How You Market and Sell is One Thing – WHAT you Market and Sell Is Another
By Tom Callos • Jun 16th, 2008 • Category: The Radical LeftStephen Oliver and Dan Kennedy are real experts who will help you learn HOW to market something. I know a little bit about marketing too, from experience, but what I really specialize in is talking, writing and taking action on WHAT you must market and sell. I don’t work much with what you must sell today; however (although I’ve written at least a million words about the subject during the last decade).
I work in the realm of what you will be selling tomorrow.
What You Will Be Selling Tomorrow
Tomorrow, you will be selling life coaching. You will develop a curriculum that takes your martial arts “out of the dojo - and into the world.” Your school will be organized to teach young people Project Based Leadership Training, which means you will coach kids how to turn their ideas and concerns into community based projects - where you will facilitate their education, experientially. Your specialty as a teacher will be your uncanny ability to take what you teach on the mats - and see that it become action in the community - and in the world.
Thirty to 40-percent of your testing curriculum will not take place in your dojo. It will consist of tasks and projects that take place outside your school - and that require your students to apply what they’ve learned in your classes to things not related to kicking, punching and grappling.
You will be selling what you REALLY do for a living (motivating people to take action in their lives - which might be “the ultimate self-defense”) by keeping a wonderfully entertaining record of your school’s exploits. This record will be called a Project Portfolio. Your portfolio will record the projects your students - and you - have done in your community. It will hold the proof that you really know how to teach people to apply the martial arts to their lives. It will also show the buying public what you, personally, stand for.
Tomorrow, you will be selling and teaching the basics of PREVENTIVE anger management education, in conjunction with the stances, punches, kicks and arm-bars you’ve been teaching for years. Why? Because nobody else is doing it - and it’s self-defense in its purest form.
Tomorrow, you will be teaching self-defense from a global perspective. Gone are the days when you could teach a “self-defense” course and simply show people how to escape a headlock. In today’s world, the average citizen will never have to protect himself (or herself) from a physical attack, but he or she will need to know how to avoid diabetes, heart disease and dioxin poisoning (among other things).
Tomorrow, you will teach a comprehensive self-defense program that authentically addresses the things that hurt and kill people in today’s world. Your program will also teach young people how to take care of their planet - because if our living environment is under attack, then we are under attack.
Tomorrow you will be teaching a kind of martial arts EDUCATION that enlists the help of thinkers, movers and shakers, from OUTSIDE your school. You will have an online film library of short films that teach emotional, physical, social, health and spiritual lessons, vital to the complete education of your students.
Tomorrow, you and your students will enlist a “village” of teachers to help with the journey to
“Black Belt excellence.” You will take online lessons from master teachers from around the world. You might learn your BJJ from Carlos Machado and BJ Penn and receive your philosophy lesson from Jhoon Rhee and Stephen Hayes, punching tips from Joe Lewis and Troy Dorsey and kicking drills from Ernie Reyes, Jr.
Tomorrow, you will have more tools to empower your students (not just to “sell” them). You will have more help, more resources for education and inspiration, and you will most definitely be able to talk about the martial arts from a more sophisticated, intelligent, relevant and modern point-of-view.
Today, there is a revolution occurring in martial arts education. Just by receiving this magazine and reading this article - you are officially a part of it.
For info tomorrow’s curriculum, visit ultimateblackbelttest.com. To get anger management teacher training, go to angercoachonline.com. To take lessons from BJ Penn, go to bjpenn.com. Too learn HOW to market, go to napma.com.
Tom Callos: is the designer and team coach for The Ultimate Black Belt Test. He is a veteran consultant to the martial arts industry — who is known for thinking way, way, way, way out of the dojo. Tom Callos is a frequent NAPMA Maximum Impact Contributor. He ma be reached about UBBT or his Anger Management Program.
All posts by Tom Callos
Tom,
You are not alone in your opposition to the war(s) being carried out by the United States.
I am with you on this.
Sadly, the martial arts in the U.S. seem to be dominated by folks who are easily mastered and led by reactionary opportunists of the worst kind. Let’s be crystal-clear:
America has ALWAYS been an aggressor nation; from the invasion and massacre of Indigenous peoples for the land on this continent, and importation of Africans to work the stolen land for free under penalty of death; to the current conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, and the Phillipines.
The majority of the world’s martial arts that many NAPMA members teach and train in were created by oppressed, non-white peoples to fight off hostile foreign invaders, like the United States.
Many of these arts only arrived in the United States once those peoples finally surrendered to U.S. aggression, and the masters of these arts immigrated to the U.S. to avoid increased poverty and oppression at the hands their country’s respective U.S.- controlled puppet regimes.
The current conflict in Iraq was created by the United States over many, many years. Former President Reagan (via the CIA) armed the Mujahaddin (seen the movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” yet?), who later evolved into the Taliban. The United States also helped arm Saddam Hussein, knowing full well that Hussein aspired to be an Arab version of Adolf Hitler.
Senator John McCain is an obscenely horrible hypocrite. He calls the controlled chaos of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) “barbaric”, yet he has stated repeatedly that he is ready to keep U.S. troops in Iraq “…for the next 100 years”.
I can count the number of deaths from MMA world-wide on one hand; I can count the number of deaths in Iraq (both U.S. and Iraqi) on hundreds of hands. In MMA, the referee, the judges, the fight doctor, the cornermen for either fighter, and the fighters themselves can stop the action at anytime.
The same cannot be said for what’s going on in Iraq, or anywhere else US. troops are fighting the so-called “war on terror”. Senator McCain’s “Bomb Iran” song is real cute too: What does that example, coming from a world leader no less, teach our children about courtesy, integrity, discipline, and respect for others?
To those NAPMA members who support the current war(s), would you teach your child students (or your own children) that it’s “ok” and/or “patriotic” for them make up a reason for violence, recruit their classmates, and then mount pre-emptive strikes on school-yard bullies or teachers they don’t like, all the while promising them fame and fortune for their efforts?
Keep doing what you do and saying what you say, Mr. Callos. You are not a lone voice in the wilderness.
Osu!
Gregory Lewis
Chief Instructor; GCL Modern Karate.
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