The Martial Arts Business Podcast Episode 44
The State of the Martial Arts Industry & Choosing Success
Mentioned in This Episode:
Episode Transcript:
You’re listening to the Martial Arts Business Podcast with your host, Small Dojo Big Profits author Mike Massie. Remember to go to Martial Arts Business Daily for podcast for show notes, transcripts, links to martial arts business resources, and more.
Now here’s your host, Mike Massie.
Hey folks, it’s by Massie. And yes, I am back with an episode of the Martial Arts Business Podcast after a rather long hiatus. Some of you may know that I ran this podcast for a couple of years. Several years back, I was probably the first person to have a successful podcast in the martial arts industry as a consultant, and now it seems like there are podcast everywhere you look, but I’m not going to talk about that right now.
I’ll get into that a little bit later in the discussion, but I stopped you on the podcast because it was a bit of a time suck. And also, you know, I had a lot of other stuff going on. I started writing fiction. My fiction novel writing career took off. It’s still doing well, by the way, and I just didn’t have time for the podcast anymore. But I’m back now.
You may also know that I have had an ongoing battle with lung cancer for the last two years, and so I’m about almost four months post-surgery. We fought the cancer for about a year and a half. I refused chemo and radiation simply because I didn’t see any… I couldn’t find any any clinical evidence to basically to to show that I would benefit from it based on the type of cancer I had.
I had a very rare form of cancer, like one a million cancer. There’s less than 1000 cases this type of cancer every year. As it turns out, that was the right call. For various reasons that I won’t get into, but 1s essentially the type of cancer that I have doesn’t respond well to chemo or radiation, and sometimes it can be harmful.
So surgery is the first line treatment for this type of cancer. And I did have surgery. The surgery was successful. Had a wonderful surgical team at MD Anderson. Dr. Rice and a surgical team over there did an outstanding job with me, and I can’t say enough good things about him. And of course, my specialist and integrative oncologist and so forth just had wonderful people taking care of me.
So I’m four months out and I’m doing well. I’m back to training and doing some of the other stuff that I love, albeit with some, you know, understandable. You know, I guess you could say, yeah, I don’t want to say challenges after you have a load of your lung removed, I don’t think you’re ever going to be quite what you were before, but that doesn’t stop me from training. And I’m having a blast being back in training. And again doing some of the things I love.
So no complaints there. And I’ll take this over the alternative. So here I am. I’m back. Now I’m going to talk about why I’m back. Actually, it’s not just because if, you know, surviving cancer and so forth, I’m going to talk about some other things here in a minute.
But one of the reasons why I’m doing this podcast is because some of you have been asking for long form video content. I have been putting out quite a bit more content recently, simply because I wanted to let people know that I am back. I am back to coaching and doing some other things. I’ll talk about that in a minute. 1s And some of you asked for long form video content, and I understand that. I understand why you want that content. I understand it’s almost expected of thought leaders these days. Anybody who is a so-called influencer in industry and social media is expected to put out long form content.
I get that, although, you know, I’m kind of hesitant to give my time freely because early on, when I first wrote Small Village Big Profits back in 2003, that following year, the book kind of took off. It was kind of an underground success. And, you know, after about a year and a half, I found that I was spending Almost more time dealing with customers and giving free advice than I was running on dojo at the time, and I had to stop it. That’s when I started charging for consulting work and so forth, and that worked out well.
But I am still very—I do guard my time very closely. And now, after having survived cancer and, you know, you spent a year and a half waking up every day contemplating your own imminent demise, and you know, things are going to change for you as far as your attitude goes. And a couple of things did change for me.
One of them is that, you know, I have even less patience for foolish people these days I suffer fools. I’ve always suffered fools poorly and now it’s having less patience, trust me.
But the other thing is, I have a little bit more empathy for others too, simply because I know there are a lot of people that are out there that are hurting and that are going through challenges. And so, you know, one of the reasons why I returned to actively coaching in the industry is not just because my health is better, but because I want to help people as as I’ve always wanted to help people. And you can’t help everybody for free. You know, I do have to do this as a business because I have to support my family.
But I’m trying to put as much information out there as I can to help those of you who are who are struggling and in many cases, struggling needlessly. That’s not your fault. But I’m going to talk about that more in a minute too. So so that’s the deal. So you asked for long form video content and here it is.
Now I want to talk about 1s what I have coming down the pike. Okay. So I have a few things coming down the pike. One of them is I have a new course coming up. It is a it’s kind of a Revision of my marketing course. I guess you could say, you know, in in the digital age, marketing is a moving it’s a moving target.
Being able to market your school successfully is something that you have to continually work at. You have to continuously update your skills. You have to stay on the forefront of of trends and and so forth. And the digital marketing industry, because almost everything is digital now, offline marketing still works to an extent, but it’s just easier to do digital marketing. And so it was time for me to revise and update that course. And I’ve done it a couple of times, but I just kind of started off from the ground up and reshot it, rerecorded it. So that’s coming, coming down the pike soon.
And of course, again, back to coaching. I am opening up more coaching availability. I’m going to make it much easier for people to book coaching sessions with me. I’m not the type of coach that tries to sell you on a $10,000 or, you know, $20,000, $30,000 mastermind coaching package right off the bat. I’d rather meet with somebody one on one and spend 45 minutes with them and find out what their problems are, and see if I can’t solve their problems initially in that in that one hour session or 45 minute session. And if somebody needs more extensive coaching, I’m available for that as well. But I’m going to make it easier for people to book with me. Although I still have limited time to do coaching every day I will be more accessible. So that’s something you can look forward to.
Hopefully, if you know, if you’re wanting to get coaching from me, some people could care less, so that’s fine too. And then I have a secret project launching soon, so there’s going to be a secret project coming up. I’m not going to announce it just yet, but we’ll be announcing it in future podcast episodes. And by the way, this podcast, you can expect me to drop a new episode about every week now. So I’m going to try to do some interviews and so forth like I’ve done before, but also change it up. And I want to make sure that it’s not just me doing these talking head videos to you every week, so you know that that can get boring after a while, no matter how much you think that that I know what I’m talking about. Eventually you’re going to get bored of that. So I’ll try to schedule some interview guests and so forth and see how that goes. That seems to have been pretty popular in the past.
So now let’s talk about the topic for this initial relaunch of the podcast. And that is the state of the industry. And in my opinion, the industry is hurting. And part of that is because, you know, we had the pandemic, a lot of studio owners didn’t recover from the pandemic. 2s It was a disruptive event like nothing we’ve ever seen.
But it’s not just that. It isn’t just that, um, while I was sick over the last couple of years, the last 18 months, um. 1s I spent a lot of time thinking about things, and I kind of was preoccupied with my own health at the time, you know, which is understandable, but it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t still working with people. I was still trying to run my coaching group and do some other things because, you know, bills had to be paid. 1s I will say that I saw some things that were pretty disturbing during that time, you know. 2s
For one, let’s just say that the business environment now is probably tougher than it’s ever been, 1s although there is more opportunity now for various reasons that I will discuss. But, you know, we have a recession that we’ve never come out of since the pandemic. I don’t care what anybody says, we’re still in a recession. Inflation is crazy. The you know, your dollars, you know, your money doesn’t go near as far as it used to.
And, you know, I’ve seen it everywhere. You know, it doesn’t matter what the you know, the media tells you, the indicators are there. The economic indicators are there. You know, gas is sky high. Heating costs are sky high. Electricity has gone up. Um, go to the grocery store. You know, I think we’re spending probably 40% more on groceries every month. You know, I went to the local Home Depot to get some supplies just for doing landscaping, because we were selling our old house because we wanted to downsize Right before my surgery, you know, for various reasons. So I wouldn’t have to climb stairs after getting part of my lung removed and stuff like that.
And, you know, a simple piece of metal lawn edging that I used to pay like 8 or 10 bucks for is now like two and a half times the price. It’s like $24 for one piece or something like that. It’s just insane.
And, you know, in our industry, we we operate in an industry where our customers primarily are spending their discretionary funds every month on our services. And so when they don’t have as much disposable income in their budget, guess what? We’re going to be one of the first things they cut out. If they don’t see our services as being something that they can’t live without.
And that’s a tough sell. When you’re teaching martial arts, you know, whether it’s to children or adults. This all adds up to making it a really tough business environment for us. I’m not saying this to be all gloom and doom, I’m just saying that this is just the way it is now.
So, you know, between recession, inflation and the economic instability we have, because we have these disruptive economic events that are coming ever more often. It used to be that when I started off in business, we would see disruptive events happen about every ten years. And some of the disruptive events that I experienced there was the dotcom bubble bursting, which was a pretty disruptive event and pretty close after that. You know, we had we had nine, 11, you know, which was also it was kind of like that was an outlier event.
And, you know, what’s interesting is, is I think 911 was probably a pretty good indication that things were changing globally as far as the type of disruptive events we could see and how they would affect our economy globally due to globalism and due to interconnectedness of of economies worldwide, which was which has changed since the Industrial Revolution, since we moved into an information age. But, you know, after that we had the mortgage crisis, you know, went through that as a school owner.
And, you know, then we had the Great Recession and, you know, that followed the mortgage crisis and so forth. So we used to see those disruptive events about every ten years, and then they started getting closer and closer together. You know, we’re like five years and then more like 3 or 2. And now we’re seeing disruptive events happen in our economy about every six months. And, you know, additionally. I think as a society, the way technology is moving as quickly as technology is moving and how technology is integrated into society.
Now, because we have mobile devices, we have smartphones, we have Wi-Fi everywhere. You know, people are relying on the internet. They see the internet is basically like a, you know, almost like a public utility. It’s something, you know, all of our economy is intertwined with internet connectivity and with digital media and so forth. So much of our economy is driven by social media and not just our economy, but also the overall zeitgeist of the of culture, you know, and civilization is greatly impacted by what happens in digital media, social media and so forth.
And because of that, I think that people on the whole society and culture are having difficulty. And it’s not just my generation or, you know, I’m I’m Gen X, you know, it’s not just us. It’s not just boomers. I think it’s everybody. People are having a hard time keeping up with changes in technology and, you know, especially in business because, I mean, things just move so fast and they change so quickly.
And if you’re not on the ball, if you’re not staying on top of things. Um. You know, you’re going to get left behind. You’re going to wake up one day and find that, you know, things that you did even like 18 months or two years ago aren’t working today in your business, and you’re going to be scrambling to fix it. And this is one of the reasons why. Number one, you have to stay on top of technological change. And, you know, technological innovation.
As a small studio owner, it doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in everything, but you need to stay on top of it, need to make sure you’re hiring the right people to help you in those areas, because you can’t be an expert at everything and you need to understand the issues and be enough. I guess you could say of a futurist, to be able to see things coming, you know, that are that are coming at you before they become a problem.
So between that and, you know, these disruptive economic events, recession, inflation, instability, and then we have these dishonest thought leaders that are in our industry. And you know, when I wrote small digit big profits, some 20 years ago, I wrote it because I was upset, almost furious and disappointed with the information that was available in the industry at the time, the business information, because I felt like the people who were disseminating information on the whole that they were, they were doling out information that wasn’t exactly in the favor of helping, I guess you could say, intended to help martial arts studio owners.
You know, it was really information that was meant to influence studio owners to run their businesses in such a way to where it would benefit some of the the most influential businesses and personalities in the industry. And so I wrote small Big Profits is kind of like a, you know, a bit, I guess you could say, of a manifesto against kind of the big school mentality. But then also, I wanted to give martial arts instructors who enjoy teaching and who wanted to run Honest Studios and run businesses. Honestly, I wanted to give them an alternative, an alternative business model.
It’s the business model that I discovered worked best for me over the years. You know, no one person taught it to me. I picked it up from multiple different sources and developed my own business model over time. And it’s what worked well for me. So. You know, when I wrote that book, I thought, you know, after maybe ten years, I guess, you know, I thought things had changed. And I thought that because of the fact that the consumer holds most of the power in the business to consumer relationship these days, and because you studio owners are the consumer when it comes to consuming services, products and so forth in the martial arts industry that are meant to assist you in running your business more productively and more profitably.
I thought we were beyond the era of thought leaders taking advantage of individual studio owners, and I was wrong. That’s one of the reasons why I’m back 1s from everything from, you know, people who aren’t martial artists, being sold franchises and being told as franchisees that they can run a small martial arts studio as a semi absentee owner business, you know, which I’m not going to get into that. I don’t have to. The news articles are out there. You can go look up the lawsuits and you can easily find information online about that.
To consultants who are still telling their clients after all this time to do dishonest things in order to make a buck in their businesses. And I can tell you for a fact that you might be able to to get, you know, to get rich, to make some money being dishonest. Eventually it’s going to catch up to you. And honestly, some of those consultants that are out there that are telling people to do dishonest things in their business, some of that’s already caught up to them. Some of them have had some major lawsuits that have disrupted their lives. And, you know, they’ve already paid the price for for their own dishonesty and their own lack of integrity, but they’re trying to pass that along to people because, you know, I don’t know, I guess sociopaths are going to do what sociopaths do.
From that to consulting companies who are really essentially overcomplicating what is a very simple business. And, you know, the over complication of business systems and, you know, business models. It’s an old consultants trick. It is a trick that consultants use in order to get more of your money, because if a consultant can overcomplicate a problem and create complex solutions to simple problems. You will give them more of your money, because it’s going to take you more time and effort to learn those complex systems.
And, you know, I think it’s, you know, it’s wrong. It’s definitely borderline unethical to do that to a small business owner who’s struggling to get by, you know, or at least maybe just struggling to learn the systems they need to make their business a success. And, you know, I’ve worked with thousands of martial arts school owners over the last 20 years. I’ve spoken with so many people, I’ve impacted so many people. And I’m not saying that’s my own horn. I’m just saying it as a fact.
And I know that most of you out there, when you start your dojos, you’re not able to get business loans, you’re not going through the SBA. You know, you’re not trust fund babies or something like that. Most of you are starting your businesses with money out of pocket. You’re using your own capital. Some of you are tapping out your 401 seconds, others of you against my advice. Certainly are, you know, starting your businesses on credit cards and so forth. But mostly you’re investing everything you have into your studios and taking a gamble on a lifelong dream.
And I think it’s unethical for consultants, coaches and so forth to take advantage of you and to tell you to do, you know, quite frankly, things that are not in your best interest. 2s So they can make a buck. You know, I just I don’t get it. So it’s upsetting to me that this is happening and, 1s you know, these people that are out to take advantage of you, the independent studio owner, you know, hacks me off. So that’s why I’m back.
And I am back and I’m going to be back for a while, you know, as long as I can. I, you know, I’m here to impact some lives. And so that’s what we’re going to do. Hopefully, you know, some of you out there will, you know, my message will resonate with you. Some people haven’t heard of me before and we’ll do some amazing things together. And that’s what I’m looking forward to.
The tip of the week. It’s time for our featured martial arts business tip of the week. For more great tips, be sure to visit Martial Arts Business Daily to subscribe to our newsletter. And while you’re there, click on the Business Resources tab for links to all Mike’s martial arts business books and courses. Now here’s your martial arts business tip of the week.
Now let’s talk about our secondary topic for today’s podcast. And that is Choosing Success. So like I said earlier, now that I’m back, I’ve started to increase the amount of content I put on a social media and a few of my videos have. They’ve got a little bit of viral success, gotten a little bit of success, and one of them recently, just the other day, was this Bob Proctor video. Some of you might know who Bob Proctor is. He might be before your time. Bob Proctor was a personal development and success coach. He wrote a couple of books.
He was also involved in that book, The Secret, which I think is a bunch of hooey. I think, you know, the whole idea that you’re going to manifest something, you know, by thinking about something universe is going to gift it to you is a crock, you know? But, you know, Proctor, he had some. He has some. Some good things to say. And so my social media team posted this motivational clip of Bob Proctor talking about how, you know, the average person and, you know, a homeless person, both have 24 hours in a day. And I get some people got really upset about it.
There were some comments on the video or some of them were funny, you know, and they were kind of tongue in cheek. Others, you know, people were really upset, but people really, really took umbrage at with that video. And so I thought it was kind of interesting because, you know, as I commented in response to some of the comments on the video, I myself was homeless for several months when I was younger. And I won’t go into that story. Some of you already know it, but it has to do with, you know, being a young man, not yet being out of high school, getting kicked out of my house and making some bad choices and so forth. But, you know, that kind of gives you an idea of where I started at when I started my first dojo, my first business.
You know, between that and the fact that I’ve actually spent some time here in Austin where I live going out and, you know, like it gets cold every year here in Austin around, you know, late November, early December, you know, we get our first cold snap. And typically there’s a bunch of homeless people out there that aren’t prepared for it because the weather’s usually so nice out here, and we have people that freeze to death and so forth. So I’ve spent time going out, passing out blankets, doing things like that, you know, food, things of that nature, you know, just warm dry socks, stuff like that. And I’ve also volunteered at one of the homeless resource shelters downtown. And I worked at the Salvation Army, too, as well, doing security there. When I first moved to Austin, that was one of the odd jobs I worked when I was trying to get my studio started.
So I am familiar with the homeless population and and having spent considerable time with them, I can tell you that, you know, yes, there are people that are on the street that don’t want to be there. And, you know, they’ve just had 1 or 2, you know, really bad things happen to them in their lives. And like most of the the population who are living just 1 or 2 paychecks away from poverty and homelessness, that’s what happened to these people, you know, and I’ve spoken with some people with some really, really hard luck stories. And then another portion of those homeless people are those who have really serious mental health issues and addiction issues, and those stories are really sad. And here in Texas, at least, I think that we’re failing them as a society.
But then I’d say roughly about a third of the people that I met and spoke with at homeless camps and so forth, you know, and, and shelters, they were people that wanted to be homeless. And believe it or not, you know, it blew my mind. But these people, typically what they told me was that they enjoyed the freedom it gave them, you know, not having to live by a clock, you know, not having to have a job, being able to go where they want to do what they wanted any time they wanted. And that’s just the way things are.
So, you know Bob Proctor, he might have promoted some hooey, but the message of the clip that he posted was basically that we choose what we what we do with our time, and we’re all given the same amount of time. Everybody has the same amount of time allotted to them, more or less, you know, in a day, is what he was saying. And we get to choose what we do with our time.
And it trust me, over the last couple of years, you know, dealing with a life threatening cancer diagnosis, I have thought a lot about time and how we spend it. And, you know, I agree with Proctor in that in that regard, you know, we get to choose what we do with our time and the fact that so many people commented on a random video on the internet just amazes me. You know, for one, you know, I operate under the philosophy that nothing that happens online is real. It’s not real life, that it’s not reality. It’s it’s internet reality. You know, it’s virtual reality.
And so I don’t tend to get really worked up about things that happen online. And the fact that so many people do is just shocking to me, because it makes me wonder, you know, if these people, if they’re spending all of their time and energy, all their mental energy and all their focus, you know, drumming up moral outrage for things that don’t really affect them personally and affect their own personal situation. You know what’s left for them? You know what? How much energy, how much mental focus? You know how much whatever drive is left for them to better their own situation.
And I think in many cases, you know, these people, you know, which is pretty common among most people, I found are more content to sit around and complain about their situation and complain about other things and blame problems, blame their problems, society’s problems on somebody else, rather than working to fix their own problems because it’s easier to do so now. 1s
There was once said, you know, by, you know, I’d say somebody who was was pretty bright person that, “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Right? That’s Proverbs 23:7. And if you want to know more about that philosophy, go pick up James Allen’s book that was written in 1903 called As A Man Thinketh. It’s a classic book. It’s actually in the in the public domain right now. And so you can get that book for free, probably on Amazon. You could probably find it online anywhere, but I recommend you read it.
Basically what Allen was saying, kind of riffing on what the 1s the author of Proverbs said is that the things that you dwell on, the things that you think about all the time, the things that you dwell on, are going to impact the person you are and they’re going to impact your life. Okay.
Now that’s a little bit different from saying that if you think about something, you can manifest success in your life. That’s a crock of horse hokey. You know, you’re not going to manifest anything that the universe isn’t going to gift you with something just because you thought about it, but 1s your attitude or the things you think about are going to impact your attitude, and your attitude is going to impact your ability to succeed.
So if you want to succeed, in my opinion and in my experience, you have to become obsessed with success. Success has to be something that you think about constantly. You have to think about your goals constantly, and you have to do that to the exclusion of almost all distractions, save for a few. You know, because we don’t want to trade a healthy marriage or a healthy family for a healthy dojo, right? A financially healthy dojo, that’s a that’s a pretty poor trade in my opinion. You can’t have both.
Trust me. You can have a healthy family, healthy marriage relationship and also have a healthy dojo. You just have to balance things and and on your rise to success, you know, you have to make sure that you that your family is in tune with your goals and the sacrifices that you have to make to get there, and that they all you understand and they understand that that’s a temporary situation.
But clearing your life of distractions. Is probably the best way to be able to focus your energy on what matters, what counts. Because, you know, there’s a Japanese proverb that says the hunter who chases two rabbits will catch neither. It’s very, very true. When I started my first studio, I had failed three times prior to that. You know, partially from lack of knowledge, partially from lack of information, but then also simply because, you know, I lack focus. And I gave up too easily.
And I finally realized when I had no other choice, no other choice but to succeed, you know, or to be a laughing stock. Because when I came to Austin, Texas, you know, people had, you know, people in my life had said that I was going to be a failure. I could make money teaching martial arts on and on. Some of that stuff’s in my book, Small Business, Big Profits, if you’re going to pick it up and read it. But but I chose, you know, that there was, you know, there was no choice for me. I was going to succeed no matter what. I was going to live my dream. I was going to teach martial arts for a living, and I was going to make it my career.
And I did succeed against pretty significant odds. But I did that by removing all extraneous distractions from my life. I didn’t have serious relationships for several years. I didn’t drive new cars. I reinvested all the money that I made on my jobs, and I worked some pretty long hours, too. In addition to running my dojo, I reinvested all my money I could back in my business. You know, I’d lived in, you know, like little, like a little 12 by 20 efficiency. That was like an old. It was the ROTC dorms, you know, for the University of Texas is what the building had been. And somebody had converted it into efficiency apartments for college students. And I just happened to get in there, even though I wasn’t a college student, because I knew somebody there.
And, you know, I had a hot plate and a little dorm refrigerator and a bed. And I shared a bathroom with the guy next door who had to one of my coworkers at the security company I worked at. So. 1s You know, I worked 50, 60 hour weeks and I would work ten hours a day Monday through Friday, and then I would drive 45 minutes to an hour to the dojo, and I would work for 3 or 4 hours. And then about 11:00 at night, you know, I would drive back home 45 minutes to an hour, get a little bit of sleep and then wake up to do it all again.
And so, you know, I made sacrifices and I didn’t let anything distract me. And that’s why I was successful. We have to do the same thing. We have to not let extraneous things and and insignificant things distract us from our goals. And that’s that’s how you choose success, you know? And the thing is, I see people complaining about about society especially.
And I’m not knocking any particular generation, okay. But I do happen to see younger people complain. And, you know, some of it’s some of it I will say is warranted, but a lot of it’s not. But they complain that they don’t have the same opportunities that their parents had. You know, that it was much easier for their parents, you know, with no college education to work a single job, be a single income family and still have, you know, a, a house, you know, drive a few cars, have a lifestyle that is, you know, what used to be considered middle class. Now it’s really considered to be almost an upper middle class lifestyle to live that way. But, you know, I see and hear people complaining like that a lot. And, you know, I don’t know.
I mean, in some sense, I agree, it is more difficult not to own a house because interest rates are higher. You know, after the mortgage crisis, it’s harder to get loans. ET cetera. ET cetera.
But on the other hand, I will also say that there’s never been so much opportunity. I mean, the digital age, you know, living in an information age and the internet and information technology just made it so incredibly. I mean, there’s just so many opportunities out there.
You know, for example, you can get a college education for free or nearly free online. Now, not only are there schools now, they may not be accredited schools, but they’re schools where you can get the equivalent education to, say, an Ivy League action for a few hundred dollars. You know, you can hack a college degree now very easily by using websites like Straight lines, Sophia study and so forth. And you could take numerous, numerous college classes, the equivalent of college classes for, you know, 40 or 50 bucks a month or something like that, 99 bucks a month, and then transfer that credit into accredited universities.
And, you know, hack, gosh, you know, 90 credits of 120 credit college degree, you can spend less than $100 a month, $50 a month in some cases, or even free in other cases. As far as tuition goes, to learn how to code, you can learn how to code yourself.
I know of an individual. He’s actually a fiction author now, but he. Was living in relative poverty. You know, he was this is his story. You know, I’m not going to say the guy’s name, but he’s a good guy. But this gentleman was living in poverty. He had several roommates that he was living with. They were all potheads. He said, you know, by of his own account that he was sitting around smoking pot all day and working in a bank and a job he hated and so forth. And he just woke up one day and said, “you know what, I hate this.”
And what did the guy do? He spent all his spare time teaching himself how to write, basically Apple apps, you know, apps in iOS, you know, iOS, and developed a 100,000 a year, $100,000 a year skill just by studying on his own. He taught himself, you know, he took classes online, but essentially he taught himself and raised himself out of poverty that way. And then later on, you know, he was able to to write his first fiction novel and became a successful fiction author.
But it’s a perfect example of the fact that, again, we all have 24 hours in every day and we can choose how we how we spend that time. We can choose to spend that time on the internet making comments about random videos and, you know, complaining about the, you know, state of the economy or how it’s impacting us and how our particular generation, you know, has it so much harder than the generations that came previously and whatnot. We can choose to spend our time sitting around drinking and, you know, doing recreational drugs and zoning out in front of the boob tube and watching Netflix or whatever streaming service you prefer.
Or we can cut all that extraneous stuff out of our life and focus on achieving a goal, whether it’s starting a martial arts school or getting a degree or learning $100,000 a year. Skill doesn’t matter. What matters is, is that you choose success, that you stop making excuses for yourself. You stop making excuses for your own failures. You stop making excuses for your own inability to change, for your own inflexibility of thinking and you decide that you are going to choose success for yourself, and that you’re going to cut out everything extraneous in your life except for the effort and the time that is necessary to achieve your goal.
And once you do, you know chances are good you’re going to stack the odds in your favor. Chances are good you’re going to succeed. Nothing’s guaranteed. You might not. You might fall flat in your face like I did many times before. You succeed. But keep trying. Eventually you’re going to meet with some success, and you can use every little success as a building block. Just like Legos. You can build bit by bit and eventually build the life of your dreams. So opportunities everywhere. I’m encouraging you to choose success.
Now go out there and kill it, and I will see you in the next episode of the podcast. 1s You’ve been listening to the Martial Arts Business podcast with Mike Massey. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and if you’ve enjoyed this show, leave us a positive review while you’re there. Thanks for your support and tune in again next time for more great martial arts business tips and advice from martial Arts Business Daily.
