I was in Okinawa with a karate instructor last year for the Okinawa Karate Invitational Tournament. Our home (or honbu) dojo is in Okinawa City, and we were training with the head of our organization.
Over a marvelously cold and delicious Orion beer one night, he vented to me that he was ticked at the reaction by several of his American students. They were thrilled to receive personal corrections by the staff of the honbu dojo, and incorporated those corrections into their techniques immediately.
“These are exactly the same things I’ve been trying to get them to change. Do they listen to me? No! But when they hear it from some Okinawan guy they’ve never seen before, it’s like a commandment from heaven!”
I held my tongue, since I didn’t want it ripped out of my head. But he was exactly right – that’s what happened.
See, these people had paid thousands of dollars to travel half way ’round the world and mingle with instructors who mythically had karate-do bred into them. Sage advice from a guy they’d never seen before, speaking an incomprehensible language – they were primed to take this advice! They’d paid for it in cash, in time, in sweat. They made the modern equivalent of trek through unknown lands and up a forbidding mountain to hear wisdom from a wise man in a cave.
Familiarity breeds contempt. As true now as it always has been.
If you are hard to get hold of, if you make your followers go through hell, if you charge them an arm and both legs, if they have skin in the game, people will follow your advice.
