There are many and I do mean many post on this and many other forums about the problem known as Mc Dojo's. But lets take a look at it a diffrent way. Lets just say that you are a young guy or girl and your be all end all dream is to run your very own school. You have busted your but to train yourself to be a great teacher. You have done all the things that you need to to bet the building and the permits. And it is in a great part of town. Now lets just say that this is your only means of support. Meaning this is ALL you do all day long 365 days a year. You put in 8 to 9 hours a day in and that is just the training of people not the paper work that goes with it as well. And then you see just down the street a new Tae kwon do school pops up out of no where. And slowly you see that your students are going over there for training. And it is not that you are not a good instructor, heck to some of them you are like the only father/ mother they have. But yet they still leave. And you look at you wallet and see the few bucks that you "might" have every week( if you are lucky) is not there. And all you wanted was students to teach. What would keep you from not as they say going to the darkside of owning a school your thoughts
Why are they leaving? I would ask them why, as gently as possible, reassuring them that there are no hard feelings and that you just want to make it better for the people that stayed.
First off, this is very hard to acheive. I recently started teaching own my own, and I still have to hold down a full time job. Hopefully one day I can spend all my time teaching. But starting out it's rough. To answer your question. You just have to stick to your guns, and teach the students you do have and make sure they are getting good training. Alot of these things come down to patience, and time. Even though you might have some students leave to go to the other school, you just have to realise that in the western world that's how people are. When I was still under my instructor at our HQ, we had a few people leave, not because the training was bad. But because alot of Americans want something fast. They don't want to spend the next 10 years learning a Traditional effective art. But there is nothing you can do about this. It's just the way some people are. You just have to be patient, and sooner or later you will get more, and more dedicated students that will stay for the long term. It just takes time.
Great replies!!!! I think the best way is to keep doiong what you are doing and keep trying to provide the best martial arts instruction for all levels of students and not to worry about the ones that leave. I think trying to run a school like this as a primnary occupation can be very difficulot, if not only for the sheer amount of money you need to keep it going and the pressure to "sell out even a little... just to keep the school going" can be overwhelming. I think that's what a lot of the really good schools I have seen are taught by pewople who work fulltime for their living and teach martial arts in their remaining time.
