How to Promote, Market, and Succeed w/ The Live Like a Champion Project
Monday, October 12, 2009 at 10:53AM
I received this note from one of my favorite people today. He’s a graduate of the UBBT –and I’ve been “working on him” to join the upcoming Live Like a Champion Project in 2010.
He wrote:
“I have 6 students and two instructors ready to take a leap of faith for the program. I have been trying to cut and paste various information from the web-site about the program and make fliers directing people to look at the video on the web-site but have not had the success I had hoped for. I guess I'm not the clever marketing guru that I thought I was. Do you have anything printed that you could share with me?”
My answer:
I have loaded posters and fliers on the Live Like a Champion website, so you may upload those if you like. I also have postcards already printed; upon enrollment I’ll send a bundle of them to you for promotional use.
In addition, we have a 5 year + history of effort and achievement documented in the UBBT and Live Project sites ---and, I would like to point out, we have a completely unique voice in the martial arts community. NOBODY, at the moment, is working on anything like what we're doing ----or is even TRYING to coordinate any sort of cohesive movement that compares with our already established body of work.
So, let me point this out:
There isn’t a flier, poster, or video that can clearly communicate the spirit, mission, and/or intent behind this project.
This can only be done by the leader of a school; by a man or woman with a sense of "mission."
Why?
We are embarking on a monumental project, which officially begins on January 1, 2010.
It will take a life-changing level of focus to stay the course.
Essentially, we are going to “The Olympics.” We are scheduled to fight in “The World Championships.” We are getting ready for “The Iron Man.”
But of course, we aren’t doing any of these events.
The Live Project is, simply, a call for people to wake up; to have something powerful to focus on; to begin “a journey” of adventure –one that will challenge participants to be better at everything that is important and valuable and meaningful, to them, in their lives.
Oh, and note this too: While this is currently "my" project --with "my curriculum" suggestions; someday, soon I hope, it will be YOURS. You will challenge people in your school, your student, your family, and your community to do and BE more.
And my God, the world sure needs it, doesn't it!
To market this program WE have to LIVE as Master Teachers like nobody's business.
We will use our martial arts training for something more than exercise. We will seek to look DEEPLY at what we consume, as the roots of our health –and our planet’s health –reside in what we eat and use to live.
We will seek to go inward, to root out negative thinking, behaviors, and habits that might keep us from living and being what we have the potential to be.
We will explore peace, anger, and apathy --and better than explore, we will take definitive action to create awareness of these --and other subjects that relate to health, self-defense, and human potential.
We will join forces with as many people as we can inspire to participate –and we will bring something to our lives, to the lives of people in our families and communities, to the martial arts world, and if we are VERY focused (and lucky), we might even bring something valuable to the world.
The Live Like a Champion Project isn’t a course to buy, it is something important to the world –that is if we can get Master Teachers to serve as examples of a level of passion, mission, purpose, and intent that simply does not exist in the martial arts world, today, yet.
If you commit yourself to living like a champion –to living an “ultimate” black belt test –and I mean commit yourself at a level where you won’t simply “participate,” but that you will turn every fiber of your being into a focused tool for becoming fully aware of your potential, I think this program may be a new beginning for you. I think it will make you teach differently --I think the messages you send out in your community will be forever altered (and for the better).
You might look at your own training differently.
You might pay more attention to your impact on others –and the planet. You might meet some people and have some experiences that change your life. You could be a part of something that, literally, changed the world (we are already having a significant impact on the "martial arts world").
But none of this will, in my opinion, happen by accident.
The Live Like a Champion Project is a wake up call to the Master Teachers of the martial arts.
Ladies, Gentlemen, you are invited to invest in an idea –a piece of theater that YOU are to act in. We (martial arts teachers) are not well-represented in the world.
Why?
The standards that “martial arts masters” have been asked to live by are –well…non-existent. We stand for little, we do little, and we have not been able to organize or elevate our “industry” to a place that is any where near what we think we are about –what we claim to be about.
“But I do a lot!” says the teacher.
Yes, you may be doing a lot, but that is hardly a stretch of your abilities.
In today’s world, where millions of people can be reached in seconds, I send you this challenge to take on a bigger mission. We cannot live in a bubble of our own delusion –and consider ourselves anything special. The world needs help –and we have trained all of our lives to become proficient at our arts ---but what does that mean and how does it serve mankind?
There is no good reason to commit to this “pipe-dream” of a project. There is no justifiable reason to join a computer-based program and paying hard-earned money for, well…nothing but ideas.
To adequately promote and market this program, you have to make something of nothing. The only benefits that will come out of the Live Project will be the expereiences of men and women inspirted to, literally, LIVE LIKE CHAMPIONS.
We're coming together to hold ourselves to higher standards; to affect the lives of people around us, so that our journey lifts them as we grow and learn; to affect our communities --as this simply HAS to happen; and to be examples for what the martial arts COULD be, that is if we all thought of our purpose and mission here as something different than what it is today.
Will we succeed? I do not know.
Will we do anything important if we don't "step up to the plate" and swing the bat? I don't think we will.
This is the quote, by Theodore Roosevelt, that drives me:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
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