An Opportunity Knocks
By this time you have undoubtedly heard me talk about DAGPAW as a success-builder. Even though the skills that makeup DAGPAW are the most important to succeed, other skills are also needed to make the big picture complete, personal responsibility, and self-reliance.
I acquired knowledge of how to operate a martial arts business when I was employed by the Jhoon Rhee Institute in Washington, D.C. Jhoon Rhee was called ”The father of American Tae Kwon Do” because he was the first to teach Tae Kwon Do in the U.S.
Jhoon Rhee was a long time friend of Bruce Lee and taught Lee how to do the flashy kicks that he was known for in his movies. (For more on Jhoon Rhee go to Wikipedia.)
Though Jhoon Rhee pioneered the mass teaching of Tae Kwon Do in America, he had eight studios that circled the D.C. area that in its hay day had over 1000 students, he was not the brains behind his organization; that was a man named Nicholas Cokinas who owned the ”Art Linkletter Rot and Tot dance studios”.
Cokinas trained Rhee and his staff in business management. He understood the power of increasing profitability by motivation through bonuses and incentives like trips, new cars, etc.
In the mid-eighties, Cokinas talked Rhee into going ahead with an experiment that would increase the institute’s staff’s wages by cutting their salaries. The idea was to put us on a ”sink or swim ” majority based incentive salary. Where we would get paid based on how well we performed our jobs.
Every month Cokinas would motivate the staff to do better than the last month by having contests to determine who could sign the most people up, sell the most equipment, or have students refer the most friends. I won my share of contests regularly and was promoted to spearhead the Jhoon Rhee premiere studio at 2000 L. St in D.C.
I remember how upset I was when Cokinas cut our salaries and incentivized the bulk of our pay (25% base, 75% incentive). As the saying goes I was madder than a wet hen, because I didn’t know how good I was.
Once I got the hang of it I found myself swimming in deeper and deeper, financial, water and I increased my salary on average of four times that of what I was making as regular base pay, but I needed to be dragged into self-reliance kicking and screaming.
This is a tremendous opportunity to make your children madder than wet hens and force them to acquire self-reliance by learning how to maintain their goal-setting objectives regardless of circumstances.
Sometimes when I would win the prize for manager or teacher of the month Cokinas, in a fatherly fashion, would take me aside and say about the others, ”There are men in the ranks that stay in the ranks. Why? I’ll tell you why. They don’t know how to get things done”.
That was his way of saying that the world is filled with dreamers, people who dream of making a lot of money, owning big homes, and driving fancy cars. The kind of people who, unfortunately, even when given the keys to success would not be able to open the door; people who because they were not taught leadership skills early need to be told what to do.
The virus is a very serious thing, so you should be learning how to get what you want out of life. Can you imagine people like Christopher Columbus turning back because they encounter a big storm?
(The virus is a big storm. We can not let it stop us. The future of the children depend on us adults being steadfast in our resolve and staying the course.)
Mostly children are molded into what their parents want them to be. They are given a value system, a religion, and race values based on their parent's prerequisites. Parents never waiver on those prerequisites, their child is going to learn them and that’s that.
When the child grows up they can determine whether they want to keep their parent's values or go their way, but at least they had an opportunity to decide.
Success skills installation should be thought of the same way. Parents who want their children to succeed in life should not give them the choice of acquiring success skills. They are going to acquire them and that’s that, and(again) the parent should be steadfast in their determination to make their child a success. (Let me rephrase that: parents should be steadfast to give their kids the tools to succeed only they can succeed. You can’t make someone succeed. Like the horse that is lead to water you can’t make it drink.)
No one said parenting was going to be easy. It’s the hardest job that you’ll ever have; it is also one that will reward you with a mountain of satisfaction if done right, but you only get one crack at it. To that, I say, with a great sense of urgency, do not let a desire for self-comfort ruin your child’s chances to be head and shoulders above average in their financial and lifestyle acquisitions.
The opportunity presents itself at unexpected times. Most opportunities present themselves during a disaster. The key to taking advantage of the opportunity is to recognize it.
This is a huge moment to teach your child self-reliance and how to stay on track.
People who are not taught to be self-reliant grow up to depend on someone to guide them and when there is no one to guide them they stagnate until someone else comes along to guide them. These people never get what they want, they get what others want for them.
To every parent out there who seriously wants their child to be successful, I say, we must seize this moment to instill in them self reliance.
STAYING ON TRACK:
In my classes, I always talk about the need to establish the next goal through the belt, the time frame, whether it’s realistic, the action plan, etc. Just because we are not physically in a group class doesn’t mean that your child can’t carry out the game plan. They have all of the tools that they need to acquire the next belt at their disposal: class cards, videos, and more. If you agree with me that acquiring success skills should have a preeminent place in their after school endeavors let me help them keep their belt momentum as we go through this ordeal.
Here is what I need you to do, contact me by website email. I will layout a test preparation program for your child that can be done at home. Lastly, let me say that I know that money is tight. Do not let the fee for testing dissuade you. I will work with you on that.