Cover Story: Small School Systems
be able to do that. You always hear people
say that they aren’t a business guy. Well if
you have a shingle hanging out front, you’re a
business guy. And either you are a good one
or a bad one. I know phenomenal instructors
who struggle just trying to get things going.
It’s the old adage from The E-Myth, you need
to work on your business not just in your business. It’s an ongoing process called intensity
verses consistency.
I use what I call the magic hour. The magic
hour is when the sun comes up, you need to
spend an hour on business development. In
the martial arts business you need to spend
some time on the 6 systems until they get
cooking. And when they get cooking then it’s
about adding effort and might behind those
6 systems. Once you get the 6 systems down
it’s about how do you plus them, how do you
make them better, how do you fuel them with
the raw material that you need to create students. But until you have the 6 systems created, you are just spinning your wheels.
You want to create a system, assign it, and
manage it. This is what makes Google Drive
is so amazing. Creating a system is like science fiction. I can literally create a system for
somebody on how to clean their mats, how to
take inventory, how to sign up a student. I can
do it with video, charts, pictures, checklists,
then I can assign that to a staff member.
I can assign it to you in their calendar, put
it in a folder, send it in an email. Once you
have all of that together, you’ve created it,
and you’ve assigned it then you can manage
it to see if the person did it. I can look on my
computer and see what my instructors have
done for the last Mondays and Tuesdays for
the last 2 years. I can do that remotely. I can
be anywhere on the planet where there is an
internet connection and check on it. Think
about looking invisibly down through your
ceiling and seeing what’s going on in your
school. Orchestrate the work of your people
and make it something that’s sustainable, and
doable. That’s freedom. People don’t want
systems, they want the freedom that comes
from having those systems.
DFL: Some people might think they have staffing problems. They might have people not
doing what they are supposed to be doing,
or not doing it to the level they want it done.
Would you say maybe don’t look at the people
as the problem, but look at the systems that
are in place, or not in place.
KM: A lot of the business owners have a part
time job complaining about their staff. But you
have look at it like your employees don’t suck,
your system sucks. I used to call it the death
by a million paper cuts, and what I mean by
that is people don’t do what they love for a
living, wake up one day, and hate their school.
I know people who absolutely hate having
their school. And if they could sell it, they’d
sell it to the first person they could. And the
reason why is because they haven’t created
systems. And it’s like every time something
comes up, they’re asked to make a decision,
there are these little paper cuts that happen
to you. You can deal with 10 paper cuts, but
you get a million paper cuts, you are going to
Dojo Nation • March 2015
15