This Saturday marks 10 years since our first day of classes at the School of Martial Arts. We originally opened the school at a location a few blocks away. We moved to our current location when we ran out of space about 3 years ago. Many students who joined us in the first few weeks are still practicing as red sashes in Kung Fu and senior students in Tai Chi. Over the last 10 years we have had well over 1,000 students. Currently, we have more students practicing than ever before.

An Overnight Success in 10 years

When I had just begun taking classes at Sifu Brown’s school in Michigan, that dojo had an event celebrating their 10 year anniversary. I remember sitting on the mats listening as Sifu gave a talk. I was a white sash shoulder to shoulder with what must have been at least 100 students. At one point he mentioned that other school owners were talking about how successful the dojo was. At the time we had one of the biggest adult martial arts programs in the entire country. He said they were calling it an “overnight success” since we had had quite a big jump in students over the previous few years. Sifu Brown remarked that in his experience, an overnight success usually takes about 10 years. Everyone laughed. 

The Flywheel

He went on to explain that it feels when you’re starting something big. Things can be tough and seem to move very slowly. He used the analogy of a flywheel, which I’ve just googled for the first time. According to Wikipedia, a flywheel is a mechanical device which uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed. In Sifu Brown’s analogy, he was talking about the initial energy to get the wheel moving. It’s a big wheel, and it takes a lot to get it moving. Eventually, after lots of effort, the wheel has tons of momentum. That first 10 years of the dojo, things seemed to be barely moving. We were slowly but surely getting everything in place, working properly, building up more students and word of mouth to get even more students. Finally, we hit a tipping point where people looked up and saw something pretty spectacular was happening.

What are you pushing on?

10 years is a good chunk of time to look at if you want to recognize large changes in life and the world. I’m sure most of you are living a fairly different life today, even without the effects of Covid. I know I am. Look back on the things we were starting back then.  The small changes we put into effect have, like the flywheel, built into something far more powerful than we may have expected. 

What are the things you are starting today that you will continue to push for over the next 10 years? What are you willing to endure a slow start for that will eventually build up enough momentum and become a force unto itself?