world full of immortal we try to separate ourselves from the crowd. We don’t just promote people based off of attendance like most schools do. There are three core objectives to a promotion. Number one is skilled development. You could show up every single day for 10 years, but not really developed your skills. I can’t tell you how many black belts I’ve met in my lifetime who do the same three moves and somehow just worked their way up to black belt. If they were to go test their skills on the world stage against a blue belt or a purple belt, they would most likely get smoked.
consistency, you could be highly skilled but if I don’t see that, you’re a hard worker or that you are consistent with your training then I cannot promote you. Consistency is subjective. If you are 21-year-old unemployed, juice head and you’re showing up to training every single day then that’s expected. But if you’re a 45-year-old father of three and you could only make it in twice a week then I take that into consideration that you have a lot of other things going on.
the last and most important one is integrity. You could be extremely skilled and extremely consistent but if you do not have integrity, then you will never get promoted by me. What is integrity in my eyes? Showing up for your teammates when they need you, helping out newer teammates, congratulating people on their success. When I promote people, I don’t just look at the person getting promoted. I look at the rest of the room if I see you clapping for your teammate, I will make a mental note. If I see you visibly get angry that somebody else is getting promoted then I will also make a mental note of that.
promotions are very dear to me. So when I promote someone, I take it very seriously. Today two of my kids got promoted and I was very proud of them!