Episode 926- Feras Alhlou
In today's episode Jeremy sits down and chats with assistant instructor and business advisor Feras Alhlou about his martial arts experience and how it interacts with his business advising.Feras Alhlou - Episode 926
SUMMARY
In this episode, Jeremy interviews Feras Alhlou, a business advisor and martial artist. They discuss the parallels between martial arts and business, including the importance of learning from mistakes, the need for discipline and structure, and the concept of sacrifice and service. Feras shares his journey in both martial arts and business, highlighting the value of continuous learning and the pursuit of mastery. They also touch on the importance of deliberate practice and the benefits of training with different people and in different arts. In this conversation, Jeremy and Feras discuss the importance of having a broad understanding and training in multiple disciplines, both in martial arts and in business. They emphasize the value of finding partners and employees who complement your skills and the importance of discipline and consistency in achieving progress. They also discuss the role of martial arts in self-defense and the importance of de-escalation and avoiding conflict. Feras shares his insights on building a successful business and the importance of being useful, honorable, and compassionate in life.
TAKEAWAYS
* There are parallels between martial arts and business, including the importance of learning from mistakes and the need for discipline and structure.
* Continuous learning and the pursuit of mastery are key in both martial arts and business.
* Deliberate practice and training with different people and in different arts can enhance learning and growth.
* Sacrifice and service are integral aspects of martial arts and can be applied to business as well.
* The road to mastery requires hours of practice, learning from different sources, and applying knowledge in various contexts. Having a broad understanding and training in multiple disciplines is important for both martial artists and business owners.
* Finding partners and employees who complement your skills can lead to greater success.
* Discipline and consistency are key to making progress in any endeavor.
* De-escalation and avoiding conflict are important aspects of self-defense.
* Building a successful business involves more than just making money; it also involves creating a positive business culture and helping others.
* Being useful, honorable, and compassionate are important values to live by.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Overview
13:11 The Parallels Between Martial Arts and Business
29:07 Deliberate Practice and Training with Different People
40:36 Sacrifice and Service in Martial Arts and Business
44:11 The Road to Mastery: Hours of Practice and Learning from Different Sources
46:21 The Value of a Broad Understanding and Training in Multiple Disciplines
48:31 Finding Complementary Partners and Employees
53:49 De-escalation and Avoiding Conflict in Self-Defense
56:33 Building a Successful Business and Helping Others
01:06:15 Living a Life of Usefulness, Honor, and Compassion
Show Notes
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Show Transcript
Jeremy
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. It's another episode of Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio and on today's show, I'm joined by Feras Alhlou and we're going to talk. We just had some pre-show, and I've got a good feeling. I usually have a good feeling. I've got a good feeling about this one. And maybe I just need to credit Andrew for always making sure I have great guests, but I've got a good feeling.
If you happen to be new to what we do here at Whistlekick, especially martial arts radio, make sure you head on over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. It's where we keep everything for every show. Anything that Faras and I talk about today is going to be linked over there. We're going to have show notes, photos, if there are videos that we end up mentioning, all that stuff's going to be there, so don't forget that. Also transcripts. Whistlekick .com is our online home for everything. If you feel like supporting the things that we do, our mission to connect, educate, and entertain the martial artists of the world, that's where you're going to go. You can pick up training programs and apparel and buy registration to an event, things like that.
For now, back to Feras, the man of the hour. Thanks for being here. Appreciate your time.
Feras
Thank you so much, Jeremy. Looking forward to this amazing conversation. I can tell, like you said, the energy is there, bright and early on my end and looking forward to it.
Jeremy
Yeah, you're West Coast you said, Silicon Valley. So it's a little after 6am there. But you're an early riser.
Feras
Historically we've had clients on the East Coast. So I kind of got used to getting up early and being ready for taking care of the clients.
Jeremy
It's funny, in my non-podcasting work, work with clients, sometimes they're martial arts schools, sometimes they're not, it's funny that the West Coast has had to defer to the timing of the East Coast. I've never had West Coast people say, no, you need to take this meeting on Friday at 7 pm 7:30 pm, right? Which would be 4:00 or 4:30 your time, right? But you all over there have to adjust to us and I feel guilty about it. I'm not going to change it, but I do feel guilty.
Feras
All good. All good.
Jeremy
What sort of work do you do?
Feras
We have a business advisory and media company that we started about a year and a half ago. I've been in Silicon Valley for over 25 years now. I got into the startup scene in 2003 after a very dramatic layoff. I was a VP in a tech company here in the Valley and then we ran out of money and I was basically asked to go home one afternoon, and we can dig into that later if you like. So I got into the startup scene, focused on working with small and mid-sized businesses. This was the dawn of the internet, so online marketing, web design. And then started to specialize and then built another company and sold that one. And in 2019, we sold that last business to Dentsu, the global media giant, and took some time off after a long career and a lot of hard work. Then I figured, let me see how I can benefit the new generation of founders to avoid the mistakes I made. They can make their own mistakes, but I can at least share what I've learned and what others have helped me along the way. So that's what this new company, Startup with Ferris, is to really provide content and consulting to folks who want to start have an idea or they have a business and they struggle, they're struggling, they're not sure what to do to build it to scale up.
Jeremy
Awesome. There's something that pretty strongly parallels, I'm gonna move a little closer to the mic. Just to the audience, if you've been listening to the show for a long time, I recently moved and I never had to worry about echo before, but I have to worry about echo here. So we'll do our best in post to take out the echo, but if you're catching a little bit of it, know that we hear it and we're going to work on it.
There's something that pretty strongly parallels martial arts progression and growing a business, right? You're talking about trying to help people not make those mistakes. Anybody who's been a martial arts instructor knows that's pretty much half of your job is here's what you have to learn. The other half is no, don't do it that way. Well, why not? Because you're going to get punched in the face. That's usually the mistake you're trying to avoid, is getting punched in the face, which, you know, the punches in the face in business, this is not my first business, the punches that you take in the face in business are generally financial and hurt in a just as strong but different way.
Feras
Absolutely. One of our sensei, one of our teachers, he says I've been doing this for 50 years, this sensei, and he says “It took me, whatever technique it is, it took me two years to figure this out. My job is to help you do it in six months.” So in business it’s the same way. Everybody's journey is different, but I think that the obstacles, the types of challenges, the types of opportunities that someone who's new to business or maybe they're savvy in business but they're new to a market, it's a new market, or maybe it's a new vertical or new type of clients. Anytime there's newness to something, I think listening to those who have been down that path before can save us all a whole lot of time and trouble and the punches in the face, as you said.
Jeremy
Yeah, and you know there's something that's really interesting that happens. Again, I see this both in business with clients I work with, whether they're martial arts schools or not, and with students when they're brand new most of them will listen to you. Then they start to learn some things and they don't listen quite as well, but eventually they go oh, maybe I should have been listening the whole time, right? We could almost graph this kind of inverted bell curve of people listening.
Feras
Right.
Jeremy
You've worked with people, and to the audience out there, if you've taught students or if you've been around a while, you've seen this happen. First few days, first few weeks, maybe even first few years, they're listening. And then they're not as likely to listen. And so given that this is your profession now, here's my question. Is that necessary? Do we all have to be able to go through that point of saying, okay, I tried it my own way. I banged my head against the wall. I came to the same conclusions as all these people in front of me. Maybe it's time to learn some, listen to that.
Feras
Maybe. That's a very good point, the way you've framed it. It could be part of just our process to learn, is we have to kind of do things on our own. I remember reading an article, I forgot which martial art journal or website, and they talked about the blue belt or the green belt sensei, someone who's been around for six months or a year and they think now they start to provide advice. It’s the same thing in business.
I think in business, it could be a number of factors. It could be our ego. It could be we're shy. It could be that we don't know that there's help out there. It could be that the grit, that go-getterness that we have as entrepreneurs, we want to figure it on our own. Which is to a large degree something positive. But I always say at specific inflection points in my journey, and this is my seventh venture, I'm fortunate to be able to do this and there were a lot of ups and downs, but at specific key inflection points had I not reached out to folks who had the specific subject matter expertise or they're just there for emotional support, I would have made wrong decisions, major wrong decisions. It would have taken me much longer to get to where I want to go. So I think, yeah, maybe it's part of our learning process to do things on our own, but we have in our company what I call the black belt principles. And one of them is when I speak with founders, I say, learn, do, then seek. So learn about something. Do it for a little bit. If you're banging your head against the wall, ask for help. Just go on YouTube and search and make sure it's a good source. But then at times you have to ask help from those who have been to where you want to go. I think that's really important.
Jeremy
You mentioned this is your seventh startup. So I wonder if we can continue to extend this metaphor. What are you doing differently with this startup business versus your first one? Are there lessons you've learned that help you progress even faster because, and here's why I'm asking this question, most folks out there who have trained in multiple martial arts, especially if they're dramatically different martial arts, the first one takes you whatever period of time to reach whatever level of proficiency as you define it. But the next time you go, even if it's a whole different skill set, even if you're going from karate to Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu, which is striking versus grappling, or maybe it's striking versus weaponry or something, you tend to progress a lot faster. And it's not just because you know how to move your body, it's because you know how to learn. So there's my long -winded question.
Feras
No, that's very spot on. I think you learn how to learn, that's one thing. And also I think some of the principles. I had a female instructor early on and she would say, especially to men with a lot of upper body power, she would said “you’ve got to use your hips.” Right? So I think moving from the center. That concept of being centered and regaining your center. I know a few arts. I don't think I'm an authority to talk about any of them, but that concept of balance I think is just universal in general.
It’s the same thing in business, this concept of working hard. I always tell entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship is five times harder than what you think. I'm telling you, Jeremy, I’m in my seventh venture and this is something completely different. Figuring out YouTube, figuring out how to grow our newsletter subscribers, figuring out how to make sure the content that we are producing resonates with our audience. It's something I've done in all the other businesses, we've had blogs and we've done some content, but that was maybe 5 % of our business. Now this is 100 % of my business. It's like a production line. I produce content every week as you know. It is really hard and you have to do the reps. Learning how to learn is important. Learning how to go to advisors is important, that applies across all. Then I think there is a phase where you just have to do the reps.
That doesn't change. Whether you are working with small and mid-sized businesses today and you want to penetrate, let's say the Fortune 1000, that's something new. Whether you've done a lot of work in healthcare and now you want to work with, I don't know, the finance sector, there's always new things. I think the more experience and learning and education in whichever field in business, I think a lot of those are transferable skills that you can take with you to the next venture.
Jeremy
You said five times harder than people think it is. I've done a lot of ... when you start a business, people who also want to start a business tend to come to you for advice. There are a number of things that I've told them. One of my mentors gave me the most succinct way of explaining it. He said being your own boss is wonderful. You get to make all your own decisions. You decide how the money is spent and who to hire and you only have to work half days, and you even get to pick which twelve hours it is.
Feras
I love it. I’m going to use that one.
Jeremy
I think that’s the best summary of what it's like to start a business. But here you're either a glutton for punishment or it's how you're wired. So we're going to keep kicking this can, keep going with this because it's bringing us some interesting stuff to talk about. I will often at the end of an episode ask a guest, why do you keep training? So not only why do you keep training, why do you keep starting businesses? And are there things in common between those two desires?
Feras
After we exited, we sold that last business and we were fortunate. It was an eight-figure business and we did well on all that. The team and my co-founders, they're really positive. So I had a call. I think Tuesday was my last day with that choir. I stayed with them for a couple of years and then I left. So I think on Wednesday morning I had a call at 7 am. So my wife said, you are absolutely nuts. After 25-plus years in corporate and in startups, why do you schedule a call? I was helping out a nonprofit. They needed some help with marketing. So I said, yeah, and I'm just used to getting up early and scheduling calls. Then I said I need to slow down just for a little bit, just to reflect on what happened in the last 25 years.
So why do we train? I think once you have the bug, it's in you. Once you have this, you want to learn more, at least for me, kind of reinventing yourself. You mentioned earlier, you're humbled. I think no matter how hard you train, I think martial arts is very humbling that you'll train with someone who's been around. I was just actually at an event, martial arts event, just this weekend and sat down next to a gentleman, the kindest and nicest person. He has 35 years of experience in Aikido and he just got his black belt in Jiu-Jitsu, which is not an easy feat. And I'm like, oh my God, wow, can I just sit down and take notes? It wasn't a place where we can get on the mat and train, we're doing other things. But I just wanted to train with him and just get a feel of this amazing person that probably was my age or maybe a bit older and he just got his black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Jeremy
If I may ask, because the majority of our audience listens rather than watches, roughly how old are you?
Feras
I am 57, turning 58 soon. I think you can always refine and do the technique sharper, smoother. You can see even when I train with beginners. I'm an assistant instructor and I have a youth class I teach on Friday nights, younger youths not teenagers. Sometimes they drive you nuts because for me, it's Friday, end of the week, they just want to come in and have fun. But even the questions they asked, I never thought about Aikido this way. So I think there's this learning opportunity every time you get on the mat. At least for me, I forget about the whole messy day I've had maybe and then just get on the mat and I leave it behind. Maybe my body is aching, but my mind, I'm ready to go for another couple hours of work. So I think that ongoing learning, that kind of reinventing yourself, meeting nice people, amazing people, new challenges, I think those are all, at least for me, they drive me to train and also to stay involved in business.
Jeremy
I had a feeling you'd get somewhere with the word challenge or a similar word because for people who don't run their own businesses, they may not realize, they may just think it's, you do this because it is a more efficient way of earning an income. And it's not because when you start out, pretty much whatever you do, there's less money. When you start a business, you could go get a minimum wage part-time job and make more money. Of course there's hope that it pays off and it certainly sounds like you have a good track record there, but it's about solving a problem. There's a very martial arts, as I see it, a very martial philosophy to running a business. You're looking for that iteration. You step back on the mats. How do I get 1 % better today? How do I make my business 1 % better today? How do I avoid the pitfalls of before? If I step in and I spar or randori with someone, how do I make sure that goes better than the last time I did it?
Feras
Yeah, 100%. I think in business, and I speak to maybe one to two founders every week, someone I was speaking with yesterday, I think sometimes people think that they're born entrepreneurs or they're born salespeople. Obviously when you have your own business you are likely to have an area of expertise, your domain knowledge, the technical, whether it's HR consulting, whether it's you help people improve their dojos and get more members, whether it is you're a financial advisor, whatever that case might be, you have some technical expertise, so that's needed. A lot of times people who have that domain knowledge, they're concerned or they're afraid of starting their own business because, we don't know how to sell. We don't know how to market. We don't know how to hire. Of course, most of us, in my experience, we were not born amazing salespeople. But all of those skills are learnable.
When I was laid off, as I mentioned, and I was out, I joke about it. I said, I couldn't find a job for seven, eight weeks. I didn't get one interview. I was hitting the pavement. I was sending resumes out. But it was a dry market similar to what we're seeing today with these waves of layoffs around us in almost every sector. I spoke with a friend of mine and he had said “I'm thinking of starting a business. What do you think?” And we joined forces. So I was in a way forced into entrepreneurship. It wasn't sort of the first thing on top of my mind. I had a young family at the time, three children, my wife.
I had to learn sales from the ground up because I never sold anything to anyone. I didn't know how to market. I didn't know. So I picked up that, what was a classic at the time, Guerrilla Marketing, and figured out because we had a very, very tiny budget. So I think for those out there who maybe want to get into martial arts or they want to try maybe a different art or maybe they want to start a business, they're on the fence, is it time to take the leap? I think plan before you sort of make a reckless decision and say, “I'm quitting today. I'm starting.” No, plan. Plan for starting a business, but everything else, just like you've learned a technical skill or a specific profession that you're in, every other aspect of the business, I think is learnable. You can learn about it. You can go out and pitch and get a whole lot of rejections, but then you'll figure it out. You just got to do the reps.
Jeremy
We learn by making mistakes. You know, it's something that I think the world is finally broadly embracing. I started hearing it, this conversation coming out of your world, out of Silicon Valley and the tech sector, talking about, okay, great, you got it right. That teaches you a way to do it. But is that the best way? You may not know. But when you get something wrong, maybe it's only under certain circumstances, but you can cross it off. And that's a lot more definitive.
There's something to be said for looking for what is wrong, what is broken, what did I screw up? If you take a look, and when I give seminars I often use this metaphor: how do babies learn how to stand up? By falling over a lot. How do they learn how to walk? By falling down a lot. How do they learn how to run? By falling down a lot. We never look at the baby and say, “you're a terrible baby. Stop trying to stand up. Stop trying to walk. Stop trying to run.” No, we recognize that that's part of the learning process. It's something that I think we are slowly getting better and need to continue getting better at is embracing mistakes or I don't like the word, but failure.
Feras
It is. Resilience is the thing, it is a real thing in martial arts and in business. It is basically the mindset of not if I fail, when I fail, because you will fail. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you will fail in different ways. But exactly what you said, Jeremy, is that we learn from this. So I'll give you an example.
Early on, since we talked about sales, I didn't know how to sell. My partner and I, we sat down and came up with a business plan. We said okay, here's the segment. We listened, we read some books on this stuff and here's the segment of the market we want to go after. Here's how much we want to price this. I think for two or three weeks we kept delaying the actual act of selling. We started kind of planning and doing spreadsheets and business plans and budgets and it's going to look rosy and look at this much revenue we will be doing in three years from now. But it was really hard for us to take that step to go out and knock on doors and tell people, “Here's what we are offering.” So we kept delaying it because it's hard. It's not easy.
But then, you know, I had to bring food to the table. Maybe not literally that week, but you got to do it. So the first day, I kid you not, we went and had five pitches. We figured we would pitch to those who know us. They're more likely to say yes. We said let's go to restaurants where we eat. We've been giving them money for all these years, so they'd better give to us, buy from us, right? So we go to five restaurants and we ended up having to have five meals, just to be nice. Then I would go to pay the bill and then say, “Hey, we have this new business where we build websites for companies.” Now this is 2003, remember, websites were not a thing at the time. So all these small business owners look at me and say, “What? What's a website? I'm a small business, I'm a restaurant.”
Jeremy
“Why do I need a website? I'm a restaurant. People aren't going to buy meals online.”
Feras
Exactly. It's just like a few years ago when you told people you need to have a mobile app and they didn't understand. So I kid you not, five rejections that very first day when we went out to sell. And so we went home devastated. It took us a couple of days to bounce back.
Jeremy
It hurts.
Feras
We said, do you know what? That is just part of it. I was listening to some CDs on sales and here's how you handle objections. Then we sat down and said, okay, here are the ten things they objected. All these business owners, everything they told us. We had answers for all these objections and that was sort of in my back pocket. So the funny thing is, the first client we had ended up being a restaurant, the sixth restaurant that we went to. It's called “Athena Grill” and it’s still a thriving restaurant down the street in Santa Clara. We got him a website. It took us two months, I don't know, three months to build a four-page website. It was really hard at the time and we did not know what we were doing. But we sold it for $1,400. I always say this: when we got the first 50% deposit on the project, that first check was probably the sweetest moment in my business life. It sort of proved that we have something going, I can sell it, clients believe in me. It's just similar to when a technique on the mat, hopefully not off the mat, you don't need to do it off the mat, on the mat when a technique works effortlessly and when it flows and you feel good about it, that was the feeling we had when we had that first sale. But it took us a whole lot of rejections, a whole lot of knocking on doors, to get that first sale. It didn't get a whole lot easier for the next few months, but the confidence was there. Then later it became more of a second nature and you figure out that this is what you have to do to build that business.
Jeremy
And again, where's the parallel with training? I'm going to ask you in a moment why you started training because we haven't gotten there, but you get out there, you're screwing it up, but you're willing to learn from your mistakes. Eventually, it gets easier and you start to build some confidence and it builds momentum. For those of you out there in the audience, think about if you remember your first days of training. You were probably terrified to even pull into the parking lot and open that door and step through the door. You're probably not wearing a martial arts uniform. You're probably wearing sweatpants or shorts and you're out there with everyone else and you're feeling like you're the only person in the world who has never known what they were doing when they started a martial arts class. Just as you're pitching websites and you're in those first five, you're probably doubting yourself. Should I even continue doing this? Because I think I heard you say these were businesses you'd already done business with and you thought they were layups.
Feras
Yeah, local restaurants we would go to all the time.
Jeremy
So of course they're going to say yes! But no, they say no. You would assume the win and now you're dejected. I think most of us can relate to that feeling. But I think no matter what it is, if you're pushing, if you're challenging yourself, if you're in a place of discomfort and learning doesn't come from a place of comfort, it is logically impossible. You only learn when you are uncomfortable. You have to make mistakes. Part of being uncomfortable is making mistakes. If you're never making mistakes, you're lying to yourself about your own discomfort.
Feras
If things are going very smoothly, if you're not making mistakes, you're not working hard enough or you're not trying new things. I think it was, who was it? The founder of the Virgin Atlantic brand?
Jeremy
Richard Branson.
Feras
Richard Branson, yeah. Sorry. It’s early in the morning.
Jeremy
You can chalk everything up to early morning for a few hours here.
Feras
So he says, “While the brave will not live forever, the cautious never lives.” He tries all these obnoxious things. It is amazing what he's done in his life and he's getting older and he still challenges himself physically, aside from all the business success that he's had. I think the first time maybe you got into sparring or randori, as you mentioned. The first time, you know in Akira there are falls, you take a high fall especially at an older age, I think that builds more resilience. In business we say competence builds confidence. So initially again, you might be very competent in one thing, in that technical expertise that you have, but how do you apply that? How do you deliver? Let's say you provide leadership coaching and you've maybe worked with first time managers and now you want to go and teach executives. So you're going to deal with something like, wait a second, these C-level CEOs and CFOs and CTOs, how do I work with them? They know a lot and they make a lot of money and they're established and they're managing groups of hundreds. I'm pretty sure the first time you do it, it's going to be nervous when you pitch it. It's going to be nervous when you deliver it. But as you do more of it, as you get better at it, as you get positive feedback, as you make mistakes and you learn from those mistakes, then it becomes more of a, hopefully, a deliberate experience. It becomes a habit, a good habit, and that gets you closer to that perfection level that we aspire to get to in business and in martial arts.
Jeremy
We've been chatting, we’re 30 minutes in, and we've barely mentioned Aikido. We haven't talked about how you even got started. We know more about how you got started in business than how you got started in martial arts. So why did you start training?
Feras
I’m probably more of a sensei in business than I'm a sensei in martial art, just to be clear here. I got into martial arts when I was in high school. I did a Shotokan karate, almost got my black belt. I think I was a brown belt and I got very close to testing for black belt, but I was not doing great in school. My father said “You have got to stop. You have to focus on your studies.”
Jeremy
Were you prioritizing karate over your schoolwork?
Feras
I probably just was not studying. That wasn't the case. I was just young and silly and just not focusing on studying and homework and all that. So that's what got into it. We had a very, very strict coach. Maybe I'm left brain, I don't know, but the discipline, the structure, that was really something I've always admired and aspired to have in my life. This was 40-plus years ago when we were younger and when we were not doing things right, he would take his belt and that is something you don't hear about these days, but those were the old days and it wasn't in the U.S. It was different times, different places. But I mean, he cared. He wanted us to train hard.
Jeremy
It was tough love.
Feras
He wanted us to be very serious about it, especially when you're young. If you complained to your parents, they would call him and say, “Yeah, do more of it” That's how it was at the time. He trained in Japan and I think this was how they did it in the old days. Then I got into college and got busy with college and then I got into judo for a little bit, for about a year and a half. Again, nothing I can speak about with authority. Then we ended up moving to Florida and I did a little bit of judo there, too. Then got here, got into the startup scene, and as I said I got really busy with life. After the layoff and starting my own business, there was just no time and there was no money to be frank.
Then it was 2009 when I said, okay, now we were starting to do well. We had some profit and we were growing and I said, okay, now I want to get back that black belt. It was my own mistake and my own not focusing on my own studies, I didn't blame my dad, but I said I want to get that black belt again. That was sort of my motivation. I think I was 41 by that time.
Jeremy
Twenty-plus years since you started, right? With a few restarts?
Feras
Judo, all that, when you get older, it's not easy on the body. So I said is there something a little bit easier on the body? So I searched online and saw this thing called Aikido and I had heard about Aikido. I think I trained once in Aikido before. So I checked out some dojos around and then I ended up sign up with this Aikido of Silicon Valley. I've been there for the last 15 years now, pretty committed three or four times a week, week in and week out and fell in love with it.
Jeremy
Why? Why did you fall in love with it?
Feras
There's the whole discipline aspect of martial arts that always inspired me in so many different ways. So that part I love, I enjoy. Aikido specifically, the concept of harmony in Aikido, the way of harmonizing energy where you're not starting the attack. When we train, someone is attacking you and then you are re-channeling that energy. In all of our training, someone is starting the attack. The person attacking you, they're grabbing you hand, they're punching you, they're grabbing whichever way they grab. I liked that concept more as I got more into it. I'm not too much into philosophy and the spiritual aspect of it, but more that concept of re-channeling the energy, the redirection of aggression. That part sort of resonated really well for me. Then as I started to train more into it, there are parts of Aikido I think that are maybe softer on the body and there's parts of Aikido that are really hard on the body, depending on your intensity in training, depending on many other factors, maybe the dojo that you train at. So later I figured I can, depending on again, if there's an injury or whatever, but at some phases you train really hard and you find training partners who want to train really hard and at times you take it easy. That's sort of the highlights or the summary of how I got to this point.
Jeremy
Anytime somebody comes on and they talk about, “I kept coming back to martial arts,” it tells me that there was something, I'm going to use the word missing but it doesn't necessarily mean it was missing consciously, but there was something that kept pulling you back to martial arts. Was it as simple as craving more structure and discipline in your life as a young man, or was it something more than that?
Feras
I think it's probably a number of factors just like everything else in life. I love discipline, just in life. I try my best to walk the talk as well in business. I tell folks one of my mottos is, “Work hard and play hard.” So as a boss, as a business owner, you're going be the first one coming in, the last one to leave. If that's what you tell people, to work hard. If you tell people to be responsive to your clients, then you should be responsive to your employees when they have issues as well. If you're telling people, I want to take care of you and we are building a business and this is the family, then you’ve got to treat them as family. You’ve got to share with them as you become more profitable. So in a way, that structure and discipline and that authority and systems, it really resonates with me. Then I think the concept of, as we say in one of our black belt principles, passion is optional, sacrifice and skills are not. We can talk about this at length, but the idea of to learn and evolve and become better at what you do and provide for your family and provide for your community. You just have to learn skills and you have to sacrifice.
I think in martial arts, in a way when I'm training with someone in Aikido, it could be where if someone is testing for their Nidan, their second-degree black belt or their third-degree, there is a lot of throwing around and there are a lot of hard throws in there. So when someone asks you to be their uke, their partner for that test, in a way you're giving your body for them to throw you around. Then when you bow at the end of the test, when you really trained hard and you bow and you thank them, it means a lot to me now. Like, thank you for allowing me to throw you around and you're thanking me for me offering my body for you to punch and throw around, right? So all these concepts of sacrificing, of learning new skills, of that discipline, to me they're fascinating. They resonate very well with me. It's conscious.
Jeremy
There's a service element to what we do, to our training. Pretty much no matter what you train you're talking about the very physically demanding aspect of getting thrown around and sacrificing your body to a certain degree for the benefit of someone else's education. I've been training a long time as well and over the last few years I've become really enamored with this idea that education in the martial arts isn’t ... most people would think of it as there's an instructor and they convey knowledge to the student. Then you get a little bit deeper and you start teaching and you realize my students are also teaching me. But more recently I've been coming to realize that not necessarily the direct education from student to student but that sacrifice, or some might call it service or submission, that the better quality people who are more willing to sacrifice for the good of the all, right? We're getting into some kind of deep philosophical principles there. There's some utilitarianism worked in there. I've trained at schools where the instructor was okay, but the people I trained with were phenomenal, so I learned a lot. I've trained at schools where the instructor was wonderful. My peers, maybe less so. I didn't learn as much. I'm wondering if that's something that you think about or talk about as well.
Feras
That's a very, very interesting perspective. I think after a while, we talked about this concept of learning how to learn. I think once you make progress and I always say black belts, maybe it’s high school and then, it’s different in different arts, right? Some arts takes longer to get to black belt, but there is progression in learning. I think at least for me, my black belt I think high school, maybe my second-degree black belt is maybe junior college. My third-degree black belt is masters and maybe if I get to fourth-degree then that's sort of like a PhD. You know the curriculum really well. So I think if you're serious about making progress, it’s that road to mastery. I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who said this, or maybe he made it popular, is that 10,000 hours or the 10,000 steps, whatever the case might be. It's not just of any practice, it’s the deliberate practice. Because, as one of our senseis says, if practice makes perfect? No, bad practice makes awful.
Jeremy
Sure, you can get worse.
Feras
Good practice, deliberate practice. As we learn how to learn, you start reading about it some more and you reflect on what other people are doing, are saying. I love going to other dojos. I used to travel a lot before COVID, and if I'm in D.C. or if I'm in Utah, I'd find a dojo and I would email them ahead of time and it'd be respectful. I'm here for a time, can I come and train in Aikido? And even if they're of the same lineage, they're always different flavors. I'm used to pin this way and then while they move that way and it throws you off and it shouldn't because you should not anticipate as we know, you should sort of follow the energy. That is a learning moment, a humbling moment for sure. So I think learning is education plus application. You have a sensei or you watch something on YouTube and take note of it or you go to a seminar. You take some notes and then, okay, how do I put this to practice? When I'm driving, okay, how does this work really? Then when you go on the mat after class, maybe you and a training partner, let's check this out and let's see if it works. Let's see if there are holes in the way I'm doing it.
I think that road to mastery in business and martial arts and in any art is the hours are required and that the greatest artist, I think the greatest martial artist, they've trained in many, many disciplines. The greatest artist, Leonardo da Vinci, he wasn't just painting but he learned biology. Steve Jobs, he was into calligraphy. I think that road to mastery and learning first is ongoing of course, but then is trying to learn from different people, from different arts, from different systems, and also different methods of learning. I think all of those are required if you're serious about making progress.
Jeremy
I wholeheartedly agree. It's a mindset, right? When we see people who have done great things, not always, sometimes you have people who are very specific at what their greatness is, at least our understanding of it. But when you were talking about an artist, my mind instantly went to Da Vinci because he was a painter, sculptor, inventor, disector, right? This man just had a thirst and a mindset that led to these incredible results. We tend to see that. When I think about the best martial artists I know in terms of skill and contribution to the world of martial arts, they tend to have a broader understanding. I'm not necessarily going say that they've formally trained in a dozen different things, but more often than not, they have trained in a lot of different things. Whether you want to justify that as they're learning how to defend against these things, or they're interested in these things, or they're cross-training the way we might often use that word, it tends to show up with all of them. I think that there's something that can't quite be ignored, that if you want to be great at anything, you're probably going to at least get very good at a bunch of things.
Feras
Yes. In business, I always say when you're looking for a business partner, now a lot of businesses and a lot of business owners succeed on their own. But a lot do so with partners, one or two business partners and in all my ventures, I've always had co-founders. When you're looking for a partner in business or a co-founder or maybe your first employee or your second employee, you want to look for someone, not just the values align, maybe the way they work and the way they think of business, but also the skills that you have. You want to find people who compliment what you have, right? If you're the sort of the believer and the very positive person, which is great, you probably want to have someone on your team, not a pessimist, but someone who can maybe be a bit more skeptical on things. It'll help greatly in business. For the person who's out there selling and marketing, you want someone who also is really good at delivering what you sell. If you're just a solo business owner, you might have to do all of it. But at one point, if you're wanting to grow, you have to figure out your area, your niche or your area of expertise, and focus on that and then get others to help you grow.
In martial arts, in our dojo, when we train every night in the class we actually stick with the same partner for the whole period.
Jeremy
Interesting.
Feras
We encourage actually our most junior people right after we bow to run and grab the most senior people. I did that initially. I was shy and they said, no, no, just go on. I used to go and grab the most senior person for the first couple of months and I think that that helps. But if you're always choosing, let’s say you're tired and you don’t want to train hard and you're choosing an easier route or someone really junior, you can do that but I think that impacts your training. You want to always train in a challenging way. When we have a new student I train with them the first night. So I do learn from working with beginners for sure. They move differently. They ask all kinds of questions. But then maybe after that one hour session, I stay another 30 minutes and I train with someone who's senior and pick up something that maybe I didn't pick up from working with that beginner that night. So it is doing the difficult things. It is doing the challenging things. It is getting out of our comfort zone. That's how we get better.
Jeremy
I'll share this with you. I don't know if we've talked about this on the show yet. You might be able to guess this, you might say this doesn't surprise you. In school I double majored in philosophy and computer science. We certainly said that on the show and people who know me say, of course, that very Jeremy. That makes sense. I also when I started my karate school for the second time last year, it's in a library, which is also a very Jeremy thing to do so that's a that's a lot of fun. I'm fascinated with distilling things down because it makes it easier to teach. I've come up with this formula for progress and we keep talking about some of these aspects here directly and indirectly. Progress requires four things: a feeling of safety but also a feeling of discomfort and remaining in that intersection with some frequency over a period of time. If you can check those four things, you're going to make progress. If you recognize those things and see where is the safety here? Where is the discomfort? You can start to manipulate those variables and make rapid progress.
Feras
I should be taking notes here, these four things. Consistency is really important if you're a business owner.
Jeremy
You talked about it as discipline earlier, which I think is the big thing most people are missing in any of their goals.
Feras
I think the discipline on the mat, of course, I think the discipline off the mat. If you want to be better on the mat, you want to work out, exercise, complement whatever art you're doing. I think every art has its strength and has, maybe it's okay to say, weaknesses or maybe areas where maybe it's not optimal in. There's no striking or kicking in Aikido. So how do you maybe compliment that? Depending on what your goal is of training. If you're thinking more martial, more maybe self -defense, if you're into it for self -defense, and I'm not saying this to sound humble. I think the last 15 years in Aikido does not qualify me to speak with authority with those who've been around like yourself 35, 40 years, and you've been teaching this for a long time. But from my, I guess I could have an informed opinion, if you're into it for self-defense, then you’ve got to learn about self -defense.
I've seen this somewhere, there's a Venn diagram, these overlapping circles between fighting, self-defense, and a traditional martial art. So maybe pepper spray might be like the best, maybe escaping, maybe, and this is the part I love about Aikido, sort of deescalating a situation might be the best instead of taking your boxing stand and ready to fight. Maybe just people who are listening just kind of pointing out, “Hey man,” you want to be close, your arms, your hands close to your face to protect your face, but instead of taking a martial aggressive stance, you can just maybe ...
Jeremy
Hands up but open.
Feras
Hands up, open, say, “Hey man, take it easy.” Maybe as we get older, maybe we get wiser, I don't know, but if you can avoid a conflict, if you can de-escalate, I think that's better than having an encounter because you don't know. We hear about crazy stuff out there. People might have a weapon, people might have three friends around the corner. You could be an amazing martial artist, but out there on the street is different.
I think your objectives of learning, of training in martial arts, is also same in business, your objectives of starting your own business. Maybe money is one objective and it definitely is important, especially if you go on YouTube and hear about all these get rich quick schemes. Money is important, but also there are other things that are important in business. I love to build. I love to build companies and hire amazing people and with them grow something and have an amazing business culture. To me, this is so rewarding. Most of, not all of my ex-colleagues, really good friends, we still stay in touch, we support each other, we visit when we're in town. That camaraderie, those friendships, lasting relationships, those are really important in business in my mind because what people maybe don't realize is that we spend most of our waking hours at work. So finding and building an environment where you enjoy and learn and contribute is important to me.
There are a lot of reasons I think why people get into business, or maybe get into martial arts. I think after a while, at least for me, you start appreciating the journey, maybe not just the destination. So you build a business, you sell it, you're a millionaire. Okay, you've done it. Good. So...
Jeremy
Now what?
Feras
Exactly. You're just going to go to Hawaii every other weekend? That's how you are going to live?
Jeremy
That’s boring.
Feras
Exactly. How are you going to help others? How are you going to maybe provide more for your family of course but how can you stay active and be an active member of your society? Those are thoughts that are important, always asking why? What do I want to get out of it? What are my goals of business or martial arts? I think that's good to reflect on that every once in a while.
Jeremy
When we think about someone who's been training for a long time, whatever a long time is, because if you've been training five years, that feels like a long time. If you've been training for 60 years, that feels like a long time. Why we continue to train tends to change. How we approach our training tends to change. We have this this perspective, this context that comes from that experience and I'm sure that if we could build a time machine and I could jump into your first business with you I would imagine a different culture. Your skill sets dramatically different than your new venture. I would also imagine, even if we're only talking about the Aikido arc of your martial arts training, that from year one to year 15, we're talking about some different things and how you approach it and I think most importantly, what you want to get out of it. What are your goals as you keep showing up for your training now?
Feras
I wish I started 15 years younger. I think a few things. One is I just love it. I just enjoy it. I sometimes it gets hard on the body as we get older, the joints, the knees, the rotator cuff, whatever the case might be. But I think you learn even if you have these minor injuries or discomforts, you’re learning, continue to learn. I think staying active is really important mentally as well. Some of the folks I know in our dojo, I've known now for 15 years. I've been to their weddings and they've been to my daughter's wedding. I've seen them get married and have kids and I've seen them in their progression, in their own training. So there's that aspect of this community that they're involved in. I teach a youth class and after COVID our youth class just really mushroomed in a good way. We have a whole lot of people, typically there are two of us there teaching and just sort of passing on what you learn and passing on, helping these young folks be a bit more maybe disciplined, be more serious about life. I think that's something that is very rewarding to me personally. Be, I don't want to say a role model, but we have three children. They're adults now, not children anymore, but also walk the talk. You tell them to eat healthy and be healthy and work out and be disciplined and sacrifice and all these values that are important to me, living those, I think there's an aspect to that when I train in martial arts. There's also a bit of a competitiveness. I don't know if this is good to say or not. Always how do I get better? I admire this person that I train with and how do I, not beat him, but how do I get better? There's that aspect. I think that's healthy.
Jeremy
There’s a challenge there.
Feras
Exactly. He's so smooth and he's so flowing, how can I? One of our senseis, he still trains with us and he's in his sixties, and he trains hard. You’ve probably experienced this. If you don't do the move perfectly, he's not going to let you do it. Not in a mean way, in a compassionate way. I don't know how to describe this because you can be a jerk about things in martial arts. You know, you can show off and ego can get in there but I don't experience that in our dojo at all. Maybe in moments I do it or someone else might do it, just human nature. But I think we correct ourselves right away. You want to receive it well, you want to give it well, you want to be compassionate about it. But it is very challenging and I don't get to train with him a lot because we're both a bit senior, but when I get a chance to train with him and I say, okay, now, let’s see if I can do this technique. And he'll still catch something that I'm not doing right and it's so frustrating. It's so frustrating, but in a positive way, like, okay, I'm going to try to do it better.
Jeremy
But knowing that he is theoretically the one that is holding you to the standards and the one that likely has the most knowledge, if you worked with him and there wasn't anything to work on, you'd probably be more frustrated. What am I doing? Okay, I've checked this box. Aikido is done. That would be miserable.
Feras
Or he's taking it easy on me. He’s probably taking it easy on me.
Jeremy
Which I think is even worse of those options.
Feras
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy
We want to know that our efforts have a result, right? We put in the time, we get something out of it.
Feras
Absolutely.
Jeremy
Let's take a minute. We're going to start to wind here, but anytime anybody comes on the show and they do a thing that the audience might be interested in professionally, take a few minutes and give us, I guess, your pitch. You probably weren't even expecting this because it's a martial arts show, but give us your pitch of what you're doing with your business now.
Feras
Well, if some of your listeners are not into martial arts, get into martial arts. Whatever it is, whatever it is. Keep training, training and keep training hard. On the business side we have the company called Startup with Ferris and it's a business advisory and media company. So we produce content today on our YouTube channel at Startup with Feras, and Feras is spelled F-E-R-A-S like my first name. And we also have a daily newsletter on our website, startupwithferas.com. We cover a wide range of topics, all to do with entrepreneurship. If someone is looking for, if they have an idea and they want to start a business and they're not sure how, or they're fearful of starting a business, we have you covered. Or if you started and you're struggling, or maybe you've pivoted and you're not sure how to sort of grow a business. Our goal is to help what we call early-stage founders. No matter how young or old you are, if you're an early-stage founder and want to build and grow the business to seven and eight figures, we have content for you and actually soon, we don't have a paid service yet, but soon we'll be launching an online course and consulting premium type consulting.
Jeremy
And this can apply to martial arts schools.
Feras
Martial arts schools can benefit a lot from, I'm going to be very polite here, a lot of amazing martial artists when it comes to business...
Jeremy
You're being nicer than I am.
Feras
When it comes to business they need to talk to you. Just from what I read on your website and the stuff you do. When you grow your membership, there's something called marketing. It's marketing, sales and marketing. Sales is not a dirty word and marketing is not the dark side. You can do it with authenticity, but you’ve got to grow, you’ve got to grow the business. Otherwise, unfortunately, like COVID, we know if a dojo, a school does not have a solid financial structure or you haven't really done the best practices in a business, you will suffer. I've seen a lot of dojos close during COVID. I mean, that was an extreme case maybe, but even you see, I don't know what the failure rate is, but in one of your videos you said you can help them increase their membership by like 5.8%. I'm a data guy. I love that specific percentage, but if you're increasing 5.8% every month, you'll do well in a few months because there's a recurring aspect to business.
Jeremy
Great. You mentioned some of the links, we’re going to have all those links in the show notes, no matter where people are consuming them. But if people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way? I think you sent us a whole list of social media.
Feras
I'm on LinkedIn, probably most active on LinkedIn. We’re on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter. I'm most active on LinkedIn. You can go to the website, email me directly. One thing I forgot to mention, we have what I call the Ask Feras Sessions free. No gimmick, no pitches. You can go on my calendar and select a 30-minute slot and just tell me about your business idea or about the challenge that you're having or whatever, sales and marketing and legal and accounting. I'll give you my two cents and help maybe point you in the right direction and no obligation. I do this because a lot of people helped me along the way. Just like in martial arts, so many teachers, so many peers and even beginners, they help us, right? Same thing in business. So many people helped me along the way and that's my way of giving back to the community is just to offer these couple of slots every week to just chat and learn about the challenges that people are facing and typically give them a point or two to help them overcome that challenge.
Jeremy
Again audience, we're going to have all that stuff linked so make sure you check that out, and Feras, I'm going to throw it back to you in a minute to close us up, but before I do just a reminder to the audience whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, whistlekick.com. Feras mentioned whistlekick Alliance, that's where that 5.82% number comes from, the whistlekick Alliance program that we have for martial arts schools. Remember the majority of the stuff that we do all, of our best stuff, is free. Our digital magazine The Dispatch is free. This show is free. Our YouTube and social media content, free. We even have free events, Free Training Day. What more can you ask for? We do everything we can to connect, educate, and entertain you, the traditional martial artists of the world in an effort to get everybody out there to train for even just six months. So make sure you're visiting our stuff. Make sure you're telling your friends about our stuff. Help us grow so we can, I guess cliche as it might be, help the world.
But I'm going to throw it back to you, Feras. How do you want to wrap today? We've definitely had a few themes today, but what do you want to leave the audience with?
Feras
Maybe I'll build on what you said about helping the world. This quote that resonates a lot with me, and I try to live up to it. It's by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He said, “Life is not about just being happy. Life is about being useful, being honorable, and being compassionate.” So, I think as martial artists, as business people, as fathers, as brothers, and husbands, and mothers, and sisters, and leaders in business and the community, we live in a time where we're bombarded by marketing messages about me, I, myself, and I think we owe it to people around us to be of service, to be of help in whichever, whatever thing that you have. Whatever skill, maybe some wealth you have, some knowledge that you have, we owe it to help others and support others.
In our dojo I volunteer, I don't get paid for what I do. When I'm teaching youth, I just love helping out. I always try to find ways to volunteer and help, even when we were really struggling as a business. I know there were other people who were struggling more. I couldn't contribute financially, but I would, maybe on the way home I would speak with a struggling entrepreneur and share with them what I've learned this last year. So I would say the concept of Budo and the concept of chivalry and being there for the community, in our local communities and in our society at large, if we have more of that, I think we'll have a better world around us. So I'll leave it at that.