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Ricky Wood wrote:
Not because I feel qualified to, but because I needed a place to train.
Has anybody else done this?
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You are in the comapny of many folks in this. The one thing I would point out is that, once you take on the role of opening a dojo you have incurred a serious responsibility to train yourself and keep on training. People will come to you and give you money, and even more importantly, their time. You have an obligation as a teacher to deliver the very best training you can.
In some cases there are no alternatives and you open a dojo simply because there are no other dojos around. You still need to keep on growing all the time so that your own limitations do not become the limitations of your students.
In other cases, there are actually other choices of places to train. In that case, delivering sub standard training is really a form of fraud. You are enticing students to come and train with you when they would be getting better training elsewhere. You have to really ask yourself if you are really able to deliver the goods.
As I say, if there is no other alternative, by all means open your dojo. But once you have done this, taking a casual attitude about your own training isn't an option any more. You have an obligation to get out and train with the best, hit the camps, the seminars, host higher level folks and keep on growing. I have no problem with someone serious opening a dojo. I have a big problem with folks who open a dojo and then deliver poor to mediocre training to people who aren't experienced enough to know what to look for. So be really honest with yourself about whether folks really benefit from you opening a dojo and then understand what a huge obligation you take on when you do this.