Developing a Product - Tai Chi

The Atlantic's recently titled "A Crash Course in Getting Hired at the Next Facebook" highlights the Boston Startup School, in which participants learn how to do all the jobs needed in a startup, so that ideally they can get hired by or create a startup company.  The curriculum is split into Product Design, Software Development, Marketing, and Sales & Business Development.  This is a way cool idea for recent college grads or those transitioning out of one career and feel that they are edgy enough to chase down the startup field.

As a recently career-transitioned individual, I find myself in the second set, except that I have chosen a startup, and it is me.  My "startup" as it were is teaching Tai Chi through a traditional martial arts school.  While the new school, Pro Martial Arts in Cranberry Township, PA is sourcing many new students for it's Tang Soo Do karate Classes, few leads are trickling in for my tai chi classes, so if I want to eat this month, I've gotta start treating my teaching as startup material.

Traditionally, Tai Chi classes are taught as part of an existing school in which various arts have been taught for a relatively long time, or the classes are taught for free to groups of students who are part of a local social scene, such as a senior citizens center, apartment complex, etc.  Within this framework, Tai Chi classes may be marketed using the Tai Chi title/name itself, or perhaps chi kung or another term is used.  This should work if people have heard of Tai Chi, but if they have not, then some other link needs to be used.

My self-appointed task here, then, is to determine how Tai Chi classes are traditionally marketed, ways in which it appears that others are marketing Tai Chi in association with other products, or if people are using seeming unrelated methods to draw students/teach people about Tai Chi.

..Alex.