Episode 612 - Mr. Shannon Hudson
Mr. Shannon Hudson is a Martial Arts Practitioner and along with his wife, they’ve founded 9Round Fitness.
All of these high performers are either military or martial artist. So, Martial Arts will help anyone in the business and it has helped me tremendously.
Mr. Shannon Hudson- Episode 612
Growing up following his brother’s footsteps in Martial Arts has really served him well. Mr. Shannon Hudson, a former Light Middleweight Kickboxing World Champion, grew up watching Kyoshi Kevin Hudson train and compete on the sidelines while in his own Martial Arts journey as well. Mr. Shannon Hudson, a co-founder of the 9Round Fitness, has attributed his confidence in leading an international fitness company to his Martial Arts training. Listen as Mr. Shannon Hudson tells his story on how he transformed into a successful entrepreneur in Martial Arts.
Show Notes
In this episode, we mentioned Kevin Hudson and Chuck Norris.
Check out 9Round on these platforms:
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's going on everybody? Welcome. You're listening to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, Episode 612. My guest today is Mr. Shannon Hudson. I am Jeremy Lesniak, I'm your host for Martial Arts Radio, founder here at whistlekick. And I love martial arts, I love traditional martial arts, been doing it my whole life, my favorite thing in the world. And that's why we do all the things that we do over here at whistlekick, and it's a long list. If you want to see the whole list, go to whistlekick.com, check out all of our projects or products or services, the various things that we do to support you. The traditional martial artists, as an individual, as an instructor, as a school owner, as a professional, whatever you do, if what you do involves traditional martial arts, there's probably something related to what we do that you would find beneficial, including the show. So, head on over there, one of the things you're going to find there's our store, whistlekick.com, has a store, it's where we sell some stuff. And if you use the code PODCAST15, it's going to save you 15% on any of the things that we have available over there, check it out, maybe you'll find something you like. Now, the show itself gets its own website, we keep things separate, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. That's where you're going to go for the show. And why would you go over there? Well, you can sign up for the newsletter, you could make a donation for the work that we do. You could check out the photo's links, social media, videos, transcripts for the episodes, they're all over there. Every single episode we've ever done is available for free, plenty of podcast hype. But remember, this is 612, 612 episodes of content, actually plus some bonus episodes that we have never put behind a paywall. And unless something really weird happens, we never will. The show comes out twice a week. And why do we do it? Why do we do the show? Well, it's all under the heading of connecting, educating and entertaining traditional martial artists throughout the world. And if you want to support that work, there are lots of ways you can do it. I gave you a few earlier, but a couple others, you could share an episode tell friends where you train about what we do. Maybe you can leave a review somewhere, grab a book, or support our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. Patreon is patreon.com. To place where we post exclusive content, and two bucks a month you get behind the scenes info, it's the only place to find out who's coming up on the show. By bucks, you get a bonus episode. 10 bucks, you get bonus video, and it goes up from there. The more you contribute, the more we give you. Now, today's guest is someone that I've known for a couple years not really well. But I like him. He's a great guy. His brother's been on the show, we've had the chance to train together. And I think very highly of him for a number of reasons. And we talk about all of them. This is a man who's involved in a martial arts business. And I would say it is probably the biggest martial arts business that you've never heard of. That's my guess. Now maybe you've heard of it. We'll get there eventually. But this is something substantial. And I was super pumped to talk about not only Shannon's journey, but how he took his passion for martial arts and just ran with it in a business sense, kind of like what we're doing here with us. Okay. So, hang back, check it out. Enjoy. And I'll see you in the outro Shannon, welcome to whistlekickmartialartsradio.
Shannon Hudson:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's great to have you here. It's, you know, we were talking before we got started. It's been a few years since I've seen you. Yeah, I don't get the opportunity to know everybody, of course, before they come on the show. And, you know, it's a long list of people who've been on the show who I want to get to know and train with and everything. But you know, we've been in the same place the same time, I think, more than once.
Shannon Hudson:
A couple times. Martial arts world is pretty small. So...
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, it is funny people say that it's big, and it's small. It's really interesting. There are so many people who participate. But then you get the people who've been participating for a while. And that's a much tighter group. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And I find that interesting, and I'm sure we're going to get into that. And there are a lot of things that we can talk about today. A lot of places that I'm hoping we go we won't go all of those spots because we can't we don't have the time. I want to start with probably the only obvious question I'm going to ask you and that's the why did you get started? You know, what's that origin story look like? So, you want that story? Yeah, let's you know, if we start there, that usually gives me more than enough to follow up. So, you know, take that however you want to take them know happy to issue one of your comic books.
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, I love the story. I love telling the story. It's so pretty. I least like the story. I don't know people.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But the only one that really matters.
Shannon Hudson:
You know, my brother, which Kevin, started martial arts when I was born 1979. So, I remember very vividly as a toddler, going to a karate school, and sitting on the side and watching my brother do karate class. I remember that, like, that was yesterday. And when I turned seven, almost eight, I, of course, wanted to follow my big brother's footsteps and do karate class. And it was back when it wasn't a real business. It was for the owner, it was the owner had a real job and would do like, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday class from six to eight. And that was it. Right? And there weren't many kids, it was mostly adults. And I was one of the very few kids. And you know, the teaching practices were not as sharp and great as they are today, it's far day one, you would get hit, no head gear. I mean, it was like, you know, one of those type of places, right. But the instructor, the owner was super, you know, great guy. And my brother became a black belt there and one of the top black belts in school and he started doing karate tournaments. And I remember going to the Battle of Atlanta watching my brother, because I'm in South Carolina, we're not very far from Atlanta, Georgia. And then in the 80s, kickboxing got, you know, pretty popular and got on TV and my brother wanted to be a world champion kickboxer. And then when he started competing in the rain, I would of course, go and watch and, and that's how I got into it. And, you know, to this day, I'm still doing it. And my brother's still doing it, and we get to work together a good bit. And we've traveled to many, many, many seminars, many fights around the world. And, you know, the careers been really good to me and martial arts. If I tell you that was my saving grace, because I was a very, you know, shy kid, and not a lot of confidence. Very small kid. Got a name, my name is Shannon. Right, I get picked up, I got picked on with that. So martial arts gave me a lot of confidence. And I'm proud to say, today, I have the confidence to lead a company that's in 17 countries and 1000s of 1000s of members across the world do 9rounds. So, I'm very proud of that. And I attribute that to a good family, great sibling, great mom and dad and the martial arts. That was it. That was my military. My dad was a military guy, and my military was martial arts. And so that's how I got to where I am today.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I know, we're going to get deep into 9rounds, because there's going to be a point in your story where we can't separate you from the company. I know that as someone whose own businesses, and especially when you're taking a business launches out of a passion. But before we get there, we've got to go through the karate steps into the kickboxing steps. I know that's a really important point and because of kickboxing that I know, you know, it's our mutual association with Super foot. And it was, you know, through Super foot that I met a brother how much older is Kevin? Kevin is eight and a half years old. So, you know, he's a teenager when you get started old enough that you're really looking up to him. He's, you know, it that age, you know, when you're a little kid eight and a half years is a big deal. Ya know, it feels like, this vast gap. I mean, you're looking up to him, you know, almost feels like as big of a difference as your parents, you know, just like those people over there so much older. And so, yeah, the 80s kickboxing comes around. And Kevin gets into that. And how old was he when he took his first fight? Because I think your age at that point is pretty important.
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, he was 16 and I was eight. So yeah, I remember it was at a gym in North Carolina, a gymnasium. Not a gym, a weight gym, a gymnasium, right? And of a school and Forest City, North Carolina and never forget it. And I mean, they would play the rocky music and I was like, man, it was good memories, man. Just such good memories.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And like you just said, you know, you're eight and we were born the same year. You're 41/42 depending on your birthday falls as a long time ago. 33 years ago, yeah, the long time and I can hear in your voice how vividly you remember that that's a pivotal moment. That's something that became a metric by which to judge or I guess a delineation points a better word for your upbringing, your life. And so, he steps in at 16. When did you have your first fight?
Shannon Hudson:
I was well in the rain. I think karate tournaments as a kid obviously. Cuz I just grew up doing that, you know from karate from my brother. But I wanted to get in the ring. I was 16/15 and it wasn't kickboxing. Believe it or not, it was amateur boxing. And I don't know what made me want to do that direction. But I did four or five amateur boxing bouts, I had a little password USB password, you had to have and then I kickboxing event came up and I said, “What the heck, I'm in pretty good shape from boxing, I'll just do that, why not so for a time being there, as an amateur, I would do both I would float, I would do amateur boxing battle and I would go do an amateur kickboxing. About two weeks later. And I was able to do that I was able to rack up a lot of fights very quickly. And I did it out of I want to experience and I knew the more I got under that pressure in that on the in the ring, the better I would get. And I would just I wanted to fight anybody anywhere. Again, not out of arrogance, but out of I just wanted that experience. And I had a great time doing it. And I learned a ton I loved the box. I still watch boxing today. I love the kick too. So, it helped me, I think.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That desire to step in the ring whenever you could and even so much so that you said fine. You know, I grew up in karate. I don't even care if I don't kick, I'll get in the ring. I'll just punch people. That sounds like it's a lot more than just following in your brother's footsteps. Is that a tie back to? You know. Name those stuff that you pointed out a few minutes ago? There's something to prove.
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, sure. I mean, absolutely. You know, being the younger kid, you know, being the baby, right? Of the family. You know, being who I. Yeah, I wanted to be, you know, a badass if I can say that on here. I definitely wanted to be and you know, and then when I was 18/19, guess what? I wanted to start lifting weights. And I wanted to be bigger. And I started lifting weights. And you know, I realized quickly that the bigger you get muscularly the heavier weight class are, the taller the fighters are. And the more dangerous the fighters are, because, you know, a fighter 170 is coming down from 190 to 170. And I was trying to come up. I mean, I started amateur boxing at 130 pounds. I want my thought on the world combat league at 147. a good bit. And when our world title at 154. So, you know, the weight 10 pounds is a lot when you're the size we are as a lot on someone but yes, but back to your points something to prove. Absolutely. I mean, I still have that in my gut today. I say I want to be successful; I'm going to be great at whatever I try to put my hands on, I want to do it. Amazingly, I want my kids to look up and say, “Well, my dad was a real killer”. He was awesome; you know. And so yeah, I still have that drive today and maybe having been smaller stature and maybe having the name has really driven me and helped me so it's a little psychology lesson today. Thank you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No worries, you know, I can I can relate to it. You know, we're we're about the same size. We're the same age we came up, you know, different areas, of course. But you know, the times were similar enough, you've got the the awkward first name, I've got the awkward last name. And you know, to the point where I punch it in my phone, it auto corrects You know what, it's auto correcting every time? Well, I mean, it's I've trained it, but you get a new phone, right? You know what I'm talking about? Oh, of course. Absolutely. And so have having something to prove that chip on your shoulder. I get it now. Row comeback league. You know, there's something that we haven't talked about on the show, and possibly since your brother was on how did that opportunity come on?
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, it was. You know, at the time, I was a top amateur in the country. I wanted a good bit of accolades with amateur kickboxing. And my brother got a call from [00:14:02-00:14:04] and said, Chuck Norris has put together a team fight concept. Would you guys be interested in doing it? For you and your brother and he's talking to Kevin and my brother says, “Sure, Shannon's an amateur though” and he said, “Well, you have to turn pro” and I said, “heck yeah. Why not? You know, let's do it”. So that was my pro debut in the kickboxing world, the world combat league fight and you can see a few of those on YouTube. And you know, I had a blast it was the great thing about that is you didn't have to fight along hard, a lot of rounds. You would do one and one half and one the other half of the event and we would fight one round so but it was very fast paced, and the pay for the one round was pretty decent. It was fun. I got to meet Chuck Norris. You know and be a rock star. At these events, they kind of they put you in uniforms. And so, it was a lot of fun. I had a blast I was on every season they had three years. I was fortunate enough to be on everyone and learned a lot from it and made some friends and had a great time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
At any point, as you started spending more time in what's called the boxing, kickboxing world, we might have some people listening who are really seeing the gap. And everybody draws it differently. But there's a noticeable difference between the way, kickboxing and karate are trained and taught and the culture around them. Did you leave karate behind? Or were you training these two things in parallel?
Shannon Hudson:
It's a great question. They're in parallel. Yes, I'm a martial artist at heart. I grew up in that environment. And I respect tradition. And I enjoy it. And I think can I taught my brother and I talked about this a lot. I love the days when kickboxing when they would bow in the ring, and they would wear a black belt. And then that got kind of lost as kickboxing move, you know, got more popular and moved on and I wish some elements of that tradition were back in kickboxing. I think it gave it an element of class. I think it was very classy that way and having pants instead of shorts, I think, again, made it classy. But yes, I did it in tandem, until I started my company, you know and started, life happens. You have kids, you get busy, and you don't get to do as many traditional karate classes as you used to. But I still love it. I have a great respect for it. I think there's a place for it. And I think the best kickers in the world and the best martial artists in the world came from a traditional background. I look at Mr. Wallace or, you know, my brother Joe Lewis. I mean, all the greats come from, you know, Bruce Lee come from a traditional background in martial arts. So, I think those are the best. I'm the best. Kickboxers did too. I mean, look at some of those greats, they started in traditional karate look at you know, Rick Roufus. Jean-Yves Thériault, those guys started in a traditional karate program as a kid and yeah, so I did it in parallel until they took over.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, there was definitely a shift kickboxing early on from what I can see now, wasn't that old? Neither of us were that old as it was really getting its genesis, but it seemed to be okay, we all do these different things. Where's our common ground? And how do we test each other? And that seems like what early kickboxing was. And it's become a very separate thing. Now, yeah, you know, and I'm not passing a judgement, you know, there are people who loved that, and don't love this, and people who love this and wouldn't have been as engaged in that. Things change, the world changes, and we move on, and we look for opportunities. And you've brought it up a couple times. And I already said after the first time, you know, I don't think there's much going to be much opportunity for us to separate a good portion of the story from your company. So, 9round, and we're going to have two types of people listening and hearing that name. People who are saying, “What's 9rounds”, and people who are saying, “holy cow, 9round?” And this is the guy who started that. Yeah. And as far as I'm concerned, in the world of martial arts and martial arts, businesses, because I consider 9round to be a martial arts business. It's probably the biggest thing that people don't know about. I would agree, I would agree with you. And I don't know how that happens.
Shannon Hudson:
Well, shame on me. My marketing obviously needs help, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Maybe, maybe, maybe not. Right? Because before we go there, because I don't, you know, we're friends. I don't want any of the listeners to think, you know, like, throwing shade at you know, trying to kick low here. Let's talk about where it started. And then I think we can we can talk about why that might be you know, what was the origin story for 9round?
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, I have some thoughts on why that may be but back to the 9round origin. Well, you know, my brother ended up purchasing the karate school we grew up in, right. So, the natural progression is my brother was the top, you know, one of the top black belts, buys the Karate school. Actually, pays back rent, you know, and takes over the karate school. So, my first job was a karate school teaching kids' karate. That was it. That was my first job. And when I was, you know, 14/15 years old, we were teaching the kids how to bow, say yes or no. And that's where I really learned how to sell memberships right there. And how to communicate very well, I think it's a skill, a lot of martial arts school owners neglect how they, you know, they think. Oh, if I just have the best product, and the people will buy it. And that's not the case. I mean, look at McDonald's, terrible product, but everybody knows, but they sell a lot of burgers, right. So that was my first job. And my brother and I, after I went to college, I didn't go to college, best six years of my life. After college, we grew the karate business, we went in business together and grew it to three locations in the Upstate of South Carolina. And we did very well, and we had a great following. Each school had probably 200 members at it, you know, we were just doing great and living the American dream. And the challenge I noticed with that business model is it's hard to scale, which means, you know, hard to duplicate. And one of the reasons that makes it hard is it's hard to get instructors that have the combination of great at martial arts, but great at teaching. Because let's be honest, it takes time to get really good at martial arts, I mean, to become a black belt, you know, three, five years, whatever in your system it takes. And that's just a really a slow way to create instructors. And I couldn't create them fast enough, we couldn't duplicate the business, the instructors fast enough and had built this amazing team. So, you know, looking around, I noticed a business out there, that was a 30-minute circuit. And it was women only. And I was just really enamored with that business. And it was called Curves. I don't know if you remember it. And I said, man, then that's the business model right there. You know, circuit training, no class time for the customer. Small square footage, low overhead. Not a lot of team members, you don't need 20 people that like a restaurant, you might need 20/30/50 people to deal with this. And I can find people that are athletic, and love fitness very easily. And the punching and kicking, you know, kicking front side, round kick, and punching straight ones, hook ones and uppercut ones, I only got a few moves to deal with here.
So, not a lot of moving parts to the business and my wife, bless her heart, and she didn't know what she was getting into 2008 we lease a space. Me and my wife, you know, 2008 was happening. Everybody knows the economy was in the tank. And my brother opted to not be a part of this, you know, he's like, you know, it's, you know, the economy's bad, or prices aren't doing what I, but we want him to do and but he was fully supportive, and like, hey, go for it. And so, me and my wife went in business together and open this 1100 square foot spot next to one of our karate schools. And after 30 days, we had almost 100 members. And we knew we had something very special there. And when we built that first studio, we maxed out the only credit card we had. We just scraped and you know, there were no sushi dinners that was like, you know, we did and we just scraped together and it were all in. Yes, no, Plan B that was our quote, there's no plan B. We're going to make this thing work. And sure enough, you know, well, and happy to say we have 700 units across the world. And we have 1000s and 1000s, you know, 80/ 90,000 members in the system right now. And it's funny, martial arts owners will be like, my school has 200 members. And I'm thinking, hey, that's great.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's awesome.
Shannon Hudson:
I got 80,000 members. But I don't say that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, no, no, you're far too humble for that.
Shannon Hudson:
You know, internally, I have my internal ego statement. I say, I want to get more. I say I want to get more people punching and kicking then Bruce Lee. And no, I don't say that out loud. Because people probably trash me pretty hard to say that. But people if people want to trash you, they're going to find some reason. Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
But we're just at that point in the world.
Shannon Hudson:
No, but I'm happy to say you know that I have a lot of people punching and kicking out there because of this. And because that's what I grew up doing. And I love doing it. So, that's the story. Now we have 45 people in the office here, where I'm sitting now and legal people and people far smarter than me. And I just tried to assemble a good team and give them a vision and direction to go. And here we are.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Awesome. I want to go back. I want to go back to the part of the story that I think is most important as someone who started several businesses as someone who is, you know, neck deep in one of them now. That initial point, that point where you say, here's a concept, and I believe in it pretty strongly. You know, most people will hedge their bets, they'll say, you know, I'm going to start this business, I'm going to look for the right time, I'm going to look for the right space, you know, your brother was looking for the right economy, or economic indicators. And you said, you know, screw all that. I'm jumping in with both feet. I'm bringing my family along with me. And I am so all in on this, that there is in your word, no plan B. Weirded, that faith in incredibly simplified martial arts concept, right? The roots of this are in martial arts. We're taking an aspect of martial arts really the fitness component. And there's a curriculum there, but it's pretty simple. And investing everything you had time money energy into that, what was it about your experience as a martial artist, I assume as a competitor, I assume as working in a martial arts school that made you believe this concept would work?
Shannon Hudson:
That's a good question. Jeremy. What, you know, one of the things I'm blessed with, that I'm very blessed with is good intuition. And I think everyone can have good intuition, but do they follow it? Right? Do they trust it enough and have faith like you said, to act on it and make it become a reality? And my personality in the way I am is, my wife jokes around ready fire aim, you know, and that's just how I do things. And sometimes it serves me very well, that type of personality. And sometimes it doesn't, you know, if I'm going to have a cheat meal and eat bad, boy, do I do it, man, I go all in on that thing. The fries and the burgers and this milkshake? And if you're going to do it, do it right. I do it, man. I don't halfway in anything. I mean, all the way. And you know, my thing. My parents taught me that if you're going to do something, do it. Well, you know, if you're going to clean up the yard, pick it all up, do it. Right. I mean, again, I mentioned briefly, my dad's a military guy. And that's how he was. He wasn't super strict on me, but he's instilled that value in me. And, you know, so we went all in on this thing. And, I always say, I'm not going to die, you know, I mean, it's just money, right? Money, like, places paper, just a piece of papers and digits on my computer. It's like, I can get more of the money, right? But if I don't try this, I'll live with this regret inside. And too many people do that. I you know, if people would just go all in and, and have the faith and make it happen. no plan B attitude. I mean, I think a lot more people would be happy today. But yeah, so that's a great question. I don't know if he even answered it. But it's a good way.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You did a little bit, but we're going to go back. And I'm going to ask it a little bit differently, because he gave me another piece to draw on. Now use the word ‘intuition’. Yes, another word that we could use. It's kind of similar, his instinct. Correct. And as a fighter, as someone who was in the ring a lot. I'm sure every time you stepped in; you had a plan. But your hands change. You know, there's that famous Mike Tyson quote, “until you hit the face”, right? We most of us know that quote. So, you have to trust your instincts. At some point, you fought enough? I'm imagining you learn to trust your instincts in the ring. Is that a fair?
Shannon Hudson:
It's totally. And you're so right. And that's probably where it can come from. I mean, you have to have that trust in the ring, you know, route to be heard. Right. So yeah, totally. Totally. That's probably where they come from. Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, we mentioned earlier, I think you've got one of the biggest things, if not the biggest thing that a lot of martial artists don't know about and, you know, if somebody didn't know that we know each other, we've trained together, they might think banter terms, terms being kind of harsh, but I think it's actually two things. One, I think there's a compliment there because it's huge, right? I don't know any other martial arts company that has 80,000/90,000 people. You know, there might be some organizations out there that do. But I'm not aware of them. But I think the more important part is the typical attendee at a 0round gym. The same person who's going to go to a traditional karate class? Not right. And that was my expectation. And I think that's probably why Is that? Is that your assessment?
Shannon Hudson:
Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. Yeah, it's not, I mean, 70% of our member base is female, and, you know, between 25 and 35 years old. So that's not what's going into karate schools today. So, that's one of our owners bases the same way, our franchise owners. It's not the martial arts people that are doing this, it's people that love fitness, are passionate about fitness and understand business, and they make the best owners because they understand we're in business, we have to be profitable, we have to, you know, to help our community, we have to hire people and be profitable. And yeah, so you nailed it. That's exactly the demographics just different.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But, and, you know, people people are going to look at that, and they're going to say, “Well, it's not martial arts”. And maybe it isn't depending on what your definition of martial arts is. I'm not going to equate it is, if martial art is a scale, it's not as martial artsy, as you know, a showed a karate school class, you know, a WTF Taekwondo class in school. But I'm a firm believer, anything that gets people punching, and kicking is a good thing.
Shannon Hudson:
That's my life's mission. That's it. Get as many people as I can, punching and kicking to better themselves, period, in the story, that's what I was put here to do. And people can trash me all day or, you know, talk bad. And that means I'm doing some great things. You know, if you don't have a few haters, you're not doing anything, right? Get yourself around haters. So, yeah, and you can call. Yeah, call it what you want. But hey, I got a lot of people punch in, and then to better themselves, not to hurt things, or hunt things or to, but to better themselves, and what a way to live, right? I get to wake up every day, knowing that I have a lot of people are getting better. Of course, they're using martial arts, which is what saved me. And you know, how fast can I spread it? And how far can I go? So that's my mentality.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I can't imagine that someone's going to step into 9round and become less likely to engage in other martial arts, I can only imagine that if someone says, you know, this is cool. But it's not for me, they're probably more likely to seek out a traditional martial arts class than they were before they started. Of course, yeah, that's my guess. So, if we look at it, even if we just look at it that way, even if someone looks at what you're doing, and says this isn't martial arts, and take that lump of people in all those locations, and they say, this isn't Karate, this is Kung Fu, whatever. You're creating exposure, you're getting people interested. And totally, I see a lot of synergy there. And this is part of why I not only wanted to acknowledge the story, but kind of dig into the story. Because one of my core beliefs, and actually, Andrew and I just recorded an episode about this earlier today, you know, who gets to decide what isn't martial arts? Right? We all get to have our opinions on it, we're going to have some disagreements, we can have some conversation about it. But who among us is ordained to determine this is and this is not martial arts? That's an incredibly arrogant thing to say. And I just tend to take the maybe I'm dodging the subject. But I don't get to say what is and what isn't, I have my opinions on what is and isn't, I'm going to do what works for me and you go do what works for you. And that person over there can do what works for them. And all of your members can do what works for them. And everybody's happy. And what's wrong with that?
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, I know. You're right. You can't be so judgmental. Right? Come on. I mean, just...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, you made a statement about martial arts saving you. And I'm not quite sure what that word choice was referencing.
Shannon Hudson:
Well, saving, I don't think I was going down a bad path. Maybe, I should... Maybe, save was the wrong word. But it gave me direction. You know, I mean, it gave me an outlet to be more confident, to be stronger. And when I was a kid and sparring and I was... When our hits, learn to hit four point or whatever, gives you a boost. Right? Gives you an endorphin hit. It gives you some confidence, right. So, and I honestly don't know where it would be without that. You know, I don't know. I took that same disappointment and as a high schooler I started playing off. And I was on the golf team and you know, love that game to this day. I mean, I think fighting and golf have a lot of similarities. You know you don't you know when it comes down to it, it's really just you, and everything relies on you. So, saving marijuana, I wasn't going down a bad path. It was just it gave me direction and gave me something to focus my energy on. Always high strong, high energy guy. I'm standing right now to standing desk. I can't sit still. So yeah, so you know. Yeah, and maybe not saving. But that gave me great direction as a kid and I'm very happy I had that outlet martial arts.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Where do you think you would have ended up? You know, if we could, if we go back? Let's go back in time. And Kevin never starts karate? That's a great question. Who do you think your life would be now?
Shannon Hudson:
I have no clue. I have no clue. I mean, I've always been athletic. You know, they wanted me to wrestle in high school. I did not play golf and wrestled, though, right? But I have no clue what I would be doing. I have no clue. Maybe I went in the military. Like my dad did. I wish I would have been that way in the military. I respect those men and women so much, I do that. In fact, when I'm wrong, we give a discount on the franchise fee a veteran discount. Veterans are great franchisees they run the plane really well work hard. But you know, but I don't know where I'd be? That's a great question.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, maybe we can attack that question from a different from the other side, right? I'm sure that there's an amount and you don't need to tell me what the amount is. But there's an amount where somebody shows up, and they say, I want to buy 9round from you. And you say, hi. And they say, you know, with this amount, you can't be involved anymore, you have to go off and do something else. And so, I would imagine most people, you know, they take that wind ball, and you know, maybe they do a little bit of traveling. But as a high functioning individual, like you somebody who is always looking for that next mission. If listeners if you go back, if you listen over the last 20 minutes or so, there's a lot of language choice in here that that shows how driven you are. You're not saying that you're driven, but it's very clear how driven you are. I can't imagine that you're going to spend the rest of your life at your age now. Not working, not finding the new mission, you're going to come up with something. And I would be surprised if you hadn't thought about it a little bit at one point. So, does that give you any clarity on what you might do? As an alternative if this hadn't happened?
Shannon Hudson:
Of course, I mean, if I could not be part of 9round today, and someone said you have to be off in the sunset, I would be bored out of my mind in two weeks. Oh, my God, I've got to create something new. I love to build; I love to create. I mean, I think we're all creators, right? And we're on this earth to create memories, create experiences, great love, whatever it is, and I love to create, I enjoy business that I do. Can I take my passion of punching and kicking and put that together in a business? And would I do it again? Do it with some different spin, if I were not with nine. Absolutely. And I've thought about that before. And I know how I would do it. I know the direction I would go. And it would be great. It would be no plan B mentality and give me five years with it, I'll have something else very spectacular, you know, because I just know I can do it. I built more confidence over the past 13 years with 9round, how to build a team, how to work, how to franchise, how to find franchise partners. You know, I know how to do it. I get it and I could build something better and better and faster. And I would test myself to see if I could do it and I would go all in man. I would do you'd be interviewing me and that logo would be different on the screen.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm looking at the 9round logo. We do these interviews, audio only just because I paste in everything and I joke with the guests that you know they can pick their nose all they want and nobody's going to. We just make it easy on the editing side too. Yeah, that's giving me some clarity. It's opening up some things here. And we're building a picture. We're building a picture of who you are and what makes you tick. So, the question is as you launched this thing and as it's taken your time as it's become this thing that you've created, you already indicated that your time physically training in martial arts has reduced. But as I found with basically the same story, as I've invested myself into whistlekick, my time for physical training is, you know, it's just not as available. Right. But there's a mental martial art, there's a thought process. There's in business, anybody who's been in business, especially entrepreneurship understands that there are, you know, when you're sparring somebody, you've got two hands and two feet to worry about when you're in business, in an industry that people don't want you there, nobody lets yet. Nobody says, “Hey, come on in and carve off some of the market share, and you can have some of our money” and you're in an incredibly competitive industry, and an industry that has had a real resurgence in a few different ways over the last decade. You're doing business martial arts, mental martial arts, however you want to think of it. Tell us what that looks like. Tell us about how your time training, biting has given you some tools, what's that toolkit look like? And how are you referring back to lessons from the dojo in your business life?
Shannon Hudson:
No, yeah, there's so many parallels. I mean, I think I heard Dan Pena say that some, I don't know if you guys have ever followed him. It's called the billion-dollar man. But he says, all of his high performers, either or military or martial arts people. And so martial arts will help anyone in business. Absolutely. And it has helped me tremendously. A lot of things I related to is like levels, like martial arts levels, you have yellow bell, orange belt, green Belt, right. You have these ranks. And I think a business that way, you know, you start out, you're a white belt, right. And you mark a little more on you get a little better at executing and now you’re maybe yellow or orange and you grow, and there's no end. See, that's the beautiful thing about martial arts in business, you can't reach the top. I mean, you're either improving or you're going backwards, right? You're either like, I don't know, if you guys have read the book. The Infinite game by Simon Sinek talks about there is no winning in business, you're either ahead or you're behind. Right. So, the same thing in martial arts, you're either driving forward and moving ahead, or you're not really winning at it, you just, there's no end to it. And it's a constant improvement, and things like perseverance, being able to stick it out when it's tough. We just recently had, you know, we're still going through the pandemic. And, man, that doesn't test your stick to activeness muscle. Oh, my gosh, I don't know what we're what cause man, and I'm telling you, I'm proud to say we have our brand, our company is better today than we were before. We have more money in the bank than we had before. We have more teammates on the team than we had before. And I relate all that to the other martial arts training, of being patient of going through the levels of being disciplined and studying. You know, when you're learning a new form in martial arts, you can pick it up on the first day. You got to practice and study and figure it out and work on it. And the same with business. I have to study and read and go to seminars and learn how to work, zoom and learn how to work with my team. So, all that is the exact same thing as going through a martial arts journey. So yeah, a lot of parallels between martial arts in business and I want to become a black belt, in business and in black. And as you guys all know, black belt like showdown means first level. So, I always think my brother always says a black belt. So white belt, it never quit. But a black belt is like the beginning level. So, I consider myself maybe a brown belt in business, maybe I don't know. But I get to black and it's just the first level I got to keep going. So, a lot of similarities. You right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think you're being a little too humble there. Right? Okay. I know how difficult it is to run a business, the size that I run. I know that as you add people and you add complexity, and now you know, you're talking about franchisees, that's even more complex and listeners out there when in my past life in it. I spent it was about a year a little over a year, we had a single location. And then we added a second location. People thought, “Oh, so you have twice as much to do twice as many problems”. No, no, no, I was four times when you think about the complexity, as you expand a business, that growth, that complexity growth is exponential, it is not linear. And so, I take that knowledge into the way I'm thinking about you and what you're doing. If you are not a showed on in business, I don't know who is my friend? Because it's not me. Thank you. You're keeping this, you're keeping this thing going, you know, are you saying it's successful? But I think that what you're pointing out there, I think is incredibly relevant. Because your approach in business, if you are thinking of it that way, is similar to the way the most successful martial arts students, instructors, fighters, look at their practice? How can I improve? Where are my weak points? Where do I shore things up? Who can I seek out that can help me improve? You mentioned book, you talked about other people in very positive lights. I imagine you have mentors and others, probably within and outside the company, people you go to say, what should I do here? What do you think about this? You're not just charging forward? We're proud of your strategy. You're so right. I mean, I have business coaches I listen to. I have, I mean, I use my phone. My phone, like a coach to like, a lot of people think they think I need to, I need a mentor. And they think I need someone to sit down and have coffee with every Saturday. And that sounds all nice and rosy. But that's not how the real-world works. You're probably not going to get that people. But you can have a lot of mentors around you, whether it's books, whether it's YouTube channels, whether it's podcasts like this, and my one of my favorite episodes of yours is the movie best of the best. I love that. But anyway, of course, you bring you bring up the episode about the movie that I have become known for dislike a terrible acting in the movie. But anyway. But yeah, so mentors are not people listening, you don't feel bad that you don't have someone to go coffee with. I mean, use these channels like YouTube and podcasts and use books and you know, in seminars you can take, and you can do a lot of them online. Now, I do that all the time so much. I mean, that's how I learned and I picked up little nuggets here and nuggets here and nuggets here and free, not I got something pretty good with all these nuggets I put together. So that's how I believe you should continually be learning. Just like in martial arts, you know, you go to seminar, you learn something, you put it in your little toolbox that works for you. I mean, the way, Bill Wallace kicks from certain things might not work for certain people, right? They don't have that flexibility. They don't have that rhythm and timing and to do it like he does, but some of it might. So that's how I approach business seems to work. Okay. Now, you mentioned earlier that most of the people who are going to sign on for a 9round franchise are not martial artists, right. But let's see if we can pull something for the martial arts school owners, from what you've learned. You've spent time in and around the school that your brother bought, you helped him grow, that you learn at least some things about business and running martial arts school there. So, when we take the 13 years of 9round and everything you've learned there, if you were to go back, and either start your own traditional martial arts school, or maybe be a consultant or something, what are some of the things that you would be doing differently than maybe most people are doing?
Shannon Hudson:
That's a great question. First off, I would have a blast doing it. But a lot of things, I mean, first off processes are very important. Process having a process for everything, have a you know, can I put it on paper? And can I teach it to someone? So having that a process for bringing on a new student onboarding a new student, ranking a new student, having these processes are what a lot of people don't have when they go into a business. And processes give you clarity, and give you the ability to hand it off. Because people that own a martial arts school usually do not have passion, and they're the only employee. But when you start to grow and you build a team, you have to be to hand things off and people call it delegation. But it's also instructing, right? You're delegating, we have to teach and train. So, building processes would be super important if I did it today. And number two would be sales and marketing. You got to. There's an unfortunately martial arts have us stigma of somehow being somewhat creepy, sometimes martial artists, and martial arts schools and we have to unprepared by that somehow, by getting the marketing right, and getting the positioning in the community, the brand positioning. And then I would elevate the look of the studio of the school and make them just freaking immaculate. You know, I think that I still just laying down some maps if you're not careful. A 9round runs into this to people that don't take care of it and make it bright and crisp. It looks inky, right? So school is just a big open space and mass and a few bags can look very janky. But how can we elevate the look and feel of it so that I can give great service and charge a premium price. And that's how I would run martial art nodes charge premium price points, I would have immaculate studios that have processes written down. So, I could duplicate and scale. I would really get savvy and marketing I would make my marketing of an unqualified the marketing and make it family friendly. And I would be good at marketing sales and boom, roll the credits. That's how you run martial art.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, as someone who had a school briefly, who spends a lot of time consulting with businesses, including martial arts school, yeah, I'm with you. 100% of systems, marketing, cleanliness.
Shannon Hudson:
Yep. Hugely in the right area, the right locations in order, you know, being in the right part of town doing demographic and psychographic studies of where you're going to put the location. These are all things that I get pretty complex, but you know, I think putting the right product in the right place is very important. I can have the best thing in the world. But if I'm not, you know, if I go fishing, and I don't have the right fish around me in the right day, I'm not going to catch anything. So same thing in business, I got to put them in the right spot, have the right bait, the right processes in place to do well. And that's what needs to be a part of a franchise can help people do we do all that work for the franchisee so they don't have to figure that out. And we have a lot of data points across the world. But little martial arts school owners, you know, the mistake they make is they find a spot, they try to negotiate the cheapest friend get the cheapest rent, and they just go for it. And I admire their gusto. But you know, the planning piece they missed or how to put together a business plan, a lot of them don't do that. So even if you have the business open putting together a business plan for you know, any time just kind of sitting down and redoing it is a great practice. And we so that's just another good a good tidbit of a tip there that can help. Right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, we've covered a lot, a lot of different stuff today and good stuff. And I had a feeling that this is what it would turn into. And I'm glad that it did. So, let's talk about the future, as we start to fade out here. You know, let's go back to the reality. You know, nobody? Well, I mean, maybe somebody does, I hope they show up with a huge amount of money. And they say here, I want to buy 9, but let's imagine they don't. And things keep going. What's coming, let's say the next five years, if you want to kick it out further than that, that's totally fine. For you and for your company.
Shannon Hudson:
Yeah, great question. First off, I think read the book, Good to Great, great book, by the way. You have to develop leaders underneath you. Right? So, it's called a level five leader, I have to develop an executive team that can run the show without me, right, I really have to build that. That's how you build a business. I want it to live long after I'm here. So, the past year, my wife and I have been really working hard on building our executive team. We've hired a new CFO, we brought in a VP of Ops, we've we hired any franchise development to franchise development officers to help us build the brand and award franchises and move to other countries. So, we focus here lately, you know, we're 13 years old on it can't be me doing everything. Heather, we have to build a very smart executive team. So, we've had to poach them from other brands, steal them away, right. And, you know, we've doing that as we speak, and we're proud of that. So, we're going to continue that practice. Other things within the brand we're going to be doing is technology based. We're working with putting screens at each of the rounds so they can see the drill and doing a very innovative thing. Heart Rate technology with an arm band is really innovative at home workout. Now called None to run is an app and we're on all the apps and a lot of franchisees are selling it along with the membership as a member perk, and anyone can buy this on the App Store and so a lot of tech things happening, the pandemic is forcing us to innovate quickly, which is a good thing. So, we're proud to say we have and, you know, build the executive team, build the Dream Team, keep building processes bring on great franchise owners, and the next five years are going to be very bright when we're looking to move into more countries. We're getting this year, we'll be opening and being Vietnam, and Indonesia, and Qatar, so there'll be three countries will open up this year. Very excited to do those. And, you know, continue growing, especially the Asia market, I think, Asian market, we just opened our seventh location in Japan. But Vietnam, we're excited about South Korea. Working on a deal in South Korea right now. So, a lot of exciting things. We love what we do, you know, my wife is the chief operating officer. So, if you really want to get into processes, she's your gal. I'm a very visionary person. And we divide and conquer behavior. Well, I'll say, here's the vision, I had to go create the training process for that. And then boom, she's often asked to create a manual for that, right? So, her and her team, so I love family businesses. You know, my brother Kevin works with me as well. My father or dad used to work with us until we finally made him retire. He was in the warehouse, packing and shipping. He was awesome. And my son is 13. In his first job we'll probably meet when he gets old enough to work, his first job will be in the warehouse. But it's a family business. We love it. And next five years, we're very optimistic about the future. That's great. Awesome.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I appreciate you being here. And you know, what are your final thoughts or words of wisdom or however you want to phrase it to the people who are listening? Yeah, well.
Shannon Hudson:
I think one of the best things you can do is put your kid in a, you know, quality martial arts program. I think you just have a more, you know, anyone jump into quality martial arts program, it's all the best. It's the one of the best personal development programs in the world. So, if you're not, if you're a fan of it or not training regularly jump back in and do it. And the other thing is, hey, go try a free 9round session. 30 minutes, it's kind of fun. If you're a martial artist at all, you will pick it up very, very quickly. And you'll have a good time doing it. And you get to see my ugly mug on the wall on a poster. So that'll be fun, too. Right. So, Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What a fun time that was. All of my conversations with Shannon have been a ton of fun. And I'm sure there will be more in the future. Looking forward to getting together training again. Sometime soon. We've got some stuff on the horizon. So, I'm pumped. Hopefully, we get to spend some more time together as a great guy. You want to go deeper on the episode, check out some photos, links, go check out 9round, any of that stuff, go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, find Episode 612. And go deep. Go deep, go deep on this goal. Check out other episodes while you're there, sign up for the newsletter, maybe throw us a couple bucks or even better contribute to the Patreon. And if those methods of support, if those don't make sense for you, totally fine. Anything you do that contributes to what we're doing our goals here of supporting the traditional martial arts world, any of it is legitimate. And of course, don't forget, we've got training programs. And we've got a speed development program that is unparalleled. Why is it unparalleled because nobody else has made one? This takes science and martial arts principles and gives you a program that will get you faster. I put everything I have on it because it will work. It works. We've tried it works. Check it out whistlekickprograms.com and you can see all kinds of other things that we've got going over there. There's a slow but steady outflow of new programs headed over there. Don't forget the code PODCAST15, you get 15% off something at whistlekick.com. And if you've got feedback, guest suggestions, topic ideas, whatever it is, let me know Jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media is @whistlekick. Really creative, right? That's how we do things. Keep it obvious. I'm done for now. So, until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day.