The Mission

As of November 2009, reflecting on the progress and status of being an official school only after five months of opening, our first growth spurt has been quite an adventure.  It always feels that I constantly think of how to improve our newly founded training grounds by putting events together to raise funds for better equipment and reaching out to pool more knowledge into one spot. There was an article that I read a little while ago on how a business owner sat down and wrote a list of reasons why he created his business and I revisited the reason why the school was created.  It definitely was not to become a full blown business and quit my day job. Although that would be, what I'd consider, the American dream.  It was just to have a place to train and have a good time.  Of course, the training grounds that was initially looked at was at very high rates and serious questions had to be answered.  What kind of place will this be?  What kind of people would this pull in? How much will it cost?

Looking around the Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads area, it didn't have very many places that offered what I had experienced that was in my acceptable driving distance.  The martial arts world has changed considerably since I first started.  As a security professional in the information technology field, due diligence and due care are terms I am constantly using.  So, what does due diligence and due care mean?  An example would be if you came home one day and looked at your neighbor's house to see a broken window and the front door was wide open. You wait around a couple minutes and there is absolutely no activity.  Every fiber of yourself tells you that something is wrong.  Then, you make the important decision to ensure that what you have found is addressed to the best of your abilities because you were the first to find it.  Stepping up to the task of providing an experience very similar to mine and also have improvements was going to be a roller coaster of a ride.  So it was decided to give it a go.  The stage had been set.  It just needed participants.

Finding our current location had been a blessing.  It happened to be in an area that well suited the size of our first classes as a founded school.  I am very proud to have these members that put forth their commitments to supporting the mission and I hope to find more people that will take advantage of this rare opportunity that they helped to create.