Introduction to Greening your Dojo

The series of blog posts are your step-by-step guide to Greening Your Dojo. Each post will rank you from White to Black Belt according to the actions taken to green your business.

Why Green your Dojo?

As Martial Arts teachers/ educators, we teach our students a level of social consciousness. You would not tell students after their first lesson to go home and practice their punches and kicks on their parents and siblings.

Of course not! Instead, we give the new student a sense of responsibility with the new skill and teach them to respect the new skill - developing a level of social responsibility.

Greening your martial arts school is extension of this social consciousness to wider field, which includes the environment. By leading by example, you integrate a new level of learning experience into your school.

We all know that our students follow what they see.

Benefits of Green Your Martial Arts School

The benefits of Green your business vary from reducing waste to saving money.

• Allergy free environment – Many store bought cleaners contain additive that cause allergies.
• Reduced waste that end up filling up landfills
• Energy savings – electric and heating cost
• Reduce Co2’s

In the next post, you will earn your white belt in Environmental Self-Defense just like a student performing an introductory lesson by completing a checklist of 5 Essential Environmental Self-Defense Techniques.

Talk and Transcribe with Jott.com

I found this great free service called jott.com. It allows you to call a number and leave a message. Jott.com translates the message and e-mails it to you. You can even setup reminders, or send a email or text to people or groups added to your account.

It's a great way to capture ideas on the move. For example, I always get ideas for writing while walking my dogs - usually caught without a pen and paper. Now, I just take my cell phone and basically dial in my ideas.

Okay, jott.com requires that you are able to talk to yourself which seems a little silly at first, but after a while you get use to it. With practice, it becomes much, more natural. The clearer you speak the better the transcription.

Jott has really increasing my productivity. You know, I am just like anybody else. I have a family and responsibilities at home, but Jott lets me to do my work around the house while I continue to write (talk?) through Jott. It's pretty amazing!

In fact, most of this post was written through Jott.com

Weekend Links – Off to My Accountant Edition

Today, I sit down with my accountant for my 2007 taxes. Looking back, 2007 was a challenging and rewarding year – quick my full-time day job, finished the UBBT team 3, sold our home and moving into the new home.

I meet huge challenges head on – financially and in my business. I made vast changes in my school and now in 2008, I am reaping the benefits. The turbulent seas are calming and I foresee some smooth sailing on the horizon.

I see our school becoming like the flywheel that Jim Collins talks about in “Good to Great.” At first, the flywheel is hard to turn but once inertia takes over, the flywheel starts chugging along.

I found some great links to reading for this week.

• I read this free report called Teaching Sells. It's great reading for any business owners out there. It's a great concept for Martial Arts School Owners.
• Crunchy Chicken interesting and risqué blog post provides tips for planning a Green Valentine's Day.
• Zen Habits is one of my favorite blogs. This week, he talks about The Simple Guide to being Present for the Overworked and Overwhelmed. Why not making meditation part of our workday too.
• Having trouble meeting your goals? Maybe they are not specific enough. Hop over to Goal2Go at here.
• Write to Done shows how to put more zest into your writing, here.

I hope you enjoy your weekend reading.

I’m not frugal, I’m a conservationist

Okay, the word frugal for most people brings up images of self-denial, suffering, and like Mr. Pink in the Movie “Reservoir Dogs” does not leave tips at restaurants. So I will not call myself frugal but I’m a conservationist.

Why?

Because… I believe things like time and money are resources not to waste. Also, committing to a frugal -oops, I mean conservationist- lifestyle gives me a huge margin of error in my business. Owning a business is a huge risk. Every decision could create a gain or loss on your P&L statement.

I combat risk by being conservationist – just in case the unexpected happens. Believe me, in business the unexpected happens frequently.

Ester and I moved to a new home. Our new home is beautiful but has some significant advantages over our old home.

For example

Lower Mortgage – This is amazing since we moved from a townhouse to a single family house. Since the townhouse was located in an upscale community, home values were much higher. (Save on mortgage and taxes)

Close to Dojo – We are extremely close to our business. In fact, I walked my dogs there this morning. (Huge savings on Gas and Car Maintenance – over 10,000 miles/yr)

Peer Pressure – When you live in a more upscale area, there is huge levels of social proof that spending and a high consumption lifestyle is acceptable and normal.

Community Association Fees – The association fees at our old home were $115 per month.

Compare prices – A cup of coffee at our old house was almost $2 and a cup of coffee here is $1. I see similar price differences at the grocery store adding up to tons of savings.

I found that being a conservationist gives you a real piece of mind since your cash flow exceeds your expenses. Besides that, we love our new home in it's quite location.

Dynamic Newsletter

I am very excited about my new e-newsletter. Feedburner has created a new generation of marketing by allowing you to publish blog materials directly to a website using tools like Google Calendars and your blog.

Check out our newsletter here. Sorry, about the poor formatting. I am still working on it. I worry about the functionality first then design second.

The great thing about this page is that it automatically updates as I add events to my google calendar and write my blogs. At the beginning of the month, I update the school information and e-mail it to current students, canceled students, and prospects through my Mr. Marketer from Championsway.

Part of my phone script asks for your e-mail address. In fact, I barely let prospects walk in the door without finding out their e-mail. Ha Ha! My e-mail prospect list has grown to over 250. The thing that I love about e-mail list is that it virtually free and less time consuming then mailers. Oh yeah! Did I mention that you don't waste paper?

I am generating many new students through our newsletter because even if they do not join right away, they receive our monthly newsletter. Because I write the articles, the prospects view you as the obvious expert in your community – giving you the upper hand over your competition.

Here’s a video on how to setup your own feeds for your calendar.
Video: Google Calendar published on a web page

I figure out that the same process will work for a blog using Buzz Boost at Feedburner.