I admit my first goal was not to be a world champion. I actually reached the success of being number one in the world because that goal was set for me by Grandmaster Jhoon Rhee. My original goal for myself was to be ranked in the top 10 fighters in the country, because back then that was a big deal. When I told Master Rhee that my goal was to get in the top 10, he said, “I don’t want your goal to be the top 10. I want you to be number one in the top 10.”
Well I didn’t have that vision for myself, but I said okay. I eventually became ranked in the top three fighters with Bill Wallace and Howard Jackson. For about two or three years, the three of us were back and forth between who was first, second and third.
In my mind, I was just shooting to be in the top 10, but when I trained, I said to myself, “There’s X amount of hours in a day.” So, I actually plotted out the hours.
How much I was going to sleep? How much I was going train? I worked out a schedule around the hours I taught karate. I worked out in the morning before class. I had a two-hour break in there, so, I worked out in the afternoon. I finished teaching at 9 to 10 p.m. and I would do another two-hour workout. I had a six-hour workout schedule.
Next, I divided out what I needed to work on to build strength, to build speed, to build timing, to work on technique, to work on power, to work on endurance. I had a whole strategy built to help me win tournaments. If I didn’t win the tournament, I would reevaluate the way I was training.
A successful school owner will approach his or her business as if he or she were training for a championship. If he’s not hitting that goal that he set for himself, then he’s got to look at his stats and give an honest evaluation of what is he leaving out, and what he has to change to make the outcome different.
I was fortunate to have a good stable of competitors to train with like Pat and John Worley and Michael Coles. There was a whole bunch of fighters coming out of the Jhoon Rhee institute and we trained together. Unfortunately, for most school owners, they don’t have the opportunity to be around other top school owners. Most of the schools out there are all by themselves. They don’t have anybody to brainstorm with and share techniques.
If I’m training with somebody and they share a technique with me and I share a technique with them, we’ve both improved. If they’re working on their defense and I’m working on my offense, I get to work on my defense as well because we are sharing knowledge.
There’s a lot of similarities in training to be a champion and building a successful school. We had a great session recently in Golden, Colorado, at the marketing boot camp. Many people had some great ideas, but nobody had all the ideas. The good thing about sharing ideas with people like Master Oliver and myself – or any of the other people at the seminar ¬– is if I have one idea and you have one idea, then we both win. Now we have two ideas. That’s one of the advantages of NAPMA.
Would I have become a world champion without the encouragement of Grandmaster Rhee who pushed me to be better than I thought I could? Would I have won the tournaments I needed to win without my training partners who shared their knowledge and techniques? Would I have been number one without the standard set by the other top fighters?
Whether it is successful competition or success in business, we are better and achieve more when we work with training partners who have similar goals. An important key to achieving your goals is to choose the best group of success partners that you can find. .
