Lessons Learned from 80s Movies: Part I – The Karate Kid
The first part of a series of altogether essential tips for business, marketing and life – as gleaned from iconic movies of the 1980s…
Plot Synopsis
Bullied underdog Daniel LaRusso learns karate from wise, old Okinawan Mr Miyagi, defeats the evil Cobra Kai, wins the tournament and gets the girl, all the while teaching us everything we’d ever need to know about car waxing/fence painting techniques.
Business Analysis
The median expected salary for a typical janitor in the United States is $23,820. Mr Miyagi is not a typical janitor. He is perhaps the world’s worst janitor.
Look at the state of this pool which is under his ‘care’:
Let’s be honest, he’s going to be lucky to get minimum wage with a poor job like that. So he’s making $8/hour in California right now.
Karate lessons, however, run from about $75-$200/month for weekly 45 minute sessions. Let’s split the difference and say $135. There is obviously the demand for lessons in the area, we see around 20 kids at the Cobra Kai dojo, plus plenty more at the tournament.
With Miyagi’s exceptional skills (he takes Daniel from no-hoper to champion in a month) he could easily attract 50 kids a week, 5 classes of 10 kids a day.
So, he’s working just 45 minutes a day, plus set up time, so maybe an hour, and pulling in $81,000/year.
That’s over $300/hour.
Mr Miyagi may be a great Sensei, but he is a terrible business man, and knows nothing of Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage.
The Lesson Learned?
Time and again we meet with businesses and find that the person put in charge of managing the pay per click campaigns for a company is simply the person who is most competent with a computer.
He may have no experience with marketing or Internet advertising at all, but he’s the guy in the office everyone looks to for help with email problems, or booking tickets online or whatever. You know, the ‘computer guy’ that every office has. And PPC is just another computer-thing, right?
No, in this case you’re being a Miyagi-janitor instead of a Miyagi-teacher.
If you’re in real estate, sell houses. Run a restaurant? Get cooking!
Do what you’re best at and you’ll have the money to pay someone else to the other stuff. Everyone wins.
Just like Daniel-san.