Running a Kung Fu School.

Running a traditional Kung Fu school of a Traditional and Unique art is like carrying around a Jade Treasure the size of a Boulder. You hold something valuable
but it weighs you down. And then if you happen to drop it, well cracked Jade only does bad for you.
Okay so the analogy doesn't necessarily work but this problem/goal/dream has been on my mind perhaps for ten years. At the old school, the overhead was way too high, but we kept the school a float in the hope that we would one day have more people, and also we needed a place for our stuidents to practice, to get better, to learn as much as possible to possibly pass on the art. (That is as much of it as possible)

We closed down/moved to a new location with a much lower overhead. However, we are still not breaking even but in fact paying into the school since, we are now a school of instructors and no students to be trained. Even the children I train that are related by blood to my Sifu, do not have what it takes (so far) to pass on the art. Yes they are children, but they are actually getting worse and not better at the Kung Fu aspect. though they are getting bigger and stronger.

I tecah many people through workshops and outside classes. These workshops benefit them /the student but they learn for themselves and not for the school so they are not really part of the family. Moreover, These classes do not pay and even oif the did, would not be able to cover overhead.

I was thinking, none of the fantasy kung fu novel masters have schools. They always save lives moving from town to town. Then I thought again. No, they do have schools, on their mountain or whatever, and (especially in Siu Ngo Gong Wu) they all go crazy or die terrible deaths due to the difficulties of runing a school. Students betray them, other schools try to start wars with them.
But at least they have students.

If all we were teaching was some regular Kung Fu that I see everyone else teaching, I would not even be interested in teaching I think.
It is beacsue I don't want this art, this real art, that I never have seen anywahere else, to die out. If I had the money I would pay people to learn if they had the right heart. But I don't, and I need to make money for the school and it would be nice to make some for myself as well.

Other people do it, whether it is Yoga, or Personal Training or whatever.