The Martial Arts Guru Was the Original Cult Brand

I've spent a lot of time over the years studying marketing, and one of the ideas that keeps coming up is the power of building a "cult" around a brand. These marketers are very direct about this. They talk about creating a devoted following around an authority figure, building a community around that person, and turning customers into people who identify with the brand rather than simply buying from it.

The funny thing is that martial arts had been doing versions of this for generations.

Long before marketers started talking about personal brands, authority marketing and customer communities, martial arts already had many of the ingredients that make this kind of marketing work. There was the instructor at the center, the hierarchy between coaches and students, the uniform, the rituals, the progression system and, most importantly, the feeling that you weren't simply paying for a service. You were joining a team.

In some cases, that produces something genuinely valuable. In other cases, it can create something much less healthy.

I think the difference is worth examining.

You're Not Just a Customer

One of the things that makes martial arts different from a lot of businesses is the relationship between the instructor and the student. If I join a commercial gym, I'm generally a customer. I pay my membership, use the equipment and go home. The relationship is primarily transactional, even if I eventually get to know the people who train there.

Martial arts is different. I become a student.

That distinction is much more powerful than it sounds. I learn the terminology, put on the uniform, train with the same people every week and gradually become part of the culture. I learn the standards of the room. I get promoted. I start helping newer students. I compete alongside my teammates and eventually start caring about their progress almost as much as my own. At some point, I don't simply say that I attend a particular academy. I start saying that I'm part of that team.

The activity becomes part of my identity.

That's incredibly powerful from a marketing perspective because people are much more loyal to identities than they are to transactions. A customer can change gyms because another gym is closer or cheaper. Someone who feels deeply connected to a community and an identity has a very different relationship with the organization.

Martial arts figured that out long before modern marketers started teaching businesses how to create tribes.

The Coach at the Center

Modern MMA and BJJ don't necessarily have the traditional martial arts master sitting at the top of a formal hierarchy, but they still have something remarkably similar from a branding perspective: the coach.

Think about how many successful combat-sports gyms are built around a recognizable coach or coaching team. The coach becomes the person associated with the training philosophy, the culture and the results. Students don't just join a facility. They join that gym because they want to learn from those coaches and train with those people.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, I think it's one of the reasons good martial arts schools work so well.

A great coach creates standards. He creates expectations about how people train, how they treat each other, how hard they work and what they're trying to accomplish. Over time, those standards become part of the identity of the room. New students learn the culture from the people who have already been there, and the culture becomes bigger than any individual class.

That's a powerful thing.

But it can become a problem if the coach becomes more important than the development of the student.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Culture

I want to be careful with this because I don't think a strong martial arts culture is inherently manipulative. In fact, I think the opposite is often true. One of the best things a martial arts school can provide is a genuine sense of belonging, shared standards and community. I've seen what happens when students really care about their gym and the people they train with. They show up for each other. They help new students. They take pride in the room. They hold each other to standards. They stay through difficult periods because the relationships they've built actually matter to them.

That's not a problem. That's culture.

The problem is what happens when the culture becomes dependent upon unquestioning loyalty to the person at the center of it. There is an enormous difference between a student saying, "I love this gym because of the people, the training and what we're trying to accomplish together," and a student saying, "My coach says this is the right way, therefore it must be the right way."

The first creates community. The second creates dependency.

When the Coach Becomes the Product

The most powerful personal brands don't simply sell a product. They sell an authority figure. The customer isn't merely purchasing information or a service; they're buying access to the person who supposedly possesses the special knowledge.

You can see versions of this in BJJ and MMA very easily.

A fighter doesn't necessarily choose a gym because the building has better mats. A BJJ student doesn't necessarily leave one academy for another because the new academy has a nicer changing room. They choose coaches. They choose training partners. They choose a culture. They choose an environment they believe is going to help them become the person or athlete they want to become.

The problem begins when the coach becomes the reason the student believes everything works.

If the coach says a particular training method is best, it must be best. If the coach doesn't like a particular style of training, the student stops questioning it. If another gym does something differently, that gym must not understand the "right" way to train. If someone leaves, the assumption becomes that they weren't committed rather than considering that another environment might simply have been a better fit.

At that point, the culture begins protecting the authority figure instead of protecting the development of the athlete. That's where things get dangerous.

Martial Artists Are Particularly Vulnerable

There is still a vulnerability here, particularly for beginners.

A new student doesn't know what he doesn't know. He may not yet have enough experience to distinguish between a genuinely good coaching decision and an instructor's personal preference. He may not know whether a particular training method is supported by evidence, simply traditional, or something the coach happens to like. He may not have enough experience to recognize when a coach's opinion is reasonable and when it is simply an opinion.

And then something interesting happens as the student progresses. His improvement becomes evidence that the system works.

If he gets better, the system works. If he doesn't get better, perhaps he isn't training hard enough. If another student leaves, perhaps they weren't committed. If somebody criticizes the coach, perhaps they simply don't understand the art.

That can create a closed loop in which almost any result confirms the original belief. I've seen versions of this throughout martial arts, and I think it's one of the reasons critical thinking is so important for both coaches and students.

I've Always Been Suspicious of the Guru

This is probably one of the reasons I've always been uncomfortable with the martial arts guru mythology. I've written before about why I consider myself a coach rather than a master. I don't think earning a black belt gives me wisdom about life. I don't think knowing how to choke somebody makes me qualified to tell them how to raise their children, run their business or live their life.

Martial arts can teach you valuable lessons about discipline, perseverance, humility and dealing with adversity, but those lessons don't automatically make the instructor an expert on everything else.

The coach's job is to help the student become more capable. That should include becoming capable of thinking independently. If my students eventually know enough to question something I teach them, I don't consider that a failure. I'd consider it evidence that they're learning. I want them to ask why. I want them to bring me something they've read and ask what I think. I want them to train somewhere else and come back with a different perspective. I want them to be able to distinguish between something I've told them, something they've experienced themselves and something that simply happens to be part of the culture of our gym.

That's what I think education is supposed to do.

Loyalty Is Not the Problem

The irony is that I absolutely want students at BLAST to feel loyal to the gym.

I want them to care about the people they train with. I want them to be proud of the room. I want them to understand our standards and feel like they're part of something worth belonging to. I want students to stay through difficult periods because they value the relationships and the work we're doing together.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of loyalty. In fact, I think it's one of the most important parts of a great martial arts school.

But I don't want students to believe that I'm the only person who can teach them. I don't want them to think that leaving BLAST would mean betraying me. I don't want them to believe that another coach can't have something valuable to teach them.

If I do my job correctly, the student should eventually become more independent, not less.

That's the difference between building a culture and building a cult.

The Martial Arts Guru Was the Original Cult Brand

When you look at it this way, the modern personal-brand guru isn't really doing anything particularly revolutionary. Martial arts already had many of the ingredients.

We had the authority figure, the team identity, the rituals, the ranks, the insider language, the shared philosophy and the community. We had people who didn't simply want to learn a skill; they wanted to belong to something and identify themselves with it.

Marketing eventually discovered that these same mechanisms could be used to create incredibly loyal customers.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Strong communities and strong brands aren't bad things. The problem begins when loyalty becomes more important than truth, when belonging becomes more important than development, or when the authority figure becomes more important than the student.

A good martial arts culture should make you want to belong. It should give you people to train with, standards to live up to and something meaningful to work toward. It should create relationships that last beyond the class itself.

But it should also make you more capable of thinking for yourself.

I've been training martial arts for a very long time, and I'm still a student. That's one of the things I love about martial arts. There is always another person to learn from, another idea to test, another technique to question and another problem I haven't solved yet.

I don't want to be the end of that process for my students. I want to be one of the people who helps them continue it.

The best martial arts culture doesn't create followers. It creates better martial artists.