Expand your thinking!

A common problem amount school owners is continually “majoring in minors” to quote Zig or someone similar.   I’ve spoken with many friends who regularly network with Billionaires rather than millionaires.  Their feedback on those individuals?  Incredibly expansive belief in what’s possible and an total ability to avoid getting bogged down in the irrelevant or in low value activities.

I see our industry hamstrung constantly by school owners who get bogged down in irrelevancy and fail to focus on the big picture.

Back in 1983 when I opened 5 schools in 18 months and grew to 1,500 active students and a $1,000,000+ operation there may have been a number of factors that contributed to the ability to accomplish it.  However, I’m convinced that the most important factor was that I believed that it could be done and I believed that I could do it.

Don’t get me wrong.

The Business Plan was essential.  The many 1,000’s of hours studying all aspects of our industry was indispensible.  The mentorship of Jhoon Rhee, Jeff Smith, Nick Cokinos, Ned Muffley and others was priceless.  However, all of this would have been for nothing without my personally believing that it was both doable and that I was personally capable of accomplishing the goal.

What made that belief possible?

I’m sure the biggest factor was in actually having seen a model with my own eyes.  The Jhoon Rhee Institute was my model for what I wanted to accomplish.   Jhoon Rhee recently said at the Extreme Success Academy:  “Steve accomplished in 18 months what it took me 20 years to accomplish, I wasn’t jealous at all.”

Well that may be true from one perspective but on the other hand if he had not invested the 20 years then I may never have believed it possible.    Without his 20 years building a multi-million dollar organization I wouldn’t have had the model for success that I had to leap frog off of.  So did it take me 18 months or Jhoon Rhee and I 21.5 years?

From my perspective the answer is obvious.  The 21.5 years is conservative. It misses the years that Nick Cokinos spent with Arthur Murray and Art Linkletter’s “Linkletter-Totten Dance Studio” to develop systems that translated to martial arts schools.  It also misses Chuck Norris and others developing systems borrowed and modeled by Jhoon Rhee and our staff.

Another factor to my early success may have been youthful cockiness and insatiable greed (as depicted by some of my detractors – especially in Colorado in the 80’s and 90’s.)  In reality my vision was more about thousands of students with deep impact on each and every one more than any personal financial motivation directly.  The youthful cockiness that many perceived then (or, now without the “youthfulness” attached) came for from a realization that most in our industry (and, in ALL industries) have not a clue what it takes to run their business as a business nor much interest in modeling success rather than complaining about someone else’s success.  Unfortunately most in our industry (hopefully not you) look for an excuse to excuse their own failures rather than asking for help and joining with a winning system.  They make up crazy names for people who are doing what they should be doing to protect their own ego and self esteem.  They call successful schools “McDojo’s” or “Belt Factories” then complain about “store-front dojo’s.”

Maybe it’s because they haven’t had my experience.  I might have thought the same thing coming from the “blood and guts” era in Oklahoma & Texas.  Luckily for me I traveled to them moved to DC and regularly had my ass kicked by fighters much more accomplished than myself who were also make a tremendous living teaching others the