I’ve been obsessed with martial arts for as long as I can remember. My first idol was Mr. Miyagi (the old master from Karate Kid). I remember seeing that movie and making a personal vow to myself that I was going to grow up to be Mr. Miyagi. I later graduated to idolizing Jackie Chan (because of movies like Fearless Hyena and Drunken Master). I eventually decided that I thought Huangxingxian‘s tai chi was the “best of the best”, so I decided to seek out two students I perceived as having reaped the most knowledge from him, Master Wang and Patrick Kelly. (It’s interesting to note that Jackie Chan eventually played Mr. Miyagi in the new karate kid. 
)
This is a process that started when I was 6. SIX! And has stayed ever present within until now, 25 years later. I’ve been utterly consumed with becoming Mr. Miyagi-like figure for over 25 years!
Me and Martial Arts
What I wrote above was probably more than enough about me. If you think so skip to the next section. 
Even though the seed was planted 25 years ago and has been growing since then, I didn’t get to try martial arts until I was about 10. First tai chi classes with my mom, then karate classes at a local YMCA. I really started getting serious about martial arts in high school when I was old enough for mom to let me walk to the local school on my own. I trained hard while in high school (as hard as you can with homework, school and other activities). I was reintroduced to tai chi near the end of high school (1997), fell in love with it and decided that THIS was the martial art I was going to train for the rest of my life. THIS would be my foundation.
I practiced tai chi with Shelton (my original teacher at the Chinese Kungfu Center), Eddie and Chris (old “kungfu brothers”) as much as I could. Then in 2002 I got to meet Master Henry Wang. It was only a one week seminar, but I absorbed one of his seven principles like a sponge. “Center.” I could easily spend 3 years teaching someone center. Ask my senior student. Shortly after that seminar, my passion for Chinese culture and martial arts took me to Taiwan.
For the first 4 months in Taiwan I went to 228 Park (Peace Park) everyday at 6am to train push hands under Zheng Laoshi’s instruction (one of Huang Xingxian’s students). “Living the tai chi dream” only lasted so long. Marriage, work and other hurdles of life eventually knock me off track. When I got back on track (2005), I found a second martial love… Brazilian Jiujitsu!
I LOVED BJJ! I LOVE BJJ! Probably more than the martial art itself is the BJJ community! I trained 5 days a week. Drank beer with these guys on the weekends. Traveled abroad and competed with them (Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines). Met AWESOME people (therealgeeza is one of my heros). Made AWESOME friends (Sincliza is hero friend). It was awesome. It was also a lot of fun being a newbie again. This is where I’ll segue to marketing…
It was my desire to share my martial arts with my mom that led me to YouTube (where I now have millions of hits.) It’s also thanks to therealgeeza who recorded this clip and emailed it to me.
Now that video has 26,000 views! I’ve never used those views to drive people to my martial arts website (didn’t have one at the time) or to sell anything but… it’s essentially marketing (marketing that makes me look like a cocky BJJ player that got taken down by someone half his size!)
Me And Marketing
I’m going to begin by saying I view marketing like a kungfu. Those of you who know, marketing along with anything else that can be practiced IS a kungfu. By definition of kungfu! From Wikipedia:
Kung fu or gongfu or gung fu (功夫, Pinyin: gōngfu) is a Chinese term often used in the West to refer to Chinese martial arts.[1] Its original meaning is somewhat different, referring to one’s expertise in any skill achieved through hard work and practice, not necessarily martial.
Marketing is a kungfu. Just like comedy is a kungfu, archery, cooking, singing, racing horses, breakdancing, the list goes on and on and on…
Everything I approach in life (since I was 6 anyway ), I approach like kungfu. Like Daniel-Son in karate kid. I look for my teacher (not A teacher MY teacher). Heck! She doesn’t know it formally, but I even adopted a teacher for learning Chinese through an internet discussion forum. I decided that she was the best for me and did whatever she said to me or others when it came to learning Chinese (I ended up adopting other teachers as well.) I have an economics teacher too! (And friend!) If he tells me to read something. I’ll read it!
Wait… we were suppose to be talking about marketing right? So marketing. My first “teacher” was Don Lapre (you might remember these late night videos.) I thought I was going to learn how to place tiny classified ads to make over one million dollars. Instead I got a dose of marketing! I actually learned a TON of stuff from the materials he sent me. I also, unknowingly at the time, learned about the up-sell. Shortly after purchasing that program, someone called me to sell me something for $500? $1,000? I can’t remember. It was easy to say no at the time as I was… 18? 16? and didn’t have the money.
What I’m pointing out here is that, I wasn’t 6, but I identified something I wanted and took a small action towards it. The problem with sales and marketing is that you get A LOT of bad information from A LOT of people (not just the sellers and marketers, but friends and family). Martial Arts can be confusing, but it’s not THAT confusing.
Anyhow, I was WAY too interested in tai chi at the time to waste too much of my time on trying to make money. Shortly after that I decided I was going to be a Shaolin Monk anyway. What was a Shaolin Monk going to do with a million dollars? Burn it to stay warm?
So Don was the beginning of my marketing kungfu journey. I didn’t really pick it back up again until I left Taiwan in 2007. 2007 also happened to be the year I peaked in BJJ (so far, I look forward to beginning my training again.) Remember that video above? I went from that, to this in under 2 years:
Why? Because I took it seriously and studied it like a kungfu. I guess it kind of helped that this actually was a martial art…
When I got back to the US I was lost (I didn’t want to leave Taiwan. Marriage problems. 
) I tried college. That was a waste of time and money. While surfing the internet (late 2007), looking for a “way out” I stumbled upon a video by Frank Kern. (I wish I could show you the actual video, it was just text and him talking.) What stuck out about this video is how laid back and funny he was. I’d watch these types of videos all the time but I was never compelled to give away my email address. I did this time.
Then I got a series of emails and videos about… marketing online. I remember being really interested! Until I found out how much it cost. Maybe it was $1,000. Maybe it was $2,000. Whatever it was, I didn’t have it. 
That’s OK. I kept following him, reading his stuff, looking for other people (teachers).
Then I ran into Jason Moffatt! He was in videos with Frank Kern. He seemed cool like Frank Kern (actually, he seemed cooler than Frank to me). So I started following Jason.
I learned A TON of stuff about internet marketing from Jason. He would openly share stuff in live videos, give out free tips and… here’s a secret, you can learn pretty much everything you need to learn (to start making some money) by watching what “they” do (the marketing “greats,” if you decide to start studying this stuff like you study martial arts, you’ll know all the greats, just like you do in martial arts. )
One day I decided that I was going to buy something from Jason. It was some $400 membership program. I figured it would… unlock something for me. I scrimped and scraped and saved and bought it and… I actually can’t remember what I learned from the program! lol One problem was that I wasn’t REALLY interested in making money yet. I was having so much fun learning and playing with all the tools people were telling me about (autoresponders, squeeze pages, etc.) plus I had learned so much from Jason for free that I didn’t even mind paying the $400 (even though I was “broke”). I actually look forward to buying more stuff from Jason, perhaps private surfing lessons. 
I owe A LOT of my “internet marketing success” to what I’ve learned from Jason. I might not have learned anything from the $400 membership site BUT hanging with him, learning, scrimping and saving to get the $400 and paying the $400 was a learning experience all by itself! I’ve gotten WAY more than the $400 return on that EXPERIENCE.
Here are some of the things I’ve done or gotten that are DIRECTLY RELATED to what I’ve learned from Jason Moffatt:
- Raised over $3,000 online for charities
- Won a Macbook Pro worth over $2,500 from a contest organized by Tim Ferriss (the one I’m typing this on!)
- Won an unreleased car with free gas and insurance for 6 months
- Sold $600 in t-shirts
- Won a contest to the MOST AWESOME
MARKETINGEVENT I’VE EVER BEEN TO!
All thanks to Jason Maffott (a marketer, an INTERNET marketer) and pursuing that $400 dream! I won’t explain how I won all of the contests, but I’ll explain the last one. I made a video using screen capture software (got that idea from Jason) and asked my email list (which I learned how to build from Jason) to vote for me.
Actually, if you find anything valuable on the “Marketing Arts” page that was made FOR YOU, you can thank Jason too! (Or not. ).
Oh! I forgot to add that when I was in San Diego for the Kung Fu Championships event, Jason bought me a smoothie! Yum!
Do you think I got a return on that $400 investment? It wasn’t clearly visible at the time but I stuck with it and it worked out. It really all started with that original $40 (or whatever it was) investment with Don Lapre.
Think about how much you’ve invested in your martial art. If you’re like me it’s EASILY tens of thousands.
This is all leading to…
Master Joe Polish
I told him I was going to call him “Master Joe.” This is always what I’m thinking when I target someone as a teacher. Something I didn’t mention above is that the laptop I won (back in 2008) and the contest I JUST won (two weeks ago) were both from Joe Polish. That’s actually how I discovered Joe Polish. When I won his laptop he sent me some “free” audio’s. I listened to them, they were AWESOME and I decided to sign up for the $30/month program and vowed to NEVER stop receiving them. No matter what! Never EVER! (That’s how valuable I found the information on the free CD). Then I bought his marketing program as well.
This is all while I don’t have a business or product of my own to market! lol I was learning this stuff because more and more I realize that it’s what I needed for a successful business. More than a business plan, the best mouse trap or a cool storefront, it was marketing. It wasn’t until recently that this idea sunk in as deeply as it has and I STILL don’t have anything to sell! (I’m working on that! )
Anyhow, long story short, I REALLY like Joe Polish’s marketing STYLE and Frank/Jason’s STYLE I started with Don, bounced around quite a bit with other books and programs, found Frank, to Jason to Joe.
In Closing
My final point about this marketing as a martial art post is that you have to find a marketing style that matches you’re personality/spirit/(martial) style. I think too many of us have a picture of a cars salesman, high pressure sales, unethical sales or a type of marketing/selling that you wouldn’t like.
What’s awesome about marketing (much like martial arts) is you don’t have to use the techniques you don’t like! For example I generally don’t like punching and kicking, so I don’t spend much time studying martial arts with punching and kicking (although I think I’ll one day go to Thailand and study Muai Thai when I get the chance… )
What you have to do is sift and sort through all of the marketing teachers, coaches and techniques out there and start trying ones you think you might like. I tried to introduce you to some cool people you could learn from that I met at the marketing seminar on the Marketing Arts page.
This isn’t some slick setup for affiliate commissions (yet! ) I honestly want to help martial artists find a marketing teacher suitable for them. Whether you want to teach your martial art full time, part time or as a hobby, mastering marketing will allow you to attract the kinds of students you love teaching.
Thanks for reading this super long blog post. I wrote it when I should have been packing, sleeping and getting ready for a flight. Please head over to the Marketing Arts page and/or subscribe to my blog if you want to learn more about tai chi push hands and follow my adventures as a teacher and student of tai chi.
Casey
