I ran into the first version of the belief A LOT when I was young. I started training in my early teens, and soon decided that I wanted to teach martial arts for a living once I became an adult.

Of course, I made the most serious mistake one can make when cultivating a personal goal or dream...

...and that is, I made the mistake of sharing that dream with others.

"You can't make any money teaching martial arts! Why don't you go to school instead and become a _____________?" That's what I heard over and over and over again from my well-meaning family and friends.

At the time, I had no idea that you even COULD earn a great living as a martial arts instructor, simply because I didn't know anyone who was doing it. All my instructors had been part-time hobbyists. Sure, they were all talented, but they were also all broke.

Didn't matter. All I knew is that I wanted to teach martial arts, and someday open my own school. My dream, my rules, I suppose. :)

But here's the really funny thing - none of the people who were telling me that I couldn't make a living teaching martial arts knew the first thing about starting and running a martial art school...

Heck, none of them were even martial artists!

So, this begs the question: Why the heck was I listening to them in the first place?

It actually wasn't until I met a school owner who we'll simply call "Joe" that I got set straight on this false belief. Joe was a really good guy who had what I considered to be the ideal life. 

He ran a small martial art school that maintained around 125 students year-round, and made a fairly comfortable living from that small studio. He was also quite an accomplished tournament competitor, and got to travel around and compete with his students to his heart's content.

Seeing Joe's success as a small school owner really opened my eyes to the fact that even a modestly successful school could provide a decent living for an owner-operator.

However, once I finally opened the doors on my first full-time school I still had to contend with the second iteration of this false belief... that I wasn't "worthy" of making a decent living teaching martial arts.

This belief caused me to seriously undercharge for my services when I first started out, and that in turn caused my school to underperform financially for the first year or so.

That is, until I got smart and realized the value of the service I was providing. Let me tell you what opened my eyes to how cheaply I was selling myself to the public...

At the time I had several families who had one sibling in my program, and another in a different activity. I'd regularly attempt to convince the parents that they should get both children into my classes, and tried to find arguments and angles to justify it to them.

Finally, I tried the economy angle with one of the moms. "You know, you'd get a family discount if you enrolled your daughter in my classes, too."

She turned to me and replied, "Oh, I know that - but we could never afford to pay for her gymnastics lessons and karate." This piqued my curiosity, so I asked her how much they paid for their daughter's gymnastic lessons.

And guess what? It was almost FOUR TIMES what I was charging for martial arts classes!

After that, I promptly raised my rates and never looked back.