Episode 841 - Martial Summit is What Everyone Needs

In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about the upcoming Martial Summit event in Keene, NH (November 9-12, 2023) and why it's something that everyone needs.

Martial Summit is What Everyone Needs - Episode 841

Martial Summit is going to be the largest event that Whistlekick has ever run, and there are so many events planned that there are sure to be so many that you will enjoy, that it’s almost silly to not be there.

In this episode Jeremy and Andrew discuss some of the events, and why this type of event is one everyone needs in their life.

You can find more about it on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1270425807017750

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy (00:02.668)

Ahem.

Jeremy (00:06.163)

I'm out.

Jeremy (00:10.39)

What's going on everybody? Welcome, this is Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. Today, Andrew and I are going to tell you why Martial Summit, an event that we have upcoming, is what everyone needs. Now, if you know how we handle these sort of self-promotional episodes, you know that it's not just, this is what we're doing. It's not just an explanation of our event. We talk about how we got here, why we're doing it.

We give you information that you can use, personally, professionally. It involves, we will talk about our encouragement for others to do similar events. There's gonna be a lot of information here, and a lot of it also has to do with our assessment of the world of martial arts. Basically, it's not gonna be just a commercial. It's not just a commercial. There is a commercial element to it. Not gonna lie, but it's not just a commercial. So stick around, hopefully you enjoy it. If you're new, well.

I'm Jeremy Lesnick, I'm the founder here at Whistlekick, where everything we do is in support of traditional martial arts. Joined by my good friend, Andrew Adams, who I don't even know what your titles are anymore. You got a bunch of them. I just call myself the producer and cohost. The producer? The producer of Listen to Martial Arts Radio. No, I knew what you meant, but it's like, it doesn't feel like that encapsulates all that you do because you do so much more than that. Anyway, he does a lot of stuff. He does some stuff. I also do some stuff. Together we do lots of stuff.

And sometimes together, we do lots of stuff. We go to things. If you can't tell, this is our third episode that we're recording today, so we're feeling a little silly. Little punchy inside. And it's a good time. If you wanna see all the stuff that we do, please go to whistlekick.com. That's where you're gonna find our events. It's where you're gonna find the programs, the projects that we're working on, our training programs that we produce, our apparel, protective equipment,

It's where you can learn about the martial arts teacher training and certification programs that we have. There's so much going on at whistlekick.com. And if you're not checking it out on, I'd probably say at least a monthly basis, you're probably missing things. If it's been a while, go, go check it out. Don't forget the code podcast one five to save 15% on something like, you know, a hoodie or a t-shirt or some pants or a hat. I'm not wearing a hat.

Jeremy (02:30.27)

If you go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, you're gonna find every single episode we've ever done. All the stuff that Andrew produces, as well as... What else do we have over there? We've got... Transcripts. I think people underestimate the value of the transcripts. Because I often get messages from people, I don't know if you do too, What was that episode that you did with that person? Well, that's why we do the transcripts. Because as you remember a phrase or a few words, you can search and narrow it down and go,

this was the episode, and then you can watch or listen to it again. That's why we do that. Okay. Uh, you could also, if you want to retain what a guest is saying, maybe we have an episode with a guest that just really like resonates for you. If you want to retain that information as best you can, listen while you read the transcript, that is a kind of a hack for you. If you really want to get the most out of a book, read the book while you listen to the audio book. The other thing you could do is.

really like the episode, the interview or episode, print out the transcript and then you put it on your bookshelf. You have it, you can read it later. You're quite allowed to do that, we don't mind. Guess what? Even if we did mind, you could still do it. We can't stop you from using your printer. No, don't use your print. See, this is the slap happy stuff. We're still in the intro. If you want to support us in what we do, you could.

print out your transcript, but you could also- And give it to a friend. And give it to a friend? You can tell people about what we do. Please, tell people about what we do. Our mission works better when you help us spread the word. You could also buy stuff, come to events, buy books, we have a bunch of books at Amazon. But the telling a friend costs you nothing. Costs you nothing. Nothing. In fact, think about your life before Whistlekick. It was terrible.

Everything about your life before you found Whistlekick sucked. Now think about your life now. And now with Whistlekick, your life is so much better. Don't you want that for the people in your life that you love? Don't you want them to have better lives because of Whistlekick?

Jeremy (04:42.063)

We gotta move on Jeremy. We gotta get past the intro. Join the Patreon. Patreon.com slash whistlekick.

So Marshall Summit. Marshall Summit is an event that we're hosting for the first time in November of 2023 in Keene, New Hampshire. Some of you who've been around a while are likely saying, Keene, New Hampshire sounds like a familiar location. I believe I've been to a free training day event there. That's right, you have. Maybe you have. We are not restricting this episode only to people who have done it. But something happened over the last couple of years.

And it winds up very much with my philosophy in business of problems become opportunities and let the market dictate what you should do. So if you've been around a little bit, you know that in 2021 we moved free training day from Vermont to Keene, New Hampshire with very little notice. Three weeks. Three weeks notice would not have happened without this guy. And it was awesome. It went great. It was the biggest one we'd ever.

done. It was frustrating for a few people. It was closer for most people that attended other than me. I'm gonna couple others. A couple of others that was a little further away. Yeah, it was a more central location and so we went back there again for 2022. Grew even more. Grew even more and it's been great. But we also did something last year that was really interesting. We kind of

We had team training for the Whistlekick team. We did a team dinner. We had a meet and greet. And on Sunday we had a martial arts teacher training and certification level one course. There was a lot there. Oh.

Jeremy (06:36.618)

And people wanted more. Yeah. If you've ever hosted an event, it's very easy to tell if people want more. And here's the way I determine. Do you have to kick them out or do they choose to leave? And in most of the things that we did, people got kicked out. We ran to the end of our time. Businesses closed, restaurants closed, the bar closed.

We had to throw people out of the gym. It is the old cliche, you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. So we started to think early this year, what if we expanded on that? What if free training day was no longer a day, because it wasn't a day. Yeah, because we had MADEC on Sunday. It was two and a half days or so. What if we leaned into that? What would it look like if we put together a long weekend for people? And what we ended up with...

was Marshall Summit. Marshall Summit will occur Thursday through Sunday, November 9th through 12th, 2023, in Keene, New Hampshire. And we kicked around a lot of things, but one of the big things that we said was very critical was that there were things of importance of substance on all four days that were free. Free Training Day will remain the anchor to what we do. Which will be Saturday the 11th of November.

But what we didn't want to do was kind of dangle that carrot of, hey, come to free training day, but if you want to go to anything else, it's going to cost you a bunch of money. There will be paid offerings, you know, a martial arts teacher training and certification level one on Sunday, level two on Friday, those are both paid. There will be some other things that happen that we are currently dialing in. And the reason we're not talking specifically about what this schedule is, cause it's not the purpose of this conversation is not to talk about

what the schedule is. It's not to talk about what Marshall Summit 2023 is. It's to talk about how Marshall Summit fits into our business, how Marshall Summit fits into the martial arts landscape, and to give you as either an individual or a school owner or any other relationship with martial arts world, some information that we have come up with that you might find interesting. Now, as an individual, our pitch is pretty simple. What you need to know is pretty simple. You should be there. Yeah.

Jeremy (09:00.306)

There will be information for you, classes for you, classroom classes and training classes available four days. Thursday we will be doing a bunch of material specifically for school owners, classes and physical trainings. And again some of this stuff will be paid, there will definitely be free stuff all throughout. But it's more than an educational event because that was the one thing that we have found with free training days that people were

raving more, it was social time. People wanted to connect with other martial artists, and I say it now, we remember, connect, educate, and entertain is what we do. They wanted to connect with other martial artists from around the world. And I don't know about the around the world this year, but I know we've got people from around the country. And I'm excited for that. Yeah, the biggest takeaway after every free training day has always been, what was your favorite thing about it? And 99 times out of 100, it was.

I got to meet all of these other people. It's that connection that people really dug. And it's because we, the educational side is the foundation. People, they come for the education and they come back for the connection. Because yeah, there are a lot, we have top-notch instructors giving top-notch classes for free. That's awesome.

But you can learn a bunch of this stuff in other places. What you do not generally have in other places is this diverse a group of martial artists coming together to share and leaving ego at the door. That's the part that I think, you know, we titled this episode, Martial Summit is Something Everyone Needs. I think that's the part that I think should be the takeaway that everyone should have that involvement in an event where there is not ego.

And let's be honest, ego can surface in a lot of different ways. You know, we often on this show talk about ego in the big, dramatic ways, but it also surfaces in other ways. And ego in and of itself is not bad. When you step up for a rank promotion testing, hopefully you have a bit of ego, believe that you are good enough. Because if you're not, if you don't, it's probably not going to go so well. Right? If you think that you suck, you probably won't do your best.

Jeremy (11:24.414)

If you go out to competition, hopefully you believe you can win. Otherwise you're not going to win. Right. But in this capacity, in this context is a better word, in this context, by leaving ego outside, everyone gets to learn so much more and so much faster.

Jeremy (11:48.91)

Do you have memories of things we talked about January, February when we were talking about Marshall Summit and what this might look like? I don't anymore, I've forgotten. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about, we have been planning this for so long. It's hard to remember when stuff came up, but the biggest thing is, you know, free training day last year was in November and we immediately started.

thinking about, planning about, okay, what could have gone better? What can we add to make it better? What should we absolutely not change? And the biggest takeaway that we talked about was the how much more the meat, because we had done a semi meat and green in 2021. And then last year we had like almost 50 people at our meat and green, like, whoa, this, clearly people want to connect more.

and they want to spend more time together, but there's only so many hours in the day if we're only doing stuff on Saturday and Sunday, so how can we make more stuff? Well, we have to grow. We have to start earlier and end later. That's the only way we can do it. Now if you've been checking out the show for a while, if you've read any of my books, any of my blogs, you know that one of the words that I use often is value. That as a business person...

value is the thing the lens through which I look at everything and Just to summarize it very quickly You are watching or listening to this right now because you find more value in that than any other option If you're watching this you know you have an near infinite amount of stuff you could watch But you are choosing to watch this because you find more value in that than watching rewatching an old episode

or watching some other episode. Or cats playing piano. Or watching cats playing piano or cats scared of cucumbers. Good one. I enjoyed that brief phase of YouTube video, that was fun.

Jeremy (13:52.118)

We are committed to making everything we do as valuable to people as possible. Now some of that value comes from making sure there are free offerings. So if you are a, let's say you're a school owner starting out and you're scraping by or maybe even haven't turned a profit yet, we're gonna make sure you have things that help move you in the direction you wanna go for free. You just have to get there. You could come sleep in your car.

bring a couple sleeping bags, it's November, right? You can get this done if you want, really inexpensively. Or if you're someone who is a more successful school owner and you are often looking for how do I reinvest and grow, well, we're gonna put you in front of and next to some absolutely wonderful martial artists. We're gonna give you opportunities to train and to learn.

Get your students trained, your assistant instructors trained, right? Like there's a lot of opportunities there. So value is very individualized. Yeah. Yep. And this is part of why the formula for free training day, which is extending out to these other three days is okay. So session one, I can do this, or this, and most likely, or this. Yes. We're looking at five offerings. Yep. Seven classes.

just on Saturday. So 35 choices. Let's see, because I'm a nerd, the number of combinations that you have available to you is five to the seventh. Hey Google, what's five to the seventh power? The answer is 78,125. So you have 78,125 possible ways that you could approach just Saturday. That's pretty great. That was very nerdy. It was really nerdy.

I own it.

Jeremy (15:48.662)

Value comes in a lot of different ways and it's not just classes, right? Remember, connect, educate, entertain. So the educate is probably pretty obvious at this point. There will be classes available to you across four days. The connect is probably also pretty obvious. It's pretty innate in what it is. Yeah, because it brings together a bunch of people. What about the entertain?

So this is one of the things we talked about in how we're gonna plan Marshall Summit, that we recognize that we have a really good job, we do a really good job of connecting, a really good job of educating, and the entertained part is, in the past, the entertained part was you and I doing shtick before and after. Just basically our preamble, and we just riffed, and it was kind of funny, but.

It wasn't a focus. But yeah, but it's also even a joke to say that was the entertainment because it really wasn't. We didn't have an entertainment. There was nothing formalized. Yeah, and so we said, how can we make this more? And there are plans and I even, I almost don't even wanna say what they are because they're so new, we're still trying to figure out what's gonna work out, but there are.

Going to be options some that I'm fairly certain There's there's an axe throwing place in key that you can throw more than axes actually you they have playing like the metal playing cards and throwing stars and darts and knives and the guy even created he took a circular saw blade and Shoved it into a short baseball bat and you can throw that at the wall to like there's all kinds of really fun stuff

Oh, like from Far Cry. Yeah. And so we are working with, we're partnering with the owner of the Axe House in Keen to have an event that will happen at his facility where you can go and throw darts and axes and stuff like that. And they were gonna have a class on...

Jeremy (17:54.038)

like alternative ways to lift weights, like not just going to a gym and lifting weights, but using kettlebells and other things and how to maybe incorporate them in your class as well. So, lots of other different things, the meet and greet and stuff like that. You will not be able to participate in everything. That is essential. That is something that we hear from people, it is their least favorite thing about free training day is that they can't do everything. And that inevitably, at least a couple sessions during the day,

There are two classes they really wanted to go to and they had to choose. Yeah, value. Delivering so much value, you cannot consume all of it. That you will always leave things on the table and this is what we're committed to bringing to you the other three days. So Andrew kind of hinted at something that I wanna make sure we address in that we don't have all of this locked in yet. We are continuing and we is no longer the two of us. We is most of the team.

and people outside of the team. In fact, you just sent a message to someone who's been on the show, who happens to live in Keene, who will connect us so we can work on something else. Because we want this to be the biggest collection and celebration of martial arts and martial artists available. There used to be more events like this. Yeah. I would say none of them had the whistle kick style.

to them. But these events did exist. They don't really exist anymore. There are private ones. There are ones that occur within organizations. And it's, you know, here's if you want to get better at this, that, or the other, here's the way our organization does it. And that's good. But we've talked before about the diversity of information leads to growth in a faster way versus that sort of deterioration if you

And none of the other ones did them for free. And I have no problem with people monetizing what they do. That's totally fine. Spoiler alert, we do make money on this event. We made a little bit of money last year on it. The first time. And so I have no problem with monetizing events, but there is nowhere I challenge the listeners and watchers to find me an event.

Jeremy (20:19.686)

of this caliber, even one day, training all day with 35 classes, completely for free. A challenge. If you find one, please send it to me because I would love to go. I would love to go.

Jeremy (20:35.614)

The reality is it's just not there. It doesn't happen. We wish it would. Free Training Day is our name. Put your own name on it. But go do it. And we'll come back to this. But we want people to do more stuff like this. Yeah. And so the fact that we are now growing this to be four days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, with free stuff. All four days. All four days, there will be some free stuff.

It does not happen. It just doesn't. No, because, and how is it happening? Because we created a foundation. Because Whistlekick created Martial Arts Radio, which created a lot of connection, which built a lot of relationships that we can now leverage to get this stuff done. We had to turn people away last year from presenting. That we had more people that wanted to be presenters at the event.

than we had space for. And I anticipate that to happen again this year because people wanna share what they have because they go, they experience, they're like, oh man, because we do things that are a little unique like you don't have to have a bajillion stripes on your belt to be able to present. We had people present last year who were not black belts. I know, scandalous. But on the subjects that they were presenting, they were experts. They were experts in, yeah. And so we had them present because...

It was the right thing to do. And the feedback was incredible, right? What matters to us is the information, not necessarily right. So, what else do we need to say? Well, the number one thing coming out of this is that you saved the date. November 9th through 12th in Keene, New Hampshire, K-E-E-N-E, if you happen to be far away, your closest airport is Manchester, New Hampshire. It is within a...

one-day drive of most of the northeast. What are you to Philly, six? Yeah, about that. Six hour drive to Philadelphia. So that gives you an idea. You can anywhere in New England, it is a one-day drive. In fact, there's a decent amount of the population that can, if you really need to, you can go up and back, you know, for one day here or one day there. Yeah.

Jeremy (22:59.862)

We do have hotel discounts. There's a lot of stuff that we're rolling out. In fact, we just got confirmation earlier today on the discount code in the link and that'll be getting shared out. There's a Facebook event. No, you don't have to be a Facebooker to be able to see that event. There's a bunch of information at whistlekick.com and it will continue to grow. One of the things, we've talked about this, I am...

I have a philosophy, and actually the first book I wrote was built on this philosophy, the idea that whenever you do something, you try to make it 15% better. Because if you get some of it wrong, it's still pretty good. If you get all of it wrong, you're okay. But this breaks our 15% rule, because we're going from one and a half to two days, however you want to look at last year, to four days. Four full days available. I am going to be very tired on Sunday night.

I'll probably be tired long before that, but I look forward to sleeping on November 15th. 13th. Or the evening of the 12th. Or the evening of the... I just want to go back to one thing. You talked about airports, so Manchester being the closest. Manchester Airport is about an hour and a half away. Bradley Airport in Hartford, Connecticut is also about an hour and a half away, which is nice. Oh, fascinating. Because...

the drive from Bradley is much easier. It is an easier drive. Bradley's a bigger airport. It's a better airport. Bradley is Connecticut. Yeah, Harvard, Connecticut. It's an easier airport to get in and out of, to be honest. But it's also- How far is Logan? Two to two and a half. Logan in Boston? Yeah. Logan will be your cheapest, for sure. Manchester will be your next cheapest. And then, Bradley in Harvard, Connecticut would be-

typically the most expensive. I would have expected that to be. No. Well, check them out. Yeah, but anyway, those would be your three closest airports. Okay. And if you, hopefully you're coming, right? We want everyone to come. There's no requirement that says you have to be here for four days. If you can't get off work and you come for Saturday and Sunday, do it. Yeah. If you can get here like halfway through Friday, do that. If you have something going on over the weekend,

Jeremy (25:16.626)

And you can get here for Thursday and Friday and leave Saturday morning or you know after the first session of free training day do that We are setting this up in a way that this is a buffet that you come and you take avail of whatever you want Because again value we want to make sure there's more available to you than you could possibly consume I'll be teaching all four days I'll teach I don't know how much on Saturday. Sorry the word I prefer is presented I do I think we really figured out

Craig is also presenting on all four days. Craig is presenting on all four. So he's also gonna be really tight. Craig Wareham, right? Because we've got level two, MEDIC level two on Friday, MEDIC level one on Sunday. Why is it that order? Because I've gotten a few questions. Because you can't pass the level one and then implement everything you learn before Sunday. That's too much. Yeah. It's too much. Level two is on Friday, level one is on Sunday. That's by design.

There's a lot that I have to share. There's a lot you have to share. You've got some fun stuff going on. You know, and the other thing that we didn't, we haven't really, we haven't mentioned or talked about is what we are affectionately calling open school. Yeah. This is a great example of us throwing ideas against the wall and hoping they stick and something that we call.

I don't know if we have to rename it, but Free Training Day Magic, FTD Magic, somehow things just work out with these events. Yeah, so we were looking for a space to host Matic Level 2 on Friday. The school that we are holding Free Training Day at on Saturday is, the school itself is closed on Friday, so the first initial thought was, well, we can go there and have Matic Level 2, because we're doing it on Sunday for Level 1.

But the school is, even though there's no school, they are using the facility that day. So we can't use the school. So we had to find, well, if we're gonna do MADC Level 2, we need to find another location. So I went to another local martial arts school. Not yours. Not mine, because my classes happen. At the school. At the school that we're hosting for your training day. So I went to another martial arts school in town that I have good connections with, and he has agreed to.

Jeremy (27:38.778)

open up his school, his math, for the whole day on Friday because he doesn't have classes until the evening. So we're going to be able to hold Matic Level 2 at Elements MMA in Keen, which is great. We're friends with an MMA school? Yes. And while I was talking with the owner...

We got to talking about how we're going to be having some classes on Thursday and his space We can't really use on Thursday because he's got his own classes during the day but he mentioned that if there he just wants people to come in and see the space and it'll be great for him and so if you are In keen for classes on for our whistle kick stuff for Marshall Summit on Thursday It's gonna mostly be done in the you know

done in the late afternoon, so the evening is yours. So the, Ari, the owner of Elements MMA said, well, if anybody that's in town wants to come check out, I think on Thursday, it's a Muay Thai class and a boxing class. We'll have schedules put together with all of this stuff. But if anybody wants to come to those classes, they can drop in for free. They'll have to sign a waiver, but you can just pop in and do this class for free.

And it got me to and same thing for Friday. He has classes on Friday night as well and it got me thinking well You know what? I'll do the same thing with our school like we have we normally hold our sure and rude cannot take classes on Thursday nights If anybody is in town for the whistle kick stuff on Thursday and they want to come to my karate class on Thursday night Yeah, they can come we were not gonna charge him anything and then when I mentioned this to you you're like

Well, why don't we just invite every martial arts school in Keene to do that? Because there are six martial arts schools in Keene. So I am in talks with all of them to, and I have not connected with all of them yet. By the time this airs, some of them are less open than others, as you might imagine. I mean, that's OK. There's one school that just came right out, said, we'd love you to advertise that. And they're going to it looks like they're going to be a part of this. But he just said, we just don't offer classes on Thursday and Friday nights. That's all. You know.

Jeremy (29:54.07)

But by the time this airs, I will have been in contact with all of them. And we're going to be publishing a schedule of this is every martial arts school in the area. These are the classes that they're offering. And you just have to go in and say that you are part of Martial Summit, and you'll be able to do these classes, their classes, for free. Show me another event that has this kind of reach into the community. This is why we do this. This is why this is such a big deal for us. And why we feel so strongly about it. Because it just keeps...

growing and not necessarily in In time right but in the word that comes to mind is saturation. Mm-hmm, right? Keen, New Hampshire will be whistle-kick, New Hampshire for four days, right? And I'm really excited about that and hopefully that's coming through and hopefully you will come and contribute your own energy To it. Mm-hmm. There is nothing like free training day

there's going to be nothing like Marshall Summit. And this is one of those events that years later people will say, I was at the first one. Yeah. You'll brag about that. Yeah. But not if you weren't there. Good point. Anything else? No, I don't think so. If you want more information on this, the easiest thing to do is go to whistlekick.com. There's information there under, there's a section, you'll find it for Marshall Summit. There is also the Facebook event titled

Marshal Summit and if you don't find what you're looking for, please reach out to one of us, Jeremy at Whistlekick.com, intro at WhistlekickMarshalArtsRadio.com. You can find us on social media, we are at Whistlekick. Remember we've got a Patreon and we do all sorts of things. If you find value in the things that we're doing for this community, for the broad global martial arts community, then please consider supporting us. And the number one thing you can do right now is go block off your calendar.

find a way to get there, if you need help with the logistics, reach out. We will help you. We'll figure this out. It would not surprise me if we had to get some people bunched together in a shuttle from Boston or something. We will do this legwork to get people there. I'm not going to pay for you, but we will help you get there logistically. It's going to be unlike anything you've ever done.

Jeremy (32:16.258)

Thank you for your time. Thanks for sticking around with us. We appreciate you. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.

Jeremy (32:29.921)

yeah