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The Seminar Business
So you're going to begin giving
seminars. Mingling with the masses and imparting your wisdom throughout the
countryside. Well, the following
article is for you and it may help you begin, as well as alert you to some of the pit falls of the
seminar circuit.
First Rule: There has to be a reason for
others to pay you to give a seminar. Just because you are the top fighter in
your martial arts school probably won’t create a demand for your knowledge and
skill at another martial arts school. The curriculum of your clinics must be
unique, in demand and/or exceptional. Prof. Wally Jay, the missionary of the
small circle theory of Jujitsu, refined many Jujitsu moves to make what he
taught unique. If you saw him teach, or better yet, felt his theories put into
practice, you knew that he was certainly most exceptional.
If your offering is unique and
your teaching is exceptional, but there is no demand for what you teach, you
won’t be packing your bags. Everything runs in cycles, and the martial arts is
no exception. You may teach excellent Kung Fu, but if the flavor of the month is
grappling, you will be staying home.
If your lessons are indeed
unique, in demand, i.e. popular, and/or exceptional then your seminar sponsor
can sell tickets, fill the mat, and recover his cash out-lay. Remember, he is
paying for your travel expenses, lodging, food and seminar fees, as well as
advertising the event.
Ok, you’ve found a niche. There
is a demand for your talents. Not a self-perceived demand, but a real honest to
goodness demand. Now what?
Show Me The Money!!!
I had a martial artist tell me
that he charged $3,000 to do a seminar. I was impressed until I asked him how
many seminars he had done. “None yet”, he answered. “But I’ve got some feelers
out”. I expect that this gentleman still has his feelers hanging out.
Charge for your seminars, yes,
but don’t overcharge. You can charge a flat fee, a per attendee fee, a
percentage of the gate, or some combination of all three. A good example might
be, $10 per
person with a minimum of $200, plus 20% of the gate if there are more than 30
sign-ups. Make sure that the sponsor at least breaks even, so that you will be
invited back.
If the sponsor is new to you, get
some earnest money up front. Say, $200 two months before the event. The earnest
money insures that the sponsor is serious about having you teach, and it
reserves that date for him.
Show Me The Ticket!!!
Unless you know the sponsor
really well, don’t pack your bags until you have a round trip ticket in hand.
Let me say it again, A Round Trip Ticket.
Word of caution. Check your
ticket carefully. I got a round trip ticket that had me flying out of Las Vegas.
Which is all well and good, except that I live outside of Reno, which is over
400 miles north of Las Vegas. I got another ticket that had me returning on a
Monday when I should have been returning on Sunday. Got another ticket where my
last name was badly misspelled. The airlines will not let you aboard if your ID
does not match the name on the ticket.
If you get ticket confirmation
via email or fax, call the airlines and double check that everything is in
order. You don’t want to find out that a mistake has been made when you are
standing at the ticket counter and your flight is ready to depart.
Show Me The Ride!!!
Make sure of the transportation
arrangements before you leave. Find out who is picking you up at the airport. If
you don’t know them get a description of them and describe yourself (“I’m the
red-headed guy with the bright, baggy pants, carrying a cane”). I have been
stranded at the airport through miscommunication and didn’t know whom to call.
So get as many phone numbers as you can.
If arrangements have been made
for you to take a shuttle or pick up a rental car, know where you are going and
how to get there. A rental car was waiting for me in Detroit, and I was given
what I thought were accurate directions to my destination. My flight arrival
time was 11:00 p.m. At midnight I was in a part of Detroit that I shouldn’t
have been in, and there was no way that I was going to stop and ask anyone for directions.
Finally, at 2:00 a.m., I found the motel, much older and much wiser.
Make sure that you have a ride,
or directions to the seminar location. Normally the sponsor will pick you up and
deliver you, but there have been mishaps that got me to my own seminar late.
Make double darn sure that you
have transportation to the airport for your return home. Some motels don’t have
shuttle service or the shuttles may not leave at the right time. I had a sponsor
delegate my pickup to one of his students. Said student partied hard the night
before. My early flight out and his hangover clashed, and I was scrambling for a
ride to catch my flight back to mama.
Show Me The Room!!!
I have stayed motels that had a big can of roach spray on top of a broken TV. I have
stayed in motels that charged by the hour. I have stayed in motels where the
floors were so dirty that I left mud tracks when I got out of the shower. If I’m
going to be put up in a motel, I request a nice, non-smoking room close to the
event site. An on-premise restaurant is a plus.
I have stayed in
some wonderful private residences, and I don’t mind staying at
someone’s home as long as I don’t have to sleep with the pets, and the bed is
flat. Requesting a flat bed is now a requirement after I was assigned a day bed
that was far too short, and felt like it had been used to store bowling balls.
You have probably traveled
through at least one time zone after getting up at dawn to catch your flight,
and if you don’t get a good rest the night before the big event you are not
going to give your best. Putting your best foot forward includes not falling
asleep in front of the class. The bottom line is to make sure that you have a
place to stay, and that it meets your needs.
You now have your first seminar
booked, but before you kickback, let me warn you that the hardest part is the
actual giving of the seminar. Standing up if front of strangers - many of them
doubters - and making them glad that they paid out money, and are spending their
time to learn from you is, to say the least, daunting.
The First One is Free
The sponsor has laid out money,
time and their reputation to bring you to their locale to share your wealth of
knowledge. Give something in return. Consider teaching a free Friday night class
to the sponsor, and the sponsor’s chief instructors, in order to give them a
jump start on what will be taught at the regular seminar on Saturday.
If the head of the school, and
the top instructors, look like they have a little working knowledge of what you
are teaching, the rest of the students will pay more attention, and you will
have people who are invested in making the seminar run smoother by displaying
their new found skills. The best part is that all a free class costs you is
time. Forget ‘ Time is Money’. Time is free, but spend it wisely.
Different Day, Different
Strokes
Every seminar that you give for
the same sponsor must be different from the previous one. If you think that
sounds easy, think again. If the amount of information you are giving is
limited, then your seminar career is going to be short. If all you teach is
kicking, then one seminar is going to have to be the front kick, the next seminar
the side kick, and on and on. How you make those kicks interesting and unique is
very important if you want attendees at your next seminar. Nobody is going to
pay to get the same lesson twice, so it is up to you to make sure that you have
more to teach than just one thing. The day of the one-trick pony is gone.
Don’t rush through the basics if
this is the first clinic at a new location, with new students. I have taught the
correct way to swing a cane a thousand times, and I have to watch myself that I
don’t give that very important information short shrift. The boring basics to
you can be advanced, 'oh-my-gosh' information to someone else.
Give Them the Time of Day
Split up the day into bite size
chunks. If you are doing a seminar in the morning and another one in the
afternoon, make sure you are allowing at least 90 minutes for lunch. This gives
everyone time to eat, and digest what they ate. Depending on your curriculum, a
word of warning about eating a light lunch might be a kindness. Seeing someone’s
lunch on the floor can put a real damper on the afternoon’s proceedings.
The starting time is critical.
Your turn out for a Saturday afternoon clinic will be lower than a morning
seminar. If you are going to start at 8:00 in the morning, expect a small
number, and sleepy attendance. It is discouraging to face a roomful of yawning
faces. Start mid-morning so that everyone has had a chance to wake up, eat a
light breakfast, and down that all important cup of coffee.
Always have a 10 minute bio break
every hour. The attention tends to wander if you, or a student, are
concentrating on bladder retention instead of what is being taught. Encourage
everyone to drink plenty of water throughout the workout so that no one gets
dehydrated. This safety precaution turns into a bio urgency that the regular
breaks address.
One Thing Leads to Another
Teach in a structured manner.
Have a lesson plan written down, or well formulated in your head, and follow it.
You have to create the foundation before you can teach the more advanced
curriculum; if your instructions are bouncing around all over the place no one
is going to learn anything, except that you don’t know how to teach.
As an example: If I am going to
teach a knife curriculum I will start with empty hand movements that will easily
transfer later when the knife is in hand. Also, it is important to teach basics,
such as the correct way to hold the knife before you start doing all that knifey
stuff.
In order to build a lesson plan,
visualize what you want the attendees to learn at the end of the day, and work
backwards. The hardest part is to stick to the lesson plan, but if you always
keep the seminar goal in mind it will help you to stay on task.
Written handouts are great. It
helps the students retain the material that was taught, and it keeps you focused
on your lesson plan. The handouts are in fact the goals that created your lesson
plan. But, and this is very important, do not, do not, give the lesson plans out
until after the seminar is over. The attendees will be reading your handouts
while you are trying to explain a very important point or demonstrating a
technique. In my case I once passed out a detailed breakdown of the curriculum,
only to watch several people walk out of the seminar early, because they had
what they needed with the handouts.
Pain Has its Rewards
Most seminars require the
services of an uke, or as we call them, ‘ouchy’. This is the person that you
demonstrate your techniques on. Ideally this person is in their late teens or
early twenties, a Brown Belt level student that is full of themselves, and would
die first before saying, “that hurts”. Your intent is not to hurt them, but you
don’t want someone that will fade on you after the first technique demo.
If your curriculum is technique
driven the uke you pick will determine the success of the seminar. If you
can really show what you know on your demo person, then the rest of the class
will get it. I always ask the sponsor, “Which one of your students would make
the best uke?” The person in question cannot be much smaller than you, and
ideally should be larger than you. As much as I hate to say this, your uke
cannot be a female, unless you are a female. Beating up on a woman, or a much
smaller or weaker person, will not send the message that you want sent, and will
make everything that you teach suspect.
Now, you’ve used your uke all day
long, and he has been a good sport about it. He has not resisted any technique
(which might require you to really hurt him). He was always there when you
needed to demonstrate a new move, or clarify an old one, and he maintained his
sense of humor. This guy deserves a reward. I will always give him a customized
cane, video or at the very least, a t-shirt. Have something in the kit bag to
cover this situation. Another benefit of this practice is that when you give a
return engagement, there will be no shortage of volunteers.
Always Leave Them Wanting More
Besides imparting knowledge,
another task of yours is to set up the next seminar. The best way to do this is
to have a very broad curriculum that requires many visits to teach the whole
course or system. If you teach everything you know on your first visit, then it
will be your last visit.
The primary product that you are
selling is yourself. If you don’t have a sense of humor, and a sharp wit it
turns off all the attendees. If you are trying to teach something that you have
small knowledge of, you will be found out. BS smells, and most martial artists
have a pretty good nose for it.
Leave your ego at home. There is
nothing quite so off-putting as someone strutting around talking about how great
they are, how many trophies they have won, what a wonderful martial artist they
are, or needlessly hurting people. It is easy to get a big head in this
business, so just keep telling yourself that you aren’t the best or the baddest,
because you’re not. If you tell yourself, and everyone else, that you are the
meanest bear in the woods, there will be someone, somewhere that will painfully,
and embarrassingly, prove you wrong.
I was attending a seminar where
the instructor was bragging about how he could jam a punch with his
well-developed stomach. He asked if he could use one of my students to
demonstrate. Barely hiding my grin I pointed to Jeff, one of my Black Belts. I
had taught Jeff how to punch using counter rotation, and Jeff had learned his
lesson well. The instructor told Jeff when to punch, and Jeff did exactly as he
was told. Smack! The instructor couldn’t talk because of lack of breath, and his
efforts to hold down his lunch. The seminar ended early. Moral: Don’t let your
alligator mouth overload your canary butt.
Giving seminars can be fun, and
they certainly can be profitable in a small way, but, if you do it right, they
will also be the hardest job that you ever took on.
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