We were lucky to catch up with Alex and Vitaly Padalka recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alex and Vitaly, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
I am sure most people heard the quote “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Don’t you agree? We love karate and are passionate about teaching it to our students. We build a community of healthy, strong, and supportive individuals around us. When we teach our classes – it doesn’t feel like work, it is a true pleasure for us! However, teaching classes and running a business are two different things.
It all started with a dream! A dream to open our own Dojo and make it one of the best karate clubs in the country. After teaching karate for about 8 years in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Aspen, Colorado at a rec center, in 2011 brothers relocated to Denver with the intention to open their first Dojo in a big city.
We were excited! none of us knew how to run a business though, so we had to learn everything from scratch. Found a perfect location, negotiated a good lease, installed mirrors, and laid down mats, Actually, the first thing we did at the Dojo – we invited one of the best tattoo and mural artists in Denver – Robin Munroe who created a masterpiece mural on a brick wall inside the Dojo. Everyone loved it. The Dojo was ready for the grand opening. We still remember our first student and how challenging it was for us to grow the clientele back then, but we believed in the journey and believed in ourselves…
13 years later Okinawa Dojo by Karate Bros is recognized on a national level, our students successfully compete in WKF sport karate tournaments, and some of them represent the USA at the World level.
This year we launched our own tournament in Denver, we called it the High Caliber Denver karate championship. It attracted 350+ competitors from 9 states. It was a success! We just booked a date for the next year – come support us! March 2nd, 2024 at the Parker Fieldhouse.
Two weeks ago our team came back from National Championships and Team Trials. Our club was represented by 22 athletes and 4 coaches. It was a great trip overall. So happy for our students who left everything on tatami! Somewhere we came a little short but for the most part awesome performance – 4 of our students earned their spot on the US Jr. Team and one qualified for the Senior Team trials:
🇺🇸Eduard Sagilyan – seed #1
🇺🇸Robert Matevosyants – seed #1
🇺🇸Julia Matevosyants – seed #2
🇺🇸Max Kaikov – seed #3
For three consecutive years, our club produces national champions. Our team captain Eduard Sagilyan won 2 Gold medals at Pan American Championships last year and was ranked #1 in the World in 2022. Two weeks ago he received a “Junior Male Athlete of the Year” award from the USA Karate, the national governing body for our sport.
Thanks to the success of our students, the karate bros Alex and Vitaly Padalka were recognized by the federation for their coaching work and both received a “Development Coach of the Year” award.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Okinawa Dojo by Karate Bros is a result-oriented martial art school. Our approach to teaching is a mix of traditional Japanese and modern competitive karate. Most parents who bring their kids to our school want them to learn core qualities such as discipline, respect, focus, and effort. This is exactly what this martial art is about. Karate begins and ends with respect. We strive to become a better person than we were yesterday.
Our classes are custom tailored for different ages and skill levels. Students as young as 4 years old can come and try their free class at our Dojo then we evaluate if the student is ready to sign up.
You might have heard the quote that “karate is for everyone”, but we believe that this statement is not quite correct. Just like anything in life, you can only be good at something if you really enjoy it. This is why we structure our classes for young students way differently from their older peers. Our instructors are trained to make every class fun and challenging at the same time as it is very important to instill a love for a sport at a young age. Our instructors play cool games with kids while learning karate, the games that help them with their balance, coordination, speed, agility, and focus.
When it comes to older kids they learn the full curriculum of Shotokan karate. Shotokan is the style we practice. Students learn kihon (basics), kata (forms), and kumite (sparrings). Physical strength, agility, and flexibility are very important for any athlete, this is why we also offer classes specifically designed to help athletes to stay on top of their game.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Over the years of running our business, we have tried pretty much all types of advertising. Printed ads in magazines, newspapers, posters, flyers, door hangers, calendars, you name it, we tried it all. One thing we have learned is that for our type of business, 95% of any kind of print advertising was a waste of money. We live in a century of internet and technologies and we think we must take advantage of it.
The best 2 sources of attracting new clients for us are:
1) word of mouth
and
2) internet
It is always more fun to do something together with a friend. So when our students or their parents refer their friends to the Dojo – everyone wins.
When it comes to Internet, we found that the best and also the less expensive way to spread the word about our business is
a strong presence on social media.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Okinawa Dojo by Karate Bros has public accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
You can always hire a third party to help you run your social platforms but we prefer to create our own content. It does take a lot of time though to manage it yourself. It is a big part of running your business.
Our team is pretty good at taking good photos, making and editing videos, creating some educational materials, and keeping our followers informed about Dojo events and karate life in general.
www.instagram.com/OkinawaDojoByKarateBros
www.facebook.com/KarateDenver
www.youtube.com/KarateDenver
Our official hashtags are:
#KarateBros
#DreamTeamOkinawa
Of course, we have a website, where anyone can find more information about our karate school, check it out www.karatebros.com
Contact Info:
- Website: www.karatebros.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/OkinawaDojoByKarateBros
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/KarateDenver
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/okinawa-dojo-by-karate-bros
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/KarateDenver
- Yelp: www.yelp.com/biz/okinawa-dojo-by-karate-bros-denver
Image Credits
Vitaly Padalka Alex Padalka Mila Perkhun Alejandro Herrera Brian Taylor