We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Anthony Kosla a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Anthony, appreciate you joining us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Dedication, ability to stay focused on your goal and great mentors.

Dedication: in starting my academy I did extensive research on every club I could find. I would look up their locations, scout their coaches, look at pricing, membership and results and compare them all. I worked 7 days a week and really focused on learning all parts of the business. If I don’t have at least a base knowledge of what needs to be done or how to do it, it didn’t make sense to ask someone else to step in.

Focus: I always knew the end goal and what steps needed to be taken to get closer to that. Some days you don’t want to give a lesson or teach a class or work on the website but understanding that everything plays a part in reaching your goal is vital to success.

Mentors; I have been extremely lucky having great mentors both as a coach and as a small business owner. Some things I might have figured out on my own, some I definitely wouldn’t have. In my experience successful individuals are very giving with their advice/knowledge if you demonstrate your desire to learn and work toward your own goals. On the other side, bad mentors really can inhibit your ability to advance which I also have experience with.

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

My name is Anthony Kosla, I am the owner and head coach of Plymouth/Ann Arbor Fencing Academy.

We opened our doors just over 2 years ago with about 30 members I am acquired from local recreation classes and another club that closed during the covid shut down.

We now have over 100 members, more than 10 fencers on the national points list, multiple world team members and a national and world champion at the academy.

I think what sets us apart from other clubs is being dedicated to providing the right service to each member regardless if their goal is to train at an elite level or just fence once a week with their friends.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My first career was in Physical Therapy.

Once I graduated from college I wanted to go back to competitions. My local club was looking for someone to help with their youth classes which seemed like a good way to offset the cost of my training.

Initially I just helped 1-2x a week but after a couple of years I was at the club 5-6x a week and working only part time. I ended up giving up competing just to be able to coach more.

In 2019 I started coaching for myself and eventually scaled it to open my own academy and leave my therapy job completely in 2021.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

The best advice I can offer is hire the right people.

From my personal experience the most important part in the hiring process is picking people who are passionate about what they are doing (in our case teaching the sport).

Base knowledge is important but if a coach is passionate they will learn and advance the skills they need and keep students engaged on their own.

Managing becomes much easier this way as it’s mostly about making sure coaches/staff are focused on what tasks need to be completed/address during a particular day/week/month.

Contact Info:

• Website: annarborfencingclub.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PA2FA/