January 26, 2024 • 23 mins
Brian Anderson Needham, a highly accomplished former US Marine and law enforcement expert. Needham shares his profound expertise in personal safety and defense, drawing from his extensive background as a Sniper, Platoon Sergeant, Route Recon Forward Operator, Hostage Negotiator, and a specialist in hand-to-hand combat and de-escalation techniques. He discusses the significance of such skills for real estate professionals, focusing on situational awareness and the importance of being prepared for various safety risks encountered in their field.
The conversation delves into Needham's experiences in training over 50,000 law enforcement, probation, and corrections officers, and how these methods are vital for real estate agents. Needham emphasizes the importance of being vigilant and prepared, offering practical advice and insights into defensive strategies that can be employed in everyday scenarios. The episode is not just about physical safety; it also touches on the mental resilience required in high-stress situations, making it a must-listen for those in the real estate industry who seek to enhance their safety and wellbeing in a demanding profession.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Live from the hottest real estate market in America, Tampa
Bay Florida. This is the real estate leads podcast with
the CEO and founder of the Olga system, your host,
Lisa Carter.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
So I'm a carry conceal uh holder and I understand
that even myself, I can't carry three or four weapon
systems from pepper spray to whatever else to a knife.
To God forbid my pistol
how
to shoot is completely different from knowing when to shoot.
(01:06):
How do you get past a person's ego with their past?
Like for myself, I don't have any military background, but
I have grown up around firearms all my life. So
I do know how to shoot the eye out of
a net. However, I may not necessarily be able to
(01:26):
equate that to knowing when to shoot. How do you
get past the egos? So, e ego is a huge
part of um
what we have to try to defeat o obviously in,
in that realm as far as firearms go. The thing
about what you just said though, first of all, you
said people can't carry several or, or, or numerous weapon
(01:48):
systems and that's where weapon brand comes. You can just
not a gun,
you can carry your gun, but you are the weapon.
So we, we make you understand what to recognize how
to avoid it. If you can't recognize it, how to
fight out of it
or deescalated it. So you have all these weapons and,
and you've got five major weapons already attached to you,
(02:09):
get your head, your arms and your legs and, and
we're gonna teach you how to use those as weapons.
The last resort is your firearm, obviously. So, you know,
even in our, our weapon retention course and, and I'll get,
get back to your question about the, the ego thing
cause it's, it's huge, right? But um even, even the
whole subject of um when to shoot, when to fire
things like that,
(02:30):
uh that's gonna take experience and that's also going to
take um understanding what those behavioral characteristics of that other
human are doing. So obviously, it takes training. So there's
a ton of people out there that just take AC
CW course and they're like, well, I, I'm good, I'm
good to go now. There's, that's such a huge
misconception, right? For that reason. Do you know how to
write a report? Can you articulate a report afterwards? Um
(02:52):
They don't teach you that in, in your typical CCW class.
Um How do you, how do you handle your firearm?
They don't, they barely teach you how to do that? Like,
do you know that the fundamentals of your own gun.
And
even more importantly than that, how to even hold on
to it cause there's people right now that carry their
gun and have no idea that if somebody that's inebriated
somebody that's uh just committed to the act, somebody that
(03:13):
has the skill set, former military, former law enforcement or
just a gun enthusiast, they're gonna get to your gun.
They don't need your consent, they're gonna go after your,
your gun. And if you don't know if you don't
understand that, that, that 9 ft radius on what to
do within that time. Because we teach you, we teach
you how to use your elbows how to actually use
your firearm without shooting it
to protect yourself. So, but back to your question about
(03:35):
the ego, it's like these people, we get it all
the time where we're like, you know, would you like
a self defense class? Would you like weapons retention? We
get the same response. Well, you're not gonna get my gun. Well,
it's not your choice
but that's, that's the ego. It's making them understand. So
when things like this, when, when we're on podcasts, when,
when we're on the news, when we're giving presentations where
(03:55):
people just kind of see like, ok, well, maybe that
we're hoping it opens their mind up to, um, understanding
that there's a lot more to it than just carrying
a gun and shooting a gun at a piece of
paper
at, at the range. You know, any special operator is
gonna tell you, um, for any special team that the
majority of their firearms training is done by dry firing.
(04:19):
As a matter of fact, the Marine Corps, you do
three days and, and Marine Corps days are, aren't like
our regular work days, right? You do three days, uh,
where you literally do nothing but what they call snapping
in and that's dry firing. How many people have gone
to a course and learned how to dry fire?
I, I don't know, har hardly any unless they've gone
to uh people that have had that prior training. So
(04:41):
I guess to answer your question, it's just exposure, exposure
and trying to get them to understand. But you know, that,
that's a question about firearms and, and, and I'm gonna
go all the way back to, to the very beginning
that what we do is we create weapons out of you.
So you don't have to use a firearm. We're, we're
advocates of, hey, carry because it's protection, right? But we're
also bigger advocates of um training,
(05:02):
train yourself up and everybody needs it. I, I'm 47
years old. Um MMI I feel like I'm 67 years
old but uh because I beat, beat the hell up. But, um,
you know, I, I, I've, I've had in 47 years
of life and out of that 47 years I started
at 19. So over half my life I've been carrying
(05:23):
a firearm for a profession and I still need more training.
I still don't trust it more than what I, what
I do. My eyes, my intuition in my hands,
my God, we're, we're all sitting here like riveting like Brian. We,
(05:43):
we have us like hanging on. What, what I mean? What,
what else? There's so much like there's everything and then there's,
I'm speechless, there's nothing but there's everything I want to
talk about this less works directly with rich
real estate agents as he mentioned. And when I told
him that you guys were coming on the show today,
he first thing he said is, oh, this is well needed.
(06:04):
We need to talk about but why? So we know
that you get sponsored a lot to come in and talk.
But I think agency to understand this is critical. So
we open our realtor safety classes a lot with, if
you told your loved ones that you were going into
(06:25):
a home
that you've never been in before with a stranger, you've
never met them. And um their response would probably be no,
you're not. You're crazy. Why would you do that? But
real estate agents do that every single day. And so
our why is to make sure that they
(06:47):
get home at night, every night safely to their families.
It's not about the CE S Yeah, the CE s
are great. It's not about, oh, yeah, I know self-defense.
That's great. But what's better is getting home to your
families every night.
It's the, for me, it's the old saying, it's better
to be judged by 12 than carried by six as
(07:10):
a real estate photographer. I see it all the time.
Sometimes that your realtors are very vulnerable positions going into
homes or being in that open house that they can't
vet anyone that's coming in anywhere from the threat to
their bodily harm to even theft. People come in when
it's busy and they will snatch the, the jewelry that's
(07:32):
in the jewelry box
and there's a liability issue for the realtor at that point.
How are you gonna replace the, uh, the, the f
literally the family jewels? That's your responsibility as the realtor.
That's the best case scenario of a worst case scenario.
The worst case scenario you're not coming home.
And that is why it is important for realtors and
(07:57):
anyone within the real estate industry to be honest because
you've got inspectors that go into shady places. I can
be sent into a shady home in a shady neighborhood.
You've got people that are within all aspects that touch
the sale and the purchasing of a home that can
be vulnerable to harm.
Is there anything that they can do prior? Is there
(08:18):
something you guys say? You know, if you're setting up
these o open houses, here's some things to look for. Oh, yeah.
Uh our, our class, our realtor safety class. It's, it's
all lecture based we have, we have one that's physical,
the realtor, self defense and the realtor, um, safety course,
which actually
that's where we go over. Hey, from the time you
get the phone call, these are some tips on, on
(08:40):
what to do to vet your client. Um, these are
some things to do on, on what, what to look
out for if this person seems more interested in you
than the actual property. So we go through the whole
process with them and, and the thing about it with
this class is
uh we're not trying to make realtors o obviously scared
cause that's their profession, that's how they make their money.
That's how, that's how they, they, they bring the uh
(09:02):
the bread home, right? However,
we just want them to be a little more confident in,
in what they're doing when they leave their house every
single day to go to a property like, like Jamie
mentioned an unknown place with an unknown person, um who
they've never met and they're alone and we want you
to be more confident when you're more confident. Well, here's
what's crazy about this when you're more confident
(09:23):
you had this aura about yourself. You know, we give
the analogy if, if you know, if you're in college
or high school and you're taking a test, there's a
whole classroom full of students and uh there's ones that
are just feverishly writing answers down, they know all of it, right?
And then there's like me in college guessing everything. Right. So,
but don't you think the professor can look out and,
(09:43):
and know exactly who's passing that test? So, that's exactly
what happens when you, when you get this knowledge, you
get this, this, this new skill set, even
this mental skill set, you carry yourself a little bit different.
You're a little more vigilant, your heads on a swivel and,
and something just to, um, just to add to what
LES said
it doesn't always have to be the shady areas. If,
(10:03):
if I'm a crook, I'm going, I'm going where the
nice stuff is. You know, so that's something else. We
have so many people that say, well, I'm, I'm normally
not in bad areas and things like that. Ok. Well, yeah,
what is a bad area right? Anywhere? Could, could end
up being a bad area. So, you know, we hear
that all the time. So,
oh my gosh, the Murdoch, they were killed, they all
were killed on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
(10:25):
So I guess it could be anywhere and a lot
of attacks, especially sexual attacks are by somebody that, you know,
might not be one of your best friends or a
family member. It may be. But, um, you know, of them,
you know, them, they're a family friend and if you
(10:47):
don't know how to protect yourself when you've trusted this
person
who's now invading your space, invading your body, maybe, um,
you know, it's not all about being in a bad area.
There's a bunch of realtor, there's a bunch of realtor, um,
reality shows on right now.
And I often look at these, I don't know if
(11:08):
you've seen Selling Sunset and, um, you know, it's like the,
it's the housewives version of being a real estate agent
and generally they're all in pretty, really nice outfits but
they're in heels and
in short dresses And I always like, get concerned about
the fact that the first of all, they send the
(11:29):
wrong message, real estate is not about that. If you
know any realtor that's doing any real business, they're not,
they don't have time to get dressed up like that.
Um It, it, they, they're right, there's a hustle but
it ain't that one. And so, you know, what do
you say to some of these younger agents that are
very much influenced by the glamour
(11:49):
um, of the Instagram live? Um Staying safe. Um So
one thing I, I would mention with that is just
keep in mind that we ask realtors when we have
this class, how many of you um have business cards?
They'll raise their hand. How many of you have your
picture on your business card? How many of you can
be found online? So, yeah, everybody, so these people that are,
(12:12):
um putting their selves out themselves out there, they have
to think also you look great. You look fabulous that that,
that's the real I want.
But that may also be the realtor that the bad
guy wants and you're putting yourself out there more and
more and more. So you just got to arm yourself and,
and by arm yourself, I don't mean necessarily, uh, with
a firearm, I mean, arm yourself mentally. Like what, what
(12:32):
kind of knowledge you carry? What kind of skill set
are you, are you carrying to be able to protect yourself?
It's a responsibility. You know, if, if, if I'm trying
to make myself look good and then put myself, which
is great, everybody should, right? Um And that's, that's gonna
get some more sales, hopefully. However, if the person becomes
more interested in you than the property, that's an issue.
Are you finding this with men as well as with
(12:53):
we right now, our conversation has been very female focused,
talk to us a little bit about what you're hearing
from males in the workplace. So a lot of times, um, uh,
as a matter of fact, when we have a class,
we just, the past couple of classes we've had our
demographic typically is female because that those are, we always
have the, these, these guys that, um,
(13:15):
we buy gift certificates or, or spend money on their,
uh their significant other or their sister, their mother, whoever
it may be, um, to come take our class. And,
and my question is always, why aren't you in the class?
Because then you guys can practice together, you can get
the skill set, you can have this knowledge because if
you knew cause they, they, we, I'm a guy, we have,
we have an ego, right? Uh But they always have
(13:38):
this thing where um
like, well, I, I won't need it. I don't need
it as much as her. But if you did know it,
if you didn't know what to do, you'd already be
able to teach her, you wouldn't need us. So why
are you spending the money? You know what I mean?
So uh we try to get it out there. Uh
You know, to as many guys also as possible because
you change one person, you change a family, you change
a family, you change a neighborhood, you change a neighborhood.
(13:59):
Now your community is becoming safer, right? And these uh
these guys that show up, we, we applaud them,
you know, we, our last class we had, what was it? Four, Jamie,
we had 44 males show up and, and we applaud them, right? They, they,
they were and uh you know, we, we tell them
look like you're, these are the responsible people taking it
back to their family and they put their ego to
(14:20):
the side. Uh
You know, all we can tell them is, is continuously
try to find ways to make yourself a little more
aware of what's going on a little bit safer and
it's contagious. You know, if your kids, see if I'm
gonna give you an example of, of, um, something pretty,
pretty intense. Right?
They were, there were, uh, interviews, there were interviews with, um,
(14:42):
Attackers with predators, predators that were looking for Children. And
when they asked them, what do they look for? What
do they look for bef before they, they actually, uh,
do this type of, type of, uh, predatory behavior. They
said they look at the dads
if they look at the dads, if the dad looks
like they have, he has himself put together, we avoid it.
(15:02):
If he looks disheveled, if he looks unaware, if he
looks like he doesn't care if he, if he just
doesn't look like he's not organized, they're more likely to
be attacked and that's coming straight from a predator's mouth. So,
I it's like if, if we know this as males,
you know, why are we trying to do whatever we
can to arm ourselves with that knowledge, uh, to be
able to make ourselves safer and, and take these types
(15:23):
of classes? And we're not saying, you know, you have
to take weapon brain classes. We are. But, uh, yeah,
but we are saying, uh, take something, take anything like
we've talked about earlier that or about yourself, you carry
yourself a little bit different. So we give the analogy
in our class to people that, um, if you left
today and I told you that out of this class,
there was a hungry tiger outside, you probably walk a
(15:44):
little bit differently. You would
and have your head down and, and your nose and
your phone right to your car. So, but here's the
sad truth. There is. There, there are hungry tigers out there,
there's predators out there and they're looking for males, for
females any way they can gain an advantage on the
male subject. Um,
and speaking about ego, how's that ego going to be
(16:07):
when you get your excuse my French? But when you
get your ass kicked because there's no guarantee in a
fight that you're gonna win. But being trained, you're gonna
have a better chance or a better chance of avoiding
that fight.
And so if your ego is so big, think about
how your ego is gonna be deflated. If you get your,
(16:31):
the general public, the general public and guys, it's all
about M ma fighting the Rocky bout. There's rules to
fighting in a real fight. There's no rules, it's me
or you and I choose me
by whatever means necessary to be able to talk to
a police officer afterwards and give a report. That's my,
(16:52):
that's my goal, but that's my last thing I wanna do.
I don't want to take a life.
But if it, if it's a choice between me or you,
I choose me and having and it all starts minutes
and minutes and minutes before anything ever happens, it's about
situational awareness.
(17:13):
You can avoid 80% of any conflict by just being
aware of what's around you and people, society in general
have this awesome when I was growing up in the seventies, eighties,
you couldn't imagine having something so powerful in your hand
to be able to communicate to someone across the world
and they got their nose buried in the phone. They
(17:35):
have no idea what's going on around them. I don't
know how many times I've had to break really quickly
at a street corner because someone's just walking right in.
I'm like, really we have the attention span of a
nat nowadays and
the more knowledge you have, you get to avoid being
able to have to be in an incident. Wow. So
(17:59):
this is Realtor safety month and so you guys must
have a quite a few talks. I can visit your website.
I'm seeing that here. Uh weapon brand
dot com. Um Brian, your bio is phenomenal. Um I
can't think of being taught by anyone um, better in
terms of self-defense. Um So do you guys have, um, in,
(18:19):
in this month you have a bunch of things going
on that you wanna kind of talk about or? Yeah,
we've got, uh we've got, we, we've just already done
several events but we have some uh some events coming
up and actually Jamie could probably uh pull that up
and tell you the exact dates but uh we have realtors,
uh realtor safety, realtor, self-defense. Uh And then also, we
have different types of uh events scheduled around that as well.
(18:41):
So we also do private, so we do private lessons.
So we, we train pretty much 364 days a year.
We, we work all day every day just because we're
a newer company. So, you know, we're doing everything out
there to help keep our community safe. Um
(19:03):
As far as upcoming events that, oh, so how, how
often do we train? We typically
are doing a lot more corporate training. So companies pay
us to come in, do a teambuilding event with self-defense
or do some of our lecture based events. Um And
those are a lot of private events. We normally have
(19:26):
one or two events that are open to the public
per month. Um And then privates we do every single day.
So talk a little bit about the adaptive training for
individuals with disabilities. Yeah, I'll, I'll talk a little bit
about it and then I'll pass it to Brian cause
he's the star there, but it makes me so proud
because he's an adaptive athlete coach, which means whether you're
(19:50):
in a wheelchair or using a walker or a cane.
Um He can train you. He trains a
blind boxer, which I think is just the coolest thing ever.
Um But I'll tell him I'll let him tell you
a little bit more about his experience being an adaptive
athlete coach, but we literally can train you if you're
laying in a bed or in a wheelchair or you're
(20:11):
an elite athlete or SWAT team or military police. He's
trained over 50,000 law enforcement officers. So, um, the gamut, we,
we train the gamut.
Yeah. So we have AAA lot of, um, not push
back per se but people that are
afraid of, of the training because they feel that. Well,
(20:32):
I just can't do that. As a matter of fact,
almost every training we have, we have people that ask, well,
we are, we going to be sweating, should we wear
gym clothes? And we laugh about it because when, when we,
when they show up in these gym clothes, we're like,
uh how many of you guys are like, are gonna
exercise after this because you're not going to exercise during
this class. Um, i it's, if you break a sweat,
it's because you, you are working too hard or too
(20:53):
hot in here, right?
And, um, we explain to people the stuff that we
do is, is so simple to learn, it's so easy
to retain, but it's highly effective and it's for every
skill level. Um, every age, when I say every age,
typically 6 to 7 and up is when we'll start. But, um,
we go all the way up to, I mean, you know,
(21:13):
Jamie's dad, 78 years old black belt in karate and
he still says he learned something every single class that
we take. So, um,
it's like I said every, every skill set and as
far as the adaptive stuff goes, it's a certification I
got years and years ago and, um,
it was main, what I mainly used it for was
for functional fitness type things. Um, how to train adaptive athletes, um,
(21:37):
how to work out, how to do their own type
of sport. And it just kind of transcended into the
whole self-defense world. So, which was actually easier. Um You know, we,
we right now have clients like Jamie said, that are
in wheelchairs, um still use your arms, you can still
protect yourself, you know, so we find ways to be
able to uh build that confidence so we could literally
(21:58):
do it for anybody.
No, no, no excuses. I love it. Well, I'm, I'm
like this, we, we got an email from Jamie introducing herself.
Um There, the folks are down in Florida and in
the Pinellas area only,
we actually are based out of Saint Petersburg. Um But
(22:21):
we travel the country doing these workshops. Um We have
a training facility in Warren Ohio that we do a
lot out of Brian actually owns that company. Um And
we use it as our Midwest training facility down here.
We are mobile. We go to your office
is your facilities or we have a gym in um
(22:44):
Pinellas Park called Kinetics Inspired Fitness that we train out
of and do a lot of events there. Um So
we'll go anywhere. Uh even if you wanna send us
to Italy, we'll, we'll go to Italy and train. No problem.
Just have some, uh, just have some good Chian for us.
Ok.
Wow, this is great. Like the timing was perfect. September
(23:05):
is September is realtors uh uh safety month. And so
to have you guys here, we're at beautiful Clearwater Florida
at the Realtors, uh, Pell's Realtors Association um office and
you guys stopped by and you made this happen
so you can talk to us today. Um So timely
and to know that there's a company out there that
(23:26):
whether I'm an individual or corporation or just a couple
of agents that are, you know, feeling a little unsafe,
wanna come to one of your classes that you are
available and you're out there. Weapon brand.com. Love it. Thank you, Brian.
Thank you, Jamie. Thank you so much.
Live from the hottest real estate market in America, Tampa
Bay Florida. This is the real estate leads podcast with
the CEO and founder of the Olga system, your host,
Lisa Carter.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
So I'm a carry conceal uh holder and I understand
that even myself, I can't carry three or four weapon
systems from pepper spray to whatever else to a knife.
To God forbid my pistol
how
to shoot is completely different from knowing when to shoot.
(01:06):
How do you get past a person's ego with their past?
Like for myself, I don't have any military background, but
I have grown up around firearms all my life. So
I do know how to shoot the eye out of
a net. However, I may not necessarily be able to
(01:26):
equate that to knowing when to shoot. How do you
get past the egos? So, e ego is a huge
part of um
what we have to try to defeat o obviously in,
in that realm as far as firearms go. The thing
about what you just said though, first of all, you
said people can't carry several or, or, or numerous weapon
(01:48):
systems and that's where weapon brand comes. You can just
not a gun,
you can carry your gun, but you are the weapon.
So we, we make you understand what to recognize how
to avoid it. If you can't recognize it, how to
fight out of it
or deescalated it. So you have all these weapons and,
and you've got five major weapons already attached to you,
(02:09):
get your head, your arms and your legs and, and
we're gonna teach you how to use those as weapons.
The last resort is your firearm, obviously. So, you know,
even in our, our weapon retention course and, and I'll get,
get back to your question about the, the ego thing
cause it's, it's huge, right? But um even, even the
whole subject of um when to shoot, when to fire
things like that,
(02:30):
uh that's gonna take experience and that's also going to
take um understanding what those behavioral characteristics of that other
human are doing. So obviously, it takes training. So there's
a ton of people out there that just take AC
CW course and they're like, well, I, I'm good, I'm
good to go now. There's, that's such a huge
misconception, right? For that reason. Do you know how to
write a report? Can you articulate a report afterwards? Um
(02:52):
They don't teach you that in, in your typical CCW class.
Um How do you, how do you handle your firearm?
They don't, they barely teach you how to do that? Like,
do you know that the fundamentals of your own gun.
And
even more importantly than that, how to even hold on
to it cause there's people right now that carry their
gun and have no idea that if somebody that's inebriated
somebody that's uh just committed to the act, somebody that
(03:13):
has the skill set, former military, former law enforcement or
just a gun enthusiast, they're gonna get to your gun.
They don't need your consent, they're gonna go after your,
your gun. And if you don't know if you don't
understand that, that, that 9 ft radius on what to
do within that time. Because we teach you, we teach
you how to use your elbows how to actually use
your firearm without shooting it
to protect yourself. So, but back to your question about
(03:35):
the ego, it's like these people, we get it all
the time where we're like, you know, would you like
a self defense class? Would you like weapons retention? We
get the same response. Well, you're not gonna get my gun. Well,
it's not your choice
but that's, that's the ego. It's making them understand. So
when things like this, when, when we're on podcasts, when,
when we're on the news, when we're giving presentations where
(03:55):
people just kind of see like, ok, well, maybe that
we're hoping it opens their mind up to, um, understanding
that there's a lot more to it than just carrying
a gun and shooting a gun at a piece of
paper
at, at the range. You know, any special operator is
gonna tell you, um, for any special team that the
majority of their firearms training is done by dry firing.
(04:19):
As a matter of fact, the Marine Corps, you do
three days and, and Marine Corps days are, aren't like
our regular work days, right? You do three days, uh,
where you literally do nothing but what they call snapping
in and that's dry firing. How many people have gone
to a course and learned how to dry fire?
I, I don't know, har hardly any unless they've gone
to uh people that have had that prior training. So
(04:41):
I guess to answer your question, it's just exposure, exposure
and trying to get them to understand. But you know, that,
that's a question about firearms and, and, and I'm gonna
go all the way back to, to the very beginning
that what we do is we create weapons out of you.
So you don't have to use a firearm. We're, we're
advocates of, hey, carry because it's protection, right? But we're
also bigger advocates of um training,
(05:02):
train yourself up and everybody needs it. I, I'm 47
years old. Um MMI I feel like I'm 67 years
old but uh because I beat, beat the hell up. But, um,
you know, I, I, I've, I've had in 47 years
of life and out of that 47 years I started
at 19. So over half my life I've been carrying
(05:23):
a firearm for a profession and I still need more training.
I still don't trust it more than what I, what
I do. My eyes, my intuition in my hands,
my God, we're, we're all sitting here like riveting like Brian. We,
(05:43):
we have us like hanging on. What, what I mean? What,
what else? There's so much like there's everything and then there's,
I'm speechless, there's nothing but there's everything I want to
talk about this less works directly with rich
real estate agents as he mentioned. And when I told
him that you guys were coming on the show today,
he first thing he said is, oh, this is well needed.
(06:04):
We need to talk about but why? So we know
that you get sponsored a lot to come in and talk.
But I think agency to understand this is critical. So
we open our realtor safety classes a lot with, if
you told your loved ones that you were going into
(06:25):
a home
that you've never been in before with a stranger, you've
never met them. And um their response would probably be no,
you're not. You're crazy. Why would you do that? But
real estate agents do that every single day. And so
our why is to make sure that they
(06:47):
get home at night, every night safely to their families.
It's not about the CE S Yeah, the CE s
are great. It's not about, oh, yeah, I know self-defense.
That's great. But what's better is getting home to your
families every night.
It's the, for me, it's the old saying, it's better
to be judged by 12 than carried by six as
(07:10):
a real estate photographer. I see it all the time.
Sometimes that your realtors are very vulnerable positions going into
homes or being in that open house that they can't
vet anyone that's coming in anywhere from the threat to
their bodily harm to even theft. People come in when
it's busy and they will snatch the, the jewelry that's
(07:32):
in the jewelry box
and there's a liability issue for the realtor at that point.
How are you gonna replace the, uh, the, the f
literally the family jewels? That's your responsibility as the realtor.
That's the best case scenario of a worst case scenario.
The worst case scenario you're not coming home.
And that is why it is important for realtors and
(07:57):
anyone within the real estate industry to be honest because
you've got inspectors that go into shady places. I can
be sent into a shady home in a shady neighborhood.
You've got people that are within all aspects that touch
the sale and the purchasing of a home that can
be vulnerable to harm.
Is there anything that they can do prior? Is there
(08:18):
something you guys say? You know, if you're setting up
these o open houses, here's some things to look for. Oh, yeah.
Uh our, our class, our realtor safety class. It's, it's
all lecture based we have, we have one that's physical,
the realtor, self defense and the realtor, um, safety course,
which actually
that's where we go over. Hey, from the time you
get the phone call, these are some tips on, on
(08:40):
what to do to vet your client. Um, these are
some things to do on, on what, what to look
out for if this person seems more interested in you
than the actual property. So we go through the whole
process with them and, and the thing about it with
this class is
uh we're not trying to make realtors o obviously scared
cause that's their profession, that's how they make their money.
That's how, that's how they, they, they bring the uh
(09:02):
the bread home, right? However,
we just want them to be a little more confident in,
in what they're doing when they leave their house every
single day to go to a property like, like Jamie
mentioned an unknown place with an unknown person, um who
they've never met and they're alone and we want you
to be more confident when you're more confident. Well, here's
what's crazy about this when you're more confident
(09:23):
you had this aura about yourself. You know, we give
the analogy if, if you know, if you're in college
or high school and you're taking a test, there's a
whole classroom full of students and uh there's ones that
are just feverishly writing answers down, they know all of it, right?
And then there's like me in college guessing everything. Right. So,
but don't you think the professor can look out and,
(09:43):
and know exactly who's passing that test? So, that's exactly
what happens when you, when you get this knowledge, you
get this, this, this new skill set, even
this mental skill set, you carry yourself a little bit different.
You're a little more vigilant, your heads on a swivel and,
and something just to, um, just to add to what
LES said
it doesn't always have to be the shady areas. If,
(10:03):
if I'm a crook, I'm going, I'm going where the
nice stuff is. You know, so that's something else. We
have so many people that say, well, I'm, I'm normally
not in bad areas and things like that. Ok. Well, yeah,
what is a bad area right? Anywhere? Could, could end
up being a bad area. So, you know, we hear
that all the time. So,
oh my gosh, the Murdoch, they were killed, they all
were killed on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
(10:25):
So I guess it could be anywhere and a lot
of attacks, especially sexual attacks are by somebody that, you know,
might not be one of your best friends or a
family member. It may be. But, um, you know, of them,
you know, them, they're a family friend and if you
(10:47):
don't know how to protect yourself when you've trusted this
person
who's now invading your space, invading your body, maybe, um,
you know, it's not all about being in a bad area.
There's a bunch of realtor, there's a bunch of realtor, um,
reality shows on right now.
And I often look at these, I don't know if
(11:08):
you've seen Selling Sunset and, um, you know, it's like the,
it's the housewives version of being a real estate agent
and generally they're all in pretty, really nice outfits but
they're in heels and
in short dresses And I always like, get concerned about
the fact that the first of all, they send the
(11:29):
wrong message, real estate is not about that. If you
know any realtor that's doing any real business, they're not,
they don't have time to get dressed up like that.
Um It, it, they, they're right, there's a hustle but
it ain't that one. And so, you know, what do
you say to some of these younger agents that are
very much influenced by the glamour
(11:49):
um, of the Instagram live? Um Staying safe. Um So
one thing I, I would mention with that is just
keep in mind that we ask realtors when we have
this class, how many of you um have business cards?
They'll raise their hand. How many of you have your
picture on your business card? How many of you can
be found online? So, yeah, everybody, so these people that are,
(12:12):
um putting their selves out themselves out there, they have
to think also you look great. You look fabulous that that,
that's the real I want.
But that may also be the realtor that the bad
guy wants and you're putting yourself out there more and
more and more. So you just got to arm yourself and,
and by arm yourself, I don't mean necessarily, uh, with
a firearm, I mean, arm yourself mentally. Like what, what
(12:32):
kind of knowledge you carry? What kind of skill set
are you, are you carrying to be able to protect yourself?
It's a responsibility. You know, if, if, if I'm trying
to make myself look good and then put myself, which
is great, everybody should, right? Um And that's, that's gonna
get some more sales, hopefully. However, if the person becomes
more interested in you than the property, that's an issue.
Are you finding this with men as well as with
(12:53):
we right now, our conversation has been very female focused,
talk to us a little bit about what you're hearing
from males in the workplace. So a lot of times, um, uh,
as a matter of fact, when we have a class,
we just, the past couple of classes we've had our
demographic typically is female because that those are, we always
have the, these, these guys that, um,
(13:15):
we buy gift certificates or, or spend money on their,
uh their significant other or their sister, their mother, whoever
it may be, um, to come take our class. And,
and my question is always, why aren't you in the class?
Because then you guys can practice together, you can get
the skill set, you can have this knowledge because if
you knew cause they, they, we, I'm a guy, we have,
we have an ego, right? Uh But they always have
(13:38):
this thing where um
like, well, I, I won't need it. I don't need
it as much as her. But if you did know it,
if you didn't know what to do, you'd already be
able to teach her, you wouldn't need us. So why
are you spending the money? You know what I mean?
So uh we try to get it out there. Uh
You know, to as many guys also as possible because
you change one person, you change a family, you change
a family, you change a neighborhood, you change a neighborhood.
(13:59):
Now your community is becoming safer, right? And these uh
these guys that show up, we, we applaud them,
you know, we, our last class we had, what was it? Four, Jamie,
we had 44 males show up and, and we applaud them, right? They, they,
they were and uh you know, we, we tell them
look like you're, these are the responsible people taking it
back to their family and they put their ego to
(14:20):
the side. Uh
You know, all we can tell them is, is continuously
try to find ways to make yourself a little more
aware of what's going on a little bit safer and
it's contagious. You know, if your kids, see if I'm
gonna give you an example of, of, um, something pretty,
pretty intense. Right?
They were, there were, uh, interviews, there were interviews with, um,
(14:42):
Attackers with predators, predators that were looking for Children. And
when they asked them, what do they look for? What
do they look for bef before they, they actually, uh,
do this type of, type of, uh, predatory behavior. They
said they look at the dads
if they look at the dads, if the dad looks
like they have, he has himself put together, we avoid it.
(15:02):
If he looks disheveled, if he looks unaware, if he
looks like he doesn't care if he, if he just
doesn't look like he's not organized, they're more likely to
be attacked and that's coming straight from a predator's mouth. So,
I it's like if, if we know this as males,
you know, why are we trying to do whatever we
can to arm ourselves with that knowledge, uh, to be
able to make ourselves safer and, and take these types
(15:23):
of classes? And we're not saying, you know, you have
to take weapon brain classes. We are. But, uh, yeah,
but we are saying, uh, take something, take anything like
we've talked about earlier that or about yourself, you carry
yourself a little bit different. So we give the analogy
in our class to people that, um, if you left
today and I told you that out of this class,
there was a hungry tiger outside, you probably walk a
(15:44):
little bit differently. You would
and have your head down and, and your nose and
your phone right to your car. So, but here's the
sad truth. There is. There, there are hungry tigers out there,
there's predators out there and they're looking for males, for
females any way they can gain an advantage on the
male subject. Um,
and speaking about ego, how's that ego going to be
(16:07):
when you get your excuse my French? But when you
get your ass kicked because there's no guarantee in a
fight that you're gonna win. But being trained, you're gonna
have a better chance or a better chance of avoiding
that fight.
And so if your ego is so big, think about
how your ego is gonna be deflated. If you get your,
(16:31):
the general public, the general public and guys, it's all
about M ma fighting the Rocky bout. There's rules to
fighting in a real fight. There's no rules, it's me
or you and I choose me
by whatever means necessary to be able to talk to
a police officer afterwards and give a report. That's my,
(16:52):
that's my goal, but that's my last thing I wanna do.
I don't want to take a life.
But if it, if it's a choice between me or you,
I choose me and having and it all starts minutes
and minutes and minutes before anything ever happens, it's about
situational awareness.
(17:13):
You can avoid 80% of any conflict by just being
aware of what's around you and people, society in general
have this awesome when I was growing up in the seventies, eighties,
you couldn't imagine having something so powerful in your hand
to be able to communicate to someone across the world
and they got their nose buried in the phone. They
(17:35):
have no idea what's going on around them. I don't
know how many times I've had to break really quickly
at a street corner because someone's just walking right in.
I'm like, really we have the attention span of a
nat nowadays and
the more knowledge you have, you get to avoid being
able to have to be in an incident. Wow. So
(17:59):
this is Realtor safety month and so you guys must
have a quite a few talks. I can visit your website.
I'm seeing that here. Uh weapon brand
dot com. Um Brian, your bio is phenomenal. Um I
can't think of being taught by anyone um, better in
terms of self-defense. Um So do you guys have, um, in,
(18:19):
in this month you have a bunch of things going
on that you wanna kind of talk about or? Yeah,
we've got, uh we've got, we, we've just already done
several events but we have some uh some events coming
up and actually Jamie could probably uh pull that up
and tell you the exact dates but uh we have realtors,
uh realtor safety, realtor, self-defense. Uh And then also, we
have different types of uh events scheduled around that as well.
(18:41):
So we also do private, so we do private lessons.
So we, we train pretty much 364 days a year.
We, we work all day every day just because we're
a newer company. So, you know, we're doing everything out
there to help keep our community safe. Um
(19:03):
As far as upcoming events that, oh, so how, how
often do we train? We typically
are doing a lot more corporate training. So companies pay
us to come in, do a teambuilding event with self-defense
or do some of our lecture based events. Um And
those are a lot of private events. We normally have
(19:26):
one or two events that are open to the public
per month. Um And then privates we do every single day.
So talk a little bit about the adaptive training for
individuals with disabilities. Yeah, I'll, I'll talk a little bit
about it and then I'll pass it to Brian cause
he's the star there, but it makes me so proud
because he's an adaptive athlete coach, which means whether you're
(19:50):
in a wheelchair or using a walker or a cane.
Um He can train you. He trains a
blind boxer, which I think is just the coolest thing ever.
Um But I'll tell him I'll let him tell you
a little bit more about his experience being an adaptive
athlete coach, but we literally can train you if you're
laying in a bed or in a wheelchair or you're
(20:11):
an elite athlete or SWAT team or military police. He's
trained over 50,000 law enforcement officers. So, um, the gamut, we,
we train the gamut.
Yeah. So we have AAA lot of, um, not push
back per se but people that are
afraid of, of the training because they feel that. Well,
(20:32):
I just can't do that. As a matter of fact,
almost every training we have, we have people that ask, well,
we are, we going to be sweating, should we wear
gym clothes? And we laugh about it because when, when we,
when they show up in these gym clothes, we're like,
uh how many of you guys are like, are gonna
exercise after this because you're not going to exercise during
this class. Um, i it's, if you break a sweat,
it's because you, you are working too hard or too
(20:53):
hot in here, right?
And, um, we explain to people the stuff that we
do is, is so simple to learn, it's so easy
to retain, but it's highly effective and it's for every
skill level. Um, every age, when I say every age,
typically 6 to 7 and up is when we'll start. But, um,
we go all the way up to, I mean, you know,
(21:13):
Jamie's dad, 78 years old black belt in karate and
he still says he learned something every single class that
we take. So, um,
it's like I said every, every skill set and as
far as the adaptive stuff goes, it's a certification I
got years and years ago and, um,
it was main, what I mainly used it for was
for functional fitness type things. Um, how to train adaptive athletes, um,
(21:37):
how to work out, how to do their own type
of sport. And it just kind of transcended into the
whole self-defense world. So, which was actually easier. Um You know, we,
we right now have clients like Jamie said, that are
in wheelchairs, um still use your arms, you can still
protect yourself, you know, so we find ways to be
able to uh build that confidence so we could literally
(21:58):
do it for anybody.
No, no, no excuses. I love it. Well, I'm, I'm
like this, we, we got an email from Jamie introducing herself.
Um There, the folks are down in Florida and in
the Pinellas area only,
we actually are based out of Saint Petersburg. Um But
(22:21):
we travel the country doing these workshops. Um We have
a training facility in Warren Ohio that we do a
lot out of Brian actually owns that company. Um And
we use it as our Midwest training facility down here.
We are mobile. We go to your office
is your facilities or we have a gym in um
(22:44):
Pinellas Park called Kinetics Inspired Fitness that we train out
of and do a lot of events there. Um So
we'll go anywhere. Uh even if you wanna send us
to Italy, we'll, we'll go to Italy and train. No problem.
Just have some, uh, just have some good Chian for us.
Ok.
Wow, this is great. Like the timing was perfect. September
(23:05):
is September is realtors uh uh safety month. And so
to have you guys here, we're at beautiful Clearwater Florida
at the Realtors, uh, Pell's Realtors Association um office and
you guys stopped by and you made this happen
so you can talk to us today. Um So timely
and to know that there's a company out there that
(23:26):
whether I'm an individual or corporation or just a couple
of agents that are, you know, feeling a little unsafe,
wanna come to one of your classes that you are
available and you're out there. Weapon brand.com. Love it. Thank you, Brian.
Thank you, Jamie. Thank you so much.
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