The Best & Worst Decisions Made - Gary Meyer
Posted by Member Solutions on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
Question: What were the best and worst decisions you made when opening your Dojo?
There are many responses I could give to this question. But I will keep it simple and answer the question regarding my logo as one of my worst decisions.
Coming from a Kyokushin background, I thought it would be cool to have my logo be a picture of somebody chopping a bull’s horn off. It looked really cool to me (but that's about it!). Nobody was able to tell what kind of business I was running from my logo. It looked more like I was running a butcher shop. After about a year, I opened my eyes to this mistake, and quickly changed our logo to an American-style Yin/Yang symbol with the name of the school around it.
I have now had the same logo for nearly 20 years, and people can easily identify what we do.
I'm sure there are quite a few more best versus worst answers I could give, but this one is at the top of my list.
Now on to the best …
Besides my selection of Member Solutions as my management and billing company, the other important decision I made for my business was relocating back to a main street location. For 16 years we were located in a strip mall right on a main street. We were then forced to relocate to an “off the beaten path” space. We managed to survive there for three years, but just surviving is not enough for me. I need to thrive! So the first opportunity we had to move back to “Main Street,” we jumped on it. We made the move in February 2010, and have since grown by nearly 100 students.
Answer provided by, Gary Meyer
