my own dojo
 

Didn't want to keep it in its original thread so here goes, it's now official, I'm now the proud owner and head instructor of my very own dojo, as of this May 1st. :)

Long days ahead, but exciting days. Really excited about all this. My wife is with me in this, we got a limited liability company set up as of last week and we're plowing forward.

It was officially announced to the other instructors of our main dojo last evening and we had some great talks with other people offering me their help in exchange of a little bit of mine. I'm feeling blessed to be around the kind of people I'm dealing with, seriously. All of this was all new to me but they have helped me, led me and even though I know I still have a lot to learn, I know the people passing on the dojo to me will be there to help me out when the need will come.

Anyway, not much more to add for now, simply coming to realize that yeah, it's really happening. :)

Wish me luck :)

FM

As I said on facebook - hooray and congrats!!!

Been very cool following your other thread and see it blossom into this one. Congrats and good luck!

Congrats, you're gonna do quite well with this. Your heart is in it, you've used your head, that's usually a pretty good combination for success.

Congrats!

Great job, best wishes for success!

hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjpFmQtyed8

Thanks for the good words and wishes. Very appreciated.


Yeah, I think you summarized it well. My heart is into this big time, teaching has always been big with me, going back to when I was in college, when I used to be a teacher's assistant, then more recently, as I climbed the ladder of martial arts knowledge and found I was able to relay what I knew to others in a way that they could understand and better their own art. But then, I also pondered the whole move a big deal. Was it gonna be profitable? How much work will it be? (I know now, a lot, but I'm okay with it and as I said, I have my wife's blessing)

Seriously, yeah, there will be long days and long evenings, as I keep my day job, but I'm hoping, betting it'll be worth it in the long run. Heck, who ever got anything without working, huh? ;)

FM

that was funny :)

FM

Edited: Wrong thread!!!!

yeah Jeff, I figured :D

meanwhile, I'm looking at very cheap web hosting places, anybody got recommendations. Not looking for anything earth shattering, just something that works and will give me a domain name and especially the emails with that domain name. Not that it's real urgent or anything, but I have plans to use the web to talk with my students, keep them informed. It's something that not been done much with the main dojo, or with any of the other dojo in our style.

Currently the options I'm looking at are:
bluehost, $3.95 a month (2 year minimum, goes to 6.95 or more after that)
fatcow, $3.67 a month (1 year minimum, no clue afterward)
ipage, C$3.50 a month (1 year minimum, money back anytime, they say ;)

all these are in the unlimited bandwidth/disk space type and unlimited email. Anyway, I'm not even sure I plan on having a webpage of my own very soon as our group of schools has one where they host a page for my dojo, but I plan on maybe making some specific pages, sharing pictures of new belts and such. All of these offer some sort of either picture gallery or wordpress capabilities so they could certainly work for a dojo with maybe 60 students in the Fall...

Anybody's got horror stories about these or good/bad reference with these or other really cheap web hosting solutions?

FM

Hole in the Wall Hosting - Web hosting services starting at $19 a year

I don't know much about them though, just have seen them mentioned because of their prices.

Congrats. IMO Kids are where you will make the most impact and difference.

You already know how I feel about this, so I'm just going to chip in the good luck here too. :) Wicked awesome.

/tk

Congratulations and good luck!

Good luck

Good luck :D

As in our private conversations, let me just reiterate how well I know you will do. You have a genuine love of Martial arts and have been planning this for a while. As the saying goes when you love what you do for a living, you never work a day in your life and I am hoping that day comes for you as soon as possible. Best of luck!!

COBRA KAI!!!!

Congratulations my friend! Awesome news! I know you will make a big impact on a lot of kids :)

This is great news! Full steam ahead!

Thanks for the kind words everyone, really appreciate it. Head is spinning a bit with all I there is to think about. Sure, stuff that still needs to be done in the short term to make sure the transition is smooth from them to me but also ideas of things to improve, things to do differently, classes to offer this August when my own schedule is really put in place. Exciting times. :)




Thanks again. It's been three years now since the first kids class I've given. In that time, I have witnessed the impact I can have on some kids' life. There are still kids I used to give class to three years ago that come back to me on competition days to show me their trophies or medals, all proud. There's often a great bond that happens between a kid and his first karate senseï, I have felt that.

To add to that special bond I think I can create with kids, I am also a parent. In that regards, I have often had parents come to me and be appreciative of the discipline I keep in my classes. I have two sons who are practicing this martial art, one of them being a black belt. When I say he started at the age of 5 and was a black belt when he was 12, parents are usually impressed.

And then, add again the fact I'm also an adult practicioner. I mean, I didn't start practicing when I was 6 and have been doing it for the last 35 years but started only one year after my oldest son had started. This may sound like a negative (only been 8 years since I started) but for many adults, sometimes parents of kids who are just beginning, I can give my own life experience as a perfect example that adults can get fit and have fun while practicing at our dojo. It took me five years to get my shodan and as weird as this may sound, it's a very reasonable time that shows it's not easy (i.e. we're not giving them black belts away in 12 months or so) yet it is achievable by a 40 year old human being (i.e. I survived it and I'm standing right in front of you sir, even better, I still keep on practicing and I'm having fun doing it :)).

All that to say I feel really good about my ability to reach out to new students and keep them with me in the long run. Really looking forward to that part, starting out kids and adults and see them grow and eventually in 4-5 years, see them become black belts.

FM

Any plans on branching out into martial arts films? JCVD,Seigal and Norris are all getting a bit old to take seriously.

Thanks. I think I mentioned it in the other thread but I have already done some forecasting and budgetting as to how many students I need for this to become my full time job. I did the same computations, trying to figure out how many more students we'd need for my wife to leave her job and be able to come and work the office only a couple hours a day or so but pull the same wage. These are all goals I have for maybe the next 3 to 5 years.

For now, I'll be happy to be breakeven over the first twelve months, as a whole. As you probably know with martial arts schools, the number of students is high around the start of a session, then dwindles down as the months go. I just want to make enough money from September to April in order to be well off during Summer of 2012. All my numbers seem to indicate that it's easily doable. Time will tell if my numbers are right but believe me, I'll spare no energy to make sure they go the right way. :)

FM

But the most important question...

Does fear have any place in your dojo?

That is so cool. There may be no more awesome answer to the question, "what do you do?" than, "Oh, I own and manage a dojo".

of course not!

FM

hehe, not really. Already wacked myself in the head with a bo staff in a competition (there's certainly still links of that video somewhere on here :p) so not sure I'd do much better doing stunts ;)

FM

I guess you could say the same for many other self-started business but really, a dojo? It'd be pretty cool. It's only starting to sink in honestly.

We went there over the weekend, me and my two sons, so they could practice with their bo. It's growing on them too, that WE, as a family, have our own dojo. My youngest, who's 7 and started practicing about a year and a half ago, didn't even know we were working on taking over that dojo up until a week or so ago. Didn't want him to go parading around with his karate friends and brag about how his dad would own a dojo before it was actually made public. When we went there to practice, on Easter Sunday of all days, he walked around the place, asking a few times if the whole place was ours, all the equipment and stuff. We practiced for maybe 45 minutes and finished by kicking and hitting the boxing equipment.

I'll have a few pictures up around lunch time.

FM

time for some pictures... the first two are of the outside of the building. I'm leasing the corner office space that once used to a Dunkin' Donuts, then was swicthed to a Quiznos subs. You can still see the drivethrough window on the right side on this pic... :)

anothe view of the front of the place

view of the entrace from the inside. When you go in, you turn to your left and we reused the little wall that they had left from Quiznos, with the little glass on top. Makes for a neat waiting aread for parents...

this is the office area that comes right at the end of the entrance alley/waiting area. Doors on both ends allowing parents and customers to walk in without having to even take off their shoes and for me, barefooted, to come in the office from behind the desk...

view of the training area where I usually give class. Here, I'm standing with my back to the office area, right next to the little wall with the glass on top that you can see on my right

view of the same training area but a bit more to the left, showing the depth of the room

view of the training/class area from the very opposite end. All the equipment in there came with my taking over of the place so I'm all set for at least my first year...

another view from that opposite corner. The black corner you see on the left is the windowed entrance that leads to the waiting area mentioned before...

Congrats, Frogman!

This is fantastic news. It always really impresses me when people go out and start their own business. Great stuff!

I look forward to our army of highly skilled and deadly trained Quebecois Ninja Assassins!

thanks :)

I'm also always impressed by people starting their own business and my grandfather used to have a truck mechanics shop. Gougeon & sons it was called. My dad used to work there in his youth. My whole setup here, with my sons both into karate, is very reminiscent of that. I registered the company under the whole Vision Martial Arts name as Gougeon Martial Arts. Showed my dad the papers the other day and I could see him being proud of that fact... :)

That being said, and quite honestly, if you'd told me 8 years ago, when I started practicing karate, that one day not only I'd be a black belt but that I'd be running my own dojo, I'd have told you to stop smoking that odd stuff. Really.

I told the whole story about how my sensei came to me one Tuesday evening after our instructors class, telling me we "had to talk, upstairs, in private". He dropped that bomb and I was kinda freaked. Me? ME? Running my own dojo? You serious? We left the place about 45 minutes after everybody had gone home and my head was spinning. Broke the news about that offer to my wife that evening and we didn't even talk about it until maybe 4 days later.

That offer was just too good to be true yet I took a good month to go over numbers and such, pondering the time commitment it would take, then garnering support from my wife who realized it really was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to be able to build something around my teaching of something I'm so passionate about.

Now, here we are. I've taken over, yet the students in place are not yet MY students. Well, some are and will remain. It's kinda weird but there are two dojos maybe 15 minutes from one another. One of them is the main dojo that's been in business for maybe 15 years, the other is now mine. They started my location as a sister dojo for the main one only last August and since then, people were allowed to freely take classes at either of the dojos. Some people take classes only at the main dojo but some do take all of their classes at my dojo. In order to not shake things up too much with the clientele, we have decided that some students will be "seen" as mine while the majority will be the main dojo's students but we will allow people the right to take classes at either places. Comes August and our annual open doors registration weekends, we will ask people to make a choice and from there on, they will have to stick with one dojo or the other.

All that to say that yes, it's sinking in, but the next big day will come around the end of August when we will get new people through the door and I will start teaching to white belts. I'm excited simply thinking about it. :)

FM

Congrats, man!!

while my 14yo son is a black belt and the current star of our dojo in any type of bo demonstration, I present you our star of the future, his younger brother, Matthew. He's only 7 and has been training with is bo only since last september...



FM

dang, two months have passed since that last update, how time flies...

Business is coming along nicely, lots of hours have been put into it, lots more to come. Switched to a Summer schedule a couple weeks ago that upped the number of classes given in a week from maybe 9 to 12, I'm basically at the dojo 6 days out of 7 and sometimes also there on Sundays, as I will be tomorrow morning. My schedules of classes for the Fall is ready and I'll be offering 20 different classes. Some of them are 45 minutes classes like specialty classes (touch fighting and bo staff) or initiation to karate classes (for 5-7 year olds) so in all about 18 hours offered at the dojo. I'll be giving about 15 and 3/4 of these hours with a couple people helping out on the rest. Many of my hours will be with an assistant though, either my oldest son or some other people I have helping me out. We'll be offering boxing and kickboxing classes as well as a full array of karate classes for all ages and belt levels. Pretty excited with the schedule I've put together.

As for the time it asks of me, so far so good. We've put together a nice one page ad that will be going out to houses once a week for four weeks in mid august and ever since starting to be more present at the dojo, it seems to me I've been getting a bit more interest from people simply stopping by for information. That's good because I've yet to advertize and Summer is such a slow sleason for us. Some of them are asking for information in order to sign up in the Fall, some might never be back but at least people are stopping by.

Word is getting out to the people already signed up to the main school and I'm being asked about the kind of schedule I'll have in the Fall. Some people are sowing interest there which is good. If I could retain mayb 20 people that were already used to come to the dojo it'd be a pretty big boost. I need about 50-55 students to be breakeven so starting with 20 right from the bat would be pretty neat. I know of abotu 13-15 that are almost sure to sign up with me, the rest are "maybes".

FM

Sounds great. Keep it up. I worked with a guy that quit teaching about 5 years ago to open his own dojo. He makes a living at it.

Sounds like things are going quite well FM and it is great to see your hard work paying dividends!

I have said it before, I have done the numbers to see what the point is in terms of number of students for me to leave my current day job and commit full time to the dojo. It's seriously not that high, despite me having the better of our two salaries in the house. I'm giving myself a couple years to get there, maybe before that. Until then, it's double shift for me but it's not that bad. The evening shift is very energizing and rewarding. :)


Right now, I wouldn't say it's paying dividends to be honest ;) I'm hoping (and am fairly confident) it'll pay off in the Fall. Then, we might be putting in hours and reaping some rewards. Until then, we're losing quite a bit of money every month but since the whole getup didn't cost me a thing, it all balances out.

Baby steps as they say. Every week I learn something new and work on something different with a drive I had almost forgotten I had. That is refreshing. And to think I'm actually working for my own self for once, that is very rewarding.

The whole "teaching to kids" is also quite great. To have kids who really like you and look up to you is neat but to know you are actually havign an impact on their lives is just beyond awesome. To see their face light up when you simply come across them at the grocery store, they wave a goodbye all proud to tell their parents "hey it's senseï Steve", makes me smile every time. :)

FM

It's been a busy Summer, a Summer where I took in all, a day and a half of vacation from the craziness that's engulfed my life since diveing into this adventure.

This past Wednesday, ads were distributed in what we call here "Publibags" (loosely translated from Publisac), bags that have the fliers for the week. 9519 doors in all is what my territory is, not too shabby.

Tomorrow is the first big day as we are hosting our first "open door" day where people can come in and sign up for classes. We'll be there from 9 to 4 both days and hoping that people will come.

We already have 30 students signed up before even holding any of these days, putting us about half way to breakeven point.

I'm really, really looking forward to tomorrow morning.

Wish us luck!

FM

Awesome - wishing you great look tomorrow FM!!!!

Knock 'em dead kid, knock 'em dead ;)

well, those were a couple of draining days. Lots of waiting around, then a few families showing up all of a sudden. We ended up with 16 new registrations which is, in my opinion, quite good. We.re now up to 46 students after just one open doors weekend. We have another one planned out for next weekend and will keep on accepting registrations all week long every evening. We easily could be at 50+ people before next Saturday and push the 60 by next Sunday evening. I'm that hopeful. :)

FM

Great news FM - happy to hear that it seems like it's starting off on a good foot for you all!