I am going to give you my sexist
testimony about how to attract students to class.
This works well in a campus type environment.
As you know Sex sells whether we like to admit it of not.

Recently I opened a Dojo at my works fitness center and the
initial response was excellent - about 25 students. not bad for the
first 3 months.

When it came to opening registration again for the next 3 months,
I put two tables in front of the companies two different cafeterias.
I asked the members for volunteers to man the tables and get
students to register... only 5 of the 25 students wanted to do it.

So I made a schedule and added the names. 3 of the 5 volunteers were
women. which happen to be in one building while the 2 men were in another. So
I scheduled them on tables in there own buildings

this advertising went on for 4 lunch times - tues. - Fri.

Here is how they made out:
Women got 40 new students
Men got 2 new students

We had so many people wanting to join that I had to limit class to 40 and I put
the rest on a waiting list!!! can you imagine how arrogant that sounds to
people?
unfortunately it is just me teaching and we only have 34 Tatami.

Now your question was what sort of people want to do aikido - the answer is that
all people want to study Aikido. They just need an incentive to get through the
door.
The rest is up to how good an instructor you are to get them to stay.

Sorry to anyone that is offend by this sort of thing but I am just stating the
facts.

A lot of people ask why Aikikai have some many women training and Yoshinkan does
not.
We usually answer by saying that Women are more attracted to softer style. You
have to ask
yourself though, Aikikai constantly focuses on pain while Yoshinkan tries to
remove the
pain from the techniques, so which is softer not which is more powerful?

oh, the yellow pages are good too!






-----Original Message-----
From: ext Brian Downey [mailto:akuma_ku@...]
Sent: 01 February, 2005 18:07
To: yoshinkan@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Yoshinkan] What Kind Of People Take Yoshinkan Aikido




Hello there,
I've been charged with the task of drumming up new aikidoka from my
school for our school club, and it's been getting harder and harder to
attract new students. What kinds of people do you feel congregate
towards Yoshnkan Aikido and how I might introduce the dojo.

Osu







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