Can a Direct Marketing Home Business Come to the Rescue of A Brick and Mortar Enterprise?

One of the nice things about a blog (even one on Marketing and Home Business Opportunities) is the ability to take it down a path other media won’t explore. This post is one such example.

I was recently asked whether a serious home business opportunity could be used as a cash machine for a brick and mortar facility that needed shoring up financially and liberation from market pressures driving it in directions the owners didn’t want to go. The short answer is, “Without a doubt!” Let’s take today’s typical martial arts school and its marketing challenges as an example.

Martial arts schools today have evolved into overt baby-sitting services. Master instructors have been forced into the role of Social Activities Directors? They are literally holding kid’s Kung Fu birthday parties on Saturdays and teaching ladies aerobics classes, all while trying to figure out how how they evolved from ‘Warriors’ to ‘Dance Instructors’?

Two problems have driven this transition:

Problem 1:

Adult students can’t continue classes because they have no time…. Employers are pushing overtime, wives are complaining about husband’s long work hours and won’t share his remaining time with martial arts training, etc (the real problem is 60 hour work weeks on the J-O-B)….

Problem 2:

Students can’t pay their bills for a myriad of reasons: Wife loses job, gas prices rose too fast, home mortgage interest rates rose, credit card rates rose, etc…. (bottom line: the school owner is expected to solve everyone else’s financial problem by cancelling the martial arts training contract).

School owners are protecting themselves to some degree from these problems by enlarging curriculums to include a lot of social activities that appeal to new fads, ie. ladies aerobics classes, children’s martial arts parties, tournaments for kids where everyone gets a prize….

Then one day they wake up and realize they’ve become what I mentioned above - baby-sitting services run by very physically fit social activities directors. But their real goal was to teach serious martial arts to adults who can handle both the physical and mental rigors of warriorship. How did they end up here?

They ended up here because they started training bodies for physical survival in hand-to-hand combat scenarios, but never trained survival in life itself. Unlike the teachers of the past, they didn’t train life skills.

In today’s society, Masters didn’t have the means to teach their students how to stand on their own two feet financially and to own their lives and their time. So they allowed martial arts to degrade into sports for increased enrollment and then took on kids as a primary customer base.

In short, school funding structures forced this. Masters needed a ‘Cash Machine’ to keep their schools alive and child-care, sports, and social activities became that cash machine.

Enter the home business “Cash Machine.” Aren’t all home businesses (properly run) cash machines? Some may be better tailored to the goal and image of a given business.

In the case of the martial arts schools, they need a business opportunity selling self-development training built around Chan (Zen) philosophy. This enables them to offer an opportunity to their students and families that broadens their martial training to encompass whole person development. Voila! A cash machine that enables them to maintain their high standards of martial science training and preempt curriculum degradation into social activities and sports.

In contrast, a real sports training school or clinic might find a home business focused on health supplements a better fit for their image and activities.

Our initial question has been examined and answered. Properly chosen and implimented, a direct marketed home business opportunity can easily help a brick and mortar entity stay its course amid market pressures to lessen standards or alter its identity.

In your service,

Richard Loewenhagen
CEO
Living My Lifestyle
www.LivingMyLifestyle.com
richardloewenhagen@libertyleague.com
(480) 600-6859 Cell

P.S. If you enjoyed this blog entry, hang tight. There are many more coming. The network marketing and home business opportunity arena is massive and growing. There will be a lot more material to cover.