I never thought I’d see the day when a well known MMA fighter takes classes from Steven Seagal… But here it is:

I took Aikido for a couple of years in college, and for the most part found it to be useless for self defense the way it was taught to me. But I’ve always liked the theory behind it and figured at least some of the techniques could work if trained properly.

I recently had the chance to read the e-book Small Dojo Big Profits, by Michael Massie.  Before I go any further I’d like to mention that I’m not profiting in any way from mentioning this book.  I’m very much turned off by single page, sales letter type websites like the one I’m about to link to, and if I had come across his site without having corresponded with Michael first I never would have bought or read the book.  BUT, I must say it’s a great book.  I wish I would have read it before I started teaching martial arts, and before I opened my own school.  So here’s the link: Small Dojo Big Profits.

Michael really covers everything you should know and consider before opening a martial arts business.  And if you’ve already got a one, the book is still a great read. I had my own place for many years, and there’s plenty of material in his book that I had never thought about.  At $147 it’s not cheap…as e-books go.  But if you’re serious about running an MA school, the book is well worth it.

I don’t use Facebook personally.  I’d rather not be user generated content for a company that has every incentive to make my private information public.  But nearly everyone I know does have a Facebook account, and I can understand part of the appeal.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts on digital defense, I consider personal data protection to be part of self defense.  The details of your private life can be more valuable than what’s in your wallet or purse at any given time.

Even though I don’t use Facebook myself, I decided to put a FB like button (which you can see at the bottom of this post for example) on this site.  Since there are hundreds of millions of Facebook users, I figured it would be a good way for them to share this site with their friends.  In order to do that I signed up for a Facebook account to get a FB “application id”.  I have numerous email addresses, and I used the one associated with this website when I created the account.  To my horror, I was shown a list of people I may know.  How did Facebook know that I knew some of these people since I didn’t even have a Facebook account???

After doing a bit of research, it seems that Facebook asks users to upload their email contacts in order for Facebook to see if they have any “friends” on the network.  So even if you don’t use Facebook yourself, if you’ve emailed with someone who does, there’s a good chance that Facebook has connected you to that person through their email contact list.  Keeping your private life private just got a little bit harder…