Our curriculum director recently created a new tagline quote for her email signature, and it immediately caught my eye. It simply said, "Adults call it working out. Kids call it playing. We call it JumpBunch!" Now she decorated her JumpBunch with all the various colors from our logo, so it looked way better than my plain old text, but you get the idea. Those three short statements sum it up perfectly.
The original tagline for JumpBunch was simply "Sports and Fitness for kids." It was very straightforward and clearly stated what we offered as a product. Those words remained under the logo for about 18 years...yep, we've been jumping for quite a while now! In that time a lot has changed, and one of those things is that there are more and more companies/people out there offering what can be presented as sports and fitness for kids. Yes, that is still exactly what we deliver, however in a crowded world you have to be much more clear if you want to be anything other than one of many voices in a crowd.
Many, if not most, JumpBunch classes are held in preschools and daycares. This has always created an interesting dynamic in that the person who takes our class isn't the one who pays for it and the person who pays for it is someone we often never even meet. Parents enroll and pay for JumpBunch classes because their kids truly enjoy it, and they see noticeable and measurable progress. Even though we may not hear from parents often, our validation comes from their children staying enrolled. Often, this is for as many as four years until they head off to kindergarten.
June 6 was Global Running Day, and many of our franchise locations made a special effort to focus on running in their classes that day. Now we all know that it is not difficult at all to get kids to run. Most will gladly just take off with even an implied invitation! That's the key though for us adults...giving the invitation. Kids will follow our lead, so it falls to us to be accountable. So Global Running Day was not as much about actually running as it was about simply moving...and setting the example for our kids by doing so.
The well known phrase "your mission, should you choose to accept it..." is a signature of the popular television show and movie franchise Mission Impossible. The things they were tasked with accomplishing were truly daunting. While the mission of JumpBunch does not place our coaches in life and death situations by comparison, we believe that what we hope to accomplish truly matters in a way that can influence the lives of children forever.
The poster that JumpBunch franchisees place on the walls in schools hosting our classes has the following two words standing out...ACTIVE AND HAPPY! Of course, we all want nothing more than for kids to be happy and healthy! Our mission, and the role we play in helping make that happen, is to get kids moving more, introduce them to many fun sports/activities, and teach that being active is a choice that makes your life better. We like to say "building healthy habits early"!
If you've ever had fun in a class of any kind, I will guarantee you that much of that was because of the leader, teacher, coach, or whatever their title was on that day. It's absolutely true that the fun starts here.
A message we try to send in every JumpBunch class is that instead of saying "I give up" we should say "I'll try again." To learn anything, we must experience failure. In fact, to get really good at something we must fail a lot! Think about the fact that the greatest hitter in baseball history still made an out 60% of the time. Michael Jordan, likely the greatest basketball player of all time, was cut from his team long before he went on to star for the University of North Carolina and Chicago Bulls. Many consider Peyton Manning as one of the best quarterbacks of all time, and he holds the NFL record for most career touchdown passes with 539. However, over the course of that career, he also threw 251 interceptions. His accomplishments, and all athletes who achieve great things, would never be possible if the reaction to failure was anything other than trying again...and again...and again.
Recently we had a call with a group from China that were interested in possibly bringing JumpBunch to their country. During the call they asked a question about how cultural differences might need to be considered when evaluating how the program might work there or in other countries. Our CEO, Tom Bunchman, began his reply by pointing out something that is so simple yet so powerful. Kids are kids. At the core of it all, if we let them, kids all have the same basic needs and desires wherever they may be.
A Youth Athletes United Brand
