Shame on you

After speaking with Steve White about the last article about trust, he passed on these comments and observations. One owner of a large school said "Shame on you Mr. Bryan, for not seeing that ahead of time." Sometimes you see these things, sometimes you don't. I've had people I trusted burn me unexpectedly. I thought we had built a bond of mutual respect but I found that was unilateral.
Another owner with multiple locations observed that people go off and do things like this for who-knows-what reasons. They'll break from an established, very successful school and think they can do it better. In effect they attempt to reinvent the wheel. Why not buy the plans? They flounder and most often they fail. Others will take off with the students to open down the street and guess what? The students come back to the original school. Why? Because martial arts are supposed to be about integrity. These people demonstrated lack of integrity and the students realized this, then left to return to the first school. True? I have found this to be so. Not always because of lack of character, but other factors as well.
I've seen the problem to be that successful schools are successful for many reasons. Owner personality is one, but not one the school can solely subsist on. Maybe a different or even unique "product" is another. The key one is business systems, "know-how". If you don't think so, read Michael Gerber's book, The E Myth. Many school owners are technicians, not mangers or true entrepreneurs. They think their martial arts prowess is going to make it happen. (The buzzer and big, red light go off now.) Ego enters into it, too. It's a pride of ownership thing. But when reality sets in, they realize what a big job running a studio really is.
All we can do is wish anyone who goes into business luck, help them if we can (or will) and hope they make their dreams come true.