March 5, 2024 • 35 mins
Welcome to the first episode of Inside the Wave with Perry Wirth, brought to you by Utopia. Today, we're delving into the heart of our mission at Utopia and exploring why our vision, coupled with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is vital for our community.
Join us as we share the inspiring journey of Coach Vern - a military veteran turned technologist, now the passionate Jiu-Jitsu head coach at Utopia. Vern shares his transformative experiences and how discovering his calling in Jiu-Jitsu led to significant personal growth and a positive shift in his life and those around him.
This episode dives deep into the essence of purpose and discipline, and how it helps in battling complacency. We discuss the powerful Japanese concept of Ikigai and the unparalleled fulfillment found in pursuing true passions. Drawing parallels between Jiu-Jitsu and life's challenges, we highlight how this martial art teaches us to navigate through life's turbulent waves.
We also explore how Jiu-Jitsu shapes the mindset of children, contrasting it with traditional team sports. Jiu-Jitsu instills a mindset of growth, focusing on learning from every experience rather than fearing failure.
Delving deeper, we discuss Jiu-Jitsu's transformative power - not just as a sport but as a catalyst for overall personal development, community engagement, and lifelong learning. Coach Vern shares his personal journey with Jiu-Jitsu, highlighting the myriad benefits he's gained, including physical strength, mental resilience, and a sense of community. He also addresses the misconception that Jiu-Jitsu is universally suitable, acknowledging certain limitations for individuals with specific health conditions.
We wrap up the episode reflecting on Utopia Academy's ethos - fostering future leaders and developing invaluable life skills in children through our distinctive programs. Tune in to discover how martial arts, particularly Jiu-Jitsu, can be a transformative force in personal growth and community development. Join us for an insightful journey inside Utopia's mission and the profound impact of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, welcome to the new Utopia podcast.
I'm here today, joined by our kids head coach and director of martial arts operations
at Utopia, Coach Vern, the legend. Big title, big shoes.
Awesome. Love it. I'm Perry. I'm the owner of Utopia.
Excited to be with you guys today. And today we're going to be talking about
(00:21):
why we think and why we know our mission and jiu-jitsu in general is necessary.
Necessary and we'll explain what we need what we mean by necessary
in a little bit so give us a little background on youth coach
for prior military then went
into the technology field for a while fixing electronics and
then stumbled upon what used to be called neutral ground and started my jiu-jitsu
(00:44):
journey and i realized early on that it could open up a lot of doors and then
got awarded the opportunity to coach with you and never looked back and studied
a lot more on childhood development.
Personal development, jujitsu, coaching, and now we're here.
Nice. What got you first involved in martial arts? Why?
(01:06):
What was your why? I was missing something.
I was extremely successful in business, sold the business, came back,
lacked clarity on my purpose again,
and listened to Joe Rogan and listened to all these influencers talk about Jocko,
Big One, and got involved.
Evolved and lacked a little bit of commitment for a little bit.
(01:29):
And I had a lot of mentors early on that I knew that did jujitsu and I saw the benefit to them.
And I said, well, if they can do it, then I can. So then started training and.
Nice. Did you lack commitment in jujitsu or other areas? All other areas.
I would make excuses for a lot of things than were my own setbacks.
(01:49):
So I would have a victim mentality.
Why isn't this happening for me and then started to look deeper into like,
oh, I'm in charge of all of this.
So I can start making better decisions and creating better habits.
And a lot of that had to do with jujitsu and opening that door for me.
Awesome. So even though you probably developed a lot of discipline in the army
(02:11):
and owning your own business, do you still struggle a little bit managing some
of that, keeping some of that?
Yeah. And I did some digging on this and a lot of it had to do with purpose
is when we lack purpose, we lack direction and clarity on the, the mission.
And we talk a lot about mission at Utopia and our vision and our path forward.
(02:33):
And when you're in the military and when you're operating a business,
you have a clear purpose, especially when you're in charge of people and leadership. leadership.
And when you kind of take the foot off the gas a little bit,
you start to question a lot of other things.
And I think purpose is the big key on finding that purpose and then executing on that. Yeah.
(02:54):
And I think it's important that everyone has a purpose behind what they're doing.
What is that driving factor?
And to me, it's got to be a little bit deeper than just, hey,
it's something I want to do because I want to do jujitsu, but that's not enough
to drive me to do it at the scale and the level and get me back in the way that I do.
(03:14):
And I think that purpose is really what is the North Star and our compass to
help direct us where we go.
We talked about it a little bit, but there's that Japanese term ikagi.
Ikagai, ikagi, one or the other, but it's where your passion,
your purpose, and your skills all meet.
And you might've found that. Have you found that in jujitsu?
(03:38):
Because I know I have, and I just find everything to be so much easier with that in my mind.
Yeah. That philosophy is important because everyone is always asking,
well, how do I become happy?
Or I'm not happy. How do I get there?
Take the happy pill. Yeah. And the short-term fix, right?
(04:00):
But really it is, is it involved in following your passion, following what you're
good at? What can you get paid to do?
And what are you inclined to develop?
And it's like, what is your purpose on this earth? Yeah.
Right. And some people find that purpose in their job.
Some people find that purpose as a parent. Sometimes people find that in a hobby.
(04:24):
And I think speaking for myself, I've found that in jujitsu.
Now there's a lot of other things I like to do outside of jujitsu,
but if I wasn't doing jujitsu, there'd be a huge gap.
At, which leads me to our discussion around why we think our mission at Utopia
and jiu-jitsu is necessary.
(04:46):
I had a parent once tell me he enrolled his son in jiu-jitsu because it was
important for his son to learn three things.
He had to learn how to swim, because he fell in water, really important.
Had to learn about money because as he was growing up, he didn't learn about
money, which results in not knowing what to do when you have it,
(05:07):
not knowing how to get it.
And as much as we like to say money's not important, as an adult,
it's very important. Very important.
And number three is the ability to defend himself.
And I like that analogy of jujitsu is just as important as swimming, right?
If you fall in water, you got to learn at least how to tread.
(05:28):
And in life, we have to learn how to build that confidence to make the right
choices, to stand up for ourselves and to potentially, hopefully never physically defend ourselves.
Yeah. Well, I've heard, I've heard you say this in passing. I kind of keep it
in the back of my mind is, is swimming in life.
Treading isn't an option.
(05:50):
Oh, it's an option. This is a very bad option. It's a very poor option because
the longer you try, the tighter you get.
And if you know how to effectively, you know, channel your emotions and be physically
and mentally confident in yourself, which Jujutsu provides, it kind of opens
up that door of, you know, I don't need to be a bully.
(06:12):
I know how to handle the stress of life because you can't really get rid of
it. You can just manage it.
And that's something that we teach a lot, especially with kids and adults is
how do you develop that emotional regulation to know that stress?
You're not going to ever get rid of it. you're only going to be able to manage
(06:33):
it and the effectiveness of that. Yeah.
And to me, if we compare jujitsu or what we do to swimming, like you said,
you don't want to be treading, treading water.
Treading water when it comes to life is complacency. Yeah.
And that's the last thing that we want is complacency. We want to teach people.
(06:54):
What their best is and how to get to their best and how to strive for their
best, not just how to make it by.
Right. Right. Because I think that's where people end up losing that happiness
is when they just start coasting.
Or they just start traveling with no destination and they're just distracted
and they lack that purpose and they wonder, you know, months,
(07:18):
years, decades, like where did all that time go?
You know, but when you learn how to effectively swim using that analogy,
you have direction, you have purpose, and you know that things that the storms are temporary,
and then you can navigate better through that.
(07:38):
Let's talk about kids kids our
program we talk about the necessity
of it and when i
think about our kids program you have so many activities that you can do for
your kids a lot of them are team-based sports football soccer basketball dance
(08:00):
gymnastics and what i tell parents is that That a lot of these programs.
Unfortunately, not by nature or design, but the by-product of those sports can
be detrimental to their development.
Because so sports like football, for example, I used to play football.
(08:23):
I played it. So played a lot of football. When you get into football.
You either are a natural talent and you get on the team or you have the competency
to understand and learn the game and then you become an athlete.
What happens to the 99%? They aren't necessarily super athletic.
(08:44):
Athletic they can't develop that
social connection with their teammates because
they feel like they're not a part of the tribe and emotionally
it it subconsciously tells them that they're
not good enough and what happens
when you lose the game what happens that
monday after you know for monday practice you
(09:07):
get punished right so they develop a a
winning losing mentality that it's bad to
lose you get punished for losing and with
jiu-jitsu the philosophy is you either
win or you learn and we've coached many
kids and competitions and the way that we go about it is when we frame the winning
(09:28):
we say before they go out there showcase your talents all these kids are training
for that purpose show me everything you've learned show off you know this is
a performance performance.
And if they lose, the first thing we do when they get off the mat is we say,
that was brave of you to go out there.
You showed a lot of courage because a lot of kids don't do that.
(09:51):
And then we say, now we have some stuff to go over and some more stuff to learn.
So winning or learning is the philosophy of jujitsu. Back to the lab. Back to the lab.
Deep, very deep.
You know, I think one thing that makes jiu-jitsu unique is a lot of kids' activities,
(10:14):
they're broken into sports and activities, right?
Where a parent puts their kid in a sport, and that would be soccer,
t-ball, football, whatever.
And activity, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, maybe dance, depends on parents' perspective.
And I think jujitsu in our program is unique because we work on the whole individual, right?
(10:38):
It is a sport, but it's not just a sport.
We work on just as much as developing athletes as we do great people.
And I think that's something that we have really embedded into our program that
truly makes it stand out from a lot of the other activities that are out there. I agree.
When I looked at the criteria of regular sports, we also, we have just a multifaceted criteria.
(11:06):
Maybe you're not the most athletic at that point in time, but you might be the most creative.
There's a spot in jujitsu for that. Maybe you're not the most creative or the
most athletic, but you are an excellent leader. And we know you go to tournaments.
It's not necessarily the big, strong guy that you're scared of in your bracket.
(11:30):
It's the guy that doesn't look athletic at all that you should be terrified
of. I agree. And I've seen it time and time again.
You should always judge them by their ears.
For sure. I've heard that one. I'm just kidding. If my ears were judged,
you shouldn't judge them too hard.
I would never judge your ears. Now, speaking of jiu-jitsu competition,
(11:52):
here's another thing that I think is unique.
Jiu-jitsu, when it comes down to it, in competition, is individual.
When you go out on the mat, you are the only person that's in charge of that outcome.
Yeah, you could say the ref has some determining factors on do they make good
calls or whatnot, but you're solo.
You just have to go out there and figure it out on your own,
(12:15):
which I grew up doing wrestling, And I think that was one of the best things
that wrestling did for me was put me on the spot and just, you got to figure it out.
But when you're in the practice room, it's different, right?
In the practice room, it's a team sport.
I need to help you get better because if I help you get better,
you help me get better. and there's a direct correlation with that and you can't
(12:37):
really do jiu-jitsu by yourself.
It's really up to that team atmosphere to make everyone better. Right.
But when it comes down to it, it's all on you.
Do you think that's a lot different than a lot of other kids' activities,
adult activities that are out there?
Yeah, I think about the notion that.
Most sports, you either win or lose as the team.
(13:01):
Maybe, but a lot of times when you win as the team, who gets the recognition in football?
The quarterback, the receivers, the line a little bit. It's getting better. Right.
But it's hard because even though it's a team sport, a lot of times you don't
get that recognition as a team.
Or when you lose, it's, hey, it's the line's fault.
(13:24):
They couldn't hold the line today right it's on the line but like
where's the where's the ownership across them yeah the
accountability ownership and i think the real cool thing about
jiu-jitsu it gives you that absolute ownership yeah like
it's on you and we're not a team sport in the sense of like hey you better be
at practice if you're not at practice you're gonna be paying for it sort of
a thing your team's gonna be paying for it it's you train as much as you think
(13:47):
you need to train and if your goal is to compete it's on you to train the right
amount And I think that teaches kids,
adults, something a little bit different that they don't learn in other team sports.
Yeah. Jiu-jitsu just has a great way of just hitting all the marks.
Yeah. Like, yeah, you can, you can put your kid in five different activities
(14:08):
or you can put them in jiu-jitsu and then you have across the board,
all the things that you would have got out of those five different activities,
you would have got them in one.
Cool. Cool. So let's touch on, last thing on the kids, let's touch on the few
things that we specifically work on at our academy.
And I'll start from the sports standpoint, and then I'll let you take over from
(14:31):
the character development standpoint.
Okay. So I think from the athleticism standpoint, we work on all those things
like building athletes, building athletic skills.
We work on making kids be able to defend themselves if they have to.
You know, we can use that term bully proof, right?
Where we want parents that are at home and their kids are in school,
(14:54):
not worrying about if their kid's being bullied, but when their kid is bullied,
knowing that their child has
has the skills to stand up for themselves and defend themselves if needed.
And I don't know about you, but I've heard more stories from our parents about
our students defending their friends than they have to themselves because they
carry themselves with confidence.
Yeah. They just, they're, it goes back to the confidence piece on,
(15:18):
I mean, we talk about confidence, but confidence can mean so many different things.
It could mean raising your hand in class, picking new friends,
asking that girl out on a date, right? So one of those aspects is intervention.
You believe in yourself enough where you can intervene in something to pretty
much save someone else. To stand up for someone.
(15:42):
And that shows up even for adults, standing up for another person in the workplace,
standing up for another person that you're in a relationship with.
It's such a life skill that needs continuous development.
Right. So what about from a, from a character development standpoint,
you know, we're always trying to build athletes and make these physically strong human beings.
(16:06):
But what about from the mind, from the mental side of things?
My philosophy when I came on board as a coach was jujitsu is important from
a sports perspective, but what they do outside of the academy is more important.
They're on the mat two to three hours a week.
Everywhere else during that timeframe, they're at school and they're at home.
(16:28):
So I like to reverse engineer this and say, I'm going to work on the childhood
development side of it and creating those life skills, then incorporating jujitsu.
So martial arts is really just a vehicle to provide that service to those kids
because Because they're unfortunately probably not learning it at school.
(16:50):
And as a parent and as a kid at one point, my parents weren't either the best examples at the time.
They didn't know how to parent or they just needed help.
And we are committed to helping parents like fill in those gaps.
There's been a lot of times where a parent will come to me saying,
(17:12):
hey, I've been telling little Billy to clean his room for years. years.
And he gets on the knives every time. And he gets on the mat and you get one
mat chat about cleaning your room and the importance of it. Done.
So I think it's really important to incorporate those life skills and not just
the martial arts discipline and focus, but really diving into how do we get
(17:34):
them from point A to point B in a positive,
constructive manner and holding them accountable in a positive way and using
positive reinforcement to get them there.
And we have a lot of success doing that just based on studying the childhood
development side of it, the psychology behind it,
working on our coaches and role-playing with them and getting the best out of
(17:56):
each coach so they can provide that service to the kids and the parent.
Something that makes our program unique is how much time we spend,
not just learning how to do martial arts, but learning how to be a coach,
learning about kid and adult psychology.
And I think that's something that makes us truly unique.
Nothing against other sports that have volunteers, mom and dad,
(18:19):
but our coaches, this is what they do. Yeah.
And there's not eight hours of jujitsu coaching in a day. No.
Right. There's three, sometimes one, maybe four.
But the rest of those days, you know, we're always working on developing ourselves
and our own ability to work with other people and to help them through stuff.
(18:43):
A huge thing of what we do and why we're successful is the level of partnership
that we have with families and our students.
Like you said, we don't care. I mean, we care about that one hour that we have,
but the important part is the other 23, right? Right.
Recognizing what's going on at home, what's going on at school for the adults,
(19:03):
what's going on in their household, what's going on with work,
and really helping them holistically with their goals.
Yeah. I like that you said holistically, because there are different schools
that do have just volunteers and, you know, we're grateful to have volunteers.
We have like 10 of them. Right.
But having that core coaching group that are professional coaches,
(19:26):
you know, when parents are like, oh, well, what else do you do? This is it.
This is my vocation. This is something that my purpose is to,
to be the partner and help them, you know, grow their kid because most parents
are parenting on how their parents raised them or the,
the direct, like my parents raised me this way.
I can't do any of that. So I got
(19:47):
to find a different way. And it's not necessarily always black and white.
There's a lot of gray area and we kind of help bridge those gaps.
Like, why shouldn't you yell at your kids? You know, why should you use positive
reinforcement or not give into them every time that they have a request?
And we are able to provide those professional answers because,
(20:08):
well, we study it every day.
Now let's talk about adults, right? We have a huge kids program,
but we also have a lot of adults.
And I would say most of our demographic being the suburbs is like your 35 to 45 year old person.
Right. And yes, we get people that are way younger, we get teens,
(20:29):
we get kids in their 20s, adults in their 20s, we get people starting jujitsu
50s and 60s sometime. Right.
But I think adult, I think jujitsu is also necessary for adults.
You know, hey, you've learned how to swim already in life.
You made it to adulthood, but there's still a lot of things that you need.
(20:52):
What do you think? I think about, and you'll love this, but Michael Bernhoff's average sucks.
Complacency? Complacency. And everyone operates usually within their average.
And that could be whatever scale you develop for yourself.
And I think jujitsu gets you thinking about that next level.
(21:13):
Well, let's clarify what average is. Right.
Because I think this is really important. Sure. A lot of people think average
is like, hey, I make the same thing year after year after year.
I have the same life year after year after year.
And that's not what average is. That's actually going down because we know we'll
take income, for example.
There's cost of living, right? So, if you keep making the same thing year over
(21:34):
year over year and cost of living goes up, you're actually below average.
Right. Right. So you know that your life, whether you do jujitsu,
whether you do personal development, it's on a predictable path.
Over the next X years, you're going to make X much more money.
This is what's going to happen in your life because this is how life progresses.
And that's an average trajectory.
(21:58):
And that's also complacency. And what we're looking for is how do we take people
out of that to put them on a above average trajectory? Yeah.
I think it starts with being on the same team, being part of the tribe.
Having a team. Having a team. An external team. That's not just your work team,
or it's not just your family team, or it's not just your drinking. Yeah, your bar team.
(22:23):
Your bar team. Yeah. Yeah. I think...
The best thing is, is our community and we don't always say what people want to hear.
One of the things I think about is like, truth is love. So if someone's not
getting to the gym, you know, our staff is calling, Hey, where are you at?
Hey, we met in two weeks. You don't show up. You're getting a phone call.
(22:44):
Yeah. Phone call. You're getting a text message. We might even knock on your
door. Hey, what's going on?
You know, because we want them
to understand how committed we are and how
much we value you their commitment to to their personal
journey and i've been huge uh
you know i've been huge on the huber mink podcast right there's a
(23:04):
internet term for it uh huber hubby huber
husband oh okay a little squad
now yeah like just dads and adults males that listen to huberman yeah and they
get into all that stuff but he actually his specialty is you know neuroscience
and she talks a lot about out these things that people can be doing on a regular
(23:26):
basis that help it. His big one is light.
Sorry, but in jujitsu, you're not going to get more sunlight doing jujitsu.
Unless you do it on the beach. Unless you do it on the beach,
but luckily most of our classes are when the sun is down already,
so you can get that sunlight.
But there's a lot of other things that he talks about to raise those baseline
levels of dopamine and epinephrine and serotonin and all these great chemicals
(23:48):
in your your brain that jujitsu provides is like a one-stop shop,
learning new skills, sense of community,
strength training, cardio training, even just touching other human beings proven to help.
And, you know, I tell people when I go to the gym, I kill three birds with one
stone every time. It's my job.
(24:10):
I get to teach and I get to train.
But I neglect those like five other huge benefits in my life of what I get out of it, right?
I'm getting stronger, improving my heart health, improving all these chemicals
in my brain through these interactions that I have.
And I don't think enough adults have activities that give that to them and that
(24:35):
challenge them in a way that push them.
Yeah. A lot of the activities as an adult become disempowered.
They drink they're watching netflix
scared to try new stuff there yeah and then that's
the snowball effect where you go so far doing that
that that becomes your normal and then you stay
(24:55):
in your box you stay in your comfort zone and it's harder
to break out but when we have a community such as
ours we we challenge the status quo and we say hey
there's something that you need therapy
therapy jujitsu go do jujitsu you need
to work on your physical health jujitsu you have
a hard time making new friends jujitsu so like 99 of the questions that i'm
(25:19):
asked the answer i usually give is do jujitsu do jujitsu if you listen to jaco's
podcast yeah let's take his answer for yeah i get it now two things i want to
touch on and these are like jujitsu fallacies one of them is jujitsu is for everyone.
And I think everyone can maybe find their place in Jiu-Jitsu,
but I don't think Jiu-Jitsu is for everyone. No. I think there is a.
(25:41):
I would say if I were just to throw a number out there, probably five,
10% low number of people that maybe have a medical condition,
which is usually what prevents people.
Like if you have lower back medical procedures or maybe you have a bad neck,
you know, so there are some outliers when it comes to jujitsu,
(26:03):
but I think everyone should, at least most people should try it.
If they have struggle with like real mental health issues, you know,
where I always tell, you know, people I'm qualified to help 85% of people through my experience.
There's 15 that I'm not, there's 15% of people I'm not because one,
(26:26):
I'm not a licensed therapist.
And then two, I'm not a doctor. Yeah. Right.
So I can't give a lot of advice to those 15%, but that 85%,
80 to 85 i can help and here's the
other thing you know even without the
the physical side of things like jiu-jitsu might
not be for you at this point in time in your
(26:46):
life if you can't handle losing right right if
you can't handle leaving your ego at the door if you
are a 225 pound male and you
can't handle getting your butt kicked by 150 pound female
which happens or even just handle you know
going to get someone way smaller than you that can even just hold their
their own right and you need to be ready for that when
(27:07):
you get to the gym like so many
adults come in and they're like i've never done this before like either
has anyone else right jujitsu's been only popular in
the u.s since like 2007 you know it really started in the 90s in wisconsin we're
late bloomers in the jujitsu community compared to like the coasts and to think
(27:28):
that you're going to come in that you're even going to be good even if you do
have other grappling skills you know you You might be above average if you've wrestled before,
but to come in and think you're going to be good in any way,
it's not going to happen.
Yeah, when I get that conversation, like, oh, I've never done it before, or I'm a little nervous.
(27:48):
Neither did I before I did it. And I tell them, you know what the hardest belt
to earn is? It's your white belt.
It's the hardest belt to earn. It's like once you get your white belt,
once you sign up and you start making that commitment, all you have to do from
there on out is just keep showing up.
You know, me and you have had conversations where I was fixated on getting the next belt.
(28:10):
All right i got my white belt and i got my first stripe all right now i
need more we talked about like jujitsu goal setting and jujitsu goal setting
we've done workshops i want to get my blue belt well like you don't doesn't
have to be a goal your goal just needs to be keep showing up and you'll get
it keep showing up you know so i think just breaking that barrier of entry for
for people that do have that limited belief we talk about limited beliefs and lvs,
(28:32):
little voice syndrome whereas that voice on the side of your head is saying
well i'm not going going to be good at this. I'm not going to try.
And if you haven't had that activity that has built up resiliency in your life,
you know, that ends up being jujitsu for a lot of our kids. It teaches them
grit. It teaches them resiliency.
It teaches them, you know, when they lose to just get back at it. Yeah.
Right. And as an adult, if you haven't had that sort of activity in the past
(28:55):
that just beats you down day after day after day, even when you think you're
really good at it, You still get beaten down.
It's hard. Yeah. It's a challenge.
And, you know, I've been rolling doing jujitsu for, I don't even know,
17 years or something like that.
Now I grappled 10 years before that. I don't know.
(29:16):
I feel like I'm just making myself really old, but like, I'll still go against
people in jujitsu where I, in five minutes, I do zero jujitsu to them.
They do all the jujitsu to me.
I'd be trying to murder that guy and they'll tap me out 15 times.
And I'm still the instructor of a academy with over 300 students,
but that's what I love about it.
Yeah. I think there's like an evolution to it too. I
(29:38):
think when you get in through the front doors
and you're on your first like couple weeks or a month or maybe
even a year it's it's that i'm
trying to survive and then you
start going through oh i think i got this i think i'm on my way and then you
go to this peak and then you start getting beat again and then you go back up
(30:01):
and then you start getting like to the oh this is all learning like i'm just
learning every day i mean as a black belt you're probably still don't learn
that much about jiu-jitsu.
There's positions I haven't even explored yet.
One of my coaches told me that when you get your blue belt, it shows that you've learned how to tap out.
Like your white belt is learning how to tap. You don't really start defending
(30:23):
until your blue belt sometimes.
Right. And sometimes you don't really start attacking until your purple belt.
And I think that's something that makes jiu-jitsu super special. Yeah.
It has done a lot for me just overall in my development. moment.
I look back and, you know, I used to take jujitsu for granted,
just come to the gym, enjoy it.
(30:44):
But I don't know what I was doing. But one day I looked back and I was like,
what if I didn't do jujitsu for the last 10 years? Like my friends are through jujitsu.
My colleagues are through jujitsu.
I love coming. Like I spend multiple nights a week at the gym.
Even before that, I spent multiple times per day at the gym.
(31:05):
Training because I enjoyed it. Not because I wanted to get great at it,
just because I loved doing it.
And I looked back and I was like, what would life be if I didn't have jujitsu?
Would it just have been Netflix or back when I started World of Warcraft?
Yeah. Do you have an answer for that? Well, I don't because that's not the path
(31:25):
I took in my life, but I have no regrets.
I love every minute and
jujitsu's evolved my friends have evolved you
know everything has changed over time you know
i just sent one of my friends a video of his blue belt
promotion we're whipping each other with belts like we don't do
that anymore and it's evolved but
(31:46):
man i had no regrets for the past like i love
i love the choices i've made what i
what i love the most us about the evolution too is you've personally
evolved but our business has
evolved as well and i really i mean
i started when it was neutral ground and then i
started seeing you investing in the business and investing in your team via
(32:11):
me and i started saying like we were starting to go higher like as far as just
attention and getting like-minded individuals in and it was It was really,
it was really impressive to see just how jujitsu evolves,
the people evolved, and now we have this culture and we're always on purpose,
(32:33):
like creating that culture of, of growth mindset and being, you know,
committed to excellence.
And I think that's important and we have a lot of fun doing it.
And I think that's reflective of a lot of our core values that we have here.
Great. Close this out. I'm ready. All right.
So you might know who said this, and we talk about this in one of our programs
(32:57):
that we have at the Academy, our STORM program, Special Team and Role Models,
where our goal, and you lead this program,
is to give kids the skills that they need to be the leaders in their lives.
Because we know that the kids that we have at the Academy are going to put in
situations where they're the leaders because they have a lot of confidence.
They have a lot of skills.
A lot of people look up to them. them and when they're put in that place,
(33:21):
we want them to have the leadership skills that they might not learn in school.
But our mission, and this is definitely not something I said.
I said, you might know who said this, but a leader isn't judged or graded on
how many followers they have, but how many leaders that they've created.
And going back to what you were saying, that is one of my biggest goals of how
(33:46):
can we give all these kids, all these adults,
all of our team staff at utopia, give them the skills to be awesome. Yeah.
We talk about our vision.
That we, our core focus is to create a community of growth.
And how do we do that? Well, we care, we develop, and we ensure that they have
(34:09):
the tools to be able to do that.
I always tell kids, cause they thank me and, you know, the parents thank me,
but I say like your kid has already has that.
We just uncover it and in different ways than storm is our big one is we've
already, we see that you have it and now we can grow it.
And then our like explorers program they're exploring that
(34:30):
possibility that they can be a leader and through
our regular programming we start to uncover that and they start to
grow and then they ultimately get in the storm team too because it's such an
exclusive group of people but with that program and what we're doing it makes
me feel a lot better on you know when we when we have to pass down the torch
(34:51):
to our next generation that we have very excellent leaders that handle adversity,
that can be critical thinkers, that can think outside the box,
that can regulate their emotions, that can go and command a room.
And I feel pretty confident that we're doing 110% on ensuring that that happens
for our future generations.
(35:13):
Awesome. Well, thank you guys for joining us on the Utopia podcast.
I hope you learned a little bit about our mission and why we think our mission
and jujitsu is necessary in so many different people's lives. Awesome.
All right, welcome to the new Utopia podcast.
I'm here today, joined by our kids head coach and director of martial arts operations
at Utopia, Coach Vern, the legend. Big title, big shoes.
Awesome. Love it. I'm Perry. I'm the owner of Utopia.
Excited to be with you guys today. And today we're going to be talking about
(00:21):
why we think and why we know our mission and jiu-jitsu in general is necessary.
Necessary and we'll explain what we need what we mean by necessary
in a little bit so give us a little background on youth coach
for prior military then went
into the technology field for a while fixing electronics and
then stumbled upon what used to be called neutral ground and started my jiu-jitsu
(00:44):
journey and i realized early on that it could open up a lot of doors and then
got awarded the opportunity to coach with you and never looked back and studied
a lot more on childhood development.
Personal development, jujitsu, coaching, and now we're here.
Nice. What got you first involved in martial arts? Why?
(01:06):
What was your why? I was missing something.
I was extremely successful in business, sold the business, came back,
lacked clarity on my purpose again,
and listened to Joe Rogan and listened to all these influencers talk about Jocko,
Big One, and got involved.
Evolved and lacked a little bit of commitment for a little bit.
(01:29):
And I had a lot of mentors early on that I knew that did jujitsu and I saw the benefit to them.
And I said, well, if they can do it, then I can. So then started training and.
Nice. Did you lack commitment in jujitsu or other areas? All other areas.
I would make excuses for a lot of things than were my own setbacks.
(01:49):
So I would have a victim mentality.
Why isn't this happening for me and then started to look deeper into like,
oh, I'm in charge of all of this.
So I can start making better decisions and creating better habits.
And a lot of that had to do with jujitsu and opening that door for me.
Awesome. So even though you probably developed a lot of discipline in the army
(02:11):
and owning your own business, do you still struggle a little bit managing some
of that, keeping some of that?
Yeah. And I did some digging on this and a lot of it had to do with purpose
is when we lack purpose, we lack direction and clarity on the, the mission.
And we talk a lot about mission at Utopia and our vision and our path forward.
(02:33):
And when you're in the military and when you're operating a business,
you have a clear purpose, especially when you're in charge of people and leadership. leadership.
And when you kind of take the foot off the gas a little bit,
you start to question a lot of other things.
And I think purpose is the big key on finding that purpose and then executing on that. Yeah.
(02:54):
And I think it's important that everyone has a purpose behind what they're doing.
What is that driving factor?
And to me, it's got to be a little bit deeper than just, hey,
it's something I want to do because I want to do jujitsu, but that's not enough
to drive me to do it at the scale and the level and get me back in the way that I do.
(03:14):
And I think that purpose is really what is the North Star and our compass to
help direct us where we go.
We talked about it a little bit, but there's that Japanese term ikagi.
Ikagai, ikagi, one or the other, but it's where your passion,
your purpose, and your skills all meet.
And you might've found that. Have you found that in jujitsu?
(03:38):
Because I know I have, and I just find everything to be so much easier with that in my mind.
Yeah. That philosophy is important because everyone is always asking,
well, how do I become happy?
Or I'm not happy. How do I get there?
Take the happy pill. Yeah. And the short-term fix, right?
(04:00):
But really it is, is it involved in following your passion, following what you're
good at? What can you get paid to do?
And what are you inclined to develop?
And it's like, what is your purpose on this earth? Yeah.
Right. And some people find that purpose in their job.
Some people find that purpose as a parent. Sometimes people find that in a hobby.
(04:24):
And I think speaking for myself, I've found that in jujitsu.
Now there's a lot of other things I like to do outside of jujitsu,
but if I wasn't doing jujitsu, there'd be a huge gap.
At, which leads me to our discussion around why we think our mission at Utopia
and jiu-jitsu is necessary.
(04:46):
I had a parent once tell me he enrolled his son in jiu-jitsu because it was
important for his son to learn three things.
He had to learn how to swim, because he fell in water, really important.
Had to learn about money because as he was growing up, he didn't learn about
money, which results in not knowing what to do when you have it,
(05:07):
not knowing how to get it.
And as much as we like to say money's not important, as an adult,
it's very important. Very important.
And number three is the ability to defend himself.
And I like that analogy of jujitsu is just as important as swimming, right?
If you fall in water, you got to learn at least how to tread.
(05:28):
And in life, we have to learn how to build that confidence to make the right
choices, to stand up for ourselves and to potentially, hopefully never physically defend ourselves.
Yeah. Well, I've heard, I've heard you say this in passing. I kind of keep it
in the back of my mind is, is swimming in life.
Treading isn't an option.
(05:50):
Oh, it's an option. This is a very bad option. It's a very poor option because
the longer you try, the tighter you get.
And if you know how to effectively, you know, channel your emotions and be physically
and mentally confident in yourself, which Jujutsu provides, it kind of opens
up that door of, you know, I don't need to be a bully.
(06:12):
I know how to handle the stress of life because you can't really get rid of
it. You can just manage it.
And that's something that we teach a lot, especially with kids and adults is
how do you develop that emotional regulation to know that stress?
You're not going to ever get rid of it. you're only going to be able to manage
(06:33):
it and the effectiveness of that. Yeah.
And to me, if we compare jujitsu or what we do to swimming, like you said,
you don't want to be treading, treading water.
Treading water when it comes to life is complacency. Yeah.
And that's the last thing that we want is complacency. We want to teach people.
(06:54):
What their best is and how to get to their best and how to strive for their
best, not just how to make it by.
Right. Right. Because I think that's where people end up losing that happiness
is when they just start coasting.
Or they just start traveling with no destination and they're just distracted
and they lack that purpose and they wonder, you know, months,
(07:18):
years, decades, like where did all that time go?
You know, but when you learn how to effectively swim using that analogy,
you have direction, you have purpose, and you know that things that the storms are temporary,
and then you can navigate better through that.
(07:38):
Let's talk about kids kids our
program we talk about the necessity
of it and when i
think about our kids program you have so many activities that you can do for
your kids a lot of them are team-based sports football soccer basketball dance
(08:00):
gymnastics and what i tell parents is that That a lot of these programs.
Unfortunately, not by nature or design, but the by-product of those sports can
be detrimental to their development.
Because so sports like football, for example, I used to play football.
(08:23):
I played it. So played a lot of football. When you get into football.
You either are a natural talent and you get on the team or you have the competency
to understand and learn the game and then you become an athlete.
What happens to the 99%? They aren't necessarily super athletic.
(08:44):
Athletic they can't develop that
social connection with their teammates because
they feel like they're not a part of the tribe and emotionally
it it subconsciously tells them that they're
not good enough and what happens
when you lose the game what happens that
monday after you know for monday practice you
(09:07):
get punished right so they develop a a
winning losing mentality that it's bad to
lose you get punished for losing and with
jiu-jitsu the philosophy is you either
win or you learn and we've coached many
kids and competitions and the way that we go about it is when we frame the winning
(09:28):
we say before they go out there showcase your talents all these kids are training
for that purpose show me everything you've learned show off you know this is
a performance performance.
And if they lose, the first thing we do when they get off the mat is we say,
that was brave of you to go out there.
You showed a lot of courage because a lot of kids don't do that.
(09:51):
And then we say, now we have some stuff to go over and some more stuff to learn.
So winning or learning is the philosophy of jujitsu. Back to the lab. Back to the lab.
Deep, very deep.
You know, I think one thing that makes jiu-jitsu unique is a lot of kids' activities,
(10:14):
they're broken into sports and activities, right?
Where a parent puts their kid in a sport, and that would be soccer,
t-ball, football, whatever.
And activity, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, maybe dance, depends on parents' perspective.
And I think jujitsu in our program is unique because we work on the whole individual, right?
(10:38):
It is a sport, but it's not just a sport.
We work on just as much as developing athletes as we do great people.
And I think that's something that we have really embedded into our program that
truly makes it stand out from a lot of the other activities that are out there. I agree.
When I looked at the criteria of regular sports, we also, we have just a multifaceted criteria.
(11:06):
Maybe you're not the most athletic at that point in time, but you might be the most creative.
There's a spot in jujitsu for that. Maybe you're not the most creative or the
most athletic, but you are an excellent leader. And we know you go to tournaments.
It's not necessarily the big, strong guy that you're scared of in your bracket.
(11:30):
It's the guy that doesn't look athletic at all that you should be terrified
of. I agree. And I've seen it time and time again.
You should always judge them by their ears.
For sure. I've heard that one. I'm just kidding. If my ears were judged,
you shouldn't judge them too hard.
I would never judge your ears. Now, speaking of jiu-jitsu competition,
(11:52):
here's another thing that I think is unique.
Jiu-jitsu, when it comes down to it, in competition, is individual.
When you go out on the mat, you are the only person that's in charge of that outcome.
Yeah, you could say the ref has some determining factors on do they make good
calls or whatnot, but you're solo.
You just have to go out there and figure it out on your own,
(12:15):
which I grew up doing wrestling, And I think that was one of the best things
that wrestling did for me was put me on the spot and just, you got to figure it out.
But when you're in the practice room, it's different, right?
In the practice room, it's a team sport.
I need to help you get better because if I help you get better,
you help me get better. and there's a direct correlation with that and you can't
(12:37):
really do jiu-jitsu by yourself.
It's really up to that team atmosphere to make everyone better. Right.
But when it comes down to it, it's all on you.
Do you think that's a lot different than a lot of other kids' activities,
adult activities that are out there?
Yeah, I think about the notion that.
Most sports, you either win or lose as the team.
(13:01):
Maybe, but a lot of times when you win as the team, who gets the recognition in football?
The quarterback, the receivers, the line a little bit. It's getting better. Right.
But it's hard because even though it's a team sport, a lot of times you don't
get that recognition as a team.
Or when you lose, it's, hey, it's the line's fault.
(13:24):
They couldn't hold the line today right it's on the line but like
where's the where's the ownership across them yeah the
accountability ownership and i think the real cool thing about
jiu-jitsu it gives you that absolute ownership yeah like
it's on you and we're not a team sport in the sense of like hey you better be
at practice if you're not at practice you're gonna be paying for it sort of
a thing your team's gonna be paying for it it's you train as much as you think
(13:47):
you need to train and if your goal is to compete it's on you to train the right
amount And I think that teaches kids,
adults, something a little bit different that they don't learn in other team sports.
Yeah. Jiu-jitsu just has a great way of just hitting all the marks.
Yeah. Like, yeah, you can, you can put your kid in five different activities
(14:08):
or you can put them in jiu-jitsu and then you have across the board,
all the things that you would have got out of those five different activities,
you would have got them in one.
Cool. Cool. So let's touch on, last thing on the kids, let's touch on the few
things that we specifically work on at our academy.
And I'll start from the sports standpoint, and then I'll let you take over from
(14:31):
the character development standpoint.
Okay. So I think from the athleticism standpoint, we work on all those things
like building athletes, building athletic skills.
We work on making kids be able to defend themselves if they have to.
You know, we can use that term bully proof, right?
Where we want parents that are at home and their kids are in school,
(14:54):
not worrying about if their kid's being bullied, but when their kid is bullied,
knowing that their child has
has the skills to stand up for themselves and defend themselves if needed.
And I don't know about you, but I've heard more stories from our parents about
our students defending their friends than they have to themselves because they
carry themselves with confidence.
Yeah. They just, they're, it goes back to the confidence piece on,
(15:18):
I mean, we talk about confidence, but confidence can mean so many different things.
It could mean raising your hand in class, picking new friends,
asking that girl out on a date, right? So one of those aspects is intervention.
You believe in yourself enough where you can intervene in something to pretty
much save someone else. To stand up for someone.
(15:42):
And that shows up even for adults, standing up for another person in the workplace,
standing up for another person that you're in a relationship with.
It's such a life skill that needs continuous development.
Right. So what about from a, from a character development standpoint,
you know, we're always trying to build athletes and make these physically strong human beings.
(16:06):
But what about from the mind, from the mental side of things?
My philosophy when I came on board as a coach was jujitsu is important from
a sports perspective, but what they do outside of the academy is more important.
They're on the mat two to three hours a week.
Everywhere else during that timeframe, they're at school and they're at home.
(16:28):
So I like to reverse engineer this and say, I'm going to work on the childhood
development side of it and creating those life skills, then incorporating jujitsu.
So martial arts is really just a vehicle to provide that service to those kids
because Because they're unfortunately probably not learning it at school.
(16:50):
And as a parent and as a kid at one point, my parents weren't either the best examples at the time.
They didn't know how to parent or they just needed help.
And we are committed to helping parents like fill in those gaps.
There's been a lot of times where a parent will come to me saying,
(17:12):
hey, I've been telling little Billy to clean his room for years. years.
And he gets on the knives every time. And he gets on the mat and you get one
mat chat about cleaning your room and the importance of it. Done.
So I think it's really important to incorporate those life skills and not just
the martial arts discipline and focus, but really diving into how do we get
(17:34):
them from point A to point B in a positive,
constructive manner and holding them accountable in a positive way and using
positive reinforcement to get them there.
And we have a lot of success doing that just based on studying the childhood
development side of it, the psychology behind it,
working on our coaches and role-playing with them and getting the best out of
(17:56):
each coach so they can provide that service to the kids and the parent.
Something that makes our program unique is how much time we spend,
not just learning how to do martial arts, but learning how to be a coach,
learning about kid and adult psychology.
And I think that's something that makes us truly unique.
Nothing against other sports that have volunteers, mom and dad,
(18:19):
but our coaches, this is what they do. Yeah.
And there's not eight hours of jujitsu coaching in a day. No.
Right. There's three, sometimes one, maybe four.
But the rest of those days, you know, we're always working on developing ourselves
and our own ability to work with other people and to help them through stuff.
(18:43):
A huge thing of what we do and why we're successful is the level of partnership
that we have with families and our students.
Like you said, we don't care. I mean, we care about that one hour that we have,
but the important part is the other 23, right? Right.
Recognizing what's going on at home, what's going on at school for the adults,
(19:03):
what's going on in their household, what's going on with work,
and really helping them holistically with their goals.
Yeah. I like that you said holistically, because there are different schools
that do have just volunteers and, you know, we're grateful to have volunteers.
We have like 10 of them. Right.
But having that core coaching group that are professional coaches,
(19:26):
you know, when parents are like, oh, well, what else do you do? This is it.
This is my vocation. This is something that my purpose is to,
to be the partner and help them, you know, grow their kid because most parents
are parenting on how their parents raised them or the,
the direct, like my parents raised me this way.
I can't do any of that. So I got
(19:47):
to find a different way. And it's not necessarily always black and white.
There's a lot of gray area and we kind of help bridge those gaps.
Like, why shouldn't you yell at your kids? You know, why should you use positive
reinforcement or not give into them every time that they have a request?
And we are able to provide those professional answers because,
(20:08):
well, we study it every day.
Now let's talk about adults, right? We have a huge kids program,
but we also have a lot of adults.
And I would say most of our demographic being the suburbs is like your 35 to 45 year old person.
Right. And yes, we get people that are way younger, we get teens,
(20:29):
we get kids in their 20s, adults in their 20s, we get people starting jujitsu
50s and 60s sometime. Right.
But I think adult, I think jujitsu is also necessary for adults.
You know, hey, you've learned how to swim already in life.
You made it to adulthood, but there's still a lot of things that you need.
(20:52):
What do you think? I think about, and you'll love this, but Michael Bernhoff's average sucks.
Complacency? Complacency. And everyone operates usually within their average.
And that could be whatever scale you develop for yourself.
And I think jujitsu gets you thinking about that next level.
(21:13):
Well, let's clarify what average is. Right.
Because I think this is really important. Sure. A lot of people think average
is like, hey, I make the same thing year after year after year.
I have the same life year after year after year.
And that's not what average is. That's actually going down because we know we'll
take income, for example.
There's cost of living, right? So, if you keep making the same thing year over
(21:34):
year over year and cost of living goes up, you're actually below average.
Right. Right. So you know that your life, whether you do jujitsu,
whether you do personal development, it's on a predictable path.
Over the next X years, you're going to make X much more money.
This is what's going to happen in your life because this is how life progresses.
And that's an average trajectory.
(21:58):
And that's also complacency. And what we're looking for is how do we take people
out of that to put them on a above average trajectory? Yeah.
I think it starts with being on the same team, being part of the tribe.
Having a team. Having a team. An external team. That's not just your work team,
or it's not just your family team, or it's not just your drinking. Yeah, your bar team.
(22:23):
Your bar team. Yeah. Yeah. I think...
The best thing is, is our community and we don't always say what people want to hear.
One of the things I think about is like, truth is love. So if someone's not
getting to the gym, you know, our staff is calling, Hey, where are you at?
Hey, we met in two weeks. You don't show up. You're getting a phone call.
(22:44):
Yeah. Phone call. You're getting a text message. We might even knock on your
door. Hey, what's going on?
You know, because we want them
to understand how committed we are and how
much we value you their commitment to to their personal
journey and i've been huge uh
you know i've been huge on the huber mink podcast right there's a
(23:04):
internet term for it uh huber hubby huber
husband oh okay a little squad
now yeah like just dads and adults males that listen to huberman yeah and they
get into all that stuff but he actually his specialty is you know neuroscience
and she talks a lot about out these things that people can be doing on a regular
(23:26):
basis that help it. His big one is light.
Sorry, but in jujitsu, you're not going to get more sunlight doing jujitsu.
Unless you do it on the beach. Unless you do it on the beach,
but luckily most of our classes are when the sun is down already,
so you can get that sunlight.
But there's a lot of other things that he talks about to raise those baseline
levels of dopamine and epinephrine and serotonin and all these great chemicals
(23:48):
in your your brain that jujitsu provides is like a one-stop shop,
learning new skills, sense of community,
strength training, cardio training, even just touching other human beings proven to help.
And, you know, I tell people when I go to the gym, I kill three birds with one
stone every time. It's my job.
(24:10):
I get to teach and I get to train.
But I neglect those like five other huge benefits in my life of what I get out of it, right?
I'm getting stronger, improving my heart health, improving all these chemicals
in my brain through these interactions that I have.
And I don't think enough adults have activities that give that to them and that
(24:35):
challenge them in a way that push them.
Yeah. A lot of the activities as an adult become disempowered.
They drink they're watching netflix
scared to try new stuff there yeah and then that's
the snowball effect where you go so far doing that
that that becomes your normal and then you stay
(24:55):
in your box you stay in your comfort zone and it's harder
to break out but when we have a community such as
ours we we challenge the status quo and we say hey
there's something that you need therapy
therapy jujitsu go do jujitsu you need
to work on your physical health jujitsu you have
a hard time making new friends jujitsu so like 99 of the questions that i'm
(25:19):
asked the answer i usually give is do jujitsu do jujitsu if you listen to jaco's
podcast yeah let's take his answer for yeah i get it now two things i want to
touch on and these are like jujitsu fallacies one of them is jujitsu is for everyone.
And I think everyone can maybe find their place in Jiu-Jitsu,
but I don't think Jiu-Jitsu is for everyone. No. I think there is a.
(25:41):
I would say if I were just to throw a number out there, probably five,
10% low number of people that maybe have a medical condition,
which is usually what prevents people.
Like if you have lower back medical procedures or maybe you have a bad neck,
you know, so there are some outliers when it comes to jujitsu,
(26:03):
but I think everyone should, at least most people should try it.
If they have struggle with like real mental health issues, you know,
where I always tell, you know, people I'm qualified to help 85% of people through my experience.
There's 15 that I'm not, there's 15% of people I'm not because one,
(26:26):
I'm not a licensed therapist.
And then two, I'm not a doctor. Yeah. Right.
So I can't give a lot of advice to those 15%, but that 85%,
80 to 85 i can help and here's the
other thing you know even without the
the physical side of things like jiu-jitsu might
not be for you at this point in time in your
(26:46):
life if you can't handle losing right right if
you can't handle leaving your ego at the door if you
are a 225 pound male and you
can't handle getting your butt kicked by 150 pound female
which happens or even just handle you know
going to get someone way smaller than you that can even just hold their
their own right and you need to be ready for that when
(27:07):
you get to the gym like so many
adults come in and they're like i've never done this before like either
has anyone else right jujitsu's been only popular in
the u.s since like 2007 you know it really started in the 90s in wisconsin we're
late bloomers in the jujitsu community compared to like the coasts and to think
(27:28):
that you're going to come in that you're even going to be good even if you do
have other grappling skills you know you You might be above average if you've wrestled before,
but to come in and think you're going to be good in any way,
it's not going to happen.
Yeah, when I get that conversation, like, oh, I've never done it before, or I'm a little nervous.
(27:48):
Neither did I before I did it. And I tell them, you know what the hardest belt
to earn is? It's your white belt.
It's the hardest belt to earn. It's like once you get your white belt,
once you sign up and you start making that commitment, all you have to do from
there on out is just keep showing up.
You know, me and you have had conversations where I was fixated on getting the next belt.
(28:10):
All right i got my white belt and i got my first stripe all right now i
need more we talked about like jujitsu goal setting and jujitsu goal setting
we've done workshops i want to get my blue belt well like you don't doesn't
have to be a goal your goal just needs to be keep showing up and you'll get
it keep showing up you know so i think just breaking that barrier of entry for
for people that do have that limited belief we talk about limited beliefs and lvs,
(28:32):
little voice syndrome whereas that voice on the side of your head is saying
well i'm not going going to be good at this. I'm not going to try.
And if you haven't had that activity that has built up resiliency in your life,
you know, that ends up being jujitsu for a lot of our kids. It teaches them
grit. It teaches them resiliency.
It teaches them, you know, when they lose to just get back at it. Yeah.
Right. And as an adult, if you haven't had that sort of activity in the past
(28:55):
that just beats you down day after day after day, even when you think you're
really good at it, You still get beaten down.
It's hard. Yeah. It's a challenge.
And, you know, I've been rolling doing jujitsu for, I don't even know,
17 years or something like that.
Now I grappled 10 years before that. I don't know.
(29:16):
I feel like I'm just making myself really old, but like, I'll still go against
people in jujitsu where I, in five minutes, I do zero jujitsu to them.
They do all the jujitsu to me.
I'd be trying to murder that guy and they'll tap me out 15 times.
And I'm still the instructor of a academy with over 300 students,
but that's what I love about it.
Yeah. I think there's like an evolution to it too. I
(29:38):
think when you get in through the front doors
and you're on your first like couple weeks or a month or maybe
even a year it's it's that i'm
trying to survive and then you
start going through oh i think i got this i think i'm on my way and then you
go to this peak and then you start getting beat again and then you go back up
(30:01):
and then you start getting like to the oh this is all learning like i'm just
learning every day i mean as a black belt you're probably still don't learn
that much about jiu-jitsu.
There's positions I haven't even explored yet.
One of my coaches told me that when you get your blue belt, it shows that you've learned how to tap out.
Like your white belt is learning how to tap. You don't really start defending
(30:23):
until your blue belt sometimes.
Right. And sometimes you don't really start attacking until your purple belt.
And I think that's something that makes jiu-jitsu super special. Yeah.
It has done a lot for me just overall in my development. moment.
I look back and, you know, I used to take jujitsu for granted,
just come to the gym, enjoy it.
(30:44):
But I don't know what I was doing. But one day I looked back and I was like,
what if I didn't do jujitsu for the last 10 years? Like my friends are through jujitsu.
My colleagues are through jujitsu.
I love coming. Like I spend multiple nights a week at the gym.
Even before that, I spent multiple times per day at the gym.
(31:05):
Training because I enjoyed it. Not because I wanted to get great at it,
just because I loved doing it.
And I looked back and I was like, what would life be if I didn't have jujitsu?
Would it just have been Netflix or back when I started World of Warcraft?
Yeah. Do you have an answer for that? Well, I don't because that's not the path
(31:25):
I took in my life, but I have no regrets.
I love every minute and
jujitsu's evolved my friends have evolved you
know everything has changed over time you know
i just sent one of my friends a video of his blue belt
promotion we're whipping each other with belts like we don't do
that anymore and it's evolved but
(31:46):
man i had no regrets for the past like i love
i love the choices i've made what i
what i love the most us about the evolution too is you've personally
evolved but our business has
evolved as well and i really i mean
i started when it was neutral ground and then i
started seeing you investing in the business and investing in your team via
(32:11):
me and i started saying like we were starting to go higher like as far as just
attention and getting like-minded individuals in and it was It was really,
it was really impressive to see just how jujitsu evolves,
the people evolved, and now we have this culture and we're always on purpose,
(32:33):
like creating that culture of, of growth mindset and being, you know,
committed to excellence.
And I think that's important and we have a lot of fun doing it.
And I think that's reflective of a lot of our core values that we have here.
Great. Close this out. I'm ready. All right.
So you might know who said this, and we talk about this in one of our programs
(32:57):
that we have at the Academy, our STORM program, Special Team and Role Models,
where our goal, and you lead this program,
is to give kids the skills that they need to be the leaders in their lives.
Because we know that the kids that we have at the Academy are going to put in
situations where they're the leaders because they have a lot of confidence.
They have a lot of skills.
A lot of people look up to them. them and when they're put in that place,
(33:21):
we want them to have the leadership skills that they might not learn in school.
But our mission, and this is definitely not something I said.
I said, you might know who said this, but a leader isn't judged or graded on
how many followers they have, but how many leaders that they've created.
And going back to what you were saying, that is one of my biggest goals of how
(33:46):
can we give all these kids, all these adults,
all of our team staff at utopia, give them the skills to be awesome. Yeah.
We talk about our vision.
That we, our core focus is to create a community of growth.
And how do we do that? Well, we care, we develop, and we ensure that they have
(34:09):
the tools to be able to do that.
I always tell kids, cause they thank me and, you know, the parents thank me,
but I say like your kid has already has that.
We just uncover it and in different ways than storm is our big one is we've
already, we see that you have it and now we can grow it.
And then our like explorers program they're exploring that
(34:30):
possibility that they can be a leader and through
our regular programming we start to uncover that and they start to
grow and then they ultimately get in the storm team too because it's such an
exclusive group of people but with that program and what we're doing it makes
me feel a lot better on you know when we when we have to pass down the torch
(34:51):
to our next generation that we have very excellent leaders that handle adversity,
that can be critical thinkers, that can think outside the box,
that can regulate their emotions, that can go and command a room.
And I feel pretty confident that we're doing 110% on ensuring that that happens
for our future generations.
(35:13):
Awesome. Well, thank you guys for joining us on the Utopia podcast.
I hope you learned a little bit about our mission and why we think our mission
and jujitsu is necessary in so many different people's lives. Awesome.
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