runs.
What is NAPMA?
NAPMA — the National Association of Professional Martial Artists — is the professional association for martial arts school owners, founded in 1993. It provides continuing education, professional standards, instructor development, networking and support to martial arts schools and clubs worldwide, with school owners in more than 20 countries.
The schools it serves range from new instructors and newly opened schools through to established owners with multiple locations and hundreds of students, across many arts, languages and cultures. NAPMA publishes Martial Arts Professional, the profession’s trade journal, and administers the Martial Arts Professional Lifetime Achievement Award.
NAPMA’s stated purpose is to increase the number of people participating in quality martial arts programmes worldwide; to help school owners build the schools and careers they envision; and to advance public recognition of the martial arts’ role in developing children into leaders and positive adult role models.
How is NAPMA different from a martial arts business coach?
A coaching company sells one person’s system to one school owner at a time. An association sets standards that apply across the profession, maintains them in public, recognises the people who built the field, and gives the profession a body that speaks for it rather than a programme that sells to it.
NAPMA does both jobs badly if it pretends to be one thing while acting as the other, so the line is drawn plainly: the association publishes standards, the journal reports, and the coaching sits with a separate company that is named as such wherever it appears.
How do I get a question about running my school answered?
School owners can reach NAPMA with questions, standards and resources. For individual coaching on school operations, marketing, pricing, staffing or retention — which is a separate business from the association — see Martial Arts Wealth Mastery.