My Way

After informing my wife Alison about my personal ambition to start up my own martial art club, it wasn't too long after this major announcement that my dreams soon started to transform into reality.

A few weeks earlier I’d already started a Ladies self-defence class at the local Leisure Centre in the town where I lived. After the course had finished I was then asked by the operator to teach martial arts on a more regular basis. This opportunity basically came about after another local martial art instructor had failed to turn up to teach his classes and I was invited to take his place.

My instructing role soon became more permanent. On 1st July 1986 I officially opened my very first martial art club in Halesworth Suffolk. After the initial opening I slowly began to attract more and more students, however it didn’t take me too long recognise that although my ambitions and desires were strong, my actual ability to operate a successful club was an entirely different matter.

I’d had very little experience dealing with any aspect of business. My wife was unable to assist me because she was busy attending to our newborn baby. I struggled with certain things, such as keeping accurate bookwork, memberships applications and other forms of paperwork. Most of this just didn’t interest me. All I wanted to do was just practice and teach martial arts and do nothing else.

My first group of students quickly discovered my intense training methods. In fact I actually felt proud if someone decided to quit. I often referred to this as an act of “culling,” basically a method of sorting the weak out from the strong. I didn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘retention’. Students were basically given a choice, “ It was either my way - or the highway."

Today, I refer to this type of approach as “Old School" training. Most people who taught martial arts back then didn't know any different, we just followed certain methods that had been handed down from our own Instructor's. It must have seemed very regimental and militaristic back then and good customer service never existed. Looking back, following these specific methods I now realise that I lost many promising students along the way.

In the late eighties there were only a few other martial art clubs around in my area.  Martial arts had not reached its peak like it has today. Instructor’s from different clubs rarely spoke to each other or had any connection outside of their own organisations. Personally I didn't really care about mixing with anyone else, I just kept my head down and concentrated on teaching and training.

It wasn’t long before I started to feel slightly out of my comfort zone, which I now recognise as a sign of growth. Everything that I did back in those early days was done via trial and error and I understand now that I made many, many mistakes. 

To summarise; I basically didn’t care about anything except training. I didn't know how to treat people properly. I wasn’t willing to communicate. I wasn’t interested in discovering about the operational side of things. In short; it was a complete recipe for disaster! 

It wasn’t to far down the road that I would soon discover the complete error of my ways.