Friend,
I'm going to be incredibly honest with you in this email...
By now you know that I always give you the straight dope on things - however, I'm not always as blunt as I'd like to be.
But today, I'm going to be blunt.
So here it is.
The truth is, most people aren't interested in the martial arts at all. Years ago I heard someone say that, at any given time, only about 1.5% of the people in any given area are going to be involved in taking any sort of martial arts training.
Surprised? Probably not, if you've spent any time running a martial art school.
But is that all bad news? Not necessarily. In fact, you can make a pretty decent living off that 1-and-a-half percent. 1.5 percent of 10,000 is 150 people... and 1.5 percent of 50,000 is 750 people... so even in a small town you can make a good living teaching traditional martial arts.
Nothing wrong with that.
But, what you may not realize is that a lot of people out there - the majority of people in fact - think that the martial arts are a fairly silly endeavor.
Case in point... several years back, I kept trying to get my wife to take my martial arts classes, but to no avail. Oh, she'd been taking my fitness kickboxing class religiously for years. But I could not, for the life of me, get her to step foot in a karate class.
Finally, she fessed up. "Michael, here's the truth. You guys are a lot like those Trekkies, or the Renaissance Festival people. You dress up in silly costumes, you use weird terminology, and you jump around yelling all the time. That just doesn't interest me at all."
I know, right? Ouch. And while my ego certainly took a blow that day, I also learned something valuable...
And that is, if I was going to reach the 98.5% of my local population who wasn't interested in taking traditional martial arts, I'd have to present them with something that they a) wanted to do, and b) that they wouldn't think was silly or embarrassing.
Of course, I could have just been satisfied with the 1-and-a-half percent. But, I've been on a long-standing mission to teach practical self-defense skills to as many people as possible.
Obviously, I wasn't going to be able to reach that other 98.5% through my traditional martial arts classes (even though we were teaching some hella good self-defense skills in that program). So, I decided I'd need to adapt in order to fulfill my mission.
Tomorrow, I'm going to tell you how I did it - so stay tuned and keep an eye on your email inbox, because you're going to want to hear about what I discovered.
P.S. - I have a really interesting interview for the next podcast episode coming out toward the end of the week. You'll want to look for that one, too - the guy I'm interviewing has pretty much turned the standard martial art school business model on its head. Wait until you hear how he structured his school - I think you'll be surprised at what he's accomplished by being the "7-Up" of his area. But, you'll have to listen to the podcast to see what I mean by that... | 