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Full time dojo


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not yet.. but it is a future goal...

 

my instructor teaches MA full time...it's great if you can do it, but there's a lot of overhead, especially in getting started, and it comes with headaches same as any other full time job :)

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I'm not now, but I ran a fulltime, 6 days per week dojo for about 5 years.

My nightly prayer..."Please, just let me win that PowerBall Jackpot just once. I'll prove to you that it won't change me!"

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  • 4 weeks later...

It's massive amounts of work, commitment and time..but can be very rewarding. also frustrating! lol Are you going to use contracts? I didn't because I didn't believe in them, but I understand why many sensei do use them.

 

Good luck!

My nightly prayer..."Please, just let me win that PowerBall Jackpot just once. I'll prove to you that it won't change me!"

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When I began training as a kid, it was 20 bucks a month. Pay when you can. Many a good school went under.

 

I will use contracts, but as pro-consumer as possible yet not giving away the store. I trained briefly at a great school in Minnesota and, in exchange for tuition I handled the schools collections, i.e., broken contracts. Students were given just about every conceivable opportunity to stay current, but in the end, one student's training relies on another students payments.

So Many Masters; So Few Students

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  • 3 weeks later...
Be prepared to spend a little more time balancing the "corperate rut" and the full-time dojo for a while. It might be a good idea to stert out like so many of us have by teaching out of your garage or at a community center for a while, just until you get a good student base and some capital built up for the construction and day to day operations of your school.

"let those who shed blood with me be forever known as my brother."

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Be prepared to spend a little more time balancing the "corperate rut" and the full-time dojo for a while. It might be a good idea to stert out like so many of us have by teaching out of your garage or at a community center for a while, just until you get a good student base and some capital built up for the construction and day to day operations of your school.

 

This is good advise. I taught out of my home, school gyms, church's, grocery store basements, backyards (tough in the winter in Montana), office buildings, health clubs and empty mall stores for maybe 12 years before I opened my first full time commercial dojo. If I'd have used contracts and been more aggresive, I think I would have had a pretty good business and done well with it.

 

Unfortunately, I hate contracts and the idea behind them, and this area is a very outdoor recreation oriented one, so winters and summers are both slow. There's a TKD guy on main st running a full time dojo that seems to be doing pretty good, but he's passing out belts like confetti and telling tall tales to his students to keep them enrolled. to each their own.

My nightly prayer..."Please, just let me win that PowerBall Jackpot just once. I'll prove to you that it won't change me!"

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I ran a part time school for 2 years. I used a church activity room like many other folks do. They let me use it for free which allowed me to put all of the money I earned back into the school for mats pads and school weapons as well as my own training. I don't like contracts either and my school folded because of it. It wasn't because the people didn't like my teaching or because of the money. My school folded because of local politics. One of my students, who happened to be a brown belt from Fumio Demura, wasn't very well liked by the other people in town because of the way he ran his personal business. They wanted me to throw him out of class. I wouldn't, so the class folded almost immediately. There are many obstacles when you have a school. You need to have a contingency plan if you do it full time. I have a friend with a VERY successful school in Arizona. He uses contracts and he enforces them like any other business would. He explains up front that his contracts are binding unless you have an acceptable reason for breaking it. Even then he usually asks for some sort of buy out. He'll tell you that he does this full time and that he and his kids have to eat. No one seems to mind as he has approximately 400 students that seem to enjoy themselves.

A block is a strike is a lock is a throw.

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