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Terry Bryan
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Terry Bryan
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March 16, 2007 at 5:16 pm
I very rarely respond to email. However, I do agree with you. I was raised that family
name and honor was everything. No attorneys. Just a man’s handshake. Your word was
everything. Never anything to disgrace your name and family.
We can only continue teaching our youth what we believe in and hope others will not sell out.
Joe Parker
March 16, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Mr. Bryan. Let them go. Lead by example, see who learns, and if they don’t, let them go, it is their loss. You can’t force people to be loyal; they either want to be or don’t and you can’t demand it. Best wishes, Nic.
March 16, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Where to begin?
A black belt gives two weeks notice and opens his own school a couple of miles away?
Giving two weeks notice is a business practice, it’s accepted and expected in business. Should it be the same for a dojo; probably not. From the outside looking in, the rationale is obvious, the black belt considers your school to be a business, not a school, club, dojo…just another business. I think that when we (and I am in the same position) begin speaking to our black belts about “retention”, “revenue”, “marketing”, “upgrades” and the like we instill in them the idea that this is as much a business as it is a tradition. This realization can, and probably should, motivate some of them to consider they own chances of success within the industry; can’t blame them.
The real questions to me are;
1- Why didn’t he initiate a dialog with you regarding opening an affiliated school? Do you have a program for personal growth that goes beyond karate training? If so, does your blackbelt staff know it exists? if they know it exists what is it that they found so unattractive about it that they would rather “reinvent the process” than follow a successful model? The failure might very well be yours in trying to anticipate that traditional values would be applied in a modern “business”.
2- How could he take your students and school district contracts? The question here is “what is he offering that they find attractive?”
It may be that he is a better teacher, better business person, better sales person, better marketer than you are…or it may be that he is just a con man “fooling some of the people some of the time.” The challenge on us as business owners is to determine what our students/customers find attractive in this individual and/or his offerings and;
A- Counter offer to save our students and business
B- Accept that he has advantages over you and ally yourself with him
C- Forget it and move on
D- Learn and move on
Which is right for you?
Ken Morgan
March 17, 2007 at 2:35 am
I understand your grief. I earned my first degree in 1990. I just promoted my first generation Black Belts. I use several Instructors and I have a concern for what could be. But, I also know there is no fault to you. We do not own or control our clients, we cannot force them to understand loyalty and respect. There will always be a Judas somewhere.
It does not mean you should fall back and quit.
Fall back, try to find the lesson in this, and move on.
As we know, owning a school is a large responsibility. It’s not just about being a “star” teaching on the floor.
Our job is 24/7, and it is not black and white, there is much grey.
This person will be accountable for their actions, wait it out.
Mike.
March 17, 2007 at 4:47 am
i usually dont reply to email , but this one struck me to be really disturbing . leaving is one thing and competing with your teacher and stealing his teachers contract another. all i can say about this guy is he might be a black belt around the waste but his heart and mind is deceitful. Getting a belt is easy but the true mastery lies in developing the mind body and soul and what you learn along the way , trust, honor, integrity which apparently this guy forgot
March 17, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I can agree and appreciate what you are saying, I too started in the mid 60s, things have changed, Was it that we were so bad as instructors that we didnt get many people promoted to Black belt? The martial arts is now a professional business, not that we sold out to get more students, or promote more to black belt, I call it the Mac Donalds efect, get it fast and quick, out society is geared towards a series of shortcuts.
At my school, we didnt lower the standards, we added more belts, Americans typically are goal oriented and want to show something for their training, In order for me to survive, I needed to adapt or close, fortunatley for me, in my area I’m the only full time martail arts school, but I have to compete against the part timers with no or little training, such as yours.
All you can do is teach good quality martial arts, its too bad he opened so close to you, if he would have approached you earlier, you could have had him at a greater distance, right now you are both going to fight for the same customer base, too bad, I would bite the bullet and call him, he may understand your logic, remember he was a student, A student will alway want to boost about their instructor, you did in your inital letter. He needs you., I think he may understand, for him to make money, he needs to be a it further away! Best of luck!
March 19, 2007 at 3:30 pm
I totally understand! The same scenario has happened to me several times. I have two schools in my area about 5 miles appart from each other. I have been teaching here since 1983 and have become the most known MA organization in my area. The challenge comes when friends and family start to tell the instructors that they can do it on their own and they don’t need to be under you. The 3 times this has happened to me has been due to influence from family of the staff. There might be a level of loyalty to you from the instructors but when thay get the daily influence from their family. That can cause them to turn on you. I resently had one of them calling me about affiliating his school with me. Tables can turn. The only ones that understand are the ones who have felt it!
March 19, 2007 at 5:20 pm
I understand why you were initially upset, since your student’s action spells out betrayal.
However, black belts are not the only ones to do that. I’ll explain.
My kids have taken martial arts with a Korean Grandmaster for over 12 year, from the time they were still in diapers. They both eventually got black belts. When the grandmaster welcomed and verbally adopted a kid from Thailand who became his pet, the pet turned vicious when it got it’s black fur (belt) and started to bark, growl, snap and eventually bite all the black belts in the Dojo. Grandmaster’s 3 schools in three different counties went down the swamp and were closed. The puppy even put out my kids…in the street- after I have single handedly (I’m a woman) built the school and ran it way before this mutt came along.
I thought better of it and packed up and eventually I opened my own studio where you can see from the website I have an eclectic program. Why? Because Martial Arts, like everything else is imbibed with egos that cannot fit.
The mongrel described above, opened his own school and he teaches students how to be merciless killers.
I on the other hand, have a classy studio where we have Karate, Kung Fu, Samurai Swordsmanship, and Tai Chi and have selected first class instructors who do not care much for ranks but the development of character.
On the other hand, as I mentioned, not only black belts do that…humans do! Unscrupulous ones, i.e. Belly Dance instructor who came to the studio with 4 students, I built it up to 30 in a few months and she quit at a moment’s notice and took all students with her, saying that is all about business, nothing more. She paid me $15/h and the rest she got from the students was all hers…that’s about $300.00/h. Now, she’s student-less…Soooo..there you go.
Keep teaching and the champions will rise from among the swampy matter and carry on your good work for a lifetime.
I know it’s painful, but from pain comes inspiration, wisdom, creativity, gratitude and once in a while a real gem!
My daughter is a gem and she teaches Kung Fu to kids, with an approach unique for her tender age, because she learned how not to behave when in charge, but how to live by example.
Parents and students adore her and she sifts the experiences through a fine net of wisdom and has let go of the murky memories under the Grandmaster’s foolish tutelage.
She also teaches the Belly Dance class now, and the traitor is only remembered with sadness…
Feel sorry for your traitor, because a “black belt” is only a puppy trying out his canines and eventually they will fall and leave him toothless until the permanent ones come in (the wheel turns and he will always fear that what he did to you it will be done to him).
Not everything’s about money and fame, but the memories we leave behind. That is the greatest legacy…you will be remembered as a good and lasting life lesson by many versus one….
Good luck…
P.S. Oh yeah…I’m also a published author (Communist Baby-by Lonely Wolf) and my poems have been stolen and published by others and I just shrugged and felt sorry for their lack of insight and imagination and went on to write even more and better than before…such as humans…
Lonely Wolf (Marinela)
June 13, 2007 at 3:57 am
It is at once reassuring and saddening to see that others in the filed of martial arts share my own point of view. I didn’t begin my martial arts studies until the mid to late eighties, and ceased formal study at a school over a decade ago for many of the reasons you so rightly bring to light.
I began the study of martial arts because for me, as a child, a black belt was a person that I felt was cut from a special cloth. They were someone who chose a path of conditioning both mental and physical in pursuit of a mastery of themselves in every respect. That belt was truly the mark of someone who was a cut above, and not because they could break boards with bare hands or throw pretty kick over their head. It was a look in their eyes, something in their posture, the way they carried themselves…it was something in them , something that had become an integral part of their character and of who they were as a person. In my expeirence anyone who has undergone special physical and mental training conducts and carries themselves in much the same way, from Marines, to Navy Seals, to Fighter Pilots. It’s a pride in knowing that they’ve accomplished something special that brought out the best in them.
This is what martial arts used to be about. Yet, at some point in the history of the arts in this country over the past twenty-five years or so, the soul, the very core of what they are supposed to be about, fell by the wayside in deference to the physical, to the superficial, and yes…to the BUSINESS of the martial arts.
To my eye, the martial arts and their core values once embodied by those who had truly earned the coveted black belt, began to die when the arts were supplanted by the needs of business and commerce. Words like “Honor”, “Integrity” and”Respect” are almost universally misunderstood, if at all, and are NOT taught in most martial arts schools.
I left formal study for the simple fact that I was no longer able to find a true teacher or school. All I was able to find was one “belt factory” after another. Schools and self-appointed “Masters” signing students to contracts and promising black belts at the end of three years of study. Teachers ceased to be teachers and instead became salesmen. Students ceased to be students and became customers who were purchasing a product. The product wasn’t knowledge or self-realization. It was a black belt. Not the skill, philosophy or strength of character that can only be the product of many years of intensive training that tests the limits of endurance. No…just the belt itself, without any real knowledge of what it is supposed to mean and what it is supposed to say about the person who earned it.
When the heart went out of the arts, it took qualities like respect, honor, loyalty, and integrity with it. So-called black belts today are just another form of greedy business man who are selling a product and will do whatever they feel they have to in order to make money, including betraying former mentors.
These people never truly understood the arts, and perhaps they were never truly taught. As the arts have evolved into a business, located in every suburan strip mall, right next to the pizzeria, they became a watered-down product. The product needed to be simple and accessible enough for anyone to be able buy into, and it needed to be attainable relatively quickly. Americans have short attention spans. They want results right now. why EARN black belt in five, six, or seven years or more when you can BUY one in three years? In that process of distillation, the first things to be cut from the curriculum were the very core values and philosophies which have allowed the arts to endure for so long.
Many of todays “black belts” never paid the price in the dojo. They never went through the character building conditioning that all students did in the old days. They never got what the arts were really about, or were never taught in the first place. Black belts today can’t be trusted for the simple fact there are very few TRUE black belts. They’re a dying breed, and they typically aren’t running cheap franchise schools, peddling the fast food version of martial arts. You have to look long and hard to find them.
The sad fact is that most black belts “intructors” today are like used car salesmen who will say and do just about anything to get the money. Business killed the martial arts. Who can argue that the arts weren’t stronger when they were more of an “underground” phenomenon as opposed to a strip mall fixture?