Shrinkflation

They don’t call it ‘rip off Britain’ for nothing. Everything is getting smaller but costing more, whether it be alternate triangles on your toblerone bar or the contents of your bag of crisps being more gas than solid. This trend also tends to make packaging disproportionately bigger which is of course an environmental concern. Things are no different in the service and hospitality industries. Less is given and more charged and the diminishing work force are increasingly stressed. Not only this but after a hard shift they have to think about the fact they haven’t had a cost of living pay increase in over a decade and belt tightening is turning in to poverty. On top of that they are gaslighted by their employers being told that they should be grateful they have a job at all and that illusive bonus or pay rise is always on the horizon. Of course that horizon never comes, maybe the earth isn’t flat after all.

Here’s a free life lesson for the younger generation. You will be told by people in your life (people that you should be able to put your trust in) to educate yourself to the point of crippling student debt and then get a job with a reputable employer, hard work will reap rewards. To be a hard worker (for someone else that is) is virtuous. Never will you be told a more nefarious lie. Money is just a commodity, get it the best way you can to serve yourself, the wider community and the environment. If you can combine it with a passionate interest then all the better. Whether that be growing or cooking food, cutting hair, carpentry, starting your own space program; whatever ignites a spark in you.

But this economic situation is all because of outside influences right?! No, it’s just corporate greed given a scary title of “cost of living crisis” by our government, because as we’ve learnt recently they take great pleasure in keeping the population in perpetual fear. The next fear campaign has been thoroughly introduced ready to be ramped up soon, and fast.

In this environment, we here at the Tai Chi Empowerment Project are doing everything we can to support small and ethical businesses. Please reach out to us on social media so we can share what you’re doing. We are also doing our best to give people tools that will help them out there in the world. We thought it would be a good idea to go over our product range so you can ensure when you work with us you are not only getting a good deal but something so generous that it subverts the wider unsustainable economic model we are living within.

First we have single lessons either in person, remotely or as is more often the case we send you a video and/or written lesson on the subject you are interested in to work on yourself. Consultancy services are similar but even more student driven. Subscribers get the same as a single lesson but it is distributed weekly and they have the opportunity to ask follow up questions and even have video critiqued. We offer a 15% discount for subscribers who pay a year in advance. Our big ticket item is instructor certification which is open to pretty much everybody regardless of training background. If we can get on the same page in terms of physical basics and safety protocols we can work together towards you starting your own school. Finally we have our merch and [coming soon] training equipment which will have some utility as well as allowing you to really indulge the lifestyle and enjoy some retail therapy. We have only just got started with this but have ambitions for a wide range of fun products.

The principle we are working to is that we have priced everything so we can just about function in the world as professional coaches but every product has the capacity for you to be given an uplift, the opposite of shrinkflation. Kind of creating a baseline financial model that we can set and forget, leaving us to concentrate on the art.

Single lessons don’t come with follow up support but get us talking about training and generally we won’t shut up! Whilst subscription guarantees one lesson per week if we get chatting about another subject it’s likely you’ll see more material come your way. The only restrictions really are around your instructor’s time and your capacity to work with the information. For those embarking on the instructor journey we’ll bend over backwards for you to ensure you can follow your dreams. And we have no issue with competition, you can set up shop next door if you want and we’ll embrace it because we’re at peace with our offering. When it comes to the merch we’ll do our upmost to provide quality we can be proud of and the principle of the merch is that it offers people the opportunity to help fund the free teaching we have given away and plan to give away in future. So you get to show your support in that way Patreon for example works for content creators, but you also get a totally badass product to impress your friends with.

Political rant and shameless self promotion over, back to relevant subjects in the next blog post, unless something significantly grinds our gears in the meantime.