Episode 820 - Kera Radke
Kera Radke is a Martial Arts practitioner and instructor. Kera is a co-owner of Lake Zurich Family Martial Arts in Illinois.
I've also had like some super shy kids, totally surprise me and turn out to be amazing instructors as well. If you want be a teacher, I can make you a teacher. I don't care if you're shy, if you’re extroverted, whatever the case may be. If you really have that desire, I'll make it happen.
Kera Radke - Episode 820
Training in Martial Arts as a hobby is quite common but making a career out of it is another level. Kera Radke's passion for martial arts started as a hobby but eventually became a career. After becoming a school teacher, Kera continued to teach martial arts as a part-time hobby. Eventually, Kera took a leave of absence from teaching and taught at her friend's school for several years before finally opening her own martial arts school in 2017.
In this episode, Kera Radke, the co-owner of Lake Zurich Family Martial Arts, highlights the numerous benefits of training, such as increased physical fitness, improved confidence, and the development of essential life skills like discipline and perseverance. She also emphasizes the importance of changing up activities frequently to keep students engaged and the challenge of balancing her own training with running the studio.
Show notes
You may check out more about Kera Radke:
www.facebook.com/lzfma
instagram - @lzfma
YouTube - @LZFMA
This episode is sponsored by Kataaro:
Since 2003, Kataaro has been providing excellent service for their superior products. Handcrafted in the USA, their belts are as unique and customizable as the martial arts journeys they represent.
Use the code: WK10 to receive 10% off on your first order today!
See their belts, and so much more, for yourself by visiting: www.kataaro.com
Follow their socials:
o @kataarousa (Instagram)
o Facebook.com/Kataaro
Show Transcript
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio episode 820 with today's guest, Kera Radke. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host for the show. founder of whistlekick where everything we do is in support of the traditional martial arts. In fact, our very reason for existing is to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world and root to getting everybody in the world to train in some form of traditional martial art for at least six months. Why? Because we believe martial arts brings out a better version of ourselves. And we wanna make the world a better place. If you wanna see all the things that we're doing to that end, go to whistlekick.com, and one of the things you'll find there is a store cause we make and sell stuff. It's one of the ways that we fund what we do. But if you use the code Podcast15, you save 15% and it lets us know that the people who pay attention to this show also wanna support us in that way. Now you can go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com to get more on this or any of the episodes we've ever done. We continue to leave them all out there for you. No paywalls, nothing like that. If you want to go back further, like some podcasts, do 820 episodes with transcripts and links and social media and all kinds of good stuff to give you more context and help you connect, educate, and entertain. Other ways that you might consider helping us in our mission. You can join our Patreon. You could tell a friend about us. You could check out the family page whistlekick.com/family. You could hire whistlekick to support your school as a consultant. You want to grow. Lots of things you can do there. And there's one other thing that you can do. You can consider supporting our sponsors. Today, we have Kataaro as a sponsor, kataaro.com, Kataaro. You probably know Kataaro. If you know them, most of you know them from their awesome belts. These guys make the absolute best belts available. We tried to make belts. It did not work. We will not make belts again. This is part of why we are partnering with Kaataro because they do something absolutely amazing and that's what whistlekick tries to do is make amazing things and partner with amazing people and amazing companies. Now, if you're watching this in video, you can see there's a whistlekick logo on this belt. I'll tell you, when I took this thing outta the box, absolutely thrilled. They have a ton of options from the fabric to the width, the length. You're not just picking a size and a color, you're picking everything on this belt. If you so choose, and if you use the code WK 10 at their website, Kataaro.com, capital W, capital K, number one, number zero, you can save 10% on your first order. You probably have a number of uniforms that you wear, a bunch of different clothes that you might wear underneath, maybe even different colors of sparring gear, but you probably only have one belt anywhere. Why not make it a great belt that you're gonna be excited to wear that reflects the time and the effort that went into earning it? Check 'em out, Kataaro. We're happy to have them as a partner. Now, today's episode with Kera Radke is a wonderful conversation about someone who I think the best way to describe it is her path could have easily gone a very different way, but as you look back on it, I think you'd be surprised if it had gone a different way. And that probably sounds vague and it probably sounds like I'm not telling you anything, but I bet once you check out this episode, once you watch or listen, you're gonna see exactly what I'm talking about. There are a lot of possibilities in front of Kera, but only one that I think once you get to know her really would've made sense. So here's my episode with Kera Radke. Hello.
Kera Radke:
Good morning, Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How are you? So what's going on? How are you?
Kera Radke:
Ah, just excited to be here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. I'm glad we finally get to talk. I get to know you better.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. Getting all set up for Bill Wallace this weekend. We're pretty stoked.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. How is it looking? People seem excited.
Kera Radke:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good.
Kera Radke:
Yes. We're meeting our like pre-registration goals and…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good. You've done some good promotion on that. A lot of people I've seen, I've had some friends that have hosted him and they just, I feel like they take like a post-it to a telephone pole and they're like, that's good.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, no promotion. You gotta try.
Kera Radke:
I learned long ago, I have to put it everywhere. If I want it to stick and I wanna get the turnout that I want, I have to be obnoxious and obscene so.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. One of the things I talk about with my clients, whether they're martial arts schools or not, the marketing theory right now is estimating it takes about 50 impressions for a message to stick.
Kera Radke:
I wouldn't doubt it. I wouldn't doubt it. I know how many times I swipe past a flyer or something, you know, and takes quite times before I read it out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because we get so many messages we're the average person's getting about 10,000 a day.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. I don't doubt it. It's incredible.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now I know a little bit about you because you popped up as a nominee for the first Never Settle awards last year, and I was like you know, looking through the names and I'm going, I know most of these people and the ones that I don't, I know why I know how they got here. I know who nominate. Like I could connect the dots for almost everybody. And I went who is this person? And where does she come from? And why don't I know her? And et cetera, et cetera. And so that's how I started to know a bit about you. But you've been, I mean, you didn't just open to school like yesterday. You've been training for a while. You've been doing your thing for a while. So let's talk about how all that started. When did you start training? Let's go there.
Kera Radke:
Oh, absolutely. I did. I knew you were gonna ask me that question. So I did the Math and this summer it's gonna be my 30th year.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cool.
Kera Radke:
So I started training in 1993.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cool. Awesome.
Kera Radke:
Right? Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm also celebrating as a training zero this year.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. Congrats. Which zero?
Jeremy Lesniak:
The next one.
Kera Radke:
That's awesome.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Which is weird cause I'm 25. I'm not really sure how that Math adds up.
Kera Radke:
That's what I'm saying. I know. It just doesn't compute. I don't know how that's possible.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How did you get into it? Is this a family thing? Friend thing?
Kera Radke:
No, completely random. I signed up for a park district martial arts program when I was 12 years old, I am pretty sure my dad signed me up. He wanted to toughen me up, you know, make sure that I could defend myself if I ever needed to and signed up with a girlfriend of mine. We were in sixth grade and she lasted for one session and I'm still going strong.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. We've had a lot of people on the show just because of the numbers who actually started at that adolescent age and you know, as an instructor, that is not common.
Kera Radke:
It is not common right now. I feel like it was more so. Back when I started, it was more common to start at that age. I remember one of my programs, I wasn't allowed to begin until I was like 14. You know, it wasn't made for younger children. It was more of an older, you had to be older to do it. And as I spend most of my days now with four-year-olds, I question my sanity and I also think of how incredible it is that they have such a start, you know, if they're doing something similar and similar in my shoes, what a great headstart that they get.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. So, even though your friend didn't stick with it, you kept going. What was it you found in that class that maybe she didn't find?
Kera Radke:
You know, I don't know. It's that fickle teenage years. You know, it just really seemed like a good fit for me. Don't know why it really didn't work out for her and I suppose I didn't ask those kinds of questions back in the day, but it was just, it was a really good fit for me. I was not a sport player. Every activity that involved a ball usually ended up in my face.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I feel like there are stories there. We don't have to go there. It sounds like there are some stories.
Kera Radke:
I never felt like any of the traditional sports that all the other kids that I knew were doing, fit for me and this really did. And it was something athletic that I did pretty good in. I didn't get hurt as much. And yeah, it was just, it was a really, really good fit for me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When did it go from this is a thing I'm trying out to this is a thing I'm really enjoying?
Kera Radke:
That's a good question. My teacher put me to work pretty early. So I was about, maybe 15 or 16 when I was helping with a lot of classes like we always get recruited to do. Especially once hit black belt and it just, it, the teaching really stuck with me. So that's when I knew it just, it really had hold of me. I really had an impact on people's lives and I just, at the time, I just knew that felt good to do good things.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, starting at the age you did, I'm sure you had ideas of what you might want to do with your life. Did they line up with teaching at all?
Kera Radke:
Yes. Okay. In fact, I was on the impression that martial arts really would just always be a hobby for me. So when I went to college, I went to school to be a teacher. Fast forward, I taught 11 years of 8th grade Math around here locally. Martial arts kinda part-time after I got done teaching, I would zoom back out to my school and teach in the evenings and on the weekends.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So you had your own martial arts school at that point, but it was the…
Kera Radke:
No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, okay. That school you were attending.
Kera Radke:
Yeah, I didn't own my own school till about six years ago.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Alright, so let's go back. So college learning to be a teacher, graduate, Math teacher know, I know a number of Math teachers or are martial arts thinking Math, Science, Math. Actually, yeah. I think it skews more Math and Science than it does humanities. That's something I'm gonna have to process.
Kera Radke:
Oh yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you're probably, sounds like you started teaching and never stopped teaching martial arts. It was a thread that was continuous.
Kera Radke:
Correct. Yeah, they just couldn't get rid of me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why go into being a school teacher? Why not just teach martial arts full-time…
Kera Radke:
Yeah, I've never…
Jeremy Lesniak:
At that point, at that college point?
Kera Radke:
It was never an option for me. To me, you know, and in the groups that I was associated with, it was just, this is always a hobby. You know, get yourself a real career, a real career, you know, with benefits and dependability. And you know, as a school teacher you have tenure, so. You know, you're gonna be able to have that job and keep that job. And it was never an option for me. Like till maybe just recently, I was the first one in my family to go to college. So I did that and they, everybody, you know, was like, you need to get a job, a real job…
Jeremy Lesniak:
It comes with expectations.
Kera Radke:
College career, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Expect that half that they wanted that they saw for you and yeah, we're almost the same age. So I understand that. Yeah. Okay. And so you said 6 years, so what's that in 12? Why after putting all those years in as a school teacher, did you set that down?
Kera Radke:
Yeah, I was.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You've done all the hard part, right? Like Math doesn't change. You don't have to rework your curriculum that much. Maybe you did once, you know, for common core, but it's not like there's new Yes. You're not alone. Maybe that is that. What did it, you went, okay, I'm out. I can't do this anymore. This is ridiculous. Or was it something else? Was there something about, was it more of a draw of martial arts than a push from school teaching?
Kera Radke:
It was a combination of two things and that's when I knew I had to do it. Teaching changed quite a bit in like the 10 years that I taught quite a bit. It was increasingly difficult to make a difference. You know, to really do good. And that's kind of the core of why I love being a teacher is that I, you know, I can pass on knowledge and make a difference and develop relationships and, you know, I dunno, changed the world somehow. So it changed a lot. It was becoming harder and harder to kind of make that influence that I wanted to. And then I also switched martial arts schools and I started teaching for another friend of mine. And he's the one that kinda opened the door and, you know, gave me a lot of opportunities that I hadn't had before. And I really started looking at it and I was like, no, I think I did the Math. I'm a numbers cruncher. I did the Math. I'm like, I really think I could do this. I really think I could do this, you know, and make a living.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How long from that notion to implementation? I'm gonna take…
Kera Radke:
[00:13:11] a school teacher for two years. I think that was like 2011 to 2013. Took myself a leave of absence from teaching. Kinda cause I could put on the back burner and go back if I really needed to.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right.
Kera Radke:
And then I taught at his school for quite a while and hustled a lot of part-time gigs and a lot of part-time jobs. That must have been three or four or five years. And then in 2017 I came here to this school and bought into this school. Took me about a year to get to full-time. I was still hustling hard with a lot of the part-time stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What kind of part-time stuff?
Kera Radke:
Well, I tutored a lot. I worked at a sushi restaurant.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm asking because I knew what kind of jobs these likely were, right? Because we know when it's the time has to line up. Right? Because you're probably teaching in the evening, so it can't be that stuff. So I ask because I want the other people in the audience who are considering this to see that you do what you gotta do to get what you're trying to go.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. It was really, really, really hard.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sushi, tutoring.
Kera Radke:
I substitute taught, I tutored. I worked at a sushi restaurant. I taught at another dojo, of a friend of mine, I DJ part-time, so I DJ weddings and like events and I roll up in my Toyota Scion with all my DJ equipment, you know, and I bust out school dances and weddings and stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice.
Kera Radke:
That was a real savior for me. I learned how to do that when I was teaching school. It was part of a, part of like our student council. I taught the kids how to use DJ equipment.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's awesome.
Kera Radke:
I did that on the weekends.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I DJ'd for about a decade.
Kera Radke:
Do you?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I did, I don't anymore.
Kera Radke:
Three or four hours in the morning. I would teach at the studio, at the dojo, and then I'd quick change put all the gear in my car, and then zoom out to a wedding, you know, like four o'clock to midnight or whatever.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And there are, let's see, I know at least one other school owner, DJ, and it's managing a crowd, right?
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're managing a crowd of dancers. You're managing a crowd of children, of adults, right? Whatever it is, it's, can you read their energy? Can you see what they need? Can you give them that input that they need that gets them going where you want them to go?
Kera Radke:
I always said if I could get a bunch of awkward middle school kids to dance at a school dance, a wedding's easy, weddings no problem.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, absolutely. They wanna be there.
Kera Radke:
Exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. So there was a lot of hustle and struggle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. Was there a point where you thought it wasn't coming in the time that you wanted it to, that you thought about bailing?
Kera Radke:
No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Never.
Kera Radke:
Never.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why?
Kera Radke:
I don't know. I'm stubborn.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Something tells me it's more than that.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. I came too far. I gave too much up. I sacrificed too much. Side note, I don't have any responsibilities except for me, so I don't have any kids or whatnot that would, if I had a family, this would be a different story, but it's just me. I had to know that I at least tried it, that I had least made it happen, and then after that it's like no now we're definitely making it happen.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Let's take a moment if I can, and I'm not gonna ask numbers because that's very private, but you bought into a school that's an uncommon way for someone to become an instructor. Right? Typically would be like, okay, I'm gonna open my own school over here under you. And yet the way you did it, You get to kind of leverage the existing organization and the support. And I'm gonna guess that as you did, so you probably added programs or added classes unless somebody out the only other way somebody was retiring, you know, and you were, they were stepping out. As you were stepping in. Talk about that decision process, you would.
Kera Radke:
Yeah, absolutely. It was definitely the right choice for me. Kind of fell in my lap. It was you know, just, I knew this school, funny enough, I sat on a black belt testing board when I was 16 here at this location.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, fun.
Kera Radke:
How many years ago? We're not counting. But yeah, so I was familiar with the school. It's in the area where I lived and grew up. And yeah, it was the right decision for me. I would've had a really hard time starting from square one starting at $0, it would've been nearly impossible for me to make that happen. I left teaching I didn't have a nest egg. I didn't have anything to kinda, I didn't starter funds. So this was perfect for me. It's a little orthodox. I know most people don't do it, I was at least able to start with a student base. But I walked in, the facility was already here. I didn't have to wait for a build-out. I didn't have to recruit students. They were already here. So it was a man, it was a matter of managing what already existed and kind of making it my own. But there was always it. The ball was already rolling.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. Now that can be a difficult situation because obviously, we know it's working out. I mean, I don't know how well it's working out, but, you know, for all I know, it's, you know, we'll stop this recording and things will be thrown and angry people will exist, but that's not my gut feeling based on the little bit that I know of you. But you stepped into an existing culture. And you went to, okay, now I'm going to be part of the one managing this culture. When the people who were already managing this culture existed and did not depart, was that difficult?
Kera Radke:
There was bumps, I wouldn't call it extremely difficult. I knew, you know, I did a good analysis of kind of what kind of school it was, what kinda rep it had, what the culture kind of already felt like. And it was already a good fit. I just had to take what was already there, which was good. School's been here for 30 years, so it's been here. Like I said, I've sat on a testing board here when I was 16. Good reputation, good community, good community involvement. It just, it was a really, really good fit for me. So I knew, you know, for all the things that could go wrong, I felt like it was a pretty good bet. I won't build a couple fillers, but for the most part, you know, there's minimal bumps in the road.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You can't have growth without change.
Kera Radke:
I know and I can't make everyone happy as much as I try.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Unless they're four and they want chicken nuggets.
Kera Radke:
So, then I definitely can't make them happy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I wanna ask this question. When did it feel comfortable after that transition into ownership?
Kera Radke:
I was comfortable once I made myself full-time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. And how long did that part take?
Kera Radke:
About a year.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Kera Radke:
I wanna say it was about a year. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So still the part-time jobs in that internship,
Kera Radke:
Even after I made myself full-time here, I still have some part-time stuff. Even now I sell some part-time stuff, you know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hard to let those things go, especially if they're lucrative. Weddings pay you, for those in the audience that don't understand. My business model when I DJ'd was bring me a quote from one of the other, like four places in Vermont, and I'll do it for half price. And it was still very lucrative for me.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. I think after Covid hit, you know, and it and you see your I don't know, you see everything so easily crushed. It's hard for me not to do you know whenever I can put it, whenever I can do a little extra, put a little extra away now. I'm very cognizant of that. I was living very, I was living by the skin of my teeth before Covid and then that hit and that was crushing so, I keep doing it. I try to do it less and less. I wanna focus, focus on this, this can be my all day every day. But it's hard to give up a couple, couple gigs here and there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So talk about your day. You said you spend most of your day with four-year-olds. What is your teaching schedule and demographics?
Kera Radke:
My day is pretty much on my day ball here at the Dojo, I get here pretty early work throughout the day and then teach most the evening. So it's typically like a 10-hour day here. I haven't figured out this whole delegation thing quite yet, but I'm trying and yeah, just living, eating, breathing, martial arts, it's a dream come true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Does it ever get tiring?
Kera Radke:
No, I get tired but it's not tiring. No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What do you chalk that up to?
Kera Radke:
I just love it. I love what I do.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Why?
Kera Radke:
It's my passion. I get to do martial arts, which I love. I feel like it's one thing that I'm good at. I get to teach students, I get to change lives. I mean, every day I have the capacity to change lives, you know, make people better. And that's awesome to me, that's my whole dream as a teacher, and I get to do both all day long. And I get to do it all by my own rules, you know? I don't have a principal to tell me what to do. I don't have anyone telling me what curriculum I need to teach. You know, I just need to make my students and my families happy. And yeah, the rewards are immeasurable.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You've used the phrase changing lives in a couple different ways, a few different times. Did somebody change your life?
Kera Radke:
Yeah, absolutely. All my martial arts instructors, you know, especially that last studio that I was in when I just, it clicked, you know, like, this is something you're good at, this is something you can do. You know, why would you let anyone tell you this couldn't be a career for you? Why would you let anyone tell you that wouldn't work? You know, and boom, game changer, mindset change and go with it. I would love to see one of my students, you know, do something similar. Maybe not the exact same thing, but, you know, take martial arts and a passion and use it to help others and just pass that along.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. You talked about first one in your family to go to college, kind of that laid out process-oriented dream that, again, folks of our age, it was a lot of expectations was this is what's gonna happen. I didn't do it either. Spoiler alert. Was that difficult for your family to swallow when you said, all right, I'm giving up teaching, I'm gonna go teach martial arts and serve sushi and DJ.
Kera Radke:
Yeah, it was not real well received. Not because, you know, they didn't want me to follow my passion, but just it's a big financial risk and it really was, you know, there's a good chance it doesn't pan out. How are you gonna afford to live? So, yeah, I think it was a hard pill to swallow. I don't think it was necessarily the college thing, you know, I, although there were definitely conversations of, we, you know, you spent a lot of money on college. Kera you sure? Are you sure you wanna give it up? You know, and I feel like I'm using my teaching still. You know, I have a huge advantage, but I have a master's degree in education. That gives me a huge advantage here at the studio. So those skills carry over. But yeah, I remember my mom being like, are you sure? You know, my mom will never tell me it's a stupid idea, but she's like, What are you sure? Are you sure, you're sure?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Which is her code, right? Her code for maybe not.
Kera Radke:
I know what that means, but my mom is my biggest fan now. She's here. We do like bring your mom to class day. We do open houses, we do events. And Mama Master Kera is always here. And I think we've convinced her that it was a good idea.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. Where does that education, you mentioned it gives you a leg up in what way?
Kera Radke:
Gosh, every way. So many people are great martial artists but can't necessarily get that into someone else's body or someone else's mind, right? So just all the things that I learned in teaching. Learning styles, making lesson plans, you know, creating curriculum. Making a curriculum for me is no problem. You know, I can…
Jeremy Lesniak:
You don't wing it?
Kera Radke:
No. God, no, we don't wing it. We do lesson plan. No, no, no. But yeah, just, you know, helping my instructors put, you know, put lessons on rotations and how to better reach their students, how to deal with disciplinary issues and classroom management. All the things that come with being a teacher that have nothing to do with martial arts. I, you know, I got all that in my back pocket and I can put that into my studio, into my classes, into my instructors' classes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now you said your instructors, so you have people who report to you. What's it like teaching the teachers who are teaching? Not everyone gets the chance to do that.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. No, it's awesome. Our studio is super big. We have to have multiple instructors. Never in this…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Simultaneously, you're talking about in one class?
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Where's the ratio where you have a second person?
Kera Radke:
Each of our classes are like 14 to one. Okay. So I'll have a class that'll have about 14 students. You know, there's a classroom over there, they have 14 and there's a classroom in the back.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They're physically broken up in two…
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Separate spaces. Okay.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. So I have to, it's cool, it's cool teaching the other teachers. When I came here, there was already built-in instructors. That was cool. And they were all really great, like really awesome instructors. So it was just a matter of maybe throwing out some tips here and there. So, very, very lucky there. We recently hired a new instructor. It's been fun kind of helping her get the rope. She didn't come from this school or this curriculum. So catching her up is cool. But yeah, it's neat to teach other teachers.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For people out there who, you know, let's face it, the majority of martial arts schools have the owner/head instructor who teaches the majority of classes. And you might have somebody who says, hey, can you go take the blue belts and go work that form? Or you know, I'm gonna go do this, you do that and there isn't a lot of, I don't wanna say structure, but formalized structure in those things. Any advice for those schools that even if they don't have a master's in education or, and don't want to go get one, some tips that you might share with them?
Kera Radke:
Yeah. To me it's, I wanna say super important. It's imperative to make sure that you have someone. Coming up underneath you and someone coming up underneath them and, you know, always keep that cycle going. You know, it's so easy to just get in there and I'm the one, and I'm the teacher and you know, I help all these students. It's so important that there's somebody there to back you up, you know? Some days I'm gonna get sick. I have to know that there's someone else that can do my job. I wanna be replaceable. I wanna know that if something happens. Me and my business partner, we always talk about, okay, if I get hit by a bus, this is what's gonna happen. You know, like, I wanna make sure that if something happened that all of this could keep going. It doesn't rely solely on me. You know, I can be one of the main puppeteers, but I wanna know that if something happens, someone can take over and keep the train going.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What do you look for when you're developing instructors? You talked about identifying people that you could bring up.
Kera Radke:
It's really hard cause I've had a lot of people kind of surprise me and turn out to be really amazing instructors. So, you know, a lot of times I'll look for the fearless student in there that's not, that doesn't hesitate to lend a hand or give advice or help out or call counts or step up to the plate. You know, there's those real extroverted types that are just kind of obvious, like you need to be a teacher. But I've also had like some super shy kids, totally surprised the heck outta me and turn out to be amazing instructors as well. So I kind of look for the whole gambit. I mostly just want someone who wants to be a teacher. If you be a teacher, I can make you a teacher, you know, I don't care if your shy or extroverted you know, whatever the case may be. If you really have the desire, I'll make it happen cause it's the best job in the world.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This question might stir the pot a little bit, but we can stir it together.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So you're not just looking at rank.
Kera Radke:
No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You don't just say, oh, you're the highest rank, so you have to be my next teacher.
Kera Radke:
Can I tell you something ridiculous?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Please.
Kera Radke:
I've got some of the best five-year-olds that help me lead my classroom. It's crazy. They have less fear than some of the teenagers that I'm trying to bring up right now. You know, they hop over and help each other with their belts. They call the commands, they show 'em how to do techniques. It's unbelievable. So, no rank, obviously, I want them to know what they're doing. I'm not gonna put someone in front of a classroom that doesn't know the material. That doesn't make sense. But no, it's more personality and character than it does rank. I know a lot of really, really great high-ranking people that can't teach a class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now when I asked the question, you chuckled, right? So you know the common perception in our world that you know why you would never have someone that is a first-degree black belt teaching someone who's a third-degree black belt in an authoritative way that is frowned upon in many environments. I don't know that I'll say most anymore, but it's at least many if not more than that. Did you get any pushback as you started to do that, or do you get pushback from people? Well, I'm higher ranked than them. Why don't you make me your assistant teacher?
Kera Radke:
Not really, not too much. You know, it's the way that I kinda present it. I definitely don't have too many younger rank teaching the older rank, but I also wouldn't have any problem in a class you know if you have black belts together. You know, hey you're a first degree you lead this form today. You know, we just, we're just very much a culture of like, we all have something to learn from each other. And let's be honest, like when my hips don't work as good anymore, you know, it doesn't matter what black belt I have, I'm gonna need this second degree or the third degree to show that technique. They can actually still do it. Well, you know, my body's not gonna work as good as it does right now. You know, I'm gonna need that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it, what I'm also reading between the lines is it sounds like you have a culture of teaching how to teach from a very young age rank. And so everyone understands the importance of that.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did you do similar stuff back when you were a school teacher?
Kera Radke:
I dunno if it ever correlated back to being a school teacher necessarily having like other students kinda help each other, not too much. not too much.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So what are you working on now?
Kera Radke:
My next big thing right now is building our teachers. It's funny you ask about teachers. We're building our teacher base. We need more teachers. You know, originally I wanted to build the school so that it could sustain itself and we did a really great job of that. We went from a hundred students up to about 200 students maybe in a year or so, and then we doubled the size of our facility. That was in 2019. And then Covid hit. So we were back to like a hundred, kinda back to square one with double expenses. And then we got outta covid. We're at a solid, like 250 students right now, so that's sustainable and that is amazing. I can't even believe that comes outta my mouth. It's so incredible. But now it's about building the teacher team, making sure that we can keep it going. Making sure that one of us can get sick without utter disaster. You know, there's no dial a Sensei substitute line, so it's always mass chaos when one of the kids gets us sick. So yeah, I just, I wanna build my teacher team. I wanna have a real solid team here so that we know everything is covered all the time and we can continue to keep growing and just keep doing all, I like to do a lot of things. I like to stay very busy, so I wanna have a big team so that we can all share it without getting burned out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You mentioned hiring someone recently.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Was that a hire from inside the school?
Kera Radke:
No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Now…
Kera Radke:
[00:33:20]
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don't know if you, I know you pay attention to the show. I don't know if you caught the episode, Andrew and I did talk about the pros and cons of hiring from within versus hiring externally. But maybe you can talk a little bit about that decision process cause again, that you know, you think about curriculum. Well, we gotta give them that. I don't have as much time with them, you know, do they just kind of interview, resume well or is this gonna be a good fit, right? So, and I think I heard you say across the country.
Kera Radke:
Across the country.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So talk about that whole thing.
Kera Radke:
It's crazy. It's totally crazy. I can't believe it worked out. It's a perfect fit. I just feel like we won the lottery or something. I don't know. But we were looking for another instructor and our student base is too young to get somebody. With what we needed. They were too young and too experienced. It was, we're kind of behind since covid on teacher training, so there was no one from within that would've filled the role. So we had to look out into the world and we don't know what we're doing, right? So I put it out on Indeed, we got an app, we've got quite a few applications, and one of them, was from a gal she is in, she was in California. The Navy was transferring her out here and she was looking for a gig and it came together. She, we knew she was gonna be working on different curriculum, but again, like I told you, I told her, you know, if you're open-minded, you have a black belt, you have enough experience to stay a few steps ahead of the students. Learn the curriculum, catch up, fill the gaps. You know, mostly she was just a good culture fit. Her personality and her work ethic really fit. So filling in the martial arts was the easy part, I think.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You said something that I think people who have, don't have a strong understanding of what public school education looks like may have missed. Stay one step ahead.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The idea that you step into an environment where you might be teaching, you know if you were a Math teacher, you might be teaching algebra and algebra two and geometry and pre-calc and maybe even additional classes. You might have five, six different curriculums that you know, or are expected to teach through an academic year. And that's a lot of material, especially when you're getting down into the details. So you can teach them. But yet in martial arts, well, you need to know all of these things. Well, sometimes we forget that form. Sometimes we miss that detail. Where does the key I go in that kata? Right. And if you have the right materials, right? Like you can, okay, so here's the lesson plan, right? Goes back to the planning that Oh my God, you have a lesson plan, which not all of us do when we teach. It gives you that opportunity to say, okay tomorrow's rundown. Oh, how do I do this again?
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And make sure you show up a step ahead.
Kera Radke:
Yeah. It happened for me. I went from my original school way back in the day when I was a child, and then I moved to a friend of mine's school. It was the same thing. We, I kinda grew up in more Korean martial arts. He did all Japanese stuff. The terminology was different, you know, the way you crossed your arms so different. But it kind learned, no, it's kind of all the same. There's some minor differences. So when I was trying to learn his curriculum to teach at his school, that's always what he told me. You know, I'm like, I would always tell him, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And he like Kera, you just have to be a couple of steps ahead. You know, these students are inexperienced, they're new. You have a ton of experience, a ton of knowledge. You've just gotta be a couple steps ahead. You don't have to be perfect.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They're not gonna know. You can mess up as much as you want. They're really not gonna know. ITF did you have to deal with sine wave?
Kera Radke:
No, no.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's the one, that's the element that I see people have the hardest time with. If they come from ITF they have sine wave. Okay. And then they step into something else. So, because you've had a chance to work with a lot of different people, you've trained at different schools and you now know, you've trained at different styles, I would imagine that your views on martial arts and material and curriculum, a lot of that, you know, that whole umbrella has probably changed over time too. You know, if now Kera talked to younger Kera and compared notes, there'd be quite a few differences. And you speak to any of the high points and in what we find.
Kera Radke:
Yeah, absolutely. As far as my, you know, my views on martial arts it goes with kinda Asian experience too. When I was younger, this is the way to do it. This is the only way to do it. This is the way I was taught. Everything else is stupid, you know? And again, just cause your view of the world is so small and you don't know anything else. So it's easy just to clinging to what you know, and that this is the only way it should be done. And then I was lucky to kind of be exposed to a lot of different martial arts and get myself utterly confused with all the different ways to do the same thing. But also it made me realize that, you know, a kick is, my friend used to tell me a kick is a kick. And a punch is a punch. You know, if it works, then you did it, right? And that's kinda how I view martial arts, you know, and I know some people are very, very much regimented in their style and they wanna keep it traditional and they wanna do that. I'm just, it's just, it's not what I was brought up with and it's not how I've evolved, you know, as a martial artist, I'm not an Olympian, you know, I'm not a world champion. I don't have gold medals. But I've trained a long time and I know a lot of different stuff. And I have a lot to give back and to teach and just, I have an opportunity to keep training and do all sorts of different things. Which is unbelievable. And I get to do it all day long. So my view of the martial arts is just, yeah, kick and punch and do all those things as much as you possibly can. There's nothing really right or wrong.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So has your curriculum evolved?
Kera Radke:
Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We have...
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is it still evolving? Do you…
Kera Radke:
Always, always, always.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Kera Radke:
I think your curriculum should always evolve. We always look at stuff and, you know, the way my curriculum was put together by my instructor originally. You know, you look back at that and you're like, God, why did I teach that at White Belt? Why did I teach that to beginners? That's so difficult, you know? Why did they teach Roundhouses to seven-year-olds with two weeks experience? You know, that's so difficult. Why was I doing that? Or why was I trying to cram so many basics down in the beginning? You know, when I can spread 'em out. Just things like building that curriculum. But every year we go through our curriculum and you know, the instructors sit down and Does this work? Does that work? Is it in the right spot? Does it make sense? And yeah, we've changed our curriculum a lot. Our curriculum is super unique. I mean, I can't even tell people like what style we are because we're kind of our own entity. It's just accumulation of all the different kind of arts that I've learned and how I feel like they go together.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. I had a conversation over the weekend with someone talking about this challenge that they were having teaching rear leg sidekick to a child. I was like, well,
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Let's break that down. Let's talk about all the things you're asking a kid who struggles to stand up to be able to do that are com…
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And some of them being completely non-intuitive.
Kera Radke:
A 100%. I learned one of my friends was a physical therapist, you know, I asked him like, I gotta teach these little kids, my teacher taught me into teaching these little kids. What am I gonna do with them? And he even said you know one of the most difficult things for the younger kids, for the preschool age is to stand on one leg and I'm like why am I teaching them so many kicks then? So now I do activities where they can practice standing on one leg and my favorite. We do a game talk called Tone Ninjas, and they grab hands and they get little ninjas on the floor and they gotta pick 'em up and put 'em in the basket with their toes. It's so silly. It's a crowd-pleaser here at Lake Zurich Family Martial Arts. But again, yeah. What's our expectations on the students, you know, are they failing because our expectations are wrong or, you know what? What is it?
Jeremy Lesniak:
One of the things that is changing in our world, and again, this is where I suspect your background in education, you didn't have to go through this, but the realization that children are not small adults.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Their brains are still developing. Heads up everybody until 25. Brains are still developing until 25. So when you look at a kid that's seven or eight and they were able to do it last week and they can't do it this week, it could be that when they can't figure out they're left from their right, it's not cause they're dumb. It's not cause you're a bad teacher, it's because they just, things are just still plugging in. They're missing pieces.
Kera Radke:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So I like that game. What else do you do? I throw on a couple other things like that, the people, I bet there's somebody out there taking more than one person taking notes. Okay. What else do they do? What else can I steal?
Kera Radke:
Yeah, no, good question. I think one of the big things we do in our classroom is like changing phases quickly. We all know that the younger kids have different attention spans than the older students. And we work really hard in like, changing states, I think is what they used to call it in my education background. I dunno. But, you know, changing activities every certain chunk of time. Used to be rule of thumb for however old your students are, that's how many minutes you should be like changing up what you're doing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's a good guideline.
Kera Radke:
You know, I teach a lot of five-year-olds. All of our stuff is kinda chunked into five-minute pieces, you know, so we'll do a warmup, we'll be about five minutes. You know, we'll do a quick review of some things that they know. It's about five minutes. We have a match-up, it's about five minutes. And that keeps their brain active and it keeps them focused and it kinda minimizes that, oh God, they're all tuned out. Nothing's getting through anymore. Cause you've been doing the same pick for 15 minutes. You know, so that's definitely a good piece. If I could give any tip there is to look at your lessons and are you switching things up again. Rule of thumb for however many minutes your students are old, so you know, your teenager class. Like yeah, you can go for about 15 minutes, doing one thing they're good, but then they start kinda checking out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. It's a good tip. And I'm gonna guess that it's not always 10 on each side.
Kera Radke:
Right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. That's one that is so instilled that I if you really, here's a fun one for all of you out there if you really wanna mess with the people in your class, it's an adult class and it's a really traditional class, do eight and then switch sides and watch their brains explode. And the fact that happens is exactly why it needs to get mixed up.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
One of mine, if I'm teaching kids and I don't quite know what I wanna switch to yet. I'll just have 'em change direction. All right. Everybody turn, we're gonna do the same thing facing this way.
Kera Radke:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's like hitting the reset button gets you another minute or two at least.
Kera Radke:
Yep. No, that's a good trick too. Just changing direction. We never line up the same way in my class, like the poor class.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Speak to that.
Kera Radke:
Never, we never line up the same way. There's no real front of my classroom necessarily because I want it to be different. I want, let's be real. Students have to do things a lot of times they have to be, they have to do repetition. You have to you know but repetition is boring. How do I hide that repetition? And that's one of the ways is every warmup, we might do the exact same warmup, but today it might be in a circle tomorrow might be in lines, you know after every exercise we do, we might face the windows and then the back walls again. Just a way to mix it up. You can do the same thing over and over and it just looks different and it feels different for the students. And that's how you hide that repetition. So they get their repetition. They get what they need. But you hide them. Like putting Spinach in a smoothie. You know I gotta put in there. and I gotta hide it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's a great example. Yeah.
Kera Radke:
Just made them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Where's this spinach? Where's this spin? I like that. How do you balance your own passion or training and development? Right. It's very clear that. Teaching is your probably primary passion, but I suspect you haven't given up on the passion for developing yourself as a martial artist. How do you balance the two?
Kera Radke:
It's really hard.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Kera Radke:
It's really not.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's why I ask the question.
Kera Radke:
It's really not easy at all. It's always me fighting with myself because it's a whole lot easier to put my time and my energy into running the studio rather than getting my own training. And that is really, really hard. It seems like there's always something that comes up and I will sacrifice my own training, my own workout to do what needs to be done for the studio. Whatever circus happens for the day, I seem to always make that choice, and that's really difficult. I definitely don't have much work-life-balance either, like this is, this is it. This is what I do. But as far as my own training. There's been a couple tricks. I like to do our fitness class, which is like martial arts-based fitness class. We hit bags, we lift kettlebells, things like that. Body weight exercises and stuff. And that's a way for us to get kind of our adults interested in martial arts too. I feel like I get a pre-workout as well. I get my own training when I teach that class. So that's a little way. I've got some trickeration to doing my own training. We have black belt workouts every Wednesday. It's non-negotiable. You have to be there. It's hard cause it's the end of the night after you've been working all day and teaching all day, but non-negotiable Wednesday nights.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Speak to that non-negotiable. What does that mean?
Kera Radke:
You have to be there, you know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Everybody? Every, if you have a black belt in your school?
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What happens if you miss it?
Kera Radke:
Especially the teacher. Well, you can get sick, you know, but it's non-negotiable. Like you're gonna be there and this is your class. If you're going to be, if you're gonna be a teacher, you have to do your training yourself. You can't you have to practice what you preach. So it's non-negotiable. Sundays at first Sunday of every month, we get a together with a bunch of black belts, even from around the area, and we do our training. That's also non-negotiable. If you're a teacher, if you're black belt, you're there. You have to get that training. So we get those. I send myself on seminars when I can get away from the studio when I can dial a Sensei substitute, will do that. But yeah, it's really hard. But it almost has to be forced. I have to force myself, I have to put in the calendar. I have to make it happen.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is it one of those things that once you start getting going, it's okay. You know, or do you, is that voice, is there a voice in the back of your head through your training saying, oh, you know, I've gotta go, I've gotta run that report. I've got a payroll, I've gotta do these other things or does the voice quiet down, five minutes in, never quiets down?
Kera Radke:
It never quiets down so much that I've even, I've gotten a gym membership a little bit closer to my house, which is so stupid because I literally own a gym. But when I'm here, it's hard for me to tune that out. So I do a couple hours a week in someone else's gym. Someone else.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Not stupid at all. I literally recently rented an office. I mean, I'm home, I'm in the home office.
Kera Radke:
I remember you saying that, and I thought the same thing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it is on one on one hand. It's ridiculous. I'm spending money every month that I don't have to do. But on the other hand, I look at my output, I look at the productivity and it, so I've had this observation that I've shared with people. For years. It is difficult, almost impossible for two people to maintain multiple distinct relationships, right? And I'm sure you've seen that in the martial arts. It's hard for spouses to have one that's an instructor and one that's subordinate. It's different in different school cultures, but you know, plenty of people out there are probably nodding on along going, oh yeah, I saw what happened when so-and-so got promoted over so-and-so, and then they got divorced, right? You know, it can be a mess. Or parents and children, right? It can be difficult, you know, the child being higher ranked than the parent, all kinds of stuff there. But it's also, you can say the same thing about spaces now that I don't do nearly as much work here. I mean it's really, it's just the podcast because it's quiet. This is home now.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Your gym is work.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's passionate, fun work that you love dearly, but it's still work and it's hard to make it something else. So you go to somebody else's gym where you don't have to care if the trash hasn't been empty.
Kera Radke:
Yeah, I do wipe the sink though there I always does. I'm so neurotic.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're just helping out. It's okay.
Kera Radke:
It's so neurotic but yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm sure they appreciate it. So what else? What should I ask you about you?
Kera Radke:
Gosh, I don't even know. Pretty straightforward. Pretty boring.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Boring. I wouldn't use the word boring, but you do come across rather straightforward.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You like what you, like, you're open about it. I don't feel like I have to dig. I don't feel like there's much I could dig. I don't know what I'm gonna get though much there.
Kera Radke:
That's cool. It's an interesting story. I think you know, if there's anything I could pass on, as you know, don't let anybody tell you what you do and what you love to do. Can't be what you do for a living. You know, I feel like I lost some years there. I wouldn't give them up. They've, those 10 years in teaching helped me tremendously with what I'm doing now. But I let someone convince me that I couldn't do it straight out the gate. You know, so looking back, it's kinda like, man, I could have used those 10 years a little differently. I could have kind of had a different headstart. I wouldn't change it. I love how things worked out, but I did let someone convince me that it wasn't an option here. And that was silly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Here's a question then. If you hadn't, let's, and, and let's be dramatic about it. You didn't go to college, you didn't get a degree in education. You didn't have that experience teaching in schools. Would you be as good of an instructor?
Kera Radke:
Oh, 100% no. No. It would've been a totally different path for sure. Like, I'm happy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Kera Radke:
Everything that I've done makes me appreciate where I'm at. But it is a little hard to swallow sometimes. Looking back and like why did I let someone convince me of that? Why did I let, I'm pretty stubborn in general. Tell me I can't do something. I'll do it. Yeah. And I just, I think it, looking back at it, it's a tough nut to, it's a tough pill to swallow that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did they convince you or did you on some level agree?
Kera Radke:
Well, it was my limited experience and in my studio, you know, nobody was a full-timer. Nobody had the business wherewithal. Nobody had the guts necessarily to really go out and do it on their own. So my limited experience, that's all I saw. That's all I knew. I was young. That's all I saw. That's all I knew. So it must be true. So, yeah, I kinda allowed myself to be convinced, you know, that was it, but I also didn't know any better. So, you know, there's that, but in hindsight, don't let you know, in general, don't let anybody convince you you can't do something that you actually wanna do. You know, that's very limiting. And, you know, looking back at it, you know, I wouldn't wanna be limited by that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What does continued professional growth look like for you? Additional locations?
Kera Radke:
No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
More people? No. Okay. Oh, oh, that was emphatic. I don't think I ever get that.
Kera Radke:
Being emphatic, yeah, I know that's kind of like the natural thing to do. Like you have a successful Martial Arts school, scale it. I have a friend that's in the, excuse me, in the insurance business, and he says the same thing to me. You know, he's like, scale it multiple locations. I'm like, no, no way. No way. It's really hard to maintain. We have a huge space too. We have a lot of, we have one school that could be three schools, so I'm happier having one big circus than a bunch of little ones that I have to move around to. You know, if a student of mine wanted to open up their own program and I could support that, that would be cool. But I'm nowhere near that. I like my one big circus so I can focus on it and do a good job.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I like the use of the word circus.
Kera Radke:
It is…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Very apt. Very apt.
Kera Radke:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right, so last question before I kind of kick it to you to close up. Let's say we get together, we do this again in 10 years. What would you hope when I said, Hey Kara, what's happened in the last 10 years? What would you hope you were telling me? I hope that this school is running itself.
Kera Radke:
I hope that I've done a good job creating a bunch of great martial artists. We've trained a lot of teachers and it could run without me. I'm still gonna be here bugging everybody and teach and do whatever I want. But it would be really cool to know that it could work without me being here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Awesome. If people wanna find you online, website, social media, anything like that, where do they go?
Kera Radke:
Excuse me. I need a drink.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, it's okay.
Kera Radke:
My huge water bottle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's a very large chug of water. What are the sticker? Was that like a colorful skull? Is that what I saw on the bottom?
Kera Radke:
It's Cobra Kai.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, it's all Cobra Kai stickers. Okay. I saw it quickly.
Kera Radke:
They're my gym. And more Cobra Kai. That's what the cool kids do, they put stickers on their bottles.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They do.
Kera Radke:
I thought so. Yeah, sorry. Lake Zurich Family Martial Arts. We're in Lake Zurich, Illinois. Little of Northwest stern suburb of Chicago. I'm all over Facebook, Lake Zurich Family Martial Arts is all over Facebook. The teenager in the studio helped me with Instagram. We're on Instagram, LZFMA. Me, myself, I'm on Facebook way too much, Kera Radke and website lzfma.com.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Awesome. We'll have all that in the show notes.
Kera Radke:
Yay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How do you wanna close, you know the show? You know what we do. What do you wanna offer up as your last words to the audience?
Kera Radke:
Goodness, I think what I would like to chalk up to everybody is martial arts is just such an incredible thing that you can do. It can be a hobby in your life, it can be your full-time career, but it's absolutely something that you can do your entire life. The people that have really inspired me in martial arts are the ones that kind of prove to me that it can be as much as your life as you want it to be, and you can do it at any age, any ability level. It's something that can positively contribute to you as a human no matter what age you are. You know, a lot of people think that I can't start martial arts. I'm not in good shape, or I'm too old, or I'm too, my kiddo is too young. He doesn't know how to pay attention. Like this is exactly where everybody needs to be if they wanna be.
Jeremy Lesniak:
See what I'm talking about? How could that path for Kera have gone any other way? She could have chosen other things, I'm sure, but I have a hard time believing she would've remained there. There's something in this path for her that just the way it came through, I suspect the people who work with her and her students would agree with what I'm saying. Destiny, probably the best way to put it. Thank you for Kera. Thank you, Kera, for coming on the show. Thank you audience for checking out this episode. Thank you Kataaro for your sponsorship, your trust in us. Audience, help us help them and help them help us. Kataaro.com. kataaro.com. Use the code WK10 capital letters to save 10% on your first order. You guys are gonna be hooked on their stuff. They do more than belts. Check 'em out. Check out all the good stuff that they've got over there and check out all the good stuff we have at whistlekick.com. Use the code podcast15 to save 15% whistlekickmartialartsradio.com for all the stuff that we have related to this show. Don't forget, we can outgrow your school and I am available for seminars. Just reach out to me, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media is @whistlekick. Until next time, train hard smile, have a great day.