Tom Callos on Martial Arts Business, Curriculum, a

Martial Arts Business. An Industry with It’s Head Up its Arse?

Is “Head in Your Arse” too harsh a thing to say about the martial arts industry —or us?

I think not.

Try this (as a test): Visit 10, 20, 30, or 100 martial arts school websites (as I have, 10 times over) —and look for something unique.

RARE.

“We are a black belt school!” “House of Pain.” “House of Discipline” (says the 28 year old tattooed high school dropout who has embraced his inner-mma-fighter). “The Student Creed.” “Little Dragonette.” “Little Assassins.” “MMA Fitness.” “Israeli Commando Fitness .” “We teach someone else’s words!”

To hell with personal experience, with investigation, with sitting down and working, working, working to put your knowledge into something powerful and important —-BUY WHAT YOU TEACH (it’s easier —and in the long run, cheaper!).

To hell with actually researching, studying, and God forbid, understanding Toaism or The 7 Habits or The 8-fold Path or Budo or anatomy and physiology or anything much more than the birthday party, the ice cream social, the pizza party, SEO and how to cheat it, how to upgrade, how to double your gross, how to sign up 60 students in a month.

And consultants? They’re a dime a dozen. Kids make Youtube videos telling other school owners (“The Industry”) how to build a better program. Why? Because it’s easier to talk on a camera and give advice to strangers than it is to go into your own community and affect REAL CHANGE —or solve real problems. Best to face and talk to people who expect nothing from you, who won’t scrutinize that you’re all small talk and very, very little about action-of-any-relevant-consequence.

BE DIFFERENT 100 MEMBERS, as This is Where Your Tuition (Value) Will Come From

Start with your own personal martial arts training.

Start with what you read, tonight, tomorrow, the next day.

Start with going back to school (you can do 1 class, yes?).

Start with doing things worth doing (battle diabetes, battle depression, battle bullying, battle anger, battle piss-poor diets that lead to illness, battle apathy, battle gender-related-violence, battle bigotry, battle the Tobacco Industry, battle conspicuous consumption, battle the medias crazy manipulation of children’s brains, battle bad manners, battle ignorance, hell….battle anything that’s worth the battle).

Start with actually STUDYING philosophy.

Start with perfecting your knowledge of food, fitness, and health.

Start with building a noble, noteworthy, telling project portfolio.

Start with shutting off your TV, closing your laptop, pushing yourself away from your desk, and getting into your community in a way that few people ever do.

Start with refining your words, refining, refining, refining…

Start teaching by your example, not what sells. To hell with what sells —and more power to innovative, important, useful service to mankind.

Write more. Video more. Teach more. Read more. Simplify more. Reduce More. DO more for others. Think more. Subvert the dominant paradigm and turn away from “The martial arts industry.” LEAD it. Eventually the industry as it is will go away —and we will be left with the things you’re now planting the seeds for, today.

Martial Arts Business: On Being Poor

Martial Arts Business: On Being Poor and Not Having Many Resources

In the practice of the martial arts we often embrace opposites. For example, when the punch is coming at the face, our mind says “flinch and cringe,” but our training says, “block.” When we face a sparring partner some part of our brain might whisper (or yell), “run,” but our training has us stepping back, raising our hands, and engaging the opponent.

It was a martial arts teacher who taught me that when something is bad, it might actually be good; he taught me that a lot of how we perceive things depends on how we choose to look at them. Finding the good in the bad is, I was trained, a fairly powerful form of self-defense.

So I’m here to tell you, Mr. or Ms. Struggling Martial Arts School Owner, that being poor is, in many ways, actually better for your business than being wealthy. That struggling with limited resources can, sometimes, serve you better, believe it or not, than having more than enough money.

Let me explain how it works.

When you have a lot of money, it’s easy to get lazy. When you’re operating with a bare-bones budget, you have to tap into your creativity, you have to become resourceful and inventive. When you have a lot of money, to advertise for example, you might buy the same ads everyone else does, in the same way. But when you’re poor, you have to choose methods of promotion that don’t rely on the almighty dollar, but that often depend on inventiveness and/or face-to-face interaction.

Oh, and money can make you really stupid.

Some of my friends who make a lot of money go crazy for stupid things like cars that cost $50,000 or more than they’re really worth. They buy clothes that cost 10-times what they should —and they think they look really smart wearing them!

Unlike my friends with less “disposable income,” my friends with lots of money have houses that are too big, furniture that’s a waste of money, and they often travel to expensive places to stay in expensive hotels that insulate them from the very places they went to go “see.”

They often buy ridiculously expensive watches, spend too much of their money on greasy food and pretentious wines, and generally insulate themselves in a cocoon of status symbols and designer brand names.

Being cash poor isn’t necessarily about being “poor” (and “poor” in the Western World today isn’t really being “poor” at all) it can be a license to look more carefully at the world around you. It’s an opportunity to embrace simplicity, which is often a far better thing than the complications that come with hoarding wealth. Being not-rich requires one to get creative, to invent, and to take advantage of the abundant resources around us, resources that often get ignored by folks who are looking for status over function.

One of my favorite reminders of the advantage of not having a whole lot of money to create genius and art (in life), is in this blog by photographer Chase Jarvis. The blog is called “Care, Time, and Vision Beat Budget Every Time.” It’s about the beautiful project, “The Ice Book.”

The Ice Book (HD) from Davy and Kristin McGuire on Vimeo.

It’s a reminder to me that working with a tight budget doesn’t have to mean “no magic.” If you’re a school owner with a less-than-abundant budget to operate your school —and life —on, I’d like to suggest you embrace the opposite: See being tight as a good thing, maybe even a great thing.

Make it force you to look at what you DO have, at the resources you don’t have to pay a lot for, and let it cause you to invent and create. Create a world for yourself where less is actually more.

It wouldn’t be the first time we (martial artists) embrace an idea that, at first, seems like the opposite of good judgment.

The Work, The Work, The Work: Martial Arts / Life

I’m Tom Callos.

In 1969 I lived on a decommissioned military base located just outside of Reno, Nevada. My father worked in a plant there that refined titanium, mostly for NASA and Lear Jet. There was an old gym there, like something out of the 1950’s, and a judo class met in the gym three times a week. I liked to watch the practice (adults only) —and it was there that I had my first lesson in martial arts; when I was 9-years-old The Sensei motioned for me to come on the mat after the adults had finished and he taught me to roll and how to break a backwards fall.

In 1971, my family moved into Sparks, Reno’s sister city. One summer day as we drove past a park on the way home from grocery shopping I saw a group of people in white uniforms practicing martial arts. I joined that school shortly thereafter, paying for lessons and a uniform with money I’d earned mowing lawns. Somehow I knew, and remember telling myself, from the first day I walked into that school, that I was going to be a teacher.

Eight years later I tested for my 1st dan. The next summer I moved to San Jose, CA to become a student of Master Ernie Reyes, Sr., whose reputation for developing martial arts champions was unmatched by anyone else on the west coast. Two years later I tested for my 2nd dan —and I am currently, 31 years later, a 6th dan under Master Ernie.

Between where I began and where I am today, I have owned a number of schools, two of which were, at their peak, two of the largest in the US at the time. Their success and my relationship with Master Reyes caused Educational Funding Company (EFC) to ask me to join their Board of Directors, which a few years later caused The National Association of Professional Martial Artists (NAPMA) to ask me to contribute content to their effort. Following NAPMA I worked on behalf of Century’s Martial Arts Industry Association (MAIA), designing a good deal of their content for a period of several years.

Like, I assume, most everyone reading this, I have done some fine things, a large number of OK things, and more stupid things than I care to remember. Over the years I have met and studied with some fine teachers; some of them I treated very well, while some of them probably thought I was a self-centered, impulsive young man, struggling with low self-esteem and on a constant mission to stand out from the crowd (as I was all that and more).

The work I do today has been shaped by many factors. I have always been a reader —and reading has lead me to being a better (than some) communicator. Communicating the benefits of martial arts training is something I might do as good —or better —than anyone in the world today (so I think). I have always been aware of spirituality, although not always sure what exactly that meant. Today, at age 51, spirituality seems about as important and relevant as anything else —and maybe the force behind my parenting, my relationship, my continued practice of the martial arts, and most certainly my current work and search for clarity.

Thanks to my first teacher, Mr. Lou Grasso, to Master Ernie Reyes, to my classmates on the West Coast Demo Team, to Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace, Jeff Smith, Chuck Norris and a hundred other champions that graced the covers and inside features of Black Belt Magazine, to my training partners, to my students, and to the people I’ve been fortunate to work with. I owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.

I also owe thanks to Lao Tzu, Confucius, Kano, Ueshiba, Musashi, Funakoshi, Tom Edison, Ray Bradbury, Rachel Carson, Anthony Robbins, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, and a countless number of other philosophers, writers, inventors, scientists, thinkers, and activists, people who have moved me with their ideas and actions.

Today, I am a man on a mission to improve the overall quality of the contribution that the martial arts world brings to the world. I’m still learning how to do that and actually see some improvement from my efforts. I use words and images and a near-relentless stream of communication to “the industry” and the general public to try and inspire martial arts school owners, teachers, and practitioners to embrace ideas and practices that brings the best-of-the-best of what we can be, to be.

I make my living coaching teachers on how to go about being extraordinary teachers. I coach school owners to adopt a kind of practice that is holistic, as genuine as they can muster, and deep to the point of spiritual practice. What I have learned in the 40 years I’ve dedicated myself to the martial arts, is that the deeper the practice is, the closer we are to finding peace within ourselves, satisfaction in our work, results in our endeavors, and meaning in our lives.

In my work, I simply refuse to embrace anything that smells of artifice. I endorse spiritual and social justice pursuits over consumerism and the feathering of one’s nest. I advocate simple living, non-violence, and community activism; and when I am thinking clearly, after taxes, after cleaning up breakfast, after two Advil, and after having my wife tell me I shouldn’t eat that dessert as I’m “looking a little plump,” I am seeking to live as a Bodhisattva —or someone who works to reduce suffering for others.

I am pretty certain that I am one of just a handful (if that) of people in the martial arts world who sees his/her “job” as the general, over-all improvement of all aspects of the international martial arts community. I don’t know exactly how I came to this place, except to say that, to me, it seems as though every teacher I have had, every athlete, writer, and thinker I have admired, and every experience I have lived through —was pointing me to this place. It seems to me that there was no other place for me to go.

If I do my job well, I hope to be lucky enough to have almost everyone I come in contact with, everyone who might, for any period of time see me as a credible source of information, to find a sense of their own “mission” in the world, by watching me live mine. I offer help to anyone who asks for it (and a lot of people who don’t) —and I am not afraid to try new things or to fail miserably, which I do often.

While I certainly strike out, often, I also occasionally hit home runs. I’ve played a part in bettering communication and teaching skills in many teachers, thanks to the press and exposure the associations and magazines have given me over the years. I have brought and/or contributed to dialogue in the martial arts world around environmentalism, health education, peace, non-violence, and anger management, kindness and compassion, black belt testing reform, community activism, voluntary simplicity, anti-consumerism, philosophy, and education. I’ve had some fine martial artists, some champions even, and a long list of great souls come through my classes.

Today, I plan on beginning again, like a white belt. I plan to look deeply at what I think I know —and what I still have to learn. It’s my goal to, every day, bring my best game to the field. I see every day as a chance to produce something beautiful and extraordinary. That’s my practice.

My life is my dojo. My business is making a difference for others.