The Unemployed Life

Lemonade Maker: Ken Gullette, Online Martial Arts Master

Ken Gullette practicing push hands with Chen Xiaoxing, a descendant of the man who created tai chi.

Ken Gullette, 56
Silvis, Illinois

In April 2008, after more than two decades in media and communications, Ken Gullette was laid off from his job at the University of South Florida. He decided to try turning his small side business—shooting and selling martial arts DVDs online—into a full-fledged company. Within several weeks, he had launched Internal Fighting Arts, a website that provides long-distance instruction in Chen Tai Chi, Hsing-I Chuan and Baguazhang to subscribers around the world.

You launched your business on the Fourth of July?
It was my metaphor for being independent of the man. The other day on IM one of my friends typed, “Oh shit, tomorrow’s Monday.” I thought, Yeah, tomorrow I get to work harder! When Friday comes I’m almost disappointed. My income has dropped $75,000 this year, but the potential is enormous. And I get to be creative all day, every day. I don’t have VPs telling me to do things that are unethical or just not good. I’m liberated from it.

It has to be asked: Why kung fu?
Growing up I was always a friendly kid, but I was kind of scrawny and wore glasses. If there was a crowd of guys and a bully walked up, they would pick me out immediately. But I was a good fighter. A lot of time, the bullies, they pick on the people they think aren’t going to hit back. Once you hit back, the game’s over.

My buddy and I saw a couple of Bruce Lee movies and I thought, Man…the Kung Fu T.V. show had a big impact, too. The philosophy especially appealed to me—the morality tales. I grew up in the Bible Belt, surrounded by pretty fundamentalist Christians; I’d never been exposed to Tao and Zen Buddhism, that kind of thinking, so I started reading about it. I studied martial arts through the 70s and 80s. There really aren’t very many true martial arts masters, and I was lucky to study with some. (Ken began teaching in 1997.)

They always say, do what you love to do. But a lot of us get caught up in a career path we think we need to be on, especially as we earn more and more money.

How did your past experience translate into this business?
I started in radio news, went to T.V. news, and then to PR and media relations, which included a lot of marketing. And I’ve always been kind of a teacher. As news director in Sioux City I was hiring kids for $10,000 a year out of college. I said, I’m going to teach them and help them go earn more money than I did. I learned as I went how to use video in creative ways. Now I get to use that in my business. Just knowing as a journalist how to tell a story, you’re ahead of most martial arts instructors who don’t have that background.

What has this year taught you about running a business?
New technology has given every business an opportunity to build trust and credibility in a very quick and cheap way. I have a blog, Internalarts.typepad.com. That’s a place where I can build credibility with good information. You can get email auto-responders for $19 a month, and we use that to let people opt-in to our free introductory course. I’ve had to advertise very inexpensively. I’ve used Google Adwords.

I think I underestimated some of the tech things. I had a lot of videos playing on a website, and suddenly I ran out of server space. You really need to explain to the hosting company what you’re going to be doing and how much space you’ll need.

What’s been the biggest challenge as a new entrepreneur?
The good thing about it is, doing so much of it myself, the overhead is very low. So I’ve made a profit from day one. It’s not a big profit, but I’m starting slow.

The frustrating thing about doing it all myself is that I don’t have enough hours in the day. I would love to spend more time marketing. I’d like to have more time to shoot and edit videos. I can generally shoot and edit two or three video lessons in a day, but my health has held me back a bit. I’ve shot 300 lessons during all this, with three heart surgeries. If I’m healthy, I’m going to be really dangerous.

Tags: business, entrepreneurs, Lemonade Makers, The Unemployed Life, The Working World