Episode 840 - Sensei Lawrence Kane
Sensei Lawrence, from the west coast, is a martial artist and author who has written/co-written over 2 dozen titles.
“I mean, I was never afraid of this stuff until I had kids and sort of realized I had something to lose, and then I started to really shift my mindset from stay tough, be a good fighter, be whatever, to let’s not get involved.”
Sensei Lawrence Kane- Episode 840
Sensei Lawrence started training in the 1970’s and has used his many years of experience working stadium security to help develop his awareness of people and their body language. Today’s episode goes in many directions, but all lead back to having awareness and perseverance.
Lawrence has also authored many books with past guest of the show Kris Wilder (Episode #614), received numerous awards for them, done over 2000 podcast interviews, and currently works as Head of Procurement at a diversified financial services corporation.
Show Notes
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Show Transcript
Jeremy:
Hey, hey, Lawrence, thanks for being here.
Lawrence Kane:
Thank you, appreciate the opportunity.
Jeremy:
I gotta ask, what's on your mug?
Lawrence Kane:
Oh, this is a... This is a...
Jeremy:
Looks a little hardcore.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, it's a mythasaur skull. It's a ode to Boba Fett from Star Wars, from many, many, many years ago.
Jeremy:
Oh, right on, okay. You know, the... If you know your Star Wars history, which I know a tiny little bit, we've had people on who have totally schooled me. But there's so much about Star Wars that's rooted in martial traditions.
Lawrence Kane:
Oh yeah.
Jeremy:
And then watching the more modern iterations, I think it's even easier to find some of those martial arts elements in there, let alone the really cool stunt folks that are on. We've been fortunate to have some connection with some of them.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, well, I mean, a lot of that came from the Curasawa films of, you know, of back in the day and kind of the, you know, the lone samurai and that sort of stuff is, I mean, let's face it, lightsabers are cool. I mean,
Jeremy:
lightsabers are cool
Lawrence Kane:
you know, if they were real, I think you'd find a lot of martial artists would, you know, cut off an arm or leg back and then trying to learn how to use one.
Jeremy:
It... Imagine if we extended that technology to other weapons, you know, uh, light nunchaku.
Lawrence Kane:
Check.
Jeremy:
You know, how many of us have taken one to the back of the head, right? I mean,
Lawrence Kane:
I've
Jeremy:
it'd
Lawrence Kane:
had
Jeremy:
be...
Lawrence Kane:
seven concussions that I know about. I used to say six and then my sister reminded me the seventh one, which was... I went down to Chinatown and unbeknownst to my folks, I bought a pair of Octagon Nunchaku with the chain, you know, like the really cool looking ones. First time I used it. Yeah, I do not remember hitting the ground. I do remember waking up and I had a big old knot in the back of my head for
Jeremy:
Yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
about a week. And my sister's like, we got to tell Mom and Dad. I'm like, no, you can't tell Mom and Dad. I wasn't supposed to go do this. And so we didn't. Unfortunately, it wasn't terrible that I had a massive concussion and never told anyone about it. But I completely forgot about that until she reminded me like probably four or five years ago.
Jeremy:
Oh, that's funny. I'm wondering how many people in the audience have at least one, if not both, parts of that story. I went to Chinatown against my parents wishes in Bhat Nantraku. And the other part of I banged myself in the back of the head so hard that I got a concussion or passed out. I don't have the Chinatown part, but I definitely have the... when did I stop standing? Because I'm no longer standing. I definitely
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah,
Jeremy:
remember that
Lawrence Kane:
yeah,
Jeremy:
part.
Lawrence Kane:
that's really a bad thing. Generally speaking, I don't recommend it. But I got to say, you know, especially for older folks, you know, we saw Bruce Lee and we saw it was like, this is the coolest thing ever. I need to get me some. The funny thing is my son who did some martial arts for all these one of my students growing up and he actually picked up a pair. He I'm not a particularly athletic person. He is. Like he played college football, he's a certified strength and conditioning coach. I mean, he's like really good at this stuff. He picked a pair of nuchaku, never hurt himself. He's actually quite good with it. Self taught. And I'm like, wow,
Jeremy:
That's unfair.
Lawrence Kane:
I don't know where you got that gene from, but it wasn't me.
Jeremy:
Was Bruce Lee an influence that got you involved?
Lawrence Kane:
I actually got involved before that, but Bruce Lee was an influence that made me excited about it and made me see it in a different way. And I don't know if you've seen Warrior, the show is based on what he wrote. I just love that stuff. And
Jeremy:
It's a cool show.
Lawrence Kane:
yeah, I mean, it's the practical effects, it's the martial arts spectacular sort of thing with a story that's interesting. And so I just always really loved that kind of stuff. But I hate to admit this because it's probably one of those Apple versus PC arguments, but I'm actually a little bit more of a Chuck Norris fan than a Bruce Lee fan in some ways.
Jeremy:
Hmm. And how long, how long, how far do we go back, I guess, for your
Lawrence Kane:
Well, I started
Jeremy:
first
Lawrence Kane:
in
Jeremy:
Chuck
Lawrence Kane:
1970,
Jeremy:
Norris? Right.
Lawrence Kane:
was hard martial arts. And I think the first time I saw one of his movies was like, I don't know, 79 or something like that. It was one of the first movies I ever saw, and I can't remember which one it was anymore. I think it might have been. I don't remember. It was just I mean, the fight between him and Bruce Lee, I freaking love that. It's one like one of the best. you know, pieces of film. I've I still like that fight even today. But there was something. So, I mean, you know, Bruce Lee obviously never got to know. He did train in Seattle for a while. I know people who knew him, but obviously I've never met him. But Chuck Norris, a quick Chuck Norris story. So he there was a guy named Tim who was one of the instructors in the school where I trained. And he ended up passing away. Yeah. And it was a kidney thing and whatnot. But he did like the adult version of Make-A-Wish Foundation. Yeah. And what he wanted to do was wanted to meet Chuck Norris. They flew him down there when Chuck was filming, um, uh, Lone Wolf McQuaid or whatever it was, the, the TV show version, not the movie. Um. No, Walker Texas Ranger, that's what it was.
Jeremy:
Okay.
Lawrence Kane:
Same character, different, or at least more or less same character.
Jeremy:
You
Lawrence Kane:
The TV show version, there we go. So they flew Tim down there and he spent, he and Chuck Norris spent the entire day with the guy, gave him one of the jackets that the crew
Jeremy:
No way.
Lawrence Kane:
used for the filming. I mean, it was like the best experience of his life. He came back and was telling us all about it. When he passed on, he was buried in that jacket.
Jeremy:
Okay. Hmm.
Lawrence Kane:
And... You know, this is a guy, is super busy at the time. That's when he's making movies and TV. He didn't have to do it. He, you know, he really made the highlight of a guy's life whose life was cut way short, unfortunately. And that was like just such a cool thing to do. I've always just had a huge respect for him for things like that. The whistle kick, or not whistle kick, oh, the kickstart for kids. Did I mention I've had seven concussions? Um,
Jeremy:
But hey,
Lawrence Kane:
uh, you know.
Jeremy:
even as a stumble, I'll take you throwing Whistlekick's name in with even some rough fabricated association with Chuck Norris, but please continue.
Lawrence Kane:
There you go. Well, hey, I mean, in my mind, you guys are the same person now, but you got to work on that beard.
Jeremy:
I,
Lawrence Kane:
Your beard is a
Jeremy:
you
Lawrence Kane:
little
Jeremy:
know,
Lawrence Kane:
sparse, fairly
Jeremy:
I, it
Lawrence Kane:
speaking.
Jeremy:
is, it is. I trimmed it the other day. If I had gotten the memo that this was a long beard episode, I would have kept it.
Lawrence Kane:
Well,
Jeremy:
I still
Lawrence Kane:
there you
Jeremy:
wouldn't
Lawrence Kane:
go. Actually,
Jeremy:
have been where you are, but could have tried.
Lawrence Kane:
the I have a corporate job, so I used to have a really long beard. Like I had a, you know, but my I'm 51% Swedish descended from a bunch of Vikings. He tried to invade consent, noble loss and settle in the steps of Russia. Right. So I said, I want a Viking beard. I want a big, long beard. I can I can braid and just see what it looks like. Well, I look at an idiot. But but I used to actually have a beard long enough to do that.
Jeremy:
Oh, that's cool.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, and then I ended up with, you know, I mean, I work at a corporate job and it's like it wasn't professional. So it didn't last. So my beard has been much longer than this, but
Jeremy:
What are the self-defense
Lawrence Kane:
not now.
Jeremy:
implications of a lengthy beard?
Lawrence Kane:
I just think that the, you know, and obviously there is something to grab onto for other people, but I think there's a kind of a fear factor thing in there. If you can rock a braided Viking beard, it's a good way to, you know how in actual, I'm actually taking this question seriously. In
Jeremy:
I appreciate
Lawrence Kane:
actual
Jeremy:
it.
Lawrence Kane:
self-defense, presence matters, right? And you stave off a lot of violence with presence. So I know a guy who's, I don't know, 6'2", 6'3", shaved head, long braided beard. Um, normal dude, like he works in IT. He's not a, like a biker or something like that. And he dresses fairly professional for an IT person. Um, but nobody ever messes with him because he's big, he's in great shape and he's got a Viking beard and just like, there's something visceral about that. And I'm not even joking that, you know, people look at you and go, uh, no, I think I'm going to find somebody else to mess with.
Jeremy:
I completely agree. And I think it's one of the elements of self-defense that is ignored. And it's that whole subject. We did an episode a couple months ago that I think we titled something like the myth of bad self-defense. And just this premise that if you learn even terrible self-defense and it makes you more confident that it has made you less likely to end up in a situation. And so in a roundabout way is effective. Ehh
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously awareness is like your number one defense, right? If you find yourself fighting, you've actually screwed up your self-defense. It's all the things you do to avoid a fight, like awareness, avoidance, deescalation. That's really self-defense. But presence is really underestimated. So I had an incident many, many years ago. It's in downtown Seattle. I had a bunch of boxes and I was sticking on the back of my car. And I was standing, there's a clock down there in front of a jewelry store. And it's a fairly famous landmark. I don't know if it's still there or not. I haven't been into Seattle downtown in years. But I'm standing there and as I'm putting the boxes and I'm looking right in the sun, I can't see anything. And I had done a bunch of this like holiday shopping, a whole bunch of stuff. And I hear his voice and the guy was like. right in my personal space. I mean, it actually kind of freaked me out because I hadn't seen him approach. He goes, hey man, you know what time it is? And like, we're standing under a clock, right? I had a watch on, but so I tossed the last box in the car. I kind of shifted back, straightened my spine, dropped my weight, didn't go into like a stance or anything. Just like I went from oblivious idiot to like somebody who could move and. I said, sorry, man, I don't have a watch. And he called, I don't remember what he said, he said some derogative thing and wandered off. But as he wandered off, I could see a bulge in the back, you know, where his right hand would be. I'm not sure if it was a gun or a knife or a baton or whatever it was. I mean, pretty sure it wasn't a cell phone is my point. And I can almost guarantee this was, you know, him testing to see if I'd be a good victim or not. Because if he'd said, you know what time it is, and I immediately looked at my watch, well now I'm distracted, but I've also demonstrated I'm a compliant victim, right? Because I'm doing what he says. As opposed to, you know, I didn't want to go full, you know, get the hell away from me, you know, freak out or something because it wasn't appropriate. But I could feel that the situation was not right. Like this is not a normal thing to do. despite the fact that it was like really obviously not a normal thing to do. I wonder how many people would have noticed that. But instead, I just went from being oblivious to being paying attention. And he decided to go pick on somebody else. And there's a lot of things like that. I mean, that one was obvious. But how many times do we have things not happen we don't even know about?
Jeremy:
The majority, right? It's so rare. One of the things I find most fascinating when we're talking about self-defense is are these, I'm assuming it's studies, I've read about a single one where they present video of people walking across the street, walking down the street to
Lawrence Kane:
Hmm.
Jeremy:
felons.
Lawrence Kane:
Oh
Jeremy:
Who
Lawrence Kane:
yeah.
Jeremy:
would you pick out? And they pick out the same people. And if they're not there in person with them, right? It's not an energetic thing. They're picking up on subtle cues. And it's exactly what you're talking about here. It's your demeanors, the way you present yourself to the world and that is something that can be disciplined and improved
Lawrence Kane:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeremy:
and you don't have to be the toughest person on the block, you just have to be not the easiest target.
Lawrence Kane:
Exactly. And there's a drill. I think Rory Miller is the one who taught me this. I can't remember where I got it from, but I've done it with students in the past. And that is where you go to like a food court in a mall, somewhere where you can look down across the mall. And there's a mall in South Center that's not too far from here. And it's got a nice layout for that. So you can kind of sit and look like you're doing something, but actually look over the railing and watch people without looking weird. And And the trick is you watch people and go, if I was a bad guy, who would I rob? And it's the same concept as what you're talking about, but it gets you thinking about why, right? Because you get this, you know, it's kind of like in The Gift of Fear, they talk about the danger signal we all have that most people ignore, right? Well, there's the reverse of that as well. You can tell who is a good victim or not a good victim, but you have to kind of train yourself to figure out why. And in doing that, you can go, oh, this person's texting on the phone and not paying attention. Oh, this person is walking submissively. Oh, this person is, you know, uh, lost in the cloud, whatever it is, right? You can tell like who would be a good choice and who would not be a good choice. And it's actually pretty easy to figure that out. And you, and as you start to be aware of that, you subconsciously start to make yourself not look like that. Just cool drill.
Jeremy:
Yeah. How do you convey that sort of stuff to your students? Because I'm assuming you're not taking field trips to the mall.
Lawrence Kane:
No, we actually took filters and all. I mean, yeah,
Jeremy:
Really?
Lawrence Kane:
I mean,
Jeremy:
That's awesome.
Lawrence Kane:
I described it originally. You know, it's like, hey, here's the thing and you should try it. And people are like, you wanna come with us? That's like, sounds like fun. So I've done it only like four times, but you know, it was a cool drill and it's a... It's kind of fun. And it's I mean, you know, you're talking to a guy who like used to go to hockey games when I was in college to pick fights, right? I mean, you know, I was never like afraid of this stuff until I like had kids and I started to realize I had something to lose. And then I started to really shift my mindset from stay tough, you know, be a good fighter, be, you know, whatever to let's not get involved. And so I've done all kinds of drills around, you know, awareness and avoidance and de-escalation, including, you know, various, um, skill drill kind of things. Um, you know, scenario training, stuff like that. I did some modern combatives and close quarter stuff. So I've done a lot of non-traditional martial arts, um, in addition to the traditional, like, you know, Asian style martial arts, and, and it just gives me a really broad kind of view of all that. The thing that I personally did that really perfected that is working stadium security. So I worked security for 26 years as a supervisor, most of that. Yeah. And I had the kind of lower bowl and East end. So the student section and like the major visitor sections of Husky Stadium for a very, very long time. Yeah. And that's where about 80% of the fights in the stadium took place. And I could always tell, I mean, at the very beginning. But I mean, once I get good at it, I could always tell when something was going to happen, not always even by the person doing it, but the reaction of the crowd around the person doing it. And so, you know, I had, I actually lost count at 300 violent altercations I was personally involved in. But of those, probably half of them, I mean, this is way less impressive than it sounds. Probably half of them, guy in uniform with radio, yells at you to knock it off as you're starting to do something. And it freaks people out because they hadn't actually done it yet. Right. They started to like many times it's the, it's the amp up and you can see the, you know, the Escalado going, but they haven't thrown the punch or they're just about throwing the punch and cause I'm, I'm seeing it, I'm able to move there. Now, you know, there's a lot of them where, I mean, I deal with knives, guns and fists and all kinds of bad stuff, but, um, but probably half the time, it was just authority figure yelling at you in the right way at the right time. and it got people to stop doing stuff and then I could talk them down.
Jeremy:
Right. But what sort of stuff were you picking up on? I'm sure a lot of it was intangible, but for the elements that were things you could describe and advise
Lawrence Kane:
So
Jeremy:
people to watch out for.
Lawrence Kane:
yeah, I mean, it's body language, right? But it's also, for example, so there's no weapons policy in every stadium, obviously. But at the University of Washington where I worked, they lost a lawsuit with the ACLU.
Jeremy:
Hmm.
Lawrence Kane:
And so they were not allowed to do searches of people. Well, after 9 11, they changed that to, you know, they get the lawyers out and they started doing inspections, which are not searches technically. But before that, you know, it was like you couldn't do anything. So I would take an average of six knives off of people per game, sometimes more, sometimes a lot more because, you know, I would just get good at spotting them. We occasionally find people with guns. More often that was the pro games that SACS played there for a couple of years when their stadium was being rebuilt. So more often we find guns with the pros and knives with the college. But so it's always, you know, looking for weapons. There is always people who you could see were there to cause trouble. Remember, I used to go to hockey games to cause trouble, right? So I kind of recognize it.
Jeremy:
So you get it.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, so I mean, part of it's like there's a, I don't even know how to describe it exactly, but you know when you see it sort of thing, right? So you're seeing, you know, sort of the irrational exuberance, you're seeing the amping it up. In college stadiums, alcohol is not sold and technically not allowed, but of course there are people who drink and who sneak stuff in. And for years and years, I mean, it was generally a combination of testosterone and alcohol, right, but it manifests in different ways. And near the end of the time, I stopped working there when my son started playing football because I wanted to go to his games. And I'll tell you in a minute about, I had a really cool deal with that. But let me wrap this up by saying near the end of that time, probably 80% of the time I worked there 26 years. Men cause problems. At the very, very end, women started causing problems too. And I don't know what it was something with society. I don't know the cause of it. But the way they cause problems is very different. So for example, Mark McGiung taught me how to catch a punch. When a guy throws a punch at me and I catch it, generally that's the end of it right there. Because they realize like, holy cow, wrong guy, I gotta stop now, right? When the lady throws a punch... and you catch it, the next one comes. Like there's no like it doesn't even register. And so the worst felony arrest we ever did was actually a fight between three women. And it started the stands. It moved into the to the first aid room. One of them also got an officer's gun. It was I mean, it was just a disaster. Right. But so. The reason I bring that up is a couple fold. It's not you can't like stereotype somebody, right? It's not young, you know, fit guy with no shirt and, you know, paint or whatever. Right. And it's not it's not what somebody looks like. It's how they act. And in. When you get used to being around a crowd like that, you get a sense of what's normal and what's not normal. And when you see not normal, it's either the way the person's acting or the way the people around the person are reacting to the person. And so you're going to what's not normal. And I realize that's not a lot of detail for somebody like kind of do on their own, but it's literally as simple and as difficult as that. You're looking for what's not normal.
Jeremy:
That makes sense. And, you know, it's like anything else we do, right? If you've spent a lot of time sparring, then, you know, you're going to get good enough that you're going to pick up on things and you're going to bypass conscious thought and you're going to block that technique or get out of the way. And the first few times you do it really well, you're going to go, what did I what did I just do? How did that? I didn't realize I was that good. That's pretty cool. But it's like Anything else I think the example most people are probably used to is when they're driving That you know what that guy's gonna go that person's gonna pull out they're gonna create a situation i'm gonna slow down You don't even know why?
Lawrence Kane:
Right,
Jeremy:
But you
Lawrence Kane:
right.
Jeremy:
get it you pick up on some subtle cue whether it's you know, the wheels are still turning just a little bit something
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, yeah, there's patterns. I mean, we're pattern recognition machines, right? That's the reason that humans have been able to evolve, right? Because you get that, oh, eat this thing and, oh, gee, what happened to Fred? I better not do that again, right? And then you get the and you recognize the pattern of, oh, that stripes, you know, chartreuse berry with the polka dots. Don't eat that or whatever. I mean, that's not real. But, you know, but the point is that the. that we get patterns that we recognize patterns. We also have to be careful we don't get tricked by them. Right? So, you know, when you get used to it, I've seen like, like I was at a seminar and this guy was talking about how you always need to see people's hands and you know, and it's going just really hardcore on it. And I finally said, you know, I raised my hand and he's like, yeah. And he go, doesn't that mean that you need to attack your waiter when they bring you your silverware? And he's like, no, that's not what I meant. I said, yeah, but that's what you said, right? You said any time, you know, and so you gotta be careful about taking the broad generalizations and applying it just like you have to be careful about going into the weeds and only looking at the weeds. It's a holistic picture. And so, you know, just cause you can't see somebody's hands or cause they got a knife in them or whatever, I mean, I've had many, many waiters come to me and hand me a steak knife, right? They're not attacking me. but they did have a knife
Jeremy:
I'm guessing
Lawrence Kane:
in their hand
Jeremy:
none of them
Lawrence Kane:
and they
Jeremy:
have
Lawrence Kane:
were
Jeremy:
tried
Lawrence Kane:
moving
Jeremy:
to
Lawrence Kane:
toward
Jeremy:
stab you
Lawrence Kane:
me.
Jeremy:
with that knife.
Lawrence Kane:
No, not a single one, shockingly enough. I have had someone pour coffee on me by accident, but that's the worst incident I've had in a restaurant was I had coffee poured on me.
Jeremy:
and yet none of us train coffee defense.
Lawrence Kane:
You know, that is true. And actually, without joking aside, I actually have used a ridiculously overpriced Starbucks venti, extra hot Americano to defend myself at one point. And you cannot block that.
Jeremy:
No. No, how did that, is that a story you're willing to share? That's a,
Lawrence Kane:
Sure. It was...
Jeremy:
yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
So, another... I seem to have a lot of downtown Seattle stories for some reason. Walk out of Starbucks. The one... the actually original one in Pike Vice Market. Which is a pretty cool location. But walk out of there. I just got my coffee. It's double cupped and has a sleeve on it because it's like flaming hot, right? And it's a fairly cold day. So, I wanted to last. And walk out. Start to go... uh you know just I don't know anymore what I was doing I was probably going to go see Pike Place Market or something. And um guys like give me a wallet. And he had his hand, you know, like he didn't have a weapon out but his hand like under his jacket. And I said no when I threw my coffee in his face and ran. It wasn't very exciting. But um, but he didn't go after me. Um, and he made lots of really bad noises. So
Jeremy:
Yeah, it's you know, I like situations like that. Like isn't the right word I appreciate situations like that because what I hear is a couple things one threat assessment Erring on the side of self-preservation not well, hold on. Let me let me talk you down, right?
Lawrence Kane:
Well, it was kind of a screw up on my part because I wasn't paying enough attention. I mean, he was in position before I knew he was there. So it was a recovery from my not using good situational awareness.
Jeremy:
Sure.
Lawrence Kane:
But once he said something, then you're right. I did go into that mode, but it actually isn't one of the things I'm proud of because I didn't really do it right.
Jeremy:
But, you know, I look at situational awareness not as a binary state, not either you have it or you don't, but there, it's a spectrum, right? And it's like any other skill, it's going to improve. There's always going to be someone that's going to be able to sneak up on you.
Lawrence Kane:
Well, yes and no. So there's something Mark Leung calls a reverse werewolf, right? So you get predators and at long enough distance, you can tell they're predators. As they get closer, they become normal because trying
Jeremy:
Hmm.
Lawrence Kane:
to hide it. And then when they are right next to you, they repredatorize again. Not that that's a word, but you get the point, right? And so if you're paying attention farther away, it's obvious who the bad guys are. It's when you're you know, it's cold, you're blowing in your coffee. You're not really paying attention and you walk into them. that you're not in the far range where you could see it coming. You're not quite in the near range where it's too late, but you'd miss the transition. And so I missed the transition. And this is back in the pre cell phone days. So I didn't have an excuse. Like I was listening to music with earbuds or texting or something like that. I just literally wasn't paying attention. Also, I will say in my own defense, it was like, you know, 10 a.m. I mean, it was not. You know, we're taught that stuff happens like late at night in certain areas or whatever. It's not always true. Um, yeah. And, you know, I'm not a particularly big guy and, um, you know, I don't really ward things off by like size necessarily.
Jeremy:
You
Lawrence Kane:
Um,
Jeremy:
didn't have
Lawrence Kane:
but
Jeremy:
your
Lawrence Kane:
I
Jeremy:
Viking
Lawrence Kane:
use, uh,
Jeremy:
beard then?
Lawrence Kane:
no,
Jeremy:
Yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
actually back then I only had a mustache even. I mean, I didn't even have a beard. Um, I'll blame that on, on
Jeremy:
Absolutely.
Lawrence Kane:
the whole thing. Yeah. But, um, long time ago. Uh, But the, you know, the way that you generally get out of stuff is literally by paying attention, but you have to do it far enough away. So like your driving example, right? If you're looking too close to you, you won't see stuff coming in time to react. You have to be looking farther out and kind of do the horizon check. And that's why heads up displays are so valuable in cars nowadays, that sort of thing. Same concept, just have to be walking. But I will say that you cannot block a hot cup of coffee. I've
Jeremy:
No.
Lawrence Kane:
actually used that a couple of times. And it's really expensive, but it does work really, really well.
Jeremy:
Well, it's less expensive than nearly anything else you would want to have on you
Lawrence Kane:
Well,
Jeremy:
as
Lawrence Kane:
that's
Jeremy:
a tool,
Lawrence Kane:
true. And it's
Jeremy:
right?
Lawrence Kane:
legal everywhere.
Jeremy:
It is, it is. I'm a big fan of a belt, but it takes a lot longer to deploy a belt than the coffee in your hand. And if we look at the more modern philosophies behind real world combatives, right? Your hand's already there. You're not carrying your coffee with your hand in your pocket. It's already out.
Lawrence Kane:
Exactly.
Jeremy:
And
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah.
Jeremy:
one could make the argument that you should have a hot cup of coffee at any given time if you're in
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah,
Jeremy:
a dangerous area because
Lawrence Kane:
sure.
Jeremy:
it
Lawrence Kane:
Or
Jeremy:
could
Lawrence Kane:
a water
Jeremy:
be a
Lawrence Kane:
bottle.
Jeremy:
weapon or maybe
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah.
Jeremy:
it's an empty cup. Maybe it's fake.
Lawrence Kane:
Well, yeah, or I mean, like, I don't know if you can see this, but that would hurt a lot.
Jeremy:
I'm guessing that's like a half
Lawrence Kane:
It's
Jeremy:
gallon
Lawrence Kane:
a
Jeremy:
water jug.
Lawrence Kane:
it is a half gallon metal water jug. Yeah,
Jeremy:
Yeah, that...
Lawrence Kane:
I get stuck in meetings for like hours at a time sometimes. So I use it for drinking. But I mean, I wouldn't want to get hit by that.
Jeremy:
No. What's the best weapon, the one you have available?
Lawrence Kane:
Exactly. Yes, exactly.
Jeremy:
Now you mentioned a story, something that as you transitioned out of security, something about when your son was playing, you wanted
Lawrence Kane:
Oh,
Jeremy:
to share.
Lawrence Kane:
oh, yeah. And I totally forgot what it was I was going to talk about. But
Jeremy:
Oh bummer.
Lawrence Kane:
but I will say, oh,
Jeremy:
Okay.
Lawrence Kane:
I remember now. So, you know, football was basically or seems curious, basically getting paid to watch football until somebody did something stupid. Right. And then I had to deal with it. So you're getting really, really overpaid or really, really underpaid. Well, after my son started playing football, I actually got my reporters credentials and I got paid to watch his football games to report on them. Which again was getting paid to watch football, but much safer. So, um, yeah, that's what, uh,
Jeremy:
better way to
Lawrence Kane:
so
Jeremy:
do it.
Lawrence Kane:
yeah. And I got to tell you, um, being a sideline reporter is really fun. Um, and I did it for, uh, high school college. Um, I did it, uh, for mostly for his teams and his games, but I also got, you know, paid to go see some other games and whatnot. Yeah. And, um, college, if you know the game really, really well, So he didn't play at a D1 school, but where he did play, they had a bunch of professional reporters, right? I knew football so much better than them, but I actually got better shots than most of them because I knew
Jeremy:
Oh cool.
Lawrence Kane:
where the plays were going and stuff. So, you know, talk about pattern, you know, and understanding patterns and all that because I knew the game well, and it's the same kind of thing, you know, with the situation awareness and all that, right? I was able to get, I had some like sports illustrative quality type shots.
Jeremy:
Hmm.
Lawrence Kane:
I mean, they were, I mean, I had a $12,000 camera too that I got to write off more of my taxes. But I mean, well, that's the camera, the lens, the whole package, not the camera itself. But my point is that I get paid enough to write off a $12,000 camera to watch Roy Stun's football games report on him. So it was pretty
Jeremy:
Pretty
Lawrence Kane:
good.
Jeremy:
good deal.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah.
Jeremy:
What I'm imagining that there were things you pulled from watching football back into your training.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, there is. So it's kind of funny because I remember reading this story. Some famous martial artist whose name I can't remember worked for the 49ers for a while with their linemen. It was teaching them hand rolls and stuff. And Chris Welder, who I frequently write with and was my karate instructor for you to move, did the same thing for some other teams, high school teams primarily. And the... So usually you're seeing it from the perspective of football players are learning from martial artists, how to do certain things better. Um, but I actually learned a few things. So, uh, you know, like, like Sanjian spine, if you do karate, there's, there's the way that you, you know, you're adjusting your lower spine so that, um, you're connecting your body more effectively. Well, football players do the same thing. Uh, when they're about to, you see like, uh, like good receivers or corners. They do that so they don't have to, you know, pivot a little bit of their, kind of straighten up before they move. They're already sort of in that Sanjian spine when they're ready to start the beginning of the play. And so I was noticing things like that. They're like, oh, that's interesting. There's an interesting corollary here, right? And you saw how, you know, like linemen, how you get low and how you can unbalance people. I'm like, well, that's a lot like Sumo. So I'm seeing little parts and pieces of these things that it's not like big macro stuff, but micro stuff I was seeing. Because I'd go hang out at practices and get a chance to take pictures and stuff like that, and pregame and then during the games. And then I'd have to rush home and write articles after. And I just surrounded it enough that I would see these things that people would do really good. Well, working on at the college stadium, I saw a lot of people ended up with long NFL careers, you know, and some of whom were pretty amazing. And it helped me see in some ways, so some of them, like Napoleon Kaufman, when he was in college, I was actually slightly bigger than him because I had a conversation with him, I was standing on the sideline going, man, this guy's really small. Like this guy's my size. One of the fastest people I've seen in my entire life. And he played for the Raiders for like six or eight years or something. Oh, he's a running back. Seemed like a really cool dude. I was not like I'm friends with him or anything, but, you know, I talked to him a couple of times. But what I noticed with him was just this insane fast twitch muscle. I think I was just like so unbelievably fast and so smooth in the way he moved. And I was thinking kind of at the time, like, man, I will never be like that because I'm just not this I'm not a very athletic person. Yeah. And then I would see people later on, you know, years after that in the dojo who had that same fluidity. And what I realized is part of it was actually the natural thing, but part of its training, because I found, you know, like there's a older guy, Okinawan guy who's just ungodly good. And, you know, just these probably 60s, I don't even know. And he was just demonstrating. So just an example of what I mean by that is He was demonstrating something on me and he said, my great front kick, right? Okay, so I throw a kick and he's just, he's demonstrating his techniques, like no power at all. This was like 2%. He shifts and he blocks my kick with his hand or his arm. I had a bruise for a month. It was just this deep black, purple, green, nasty, like, I mean, he might've maybe done a micro fracture or something. I never had it checked, but I mean. Like I was limping around for a month and he wasn't even trying to do anything. He was just demonstrating the movement. That was no technique at all,
Jeremy:
Hmm.
Lawrence Kane:
right? But it was all technique, if that makes sense, right?
Jeremy:
Placement.
Lawrence Kane:
Because even when he's putting no power into it, his technique was flawless. And when I saw this guy move, man, he would move. And if you look at him and you go, old Okanowan dude, you see him move, you go, holy cow, like how do you do that? But you can tell it's not, you know, he didn't have the fast twitch muscle. He wasn't in awesome shape or anything. He wasn't the, you know, the 20 something year old pro athlete, right? He was somebody who'd been doing this his entire life and got it down flawlessly and had no unnecessary movement in his technique, right? Everything he did was exactly precise and exactly correct. And I found out later he'd like, he learned karate from his dad growing up and like the first. many, many years, I think it was like five years or something, but I may have misremembered that. All he did was stances, like nothing else. But, you know, every day for hours and hours. So, you know, it's kind of the amateurs trained until they get it right, professionals trained to like can't get it wrong, right? He was on that track.
Jeremy:
You've spent plenty of time teaching, right? You have a school or have had a school?
Lawrence Kane:
No, no, I taught in a school. Yeah,
Jeremy:
Okay.
Lawrence Kane:
unfortunately, the whole, you know, virus lockdown
Jeremy:
Hmm,
Lawrence Kane:
thing,
Jeremy:
I think.
Lawrence Kane:
put the school out of business. So I actually haven't, I've not been in Doja since then because there isn't one, but I did teach in the West Elkhart Academy, which was run by Chris Wilder, who's a Hall of Fame member. You probably know him.
Jeremy:
Yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
And I'm nowhere near as good as him, by the way, just for the record.
Jeremy:
What would he say about that? I bet
Lawrence Kane:
I think
Jeremy:
he
Lawrence Kane:
you'd
Jeremy:
would.
Lawrence Kane:
agree. I know stuff that I mean, I know stuff that he doesn't, right, because he's been, you know, probably focused on karate and I do like, you know, knives and guns and swords and other stuff that he's never really done.
Jeremy:
to coffee.
Lawrence Kane:
But but I'm one of those like, you know, kind of a mutt, right? I've done a whole bunch of a big smattering of traditional martial arts, you know, modern stuff, medieval recreation stuff, all kinds of weird things. So if I'd focus on any one thing, I'd be like really, really good at it. I mean, I've been doing martial arts for 48 years, right? But I'm not awesome. I'm just adequate at a whole bunch of things.
Jeremy:
What is it that keeps you looking at other things? You know, your
Lawrence Kane:
Uh...
Jeremy:
speech, and let me preface that with,
Lawrence Kane:
sure.
Jeremy:
you've spoken very, very positively about two different people now who were, you know, head down, kind of tunnel vision in pursuing an art.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, so it's, I'm like all kind of all about interesting and meaningful experiences, right? So, you know, if I'm at the fork of a road and I've got to choose two paths, I'll try to pick the one that's more interesting, you know, lead to more something more interesting happening. Not in the ancient Chinese curse sort of interesting definition, but you know, like, like I like experiences, right? So part of it was, so I started in Judo. And when I went to college, they the Judo instructor was not available anymore. So I did a little bit karate. That instructor was horrible. So I ended up doing kendo and sort of fighting things like that. I was ended up in a bar fight and one of my friends who was a. Very interesting character afterwards said, you know, this whole empty hand stuff. like in a real fight, that's dumb. Like you're not an ape, use a tool kind of concept. That quote actually didn't come from him, but the same concept. So I'm like, oh, okay. So I ended up, I ended up shooting competitively for four and a half years, doing all kinds of, you know, combatives type stuff. I mean, it just, you know, it just sort of things morphed and changed. The one I spent the longest amount of time with was Okinawa Gojiru. I just, but that was because of the instructor, right? So Chris was such an awesome instructor and I really, really learned from the experience. So like my judo instructor was actually his, not at the same time, but he was the highest ranking black belt in the United States at the time, brought judo largely to America in some ways, just like an amazing dude. He'd pack his kids up in this... big 1970s Ford LT station wagon drive us up to Canada. We go commit tournaments on weekends stuff, right? There was no border security back then. And, you know, not with no parents, no formation slips, right? So I mean, great dude in a lot of ways, but he taught Japanese style. He didn't explain anything. And so I did judo for like four, four and a half years, something like that. It was still green belt, just not very good. And I went to a week long like a camp that was taught by the Canadian Olympic judo coach. And I learned more in that one week than I did in those four and a half years. Because he explained how stuff works. So all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I need to find a good instructor. It doesn't really matter so much what I do. And so part of my bouncing around so much other than just like, oh, I'd like to be able to hit, you know, to hit a target with a gun. That sounds like fun, you know. Oh, now let's try this other kind of guy. And let's try this. I love swords are really cool. I actually made swords and knives and additional learning and use them. So, I mean, I got a lot of experiences
Jeremy:
Yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
and they were just interesting, right? But ultimately the thing I resonated with the most and stayed with the longest was the good instructor which happened to be Chris because he could teach and reach my learning style much better. So I learned, I think more effectively from him than anybody else I learned stuff from, including the combative spokes, the... you know, some of the modern stuff, which is supposed to have modern teaching methods. You know, it's all about the individual and how well they can connect with you kind of sort of thing, that makes sense.
Jeremy:
How did you connect with Chris? How'd you find him?
Lawrence Kane:
Uh, it's kind of funny. So, so I was doing, uh, this medieval recreation fighting stuff, like, you know, SAA, wrong show, everything's like that, if you've heard of that. And you couldn't really do that on your own, right? So you're putting on real armor using Rattan. So solid weapons, like a, well, you know, like somebody think about kind of like Kendo with, you know, uh, more solid weapons and, and more realistic or, you know, heavier armor and, um, It was hard to do that on a regular basis because it was so much time consuming effort. And like, for example, I had a suit of white harness, plate armor, it's a Maximilian fluted plate, mass heavy stuff, gorgeous, absolutely real, right? But every time I used it, it wasn't stainless steel because it was real. So I had to polish it afterwards. So you might work out for an hour and a half, you got all sweaty and stuff, you have to... go put all the armor away, polish it, clean it, whatever. So I'm thinking, I need something else, right? I'm like, I love doing this stuff, but I need something to stay in shape. This is gonna be fun, whatever. I walked into a YMCA. I was actually gonna go lift weights. And I saw this karate class. And I'm like, oh, that looks kinda cool. And so I kinda hang out and like watch a little bit. And he goes, are you interested in karate? I'm like, oh, well, you can have a free lesson. And 20 something years afterwards, I'm still there. Right now he moved from the, you know, from the YMCA to got his own place, you know, moved a couple of times and I stayed with it. Well, now he's in, you know, it's probably a two and a half hour drive away. So that doesn't work anymore. But, um, but it was really the quality of the instruction. And so, you know, if I was giving advice to somebody who's interested in martial arts, uh, you know, it doesn't really matter what you take. As long as it meets your need, whatever the reason is for doing it, you know, is it self-defense? Is it, you know, self-actualization? Is it getting in shape? Whatever it is you're trying to do, right? As long as it meets that, find the best instructor you can get, somebody that works for you and stick with that. Right. So even though I've done all this well, the eclectic, you know, stuff, if, you know, I had found the right instructor from day one, I probably would have stuck with that day one. through most of it and occasionally dabbled in other things, but more like go to a seminar or take a class or whatever, not like completely changing what I did. Because some of these things are incompatible, right? I'm fairly well-rounded, but there's sort of mindset and take, give an example. So with the medieval stuff, right? It's almost impossible to protect your feet against a solid rattan. object to where if you get hit, you won't break your foot and then you're probably never going to walk again, right? Even with surgery, right? So it's illegal to hit below the knee, even though you will tend to wear armor below the knee, it's illegal for safety because people miss, right? So in Kabuto, when I was studying Kabuto, we used to bowstaff. Bowstaff is done many, many ways, very similar to a medieval spear.
Jeremy:
Mm-hmm.
Lawrence Kane:
You know, there just doesn't happen to have a point on when in, but they're very similar in terms of technique. So I was in a tournament with the medieval stuff and I did this beautiful movement, the guy who had a sword and shield and I had a boar spear. And I kind of knocked him offline a little bit and pivoted and I was just about to do this, think of almost like a downward pool cue sort of thing, right into his ankle, which would have shattered his ankle and he probably never would have walked again, right? And I caught myself right before it connected and froze. And the guy like he looks down, he looks at me, you know, I look down, you know, I look at him and we're like, oh shit. And the I think I probably should for context, I was the head marshal, which means I was a guy in charge of safety. I think the whole organization, right. So one of the other marshals looks at looks over me and goes, you know, that's not a target. Like, yeah, I get it. I had to quit doing that because Kibudo, it is a common target, like aiming at somebody's foot is a great way to be able to defend yourself, right? Because you pop them in the foot and you can run away. And remember, Kabuto was based, you know, was created by Okinawans who were had been invaded by the Japanese who had arms and armor, but the Okinawans did not. So what's a great target for that? The foot or the ankle. Right. I couldn't reconcile my brain going from the sport where you have to hit above the knee to the combative thing, you know, Kabuto, where the foot's a really common target, right? I just couldn't do it. And so, you know, I could do it when I was thinking, right? But then it moved too slowly. When I started to just react and just, you know, get
Jeremy:
That makes sense.
Lawrence Kane:
into the moment, which is what you have to do if you're gonna win a tournament at a high level, it just, my brain couldn't make the switch. And so I had to stop doing it. you know, because of that. So some people may not have that problem, but for me, there were two completely incompatible things, even though the motions were almost identical, even though the weapons were almost identical, they were so incompatible because of what they were designed for, I couldn't do both. And there's other arts that, you know, are incompatible as well. Just the strategy and the tactics just don't work. But, you know, that's kind of a visceral example that maybe makes sense.
Jeremy:
That makes sense. Yeah. I want to switch gears a little bit because it's such a big aspect of your relationship to the martial arts and that's your time as an author.
Lawrence Kane:
Oh, yeah.
Jeremy:
How many books have you written? It's more than a couple.
Lawrence Kane:
Well, I've published 27,
Jeremy:
Okay.
Lawrence Kane:
about 70% through the 28th one. And yeah, I got started as an author because of martial arts. Actually, you may find this amusing. So I get my EQ, my high school round bill. And Chris says, OK, you can test for black belt in the year. And I want you to write a thesis and bring it to the test. Oh, wow. OK. Year thesis. So I show up at the test and I've got this, you know, big, it was 140 page document. And I handed it to him and he's like, Kane, what the hell is this? The thesis you asked for? No, no, I meant like a research paper, like, you know, five or 10 pages. I'm like, oh God, I'm an idiot. So, some month later or so after he gets done reading, he goes, this is fantastic, you gotta get this published. I'm like, how do I do that? I don't know, figure it out. Sensei says, figure it out. So I did. So then like, you know, a couple of years later, first book comes out, it's been out for about six months, publisher calls me up and goes, so what's your next book gonna be? Like next book, I didn't even plan to write a first book. And so I actually had all these notes that I'd taken throughout the time. And I said, you know, I've got this idea, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable doing it myself, because I'm just a showdown. So I went to Chris and I said, hey, you know, most people think Cod is dancing around in an underwear. I, you've shown that it's not, I'd like to write a book on that. And so we collaborated and that's where the wave of Kata came from, which was a massive bestseller. Um, I mean, the average book sells 250 copies lifetime, but best sellers, anything over 5,000, uh, that one, I don't know what it's doing today, but, but in the first couple of years, it's still 20,000 copies. So, you know, that was kind of, um, kind of the impetus. That's why most of my books are co-written with Chris. because we tend to work really, really well together. And we're both, you know, we take the, unlike most martial artists, we actually take the ego out of it. And it's all about having good quality work. And so it makes it like really, really nice. But it all, you know, it all started from martial arts. Most of my books are martial arts related, martial arts, violence society, stuff like that. There are a few business ones, because like I actually, I'm actually in a hall of fame, but it's for the like. real job, not for martial arts. So, you know, I do a little bit of stuff like that. So, you know, if you ever need trouble sleeping, I've written a book on contract law, but
Jeremy:
Mmm.
Lawrence Kane:
most of the stuff that I do is around is about martial arts.
Jeremy:
What's the new book you're working on?
Lawrence Kane:
That was actually that was a fiction book
Jeremy:
Is this your
Lawrence Kane:
and
Jeremy:
first fiction title?
Lawrence Kane:
third, but most of my stuff's nonfiction, but it is martial arts fiction. So I think it's going to be, I don't want to talk too much about it yet to give anything away, but it's if you like like, you know, Crotty Kid, Cobra Kai, that sort of thing. It's sort of like that with a little better characterization in my view and a little bit more of a kind of life lesson that comes through without being preachy. So Hopefully that's going to come out somewhere around November.
Jeremy:
Oh, cool. All right, so we'll use this. Yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah,
Jeremy:
You
Lawrence Kane:
but
Jeremy:
can.
Lawrence Kane:
it's kind of funny. I have been really fortunate to stumble into writing because it's allowed me to meet people around the world. Nobody even know who I was if I didn't write books, right? Except for the local dojo or something. And I've got friends in almost every continent. I've been in... hundreds of interviews, including things like Forbes and big time, most of these are work related, but big time, I've been on Fox Morning News, I've done all kinds of stuff that's, it did an hour on the Jim Bohannon show, which is a nationally syndicated radio talk show, things like that. So all that's from the books. And I've also sold well over a hundred thousand copies. I don't even know exactly. I'll tell you it is not lucrative. It's not even close.
Jeremy:
No, no,
Lawrence Kane:
I mean,
Jeremy:
anybody
Lawrence Kane:
yeah.
Jeremy:
who thinks writing books is a good career move doesn't either cannot do math or doesn't value their own time.
Lawrence Kane:
Correct. Yeah. I mean, I had one book. So Chris and I actually created our own publishing company. It's an actual C Corp real company. But before we did that, the reason we did it was because one of the publishers, we made that publisher. I think it was about $6.8 million and got 80,000 that we split between the two of us out of it. Now, if you do the math there, that is not the 15% royalties that you would expect, because 15% of 6.8 million is a much bigger number. But you know how Hollywood accounting works? It's the same thing in the book industry.
Jeremy:
Every
Lawrence Kane:
So.
Jeremy:
expense comes out of that 15 percent
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah. And, and like, you know, I've had, um, I've had contracts with, you know, major publishing houses, the kind where you get an advance that's like, like real money, um, that never sold out of the advance because they didn't listen. Uh, I've had a niche publishers that they did really, really well, but the structure of the deal was all for them. Uh, so, you know, it just finally got tired of it and went, uh, you know, uh, we knew better. And we have, I mean, uh, Massachi's Dakota, which is one of our, our best sellers was the number one on Amazon for 36 weeks in a row dropped for about four, three, four weeks. And then went back up to number one again, uh, for three. So, I mean, you know, um, I actually know how to do this,
Jeremy:
It is.
Lawrence Kane:
but, uh, you know, people, people like what we do, which is the only reason I still do it. I mean, if, if somebody didn't sell, like you said, you know, your time, I mean, My first couple of years of writing, I was probably making, you know, a hundredth of a cent per hour or something, you know, because you don't only have to write it, you have to, you have to promote it. You have this like so much stuff you have to do, you know, to, I mean, there's, there's a couple million new titles published every year. Right. And then there's a few hundred thousand are published by the, by the big publishing houses. You have to compete to break out all that noise. That's all, that's a lot of stuff. And the, you know, the 300, so 1000 that come from the big houses, they get all the marketing dollars. But even they get lost in the noise. Right. There's there's only I read a study last year, actually, because I did a put together a keynote on how to get published. And so I had to do research. And 81 percent of people believe they've got a book in them. less than just about 1.8% actually get published. And of those that get published, only 6% actually make a living from it, meaning they make over a hundred grand. And even with the pandemic and all that sort of stuff, like when you think people will be reading, revenues declined 38% during the pandemic. And new titles only account for 32% of retail book sales. So all those new books that come out there, most people don't buy them. they're buying stuff that's tried and true that is somehow broken out of the noise, right? It's just, the industry is bizarre.
Jeremy:
Do you see that in your, I assume you do analysis on your titles?
Lawrence Kane:
Oh yeah,
Jeremy:
You know, is
Lawrence Kane:
yeah.
Jeremy:
it still the way of Kata? Not so. Okay.
Lawrence Kane:
I know this shifted around the and part of that's because the way of Kata came through a different publisher and they don't promote it anymore. So a lot of these publishers, what they do is they'll promote the book for the first like year or so. And so you see this big spike and then it kind of tails off and then they don't, they don't do the promotion after that. And we don't promote books from publishers where the royalties are crap. Right. So, you know, I mean, sell my author page, but I don't do any. like digital marketing, don't do anything active about those, only the stuff that are through Stickman publications because that's where I actually get real royalties. And so, you know, you see that, I mean, some of those still pop up, you'll still see sales occasionally, but it's not like a, you know, we used to be selling, I think when that first came out, we were selling like 30, 40 books a day, something like that. It's now like, you know, maybe that many in a month. I don't really track that as carefully. I mean, I get royalty reports and kind of go, well, that check sucks and then put it in your, you know, so that's kind of one of those, I'm not paying as much attention to it, but I think that, you know, if anybody is an aspiring writer, I think the takeaway from that is, you have to keep yourself, you have to find ways to break out of the noise. And even if you do mean like, you know, our Penguin contract, one of the things like, They had Chris on the Howard Stern show. We did zero for sales, right? Because it's the wrong audience. But he had to go do it. I would have gone too, but I was, you know, I had less flexibility to do the travel than he did. So, so ended up, you know, we're only able to make it work with just him. But so, you know, the big publishers, they'll put you on these shows. You know, that's how I got, you know, on live television as well. But what happens is if they don't, pick correctly because they go through their Rolodex of people they know or virtual is no Rolodex anymore, but you know, virtual Rolodex of people they know and they, and they, and they, you know, work with these producers and look at you on these shows, right? But if the show's audience isn't the right set of folks, you buy your book, they don't really pay any attention to that. And so most sales are coming from word of mouth, you know, book reviews, especially Amazon reviews, you know. podcast, kind of guerrilla marketing, so to speak. And then well done digital marketing, we're actually targeting ads at certain people through Facebook or Google or whatever platform your audience happens to be in. And I mentioned Facebook and most people go, ugh, right? But our audience happens to be older folks. And so I actually have, let me see if I can find it real quick while we're talking. So 78.2% of our readers are male, 21.8% female, predominantly between the ages 25 and 54. So, you know, there's actually, you know, you can go through and really look at the demographics and then identify how do you make the channel work based on who reads your stuff. And so I actually do Facebook ads from time to time because it's an older audience who actually uses it, even though
Jeremy:
Mm-hmm. It make sense?
Lawrence Kane:
I don't even have a Facebook account personally.
Jeremy:
Yeah, it's fascinating how all this stuff works. You know, we've done some stuff with books and, you know, been well received. But, you know, you know even better than I do, having written so many more. It's a slog. And if you go
Lawrence Kane:
Oh yeah.
Jeremy:
into it to make money, it's probably not a use of time that you will. be thankful for. You're likely to regret it. I know a lot of people who, you know, I had to get this book out. I had to get it out of my head, you know, and that's really the extent
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah,
Jeremy:
it was just, it was
Lawrence Kane:
but
Jeremy:
in
Lawrence Kane:
if
Jeremy:
there.
Lawrence Kane:
it's a passion, that's cool.
Jeremy:
Sure.
Lawrence Kane:
You just don't think you're gonna make a ton of money on it. So, you know, traditional publishing, right? The publisher owns the royalties. They invest in the work, which means, you know, you get a lot less royalty. It's a much more prestigious ISBN, but they'll typically make you hire an agent, right? So now instead of just splitting like, like most of my stuff's co-written, so instead of just splitting between two authors, it's now our agent gets a cut. And, and, you know, and so you start diluting that, that pool, right? They facilitate marketing, but they don't really do the marketing. So traditional publishing, if you're famous, you have a much better odds of success. You still have to do stuff, but it really helps to be famous for self publishing or, or that kind of thing, or hybrid. You own the royalties. But that also means you have to do all the investments to make it professional. So like a penguin or somebody, they're gonna provide copywriters, editors, proofreaders, like all this stuff, right? You get the whole infrastructure to make sure it's good. You gotta do all that stuff yourself. You also don't get an advance, right? You only make money once you generate royalties. But if you're passionate enough, you have a likelihood of being successful. Right? So, so one of them is kind of about fame and letting the system work. And the other one's kind of about your passion and driving energy, realizing that, you know, the chances of you making a lot of money are pretty small. But you can if you if you look out the another thing is really interesting is for martial artists, nonfiction actually generally pays better than fiction because you can branch out. So let's say you go and you do you teach a seminar, right? You got some of your books for sale. maybe you've got some other merchandise that you have. Maybe it draws people into your studio. Maybe it, you know, like there's offshoots of nonfiction that's not just the book. And so for example, you know, I wrote a book on, well, co-wrote a book on contract law. Well, I helped leverage that to get a higher paying job. So there's an indirect path as well. Like, you know, look, I'm in the hall of fame. I'm a world's leading expert on this thing. You know, by the way, I wrote this stuff, right? So, in fact, when I was introduced for one of these things, yeah, and he literally wrote the book on this. I'm like, well, a book, not the book, but yeah, I did. So, you know, the point is that if you're just doing it as a, you know, it's kind of a, I gotta get this out of my head and it's really exciting. You're probably gonna sell under 250 books. and you're going to have, you know, something kind of a cool memento, just be aware of that. It's not, not lucrative, but if you do something that people actually want to buy and that adds value and you market it, right, then you can actually make some money and it gets broader, right? So if it's a, you know, you know, Lawrence, my life in martial arts, it's like everyone's going to fall asleep. Nobody cares, right? But if it's something that's, you know, like, some of our best sellers, Little Black Book of Violence, Dude the World's Going to Punch You in the Face, Masashi's Dakota, you know, martial arts in your life. I mean, things that actually provide value for folks. Those can sell pretty well. Some of the like we did Three Fires of Sanche, which is largely Chris with me editing and. like super deep on how does San-Chen work actually
Jeremy:
Mmm.
Lawrence Kane:
the physiological level and um you know phenomenal book extremely good feedback it's a niche of a niche of a niche audience right you have to be a traditional Japanese or Okinawan martial arts practitioner who does San-Chen who actually cares about that stuff, right? So it's not gonna be, it's not aimed at a big audience, but it was like a, you know, something he really, really wanted to do
Jeremy:
Yeah.
Lawrence Kane:
and it furthered the field. Like, I mean, it's, you know, he like actually wired himself up with things and, you know,
Jeremy:
Oh, that's cool.
Lawrence Kane:
did study, I mean, it's fascinating, but only for a really small group of people, right? Whereas like, Takoto, you know, that's Misaki, I sure everybody's heard the book of five rings. Well, that's his 21 principles that he wrote right before he died, right? You can get that for free. You don't need to buy the book. But if you wanna know what the principles mean and how they might apply to you, what we did is we took five different perspectives of each one and did commentary around each one of those 21 principles. And there's also a workbook if you wanna make it your own and take the... take those principles and actually apply them into your life is the Masashi Field Manual, right? So there's, so that was designed so people can actually do something with it, right? Martial arts in your life is the world's most comprehensive and probably only study on what makes martial artists tick and how are they different than like everyday folks and how can you be more successful as a martial artist? So, you know, a bunch of things like that.
Jeremy:
If people want to check out your books, where do they go with Cece's place?
Lawrence Kane:
Probably Amazon. Amazon author page is the easiest. You can just Google me. By the way, I'm Lawrence Kane, the author, not the Zodiac killer suspect. He has the same name as I do. But
Jeremy:
I
Lawrence Kane:
if you...
Jeremy:
appreciate that clarification.
Lawrence Kane:
Yeah, I figured you'd like that. If you go on Amazon and just type Lawrence A Kane, you can find my author page pretty easily or even just a normal Google search. We've got all kinds of stuff out there. Most of the things I do are co-written. So you could also search on Chris or Rory Miller and I wrote a book together, several other things like that.
Jeremy:
Well, we're gonna wrap here, but I wanna pass the ball back to you for our close. I always invite the guest. How do you wanna wrap this up? You're talking to a whole bunch of martial artists. We've talked about a whole bunch of martial arts things. What words do you wanna leave them with?
Lawrence Kane:
Sure, so, you know, the, I have found martial arts to be really transformational in my life. It's something that, you know, I started doing it as a kid, because kind of my folks sort of made me. What I found is it really helped me to be a better person and to be... more resilient in tough things. I mean, as an example, I negotiate multi-billion dollar contracts for a living. I've been in meetings where everybody's freaking out and I'm thinking, well, nobody's trying to stab, punch or shoot me. What do I care? Right? And I have a level of calm that makes all the people around me calm and makes me a better negotiator. I've had some, you know, pretty significant impact. I mean, honestly, I probably wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't studied martial arts because I got into a couple of really dumb situations that I had to get myself out of because I screwed up my self defense and felt myself fighting. But even if that hadn't happened, I found that the aspects of understanding your body, understanding your mind, fitness, nutrition, all the things that go with it has really, really been transformational. And it's something that I absolutely don't regret in the slightest. even my like just sort of doing the dog's breakfast of different things and dabbling here and there. I just found enjoyment out of it. You know, I've never really aspired to be, you know, the world's best carotid or something anyway, I just want to learn stuff. And so it's, it's been a really cool journey. I've learned a ton. I've met a ton of people all around the world because of it. And, um, uh, you know, kind of my, my point is that martial arts, oftentimes is transformational ways we don't think about when we get started. The journey kind of changes over time, right? When I was a kid, I liked to compete and win trophies and stuff. Um, you know, I'm in a very different phase now. But it's something that stuck with me and probably will stick with me for my entire life because it just become a part of who I am. And one of the really cool things is when I go out and I speak at conferences, I do keynotes, stuff like that all the time. So I talk to people in business and I'm usually dressed, you know, wearing a suit or whatever. Most people think I'm in my 40s and they go, man, you've accomplished so much. I look way younger than my actual age because I do all the exercise for martial arts. So there's that too, right? So, other than the gray hair, I think most people have no clue how old I actually am. So there's an advantage in doing this stuff and I think it's worth the journey. And so, find a good instructor, do something you enjoy, stick with it.