I have been spending quite a bit of time lately thinking about my next step.  Ideally I would like to try to do all my work on a ‘Give Freely Receive Freely’ basis.  I have already started with my clinical work and also with my qigong classes, courses and workshops, and it has been going ok.  It hasn’t been a massive success, but it hasn’t been a miserable failure either – I believe the idea has potential and CAN work.  This leaves one major area of my work to try GFRF with and that is my Kung Fu teaching.

I have a number of reservations about trying GFRF with my kung fu teaching, one is that while a lot of people love the idea of GFRF there are others who just don’t seem to get it and they feel awkward about it.  My view is that GFRF is the fairest deal there can possibly be for both the provider and receiver, but I don’t want people to shy away from using it because of unfamiliarity or discomfort.  Being faced with making your own choice about price can be quite confronting when you have not spent any time thinking about it and my aim is not to confront, but how else can I introduce the idea?

Another concern I have is that while I have contact with the students attending my classes every week, I often do not have a lot of contact with the parents of students.  All too often I think paying for the classes can be easily forgotten about.  It is a problem I have now with set prices that I have to chase up some parents right till the end of the term to be paid.  This takes a lot of time and effort which quite frankly I don’t have to spare.  I actually wonder if by putting the responsibility on the parent to decide how much to pay, they might also be more prompt in paying and understand better that it is their responsibility to support what I am doing for their child rather than my responsibility to chase them for payment.  It comes down to the idea that under GFRF both parties to the transaction become free givers rather than takers from each other (see my earlier blog post here).  But then again… it may not work out that way in practice.

Another concern is that I think people often underestimate the true cost of providing things (in this example kung fu classes).  There are many overheads to cover: rent, power, equipment, wages, advertising and so on, even really simple things like GST make a big difference.  Also I think people tend to underestimate the amount of time it takes to provide things like classes, looking just at the actual time the class takes when in fact there is a significant amount of time spent on administration, preparation, travel time and so on.  Owners of small businesses tend to be the exception as they have experience with all the things that need to be done to keep something running and what they cost, but for other people I think they often look at things from the perspective almost of the person providing the service receiving all the money.The reality is far from this.  The truth is that many of my classes are marginal with some even running at a loss, but I continue with them because I believe that learning kung fu has a lot of value for people by developing fitness, confidence and social skills (there are some really good studies that show that children allowed to play fight go on to be better socially adjusted than those who are not allowed to play fight).  I also believe that we have a great kung fu syllabus and organization that will grow over time if given the chance.  I can only do so much with the classes if they are not profitable though, and there is so much more that I would like to be able to offer in terms of competition, advanced training and performance, but I can’t until I have more financial resources to support them.

Similar to my concerns mentioned earlier, I wonder if GFRF may actually provide a solution to some of these problems as certainly it would allow any families who cannot afford my current prices to be able to attend at a price that they can afford, increasing class sizes.  Also the GFRF model would allow those who can afford more, to give more if they want to help support the ongoing running and further growth and development of the kung fu organization.

So there are significant pros and cons on both sides.  I guess one final factor is that I want to move to GFRF because I like how it changes my relationships with people.  I have noticed in my clinic work and qigong teaching that whether the client or student pays more, less or exactly the same as they did previously, there is a subtle change in how the interaction feels.  It might sound a little corny, but there seems to be more warmth, love and respect in the interaction from both sides; and that really is how I want to live my life.

I’m still nervous about it though… Due to the overheads and the time commitment involved in running classes it could easily go wrong and make it difficult for me to continue.  I wonder maybe if it is too soon for me to try this, but I also think if not now when would I start?  What I’m thinking of doing at the moment is trying it out at just one location where I have kids and teens classes and see how that goes… but I’m still not even sure about that.   I have a few weeks to think about it before the next term begins.