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(Author's note: While this article is written for the man or woman who runs a martial arts school, the advice applies to anyone doing business in today's world.) The New Way to do business is not mechanical, it is emotional. Read the following 6 sentences as an example: I heard that a man in China helped save someone's life. I heard recently that a woman in London saved a child's life. I heard about a man in Florida who saved his neighbor's life. I heard that a man in the next town over took special care of an older couple and actually saved them from dying in a fire that had started in their kitchen. A man on the next block over saved the life of a friend. Yesterday, someone saved my life. These sentences point in the direction of my message to you -about The New Way to do business and in the case of the martial arts school (or any business) marketing/managing your business in today's world. Contrast the way you feel between the first sentence and the last. Recognize that the more personal the message becomes the more powerful it is. This is the new marketing. We seek to touch the lives of people, directly. Our goal is to get close, to reach out -so as not to be something distant and removed, but something close to the center; close to the heart. We want people in our community to understand, rationally and intellectually, what it is we make, produce, provide, practice, turn out, craft, and create. For some people, this is all that's needed to make a decision about enrolling and sticking with the program (buying and returning as a customer). We also want to reach people underneath the radar of their intellect. We want to affect them emotionally. To do that, we must intend it; we must talk the talk of the best we are -and the best we can do. We must act in a way that is heartfelt, a way that cannot be written in a corporate manifesto, in an employee handbook, or a fabricated for the manipulation of "the prospect." For the martial arts school owner, our business is self-defense; our business is health, vitality, fitness, character development, practice, self-discipline; team; compassion; clear thinking; self-control; and a hundred other things that give us exactly the tools we need to reach people viscerally. What is your business? What do you sell and promote? The New Way is to make these things come alive, in practice, in a way that IS advertising, in a way that IS marketing, in a way that is real and on a day-to-day basis. Our goal is to take our "practice of the martial arts" out of the dojo and into the world. Do you have 20 or more students (clients)? Each of those 20 people have between 2 and 20 people in their immediate "sphere of influence." When your 20 students live the practice, when their practice affects the lives of those around them, when your training helps to bring out the best in your students, physically, mentally, emotionally -and when your students actually touch the emotions of these people, you will begin to reap the benefits of this "New Way" of looking at the business (the role, the mission) of your business. The New Way makes your martial arts school more than a "gym," a "club," or a place where someone has bought a membership. The New Way makes your school a part of the community's heart and soul. It makes your school something powerful OFF of the mat. It takes the martial arts from a place where people have heard it's something special, to a place where it is actually touching their life -and making things better in it, in the community, and in the world. The New Way isn't a package you buy, it is found in your intention, in your sense of mission, in your commitment to a new way of thinking -and acting (as a martial arts master teacher and as a business-person in the 21st Century).
Article Source: http://blogticles.com
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