Thailand is a beautiful country and I've visited it four times in the last five years; it's become something of a regular summer holiday for me, only I don't go for the sightseeing, I go for the training. Thailand is still the best place in the world to train Muay Thai kickboxing and every year some friends from the local club and I spend a month out there training with one of the top-level camps.
None of us fight for a living, it's just a hobby we're passionate about; we all have day jobs in offices and muay thai is just something we do to keep ourselves in shape and to let off some steam. However, the economy on the home front has been a bit weak recently and a couple of our group have been made redundant. Though we all easily managed to afford the flight and the training camp, things felt very different for us and one night over dinner the discussion started turning towards making a living out of our hobby.
There was no way any of us were going to make enough money by fighting for a living - we loved training and a couple of us had done fairly well in amateur bouts but there's just not enough money in the sport in England to make a living out of it, add to that the fact that we're all in our thirties and it seemed like the idea was going to fizzle out until I thought about opening our own training camp. The Thai economy's not
as bad as the West's right now and people come from all around the world to train muay thai - we could really make something of ourselves here if we hired the right trainers, bought the right equipment and managed it properly.
That's where the idea really struggled - none of us knew how to run a business, but a quick look through a local newspaper revealed that the Indian School of Business wasn't too far away and courses were affordable. After training the next day, my friends and I decided that we would open the school and I would leave my job in England and head to Hyderabad and the Indian School of Business for the next few months to study.
The enrolment process for the Indian School of Business was simple and I let my friends take care of my belongings back in England while I took the three hour flight from Bangkok to Hyderabad. Though it was a big gamble to leave England and take a business course in India to run a kickboxing camp in Thailand, we all felt that life is a gamble anyway, and why not chase the dream while we were still young enough to appreciate it?
Studying at the Indian School of Business is hard work, but I'm convinced it'll be worth it in two or three years when we watch students leaving our camp and going on to win championship belts all around the world. It's a gamble, but I'm sure it's one which will pay out for us in the end.
Author Resource:-
Thomas Pretty is an amateur kick boxer who is studying a business course to open his own training camp in Thailand. Find out more about the Indian School of Business at http://www.isb.edu/isb/index.shtml
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