About Ron Sell
The school owner's playbook starts here.
Martial artist, entrepreneur, and founder of Spark Membership Software. Builder of builders.
The why
Why I do what I do.
I am called to build people, systems, and legacy.
My mission is to help others create better lives through leadership, discipline, entrepreneurship, and personal transformation. I use my gifts to turn complexity into clarity, ideas into action, and potential into measurable growth.
I believe true success is not just personal achievement, but the ability to multiply impact through the people I lead, teach, and serve.
I am committed to building a strong family culture rooted in love, integrity, resilience, faith, and intentional living. I will lead my family by example and create an environment where each person is empowered to grow into their best self.
I will use technology, business, martial arts, education, and storytelling as tools to develop character, confidence, and capability in others. I will create systems that outlast me and equip future generations to lead meaningful, purpose-driven lives.
I choose discipline over distraction, progress over perfection, and contribution over comfort.
I will continue learning, building, teaching, and serving.
My legacy will not be measured only by what I achieve, but by the lives transformed because I showed up with courage, clarity, and purpose.
I am building builders.
The journey
Ron's timeline.
- 1987-1991
Becoming an instructor
Ron worked for his parents, Grandmaster Ed Sell (10th Degree) and Brenda J. Sell (9th Degree), at their headquarters school. Learning from his parents how to teach martial arts, how to enroll new members, how to gain more new students, conduct belt exams, run events, clean the mats, and connect with students. In 1991, he tested for his 4th Degree Black Belt.
- 1991
Opening the doors on school no. 1
Having practically grown up in martial arts schools, run by his parents who were both Grand Masters, Ron opened his first school in 1991 in Florida. Ron was just 19 at the time and it would start a decades-long journey as a small business owner.
- 1995-1999
Here come schools 2 & 3
After four years, school number one was thriving. It was time to expand. Ron opened his second school in 1995, aged just 23. Like his first, the second school grew rapidly. And there was only one thing to do: open a third school. And that's exactly what he did, opening school number three in 1999.
- 1996
Created Martial Arts Drills and Skills DVDs
Created a three column DVD set, with hundreds of martial arts drills instructors could add to their classes to inspire their students to train long term. Ron always knew the martial arts can help people live a better life, helping school owners keep members engaged and training long term has always been important to him.
- 1996
Created the iManual
Based on his helping martial arts instructors become their best, Ron created the iManual, a step by step guide to teach martial arts instructors how to inspire, lead and grow their martial arts school.
- 1999
Created the first ever computer-aided martial arts business training
Ron combined his love and passion for martial arts business, with his genius in creating software, with his first foray into helping martial arts school owners to use computer aided training with business skills.
- 2003
Opening school 4 & growing fast
After 12 years, business was booming. Ron was managing three successful schools. Demand was everywhere. So he opened his fourth school in Tampa, Florida. Based on everything he'd learned from 12 years running schools, this fourth location exploded to 320 students in the first 6 months. But then the overwhelm started to set in…
- 2004
Selling up & stepping back
By now, Ron was running four schools, training 1000s of students and working non-stop 80+ hour weeks. There's no sugar-coating it, he was overwhelmed. His businesses were running him. He had no free time to spend with his wife, newborn baby, or hobbies. Something had to give. So, he made the difficult decision to sell his schools and take a step back.
- 2004-2014
First foray into school management software
Enjoying clear headspace for the first time in over a decade, Ron had time to think. Why had his schools been so successful when others struggled? The answer was systemization. Ron had built systems for every aspect of business. He took these systems, taught himself to code software, and built his first successful member-based software business.
- 2015
Going in different directions
After ten years building software used by 1000s of businesses, Ron and his business partner had different visions for the company. So, Ron exited his first software company. With everything he'd learned about building software, Ron knew there would be a round two. And next time would be even bigger and better.
- 2016
Created the Facebook group "Martial Arts Business Growth"
Helped over 8,000 martial arts instructors grow their schools, helping them with marketing, enrollments, retention, teaching skills and growing their future.
- 2017
It started with a 'Spark'
Refreshed from a break and still with the mind of a school owner, Ron couldn't shake his drive to help other small business owners. Armed with the knowledge of building software for the past decade, Ron teamed up with Grand Master Cheong Park, the owner of eight successful martial arts schools to build Spark Membership.
The name said it all. Spark was about bringing the fire and burning desire to help small business owners.
- 2018
Building the DNA & code of Spark
For the second time in his career, Ron sacrificed time with his family. He moved to South Florida for weeks at a time to work shoulder-to-shoulder with Grandmaster Park. Spark combined Ron's real-world and software experience with Grandmaster Park's on-the-ground connection of owning multiple schools.
Months were spent in the trenches, running into roadblocks and setbacks. But what kept us going was we were going to help a lot of school owners overcome the problems we'd faced ourselves as small business owners.
- 2019
Take off: 1,000 schools helped in year one
Two years after the Spark was lit, it was time to launch. And Spark took off in a way beyond what we ever imagined. School after school started signing up for Spark. We were riding a rocket ship!
First 10 schools. Then 100. Then we flew past 1000 schools in our first year. We felt exhilarated. And vindicated. We'd built a product that instantly solved the biggest problems that school operators had been crying out for help with.
- 2020
Pivoting in the pandemic
Just as everything was going smoothly, the pandemic hit. Our first thoughts were with the 1000s of businesses using Spark whose doors were forced closed indefinitely. Their livelihoods were under threat. We pivoted fast, introducing new features, including online training courses, so schools could go virtual to survive. Incredibly, over 500 new schools adopted Spark during the pandemic to shift their businesses online.
- 2022
$50,000,000+ generated & going global
We quickly learned that many of the problems martial arts schools face are the same ones other member-based businesses deal with. Now, member-based businesses of all martial arts disciplines across four continents depend on Spark daily. We've expanded our product to cater to their every need.
To date, Spark has helped member-based businesses generate $550,000,000+ and even though we've been in the game for 30 years, we're still only just getting started…
- Future
Still only just getting started
No one knows what the future holds, but Ron will continue following his passion of helping martial arts school owners grow their schools, help more students fall in love with the martial arts, and make an impact.