Episode 942- Jake Miesner
In today's episode Jeremy sits down in person and chats with Jake Miesner after Free Training Day Midwest in Kansas.Jake Miesner - Episode 942
SUMMARY
Jeremy sits and chats with Jake Miesner after FTDMW in Kansas. Jake discusses his martial arts background and experiences. He shares his journey from starting martial arts to becoming a teacher and opening his own school. He emphasizes the importance of breaking down movements and keeping the learning process fun and simple. Jake talks about his transition from being a band director to starting his own martial arts school and the challenges he faced. They also discuss the business aspect of running a martial arts school and the need for growth and profitability. Roughly half of martial arts schools in the US are not profitable, but that doesn't mean they can't turn it around or that it's inherently wrong. It's okay to have a hobby that puts money in your pocket and brings you joy. Teaching martial arts and running a school require different skill sets, and it's important to recognize the value of both. Martial arts can provide physical and personal growth, and it can be beneficial for athletes in other sports as well. It's important to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for students and parents, and to involve parents in the training process. Assessments and subjective evaluations can help parents understand the progress their children are making. The goal is to create a sustainable business that allows for growth and expansion, while also prioritizing physical and mental well-being.
TAKEAWAYS
* Breaking down movements and keeping the learning process simple and fun is key to teaching martial arts effectively.
* Transitioning from a different career to starting a martial arts school can be challenging but rewarding.
* Having high expectations and holding students accountable is important for their growth and development.
* Running a martial arts school requires a balance between passion for teaching and the need for profitability.
* Success in martial arts and other disciplines often comes from breaking down complex skills into simple components and gradually building upon them. Roughly half of martial arts schools in the US are not profitable, but it's okay to have a hobby that brings in some income and brings joy.
* Teaching martial arts and running a school require different skill sets, and it's important to recognize the value of both.
* Martial arts can provide physical and personal growth, and it can be beneficial for athletes in other sports as well.
* Involving parents in the training process and creating a welcoming environment can enhance the student experience.
* Assessments and subjective evaluations can help parents understand the progress their children are making.
* The goal is to create a sustainable business that allows for growth and expansion, while also prioritizing physical and mental well-being.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Backgrounds
08:00 Dealing with Bullies and Finding Martial Arts
17:46 Transitioning from a Different Career to Starting a Martial Arts School
24:43 Teaching Approaches and Balancing High Expectations
31:27 The Business Aspect of Running a Martial Arts School
32:16 Striving for Growth and Profitability
33:16 The Profitability of Martial Arts Schools
34:15 Balancing Teaching and Running a School
35:41 The Benefits of Martial Arts for Athletes
37:04 Involving Parents in the Training Process
37:33 Assessments and Tracking Progress
38:02 Creating a Sustainable and Inclusive BusinessShow Notes
Contact Jake Miesner at:www.ninjafit.com
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Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:01.569)
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. Whistlekick, martial arts radio and, crap, how do I say your last name? I'm here with Jake. Measner. Measner. Yes. Jake Measner. I just tell people call me Jake. Well that works out well.
Jeremy (00:20.385)
We met yesterday at free training day Midwest. Yes, sir. was a good time. It a good day. Exhausting beginning. Yes. Throw a cross country flight on that. Right. I bet. I imagine. But it was a good time. And we got to work together a little bit. And I'm trying to think, is there anybody that I've sat down with that I met them the day before and we trained together a little bit and
we did this and I don't think that's happened before so that's kind of fun. so here we go. here we go. 900 something episodes, we're still finding firsts. We gotta do that.
Jeremy (01:02.347)
Usually when I work with someone I can figure out their background. I've got nothing I have no idea what your background is. I could not tell from working with you. So you might find that Complimentary or not. I mean it is a compliment though. Thank you. It's changed a little bit over the years. I started off in I mean, it's all mainly been taekwondo related I started off in a version that was kind of slightly removed from ITF still the same forms
and all that. So we can get up and do some Chongji and some Dangan. Exactly. But without the sine wave motion. My instructor was not big on sine wave. Occasionally we... I just affected some of my friends out there. But yeah, lot of the same styling and all that and the sparring was similar to that but a little bit more hardcore or hard contact. was late 80s, early 90s when I got into
So we were still fighting pretty rough back then. I was 12 years old when I started, but I was pretty tall for 12. So I was close to being in, I was like the size to be in the teen and adult class. So was getting thrown around by men that are my size now. Which was fine, scary as heck, but fine because I got into it to deal with bullies and all that stuff. And if I can take a hit from a grown man kicking me back five yards and run back at him, I'm like, one, hit me again, you know. Then a bully that was my size didn't really affect me anymore. It didn't faze me after a while. that was cool,
Was it your idea to go in because of bullying or your parents? Mine. Yours? I needed something. I tried everything else. I had a mouth that was writing checks. My body couldn't catch. I tried everything else. I tried to be funny, the funny guy. And I'm hilarious in non -planned context with my friends and family and stuff like that. they think I'm funny. The bullies didn't like it when I'm talking back to them and it's backtalk instead of, here's a funny joke. Bullies don't like when you're funnier and smarter than they are.
and more handsome but I mean that's that's for someone else to say but you do have the right style of haircut that's right that's I moved I dealt with bullies when I was young really young in Oklahoma where I I started off with and then somewhere in the middle of fourth grade so it was like Christmas break moved to a new town in Texas and Texas people are a little bit more clickish than Oklahoma people from what I found that Oklahoma people a little bit more
Jeremy (03:21.065)
accepting of everyone around them. And from what I understand, fact that you came from Oklahoma probably set you back little bit too. yeah. And so, you know, wasn't like we would go straight in the school and meet all these people. We were on break for Christmas. And so the only kid I got to meet when I first moved to a new town was a kid who happened to live on my street who was like the dork of the school or something like that. know, like if you remember Say By The Bell, it the screech kind of kid in the school. But he was nice to me and we had fun and all that. We got along.
I show up to school and the bullies are picking on him and I try to mouth off to him to save his butt and now I'm their target for the next few years. so getting into middle school, I tried, okay, well, what if I'm on their same team? What if I joined the sports team with them? We're on the football team together, even though I was a Scron kid. And then I just ended up getting beaten up in the locker rooms. So at some point there in seventh grade, I'm like, I need some help because I can only ride my bike faster than five guys for so long. And then one of them was going to catch up to me or something like that, you know? And that's what it was like, honestly, leaving school.
hauling butt home and trying to out -ride five guys trying to attack me from behind. So some point, yeah, I found the school and this guy was just incredible. mean, just fun to watch and charisma and all that stuff. And it's like, I want to be him, you know? So that got me into it. was a taekwondo, like I said, slightly removed from ITF. more when I was leaving it in 96, when I was graduating high school and going off and moving off to college and all.
They were getting really into the AAU, Olympic sparring kind of stuff and all that. And that's kind of what they look like now still. I'm not a big fan of just bouncing up and down with my hands down around my waist and all that stuff. So you're talking more the world taekwondo, WTF. Right. Even though we've changed that name. Style of sparring. Yeah. And it was fun for a while. mean, the speed that it builds up when you're doing a lot of tournaments, sparring and stuff like that was fun for me. And I was good at it. I won my fair share of things and it was fun.
Then I got in, I moved around for college, ended up in Louisiana for grad school at LSU and got in with a guy that at that point they were International Taekwondo Alliance, the ITA, but now they're Tiger Rock and all that stuff. They kinda split out again since then. And the guy down there was a lot more, he was like 50 something years old and always not like a physical specimen. You're gonna be like, I wanna look like that. so nice, so welcoming and everything he did was for more like a self defense kind
Jeremy (05:43.519)
still taekwondo, still the same forms, chunji, dangun, all those things and all that. The way they did at that point in time, but he's like, why are you pointing your toes and kicking up when you're doing front kicks? Who are you ever gonna kick up like that? You know, if you hit someone in the privates, there's a soft part, yes, but then after you get past that soft part, there's a bone that points down. So if you hit with your flat foot like that, it's gonna hurt. And I'm like, never thought about that. Nobody ever pointed that out. I had always had one of those hanging punching bags and all that, and I just slapped.
bottom of that sucker left and right until my foot was red and all that and I thought I was doing awesome, you know? And nobody ever said, how's that gonna feel if you do that in real fight? I don't know. Hopefully you never find out. Seems like a sensible point. Right, and so that was kind of interesting. So he helped me rearrange my approach a little bit and I mean it's still, when I first started with him, the first instructor I had was, we couldn't punch to the head. We could kick to the head and we could punch to the body and it was hard.
So you didn't want to get hit no matter what. But I got really fast and really good at reflex and ducking away from seeing feet coming out my head. could dodge those for the most part. But when you get to the ITA guys and they're punching in the head, this dodging doesn't work and they're just on top of you. So he helped me kind of break that down with some drills that I've kind of since turned into some fun kind of game drills that I can teach the kids and go into public schools and have them do when I'm doing PE teacher for a day kind of stuff.
But it really helps them learn how to stand their ground and just okay you don't need to panic when this gets here. Here's what your choices are. And I love that. So from that point on I kind of developed and that's the reason I got into martial arts was for self -defense. You I knew I could get hit hard. I knew I could hit people back hard. Busting boards left and right. Had good speed but I still in high school going through that first style of taekwondo I'd wake up in cold sweats at night. Nightmares about bullies
bad guys or whatever. know about that? I don't know if they knew about that part of it. mean, it's a lot for a kid in his shoulder. it really was. Waking up in a cold sweat. That's right. Nobody should have to have to live a life like that, let alone a teenager. Right. It was. Yeah. You just kind of keep it to yourself and struggle on
Jeremy (08:00.149)
go out to the bag and punch the bag, kick the bag a lot and all that until I just had no more worries. Honestly, that's how I used to just exhaust myself. Girlfriend's mad at me and we break up or something. I go out, punch the bag until I can't walk or stand anymore and then go to bed and shower in the morning and wait a minute. I'm sweaty and all that stuff. It is hard to be stressed when you can't breathe. Exactly. Exactly. It really is. That's one of the best therapies I've found so far is just bag work. So I love that. But since then, since grad school then...
It kind of changed my focus and that's all I wanted to do is I love teaching people Taekwondo. I love the movement parts of it, the forms, breaking, sparring for the most part when I find nice people to spar with that don't want to kill me. teaching them from the perspective of here's why you would do this kick this way to get somebody off you, you know. Here's why this one is pretty in the air, yes, but probably not as effective for self -defense. So we'll practice it, but I really want you to be good at this one and this one and this one.
and you know I want you to be able to move and throw all your spins and your jumps when we're sparring and you're demonstrating for testing and all that but I also want to know if I get across from you for your black belt testing because all my students have to fight me for their black belt I want to know you can stop you know just I don't care if you're 10 years old and I'm coming at you or whatever you need to throw something that's hard enough to kind of make me pause temporarily so I know this kid's got it you know so it's fun. When did you start wanting to teach?
I've been teaching since 14. I got my black belt when I was 14 and read the belt before then when you had to start remembering all the forms and all that stuff my instructor started pulling me in saying you need to start helping out. Was that something you were enjoying? Loving it. Really? Loving it. I've always kind of wanted to be a teacher. don't know why. That and That's a common answer when I ask those sorts of questions. Teaching just felt right. Right. I love it. Yeah. It's just helping other people in a way that I know I can do repeatedly.
You try to do things like...
Jeremy (10:00.053)
donations and charity work and stuff like that but that's not something I can have the resources to do every day and stuff like that but I can give it myself all the time. If I've got something and I've got some knowledge and you want to learn how to get there I can do that. it was kind of torn all through high school between that and music. was a band student. want to be a band director when I grew up and all that stuff. What instruments? Tuba mainly. I think you're the first tuba.
And I don't know how many episodes of the show you've listened to, but long time audience members know there are these two groups that keep showing up that I find fascinating. One is IT, computer nerds, right? Like that was me. The other musicians. Yeah, it's really weird because you'll see that as you get people that are black belts in their teaching seminars, this guy is very analytical and very, you know, so okay, I know what this
I got his background, know, and this guy's more artistic and more concept and I'm like, okay, I bet that person's got some music or dance or something in their background and all that where they came from. It's not everybody, but it's... There seem to be more musicians in martial arts than in the broad population and there are definitely more people coming out of IT in martial arts than the broad population. Really fascinates me. And I would think maybe both of those people, both of those types of people were people that...
because both of their interests, those interests, take up so much of your time, at least where I came from, like in Texas, you couldn't be on the football team and being banned at the same time. In some smaller schools you probably can. can be, you see cheerleaders strap on some drums and go out to the halftime show and play their things and all that stuff for Marching Band, but you kind of had to dedicate one or the other. I see it in this, it kind of correlates in my mind because it's an individual thing.
martial arts and individual sport, music and all that. You can do it with groups and it's fun but you don't have to. You can go solo and you can do duets. That's a great point. And I think maybe the IT kind of same thing. It's a solo endeavor for the most part. You're not trying to go up and see metal problems. You're doing it on your own. It's a way you can serve and connect with other people but at the end of the day it's really on you in the same way martial arts is. I like that. Alright
Jeremy (12:20.555)
graduate, go to LSU, you're training in different spot, and where does life take you from there? I graduated, I thought I was going to go into the military band. I won an audition for one that tours up and down the west coast in California, I'm deaf in one ear, had epilepsy when I was young, and the military doesn't like that. Some of the people I met in the band that I was auditioning for had half their intestines removed, but that happened after they got into the military, and that was okay.
But me being a physical specimen of a martial artist and dancing, you because that summer that I auditioned was happened to be a summer I was playing in Disneyland band in California. They're all American college band kind of thing. We're dancing and all that playing our instruments all around the park and stuff like that. I can do that, but not fit enough to go into didn't limit you, but because you didn't check that box of I have two great ears. Right. That wasn't good. Right. they. So what do you think about
we'll use the word compromises that are occurring with entry standards in the military now to meet enrollment. It's pissing me off that I missed the cutoff. Yeah, could show up now with 20 % hearing and they'd probably be pumped to have you. Right. Yeah, it's frustrating because in the music world, that's a really solid gig. Even the bass bands are OK, but if you can get something that's a little bit more upper tiered and all that stuff, but the benefits that come with that.
You can have a secondary gig or whatever. can teach music lessons on the side in addition to that job and all that and bring in some extra money and all that stuff. That kind of seems like a dream musical profession, right? Like you're in, you've got this depth, you're doing some different cool stuff. You know, you're never going to have to worry about the parents at the school showing up on budget day saying, do we really need a music program?
happens. our kids need art? Right. That's been a struggle. You can play. Just, right? You could just play. It would have been fun. So I thought I was gonna, my two -year master's program got kind of put into three semesters so I was trying to graduate early to see if I could get into the basic training and all that stuff but then as that semester went on they said no you won't pass the physical part of it. Okay so I graduated in December with no, you know,
Jeremy (14:47.575)
two degrees in music, music education, stuff like that, but nothing to do and nobody wants to hire in the middle of the school year and all that. So, talked to the guy at the Taekwondo school and he's like, yeah, you can come work for me because I used to teach classes at the other, for my other instructor. went working full time for him and that's okay, but it's not paying great bills for somebody who has two degrees you would expect. You know, I've got student loans, now I've got to start paying back. So, my two instructor from LSU helped me find a job down at a different university down the road from us. They needed an adjunct.
tuba professor and all that to teach some classes and lessons and also. tuba professor, that's specific. Yeah, tuba and euphonium, like the low brass guy and all that. I drive two days a week to go spend most of the day there and teach some lecture classes for music history and private lessons and stuff like that. Then the other two three days a week I'd be over practicing, know, running the martial arts studio and opening that up and doing all that stuff. But two jobs to try to pay my bills and still feels like I'm just caught between both worlds. And I talked to the head instructor that I was teaching his classes for him
He helped me within that organization. have hundreds of schools at that time, maybe I don't know, maybe a thousand. He helped me find a couple to try out with that said maybe we could pay him full time and help him pay his bills here. So I ended up in Texas, back in Texas, at a school that had like seven, 800 students. So I was on staff with like four five other people that were there, eight o 'clock in the morning to 10 o 'clock at night, five days a week, Saturdays were half days, but you're still working six hours at least if you don't
birthday parties and then some days sometimes coming in and I'm like, okay, so I'm wearing myself out and I'm barely paying my bills, but the got repoed. wasn't really, you know, like I couldn't afford to pay for a nice car or anything like that, a truck or anything. And no, after about two years I was burnt out because I was, I was on list. They were, they were, they were, they were like, we want to get to know you before we help pay for you to get out on your own. So we're going to need a couple of years to kind of get to know you and you know, use you or whatever. guess, you know, that's in my
And right before it was my time to go after, I'd been there for about two years with this company. The guy before me was having troubles in the town that they had just set him up in. one of the other martial arts instructors in that town had done something with a minor or something that had made the word bad for martial arts and all that stuff. So they were struggling with his school and they're like, well, we need to put off a little longer. I'm just like, this is pissing me off. I've got more skills than you're paying me for. And so eventually I left them.
Jeremy (17:16.481)
tried band directing for a couple years and all that stuff in some small towns. you training at that point at all? Training when I went to band directing? I stopped for those I could see that in your eyes. There was something about that. Really burnt out on that part of it. But it was, mean, you're working for that many hours a day and you're teaching that many classes. mean, you're bound to just kind of learn real fast and a lot of stuff and have a bunch of experiences to grow from. So that was, it was fun and good in that aspect.
burnout kind of stuff too. I realized afterwards when I wanted to get back into martial arts and I decided I wanted to start my own school, I would never go that full force ever again. So Monday through Thursday is all I'm ever going to do. That's it if I'm teaching classes. So it's fun, but yeah, band directing was interesting, coming from the first school district I got a teaching job at was kind of small and they hadn't had, you know, as a band director or whatever. I'm helping out, but I'm teaching.
middle school guy, people myself, and then I'm helping out at the high school with the marching band while they hadn't had one those flag corps with the girls who throw the flags and rifles and all that. They hadn't had one of those in about 10 years and they wanted to restart that back up. And I said, I can teach that. I've taught those stuff. I can do that. sure enough, okay. Then I get a video with some lady showing us the actual like choreography that we're supposed to learn with the marching and all
I drilled it into those girls and they won more competitions. They scored higher competition than the marching band who'd been playing their instruments for years. those girls were so pumped and excited they wanted to do it like year round. So we found an indoor competition thing that they could do and figured that out. what was different? Let's talk about that for a second because clearly something in your Taekwondo background as training and instruction made an impact quickly. What was that? What were you doing differently than they were used to?
I can break it down so easily. can break down simple movements and I can get them to, I can hide the repetition, disguise the repetition. I can motivate that better than most high school teachers who, right, exactly. That's probably, I kept it basic, I kept it fun. So they're not gonna learn like twirls and throws the first day, but once they get good with the basic things and all that stuff, I say, you guys wanna try it out for them? We'll figure that out together.
Jeremy (19:31.787)
I might try it first and let them try it since they're twirling there every day and I'm not the one twirling every day, I'm just the one teaching, showing slow motion, they figured it out faster than I did. I'm like, good, do that again. Do it harder, you know, let's try it. And we just kept bumping it up and that's just how I love to do things. And that's what I find for me, teaching is fun because I feel like when I watch other people teach too, it kind of reinforces. I feel like I do it at a different level than a lot of other people because I've learned that, how to stair stack things. I don't try to
huge expectations on beginner students and all that from day one. Hey, you're not gonna remember five different things right now. And when you're teaching a drum line, I taught at the middle school to a man and I'm teaching the sixth grades, they wanted to do a separate little drum line competition, so sixth graders would never touch the stick in their life like that. Okay, we're working on basics, you know, day one and getting them down, but by the end of a semester, they're scoring like third place at their competition and stuff like that against other people. So it was fun and it's just...
learning those basics. If I can figure out the basic and look at it stare at it for second or two well enough and I've always probably been pretty good just from all the experience in martial arts I've done and kind of seeing and figuring it out quickly how to do it, okay, then I can teach that. I can figure out how to break that down, you know. So that's helped a lot. That was kind of my experience teaching gymnastics. goodness gracious. Yeah, I was at an adult rec program and about two months in,
the owner of the gym who had been a national level coach, like not in the US, but he's from Eastern Europe. So that gives you an idea. He said, I want you to teach the boys program. And I went, you're funny. And I came back the next week. said, so when do you want to start? I said, wait, you were serious? I thought that was a joke because I didn't do gymnastics. And he said, no, I've seen the way you move. And I know you're a martial artist. I know you can figure this out. And so I did essentially the same thing. And
You know, these are eight to 12 year old boys who half of them were fearless, right? So we're on trampolines and things and they started better than I was. And so how do you help them get better? Will you break down the movement? Okay, what are we trying to do? Where are you? What is it that you need to talk or pull or rotate or spot? You know, it's all skills that we have in martial arts, but
Jeremy (21:52.841)
Now we're just applying them differently. I've said it on the show many times. There only so many ways the human body can move. And there are only so many ways that make sense through the lens of combat. Well, there are only so many that make sense through cheer or marching band or gymnastics, right? It's the same arms and legs. just, how are we applying that understanding of our body? And for me, it's kind of,
setting them up for success because that's the only way they're going to want to continue practicing and continue getting better. like you were saying, if you're going back to drummers or music, like piano, I tell my students all the time, being a black belt sounds fancy and all that stuff. And a lot of times they're making things look easy. Right now, you're struggling to think about stances when I'm trying to have you just doing stances walking down the floor. And then I bump it up a level and say, now let's add a punch to it or something like So now you're thinking about two things.
Okay, but my black belt's been doing this for so long and after a while I added more things to them. So breathing, hand foot timing, twisting the hips, twisting the hands at the last second. Those types of things. Explosiveness, so relax, explode, that kind of stuff. I said, it's like a drummer. He's not just thinking about one stick and one thing. Eventually he adds both sticks together and then he adds his foot pedals and he's got cymbals and then you're going. He's picturing all that stuff in his head, but a beginner drummer, one stick, one hand. Then the other stick and one hand at the same time. Or a pianist, same thing.
one hand, then they do the other by itself, then they eventually add them together, foot pedals and dynamics and phrasing, it's it's crazy. But they make it look easy after a while, but they sure didn't start thinking about all those, and that's kind of what the whole process of progressing is, is just learning to add those different layers to where it doesn't overwhelm you anymore. It's funny, you talk about playing music, which is not my world, and that one hand or two hands, or then adding the feet, because I do some of that with sparring.
with my new students. I'll start them and just say, I don't even care what your stance is. I don't even want you to use your feet. I just want you use your hands and not fall over. And for some of them, that's difficult enough. And I find when we can disguise the repetition, keep it fun, and really narrow up what they're working on, people who've done seminars with me know this is the heart of what I teach. How do we hyper simplify?
Jeremy (24:13.281)
to the point of success and then stack. And if we can do that with everything, how do we break it down that simple that they're all but guaranteed successful repetitions? And then we don't need as much time before we add the next thing. That's way to do it. Yeah. right. you've you're taking a break from training. You're off your band director. You're you're doing some other stuff with the students in a non martial way.
You're seeing success, you're having fun that
Jeremy (24:48.623)
And then we'll see this is why I like doing it in person because I can I can't do that on I can't do that over zoom. It's like sneak attack. Yeah. So I got one of the last school district I taught at as a band director was even smaller
They had fired a husband and wife team that were working together at both campuses, middle school and high school, because they were yelling at each other and cussing at each other. So they're like, they need to go, we need just something that's a little bit healthier atmosphere, so let's just do one person and see if we can stretch them between both. And I did that and it was fine, but I'm like, okay, so even though you're a small school district, I come from a place with high expectations, so here's what I'm thinking. And I'll put together a band handbook like most band directors have for middle schools, for high schools, it's going to
Here's my rules and my expectations. You're going to have practice cards and all that stuff, like for beginning band students, because that's what I grew up with and kind set an Sounds like a large school to me. Right. You need to have that. You need to know to do it. And the school board signed off on it. I had the meeting with the parents before school started. Parents signed off on it. Six weeks into class, half the kids are failing band because they're not turning in any kind of practice record and all that stuff. Parents are calling into the school going, why is my kid getting a zero in that class? That should be an easy class. Your kid's not doing anything.
to help themselves in this class, which I keep reminding them of. Principal comes to me, says, you can't fail any kids in band. We're not gonna allow it. Nobody can make less than 85. I said, that's not ethical, and I don't agree to that. They signed this sheet, you signed off on it before I handed it to them, they signed off on it, so no, and they said, well, we're gonna have to let you go then. They'd rather lose a teacher with high expectations and ethics than That holds the kids accountable. Right, exactly. What year was
Jeremy (26:36.443)
2005, 2006, something like that. That starts to track. And then, so I left that. I didn't want to be around people anymore. My brother runs a pretty successful water landscape company down in Texas. So I'm like, hey, I'm moving back home. Can you put me to work? Yeah, sure. We'll figure something for you. I worked for him for a couple of years. Still not training? Still not training. Physical job, so I really feel like I needed to. I didn't have any energy at the end of the night.
Eventually got into an office type job where I was sitting more of the days and stuff like that where I wasn't outside and all that stuff and it was kind of nice. But just sitting and feeling like I'm flabby and all that stuff. So after a couple years of that, I'm like, I really need to find something to get back in exercise. At that point in time, I transferred to a place back in Louisiana up in like Shreveport, Boulder City area with a management job and all that. And I found a martial arts school there that did the same type of forms I did.
different way but they still did Chun Ji, Nam Goon and all that. were a mile high karate studio with Steven Oliver's group and all that stuff.
Jeremy (27:43.361)
Taekwondo and I'm like, hey, I know that stuff. So I went and watched a little bit and I'm like, okay, that's cool. And I wasn't like super duper hardcore competitive. I'm like, this feels like a safe place for me to start coming back and being active. I started working out there a little bit and I started helping some of the junior students who are struggling and the owners like, hey man, I'm kind of, I've got real bad arthritis. I don't really move well anymore. Would you like to start teaching some classes? How long had it been in between training when you started training there? It sounds like six, eight years. Yeah.
about six years, something like that. So been a little while, but it all comes back to you. How did it feel stepping back on the mats?
honestly. I don't even think I'd say nervous or anything like that. It was just kind of nice like this is where my home is. So I love that. I love those kind of atmospheres of those places. So I did that for a few years with him and then was looking for something a little bit more job -wise, career -wise and all that stuff and was trying to start thinking, okay what if I ventured out on my own and started my own place because he was trying to sell his school and move on because he was, like I said, his body's shutting down and stuff like that but I couldn't afford to buy his school from him.
thinking about like bootstrapping, so like small dojo big profits kind of stuff, you know. And an opportunity came up here in Kansas City where I have some family, some cousins that lived up here. came to one of their weddings one time in the fall and it was just beautiful. like, what, you guys get all four seasons up here? I've just been growing up in the South my whole life and know, occasionally and they took a family vacation down to Mexico or came and I just thought the whole world was hot all the time, you know. So I'm like, this is amazing. up to her mom. Right, yeah. It's hot, like two weeks a year. There's a joke.
told me shortly after moving to Vermont. said, you know, people ask me, what do you do in Vermont in the summer? And I tell them we usually take that weekend off, that week off for vacation. That'd be awesome. I would love that. My wife loves the heat and the humidity and all that. So she's happiest in the summer here and she won't even turn the AC on in our house. And I'm like, I'm like, maybe when I get home, I got to have something. I love the winter. I can always get warmer. I can always wear layers. And if I need to, when we go inside and it's cooler, I can take a layer off or
Jeremy (29:50.141)
out but man I loved it up here I wanted to move up here and chance to kind of start fresh start brand new.
first year or so I was here I was kind looking around different parts of town. Okay, where is there growth? Where would be a smart place? And eventually I found a place that would let me use their space in the evenings and all that a couple nights a week. so I started trying to start a program up there. I had the curriculum and all that already set in my head. I'd already made a bunch of YouTube videos for it all that. I kind of had it all set up on paper and all that too. But just the growth from there, that was about five years ago when I started trying to do that.
within a one mile radius of where I was trying, there was at least 600 martial arts schools that had been open for 10 plus years that were well established and all that stuff. So getting a bunch of new people when something new like that's opening up wasn't, cause it wasn't really new in that town. So found a different location in a different part of town about a year and a half or two years into that and just moved over there and none of my students came from that, I only had five students at that first location. So none of, all kind of quit
I was like I'll be happy to help you find a good, helpful place around here. But I'm gonna try to find somewhere else and now... Because there is a business component. You do have to pay the bills. Right. At least. So yeah, and now I'm... This is my first... I've been about six months or so now. I found an actual full -time location where I don't have to remove my mats each night after classes and all that. And no one else is using the space, no other dance studio or anything like that. So
We tried to go to four nights a week and all that to expand my schedule. it's, the people are liking it, the kids are, but the town doesn't know I'm there yet still. So trying to get advertising and signage and stuff like that. My landlord and I are kind of button heads. He doesn't want signage up in front of this pretty new building and stuff like that to block the view. And trying to get the point across and you need your tenants to pay your rent, right? So you want them to grow. So.
Jeremy (31:53.815)
I've never run into that, some of the other people I've talked to in the martial arts world would be like, yeah, I've had landlords that are just weird like that. For whatever reason, they fight you on those stupid small things like signage and putting things in your windows so people wouldn't know you're there. I've never heard of that in my life. That's a bit of a struggle. Five years in now, I've got 20 students.
It's a better than five. Right, definitely. They're happy and I'm not giving so much away for free as I used to. I used to give them their uniforms and their sparring gears and all that stuff for free and all that. I was just losing money but I was considering it kind of a hobby back then. I wasn't trying to think, you know, I wasn't super serious about I'm gonna make this a full -time thing one day. I just want to have fun with it. want to teach people. Well now I'm the last year so I'm like no I need to stop losing money every year. I started looking back at my taxes and three years ago I was $20 ,000 in the hole.
Two years ago I 12 to 15 thousand I think in the hole that I was losing money and I felt like my own personal money coming out of that. like, that sucks. So I started looking at it and paying attention. I'm like, okay we need to change some things. This thing needs to start making money. Even with 20 students it needs to pay the bills at least. It doesn't have to pay me a salary or anything yet. It's more fun of a hobby now at least if you're going to call it that because I'm not stressed about it. I'm not losing money with it. They're helping me. It's a huge step. There's something
You know, the data out there isn't great, but it seems like roughly half of the martial arts schools in the US are not profitable. That's somewhere in that ballpark. Could be 40, could be 60, right? But somewhere around half. So you're not in bad company. If anybody out there in the audience has a school and they're feeling like, you know, I'm losing money. Well, you're not alone, right? It doesn't mean you can't turn it around. also doesn't mean you have to change that, right? Because how many of us have a hobby
and that doesn't pass, I most hobbies don't make you money. Right. As long as you're not losing money on But if, if you could have a hobby that puts a few bucks in your pocket and connects you with the good people and you feel good about what you do at the end of the there's nothing wrong with that. don't want anybody out there to think that that's problem or it's inherently wrong. Right. Yeah, I've enjoyed it. It's nice not being as stressed. And it's nice trying to learn how to make it a bit. But I mean, I, for years, since I decided I was going to branch off and start my own thing, I
Jeremy (34:14.475)
reading all those small dojo big prophets and Mike Massey things and his podcasts and every every trying to absorb every bit of information in that world that I could. Reading and all that I'm just it's been like so many things in my life I watch people and go I could do that but then when I step into those shoes it doesn't happen as easily or just doesn't doesn't get there I'm seeing them after they're already established and I'm like I could do but I didn't see day one you know when they were struggling or something like that.
years in it shouldn't be this high, should be happening soon you know and so that's the challenge for me is mentally trying to stay with it. Well it's like training too right? How many people start training because they saw something cool right? They saw somebody in a movie, they saw something I mean the Olympics are going on right now where we were having dinner last night you know Judo was on the TV I think they were running Taekwondo as we were leaving. really? I think I saw
And you can watch those folks and say okay, know, yeah I see what they're doing and you show up and you start training and First off statistically, you're probably never gonna be that good no matter how hard you work because it's the Olympics But even if you just want to be decent How many days a week and how many hours and for how long right is that and?
Jeremy (35:40.503)
How many hours and days and years do you have not teaching? That's a whole different skill set than growing the school. Teaching martial arts, running a martial arts school is, we've got the business side, which we're the only industry I know of where a good portion of people will wear their lack of financial professional success as a badge of honor. I only have seven students, but they've been with me for
you know, 13 years and they're really dedicated and they tell themselves a story that, well, it's because I'm too difficult to train. I'm old school, right? Or because I don't want to have a big commercial school or, you know, people throw the word McDojo. I don't want to be a McDojo. Being a McDojo doesn't have to mean that you
pay your bills, right? Like there's a lot of middle ground here. I don't even like the term McDojo, it's a whole other conversation. And then of course we've got the aspect where we're also to my knowledge the only industry that says, okay, you know how to do this, you must know how to teach it. Right? You're a teacher, right? you went to school, you understand, okay, teaching a thing is different than doing a thing. And yet, when you started teaching,
martial arts it was simply because you could do and your instructor said go do this but I'm assuming there was at least some guidance in there. Sure, a big learning period. But there are plenty of people who you know they have a falling out with their instructor or they reach a certain rank and it's just expected you go off on your own and those people flounder and that's why you you mentioned like Massey there's so many resources out there now why do we need this level of resources because we need this level of resources.
We need those hours of time to practice. And it kind of reminded me, I don't know if we can connect this to the business aspect, but kind of going back to one of our seminars yesterday, Wyatt did the ballet for martial arts. You know, how to get explosive Yeah, we're going to talk to Wyatt next. I don't know the order we're going to run these. Love that. And I asked him at the end, this isn't really necessarily about the power for martial arts and all that, but I said I've always been jealous. Especially nowadays because you can pull it up on social media and you see these reels.
Jeremy (38:01.679)
gymnastics kids and dance kids and these little eight and ten year old girls that are torturing themselves sitting there doing the splits trying to lift things up with lift their feet up off the ground in the splits but they've got books or something on each foot and all that stuff and they're doing this crazy hard stuff and there's a room full of them just up like an army of girls and I'm struggling to get nine and ten year old boys to do something other than you know I'm like come on man put some effort into it you know don't you want to bust this board or something and and
try to encourage them to practice at home and try to give them challenges to do to make them practice at home. But no, but then you see these gymnasts and girls with those six pack abs and they're watching their diet and they're exercising every day. And it just made me remember like I had a teenage cousin one time that she was so into dance and we go, I go visit her sometimes, her family and all that. We go shopping at Walmart and she's doing dance moves up and down the aisle. And I'm like, I used to be like that with Taekwondo. I'm sitting there hitting tree limbs and stuff like that when we're working, trying to work on
my twist in my wrist and trying to see if I can kick even in my jeans and all. Can I kick that one, that leaf right there or something? And I was having so much fun with it. The practice was so much throughout the day, but it wasn't really practice. It was just, I'm doing moves because I love it. And that's the same thing like my cousin did. And I need to get, and I'm so jealous because it seems like there's such a, I don't know if this is right way to say it, like cult following with dance, dance and gymnast. It's a lifestyle. It's really difficult.
to, from my observation, right, and obviously there are some regional differences in everything, but when you think about dance, when you think about gymnastics, you get the kids coming in three, four, five, right, and they're learning really basic fundamental skills, and they're disguising a lot of repetition within body conditioning, right, and then that's the point where maybe six, seven, eight, they start to split.
Is this gonna be a thing that I do once or twice a week for fun? And they don't tend to hang there too long. Or is this the thing that we do, right? Are we a dance family? Are we a gymnastics family in the same way? You know, I'm from Vermont. We have hockey families. Right? If you're a family. I was thinking lumberjack families or something. Do have lumberjacks up in Vermont? We do, but they're not usually using axes, right? They're usually using some really big...
Jeremy (40:22.935)
Crazy equipment. There you go. Maybe that's your marketing now. You got to get outside and you got to chop some wood. I mean, y 'all don't burn firewood down here too often. But if somebody said, I'll drop off a couple of quarts of firewood that I chopped with my hand. It might be a few grand versus a few hundred dollars, but that'd be a cool marketing gimmick. But the hockey family still looks like that too. If you're doing it, you're doing it.
What are you doing this weekend? Well, you know, it's this kid's, this team's tournament weekend. And they're just, it's what they do. And I think there's an identity wrapped in with that, that when you were a kid, martial arts was your identity. When I was a kid, right? Like it was your identity. We have an audience, right? Victor and Karen are over there. And what you're talking about is without that identity,
without that all encompassing it becomes really tough. Now, if we're talking about young kids, that's not coming from them. Right, right. A five year old isn't saying I want to do this one thing forever and only and always no five year old says that. Right. But the parents say you made a commitment this you said you wanted to do this. This is what we do. And so they just show up
Jeremy (41:46.185)
It can happen, but you know, it's, I think what you're talking about, a lot of martial arts schools are experiencing, right? This idea that martial arts is a thing that some people do sometimes, not an identity. That's where, that's where I'd love to figure out how to crack that code. So I've got a suggestion and I've, and I've offered this up to a lot of schools. Actually, Victor, we've talked about this, this idea
If you think about what martial arts provides, forget about rank for a moment, forget about a lot of these things. If you look at martial arts as a physical and personal growth program, right? Like the life skills and the health and benefits. And you you, you mentioned one of the most passionate youth sports demographics I'm aware of boys football. Right. If you ran a six week martial arts for football kids that ran prior to preseason,
Over the summer, it takes connecting with the coach and the athletic director. But if you can run those sorts of camps and skill development, because if you take a look at high end pro athletes, right, this is one of the things that that is whistle kick rose. I really hope we end up with the resources to do. I want someone to be able to on my team to be able to dig through and say, OK, we know this is the general participation rate of martial arts for adults. Here's the participation rate of
Pro basketball players, pro hockey, pro football, right? We know that there's a lot in there. We know that a lot of, you know, we had Wyatt's class yesterday, free training day, ballet, right? There are a lot of pro athletes that have done dance, not necessarily as youth, but, this is another way of me helping my body. We talked to any college level athletic trainer. They will tell you that the kids that are most injury prone are the ones that have been single sport.
from a very young age, right? So when you start to approach some of these things from those angles, there's a whole demographic that I think we as an industry miss, which is temporary. Right? Yeah, I like that. I've talked to some of the sports coaches in the school district that I've just moved to. I've touched base with them. I've let them know, look, I've had experience in that exact field. When I was going at LSU for my masters, the guy I was doing the Taekwondo school owner and was doing stuff with
Jeremy (44:13.835)
had an end with Nick Saban at the time who was the coach and all that. And so on the off season, we got invited to come over and teach his football team the stretches and some fun little target drills and stuff like that. Our team black belts would show them their jump spin flip kicks and all that show off arm and they love that. it was just, was fun. They had fun. They got to move in a different way. And it was, it was really interesting to see cause like the lineman, these guys could lift a Mack truck, but you ask them, okay, now we're just going to try to do the, do the splits, just stand up and just kind of, you don't have to fall all the way down on the floor.
And they refused to go past 45 degrees. like, man, I can't do it. I can't do it. I walk up to them and I kind of nudge their foot out a little bit and they freak out. Their eyes get real big, but they go down to 90 degrees and look, man, I'm doing it. Hey, hey, look, Ralph, I'm doing it. And they start talking to each other and they're all proud of that. So he kept saving kept that stretching routine we taught them and we had them doing. He kept that as their stretch routine for the next football season.
And that was the year they tied whatever BCS championship. they'd had, he had reported back to us that they'd had the fewest injuries that season that he's ever had in his career. And so, yeah, I try to use that with coaches that I'm talking to and I said, I'd be happy to come out and do a class or something with your football team, your basketball team, whatever, and kind of show them our stretch routine and have them do some fun stuff. But I've just kind of been limiting it in my mind to one class I wasn't thinking about. Hey, what if we had a program right before
the season actually starts. I think camps, right? Anybody out there, if you're a parent, you know how expensive camps are. If you're someone who runs camps as part of your martial arts program, it's probably one of the more lucrative aspects of what you do. you know, that might be an area that you look at growing into. you know, when I think football, almost every, I'm not a passionate football fan, but very casual, but every position, I see a place where martial arts plays a role. Offensive line, they're sparring.
Right, like they can't grab, they're, I mean, they're sparring, they're palm healing. The D line is they're trying to come in. If I make those hands faster and more accurate, how does that not help my team? Right. Right. And we actually had a number of classes yesterday that were around awareness. Tell me that every single position isn't better when they're more aware. Right.
Jeremy (46:27.159)
I think there's a lot there and I hope that we as an industry start to embrace that because it's the gateway drug, right? It's the first one's free, right? okay, so I can correlate. I did this thing. It made me better at football, but it was also a lot of fun. So when the season's over, maybe I'm gonna give that a whirl. And I think what we need to do as an industry to allow that is not shame people when
treat martial arts like a seasonal sport. Do we want them there all the time? Of course we do. But people have a really hard time with things that don't end. That ongoing, inevitable commitment. The world doesn't work that way too often anymore. And I've seen it both ways. I've seen instructors that kind of shame them a little bit and say, you look, you either got to commit to this or whatever, or if you leave, don't come back kind of thing. And I've seen instructors that are real welcoming and open. I've always loved.
I've always appreciated the welcoming and open lunch. I had one organization I was with a while back, won't say any of them, but first time I got to meet one of their grandmasters in person, he was giving a lecture, leading a seminar to a group and all that, and he had us all sitting down, and I'm in the back of the room, so I'm the lowest rank, only like second degree or something at the time, and he's telling a story, and it's funny, but where I came from, grandmasters, they can tell jokes and stuff, and we can be nice and polite to each other,
I'm sitting there nodding my head at him, smiling at him, and he stops what he's saying in the middle of it and what are doing? I'm nodding at him, joking, you're telling something funny. 50 pushups now. I'm like, what, what, And they're punishing me for doing something other than just saying, yes, sir, and being obedient. Was your instructor Joe Pesci from Goodfellas? Felt like it at the moment. And I was just like, man, really, if you really need to feel that big and that strong by making,
whatever and that was not a vibe I ever wanted to pass on to my students or their parents or anything like that so I've always appreciated the ones that were more welcome and I find that eventually they will come back I've got one kid now that got so close to black belt he got to red belt and his mom's like look we got him in piano lessons and swim lessons he's got to do his homework we got him in something like soccer or something like that and all that and he really knows he loves doing your type 1 stuff but he knows he needs to commit more time to it he just can't do it because we've got him in all these other things
Jeremy (48:52.309)
So we're going to take a break. We'll come back in the summer. And I'm like, I understand. I wanted to be here. I want them to be good at all those things too. I'll just remind you, know, just there's things that those classes, while they're really good and I'm a musician too. And I appreciate that too. There's lessons here that he learns that he won't get anywhere else, but yes, please bring him back whenever you can, you know, and I'm still waiting for him to come back, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm just going to send out every now and then texts or send reminders say, Hey, we're still thinking about you. How's Kai doing or something like that.
I'm not gonna shame them and be like, you're a You know how much you're letting your kid down. know. One of the things that I see some schools doing and I want to see more schools doing this, especially for the youth, is assessments, subjective assessments. Having the parents scoring, you your kid comes in on a scale of one to whatever, one to five, one to three, one to ten.
How focused is your kid? How disciplined are they? How well do they listen at home? Like all the soft skills that really are what parents want of their kids. And then every three to six months, have them fill that out again. Right. Have them sing it improved or anything. Yeah. Because sometimes we have to help people understand the value. if it's, let's say it's music. If the kid's playing piano and they're playing piano at home, it's really easy to know that that kid's gotten better because you don't hate listening to them. Right.
Right, when they're practicing, they're like, my God, okay. If it's a seasonal sport, it has an end point. There's a built in, things become more valuable when they're scarce, right? So there's that component to it. If it's, you know, if you're lifting weights, right? You see that the weights get stronger and maybe your clothes fit differently, right? Like there are a lot of different ways that people evaluate.
but especially in a school where the parents aren't watching, they don't have the context for what marks better progress within martial arts. They don't know. They're scoring it entirely on how the kid responds when they say, all right, it's time to get ready for class. And if the kids knee deep in playing Minecraft, doesn't matter what you're asking them to do. They don't want to get ready for class. They want to keep doing the thing that they're doing that they're enjoying. And if they can't see enough,
Jeremy (51:17.333)
value in the progress to offset that, you know, cause they're, they're, they're pushing them to do
Eventually they're going to tap out. Yeah, I think that might be somewhere I could improve on. I might be dropping the ball and trying to make them aware of that more. I have been trying to do more. So when I first was doing classes two days a week and all that stuff, the testing belt testing and all that would just be during their normal class time on the Thursday of that week or something, the last week of our cycle and all that.
That's not how I grew up doing it, but I do just what I felt was easier for me or something at that time. And then I kind of started thinking back to my belt test. I'm like, no, there's, there's, there's something to be seen for. want to sit in my kids, a white or yellow belt right now. I haven't seen what the green belts look like when they're sparring and whatever the black belts when they're doing their cool stuff. So there's something about that that we need to, we need to show the progression and all. So now lately, the last couple of the last year or so I've been making sure that we're, doing that. We're belt tests for everybody starts at this time, five and six year olds go first. And if they need to leave, go.
that but everybody else that wants to stay and watch all the way to the black belts and board breaks and all that stuff and I'm trying to make throughout the test make pointers to the parents hey this little blue belt right here started with me in the five and six year old class he's been with me for about two years now or something and look at him now remember how ordinary you were when you started you know crazy you were jumping off the walls and all that stuff and look at him now he's standing still attention and he's breaking boards it's a testing but it's a it's a celebration
Right. I try to make that point there and that's every three months or something but kind of asking their input on what they're seeing at home or outside. I really like that. I really like that idea. One of the presenters yesterday, she's been on the show I think multiple times, yeah I know multiple times, Kelly Thomas. She recently, if I remember correctly, made this change recently, her testings are now called leveling up. Okay. And I like that right because the word task can be intimidating to people but I think it also
Jeremy (53:15.959)
Test is for the person who is training. Leveling up could be for anybody. It's game day, right? Come watch, come celebrate, come be an accessory part of this event. Let's face it, no kid is training without the parent. The parent has to at least approve it, let alone drive them, pay for it, laundry, right? They're involved, so keeping them involved, I think, can be really important.
On that front, I have been trying to do better than what I've seen in my experience growing up, other martial arts schools keeping people out in lobby behind a glass wall, whatever, just let your kid watch, the parents are out in the parking lot on their phone while the kid's in class or something. I've been trying to pull the parents out on the mat. So if I do a 12 week cycle where we're working on techniques and all that for 12 full weeks, because when I grew up it was eight weeks, and nowadays that seems a little bit too fast for me for the attention span, and I'm out there actually practicing, so
trying to expand that and give them a little bit better time, more time to look better. But the first month of that, anytime they're learning a new technique, I'm pulling the parents out on the mat to hold the target for them. So they're learning how, okay, and what are you looking for in this? yeah, see that back foot has to turn, I need to see that pivot all the way, or see where his knee's pointing or something. That way they're learning not only how to hold that, but now, okay, I'm encouraging them to help their kid practice at home and be a partner in that practice, you know? And I've gotten good feedback from that, more parents saying, yeah, we're working on that, he's still not pivoting
He's jumping too late or something like that, you know? But that first like four weeks or so, the parents are heavily involved and I think they're liking that. I don't really have a whole lot of parents that stay out in the parking lot at all. They're all at least in the room now when they're in class. whenever we're working on stuff that their kid's struggling on, I'm like, hey Jim, watch this, watch what he's doing at home. This is what needs to happen. I don't have them behind a glass wall or anything like that because I want them to be able to hear that conversation.
Occasionally I'm just going to ask questions and be like, what's your word for the cycle? Integrity? Okay, what's that mean? And he tells it, he tells it, and I said, so dad, is he doing that at home? you know, is he doing that with sister? You know, is he being courteous to sister or something? And kind of getting feedback a little bit from there. like, okay, that's why it's your word for the cycle. You need to be working on that. I want to hear good stories. It's funny, we keep talking about people who were at free training day yesterday, but.
Jeremy (55:34.785)
Craig Wareham who, I don't know, Victor, you and Craig are fighting it out for most appearances on Martial Arts Radio. I don't know who's in the lead right now. He's in the lead still? Yeah. Okay, all right. Well, I don't know if we're counting you as this is an appearance right now. I don't know if your voice made it to the microphone. Sorry, Craig. But his school has done, I don't know if they're still doing it, but has done a class for parents who are not training to help them understand those sorts of things you're talking
This is what we're looking for. This is how you can encourage coach them. The regular thing like each cycle or like every week or something. I think it's it was meant to be more of a one -off right? Like here's how you can be a good martial art parent. Right. And because if they're not training they don't know what they're looking for. So if it's you know go practice your form and the kids six right like they're looking to the parent for some feedback and the parent is like I know. I do it a little bit differently. We have family classes.
We run our kids class, run our adult class, and in the middle there's the family class, which allows for some overlap for, know, and admittedly most of the families don't participate in that. But how many things are there, my philosophy is, how many things are there for parents to do with their kids? This is not a lot. So, I just, the last two leads that we took in, one was a family of five, know, six, eight, and 11, and the two parents, and they're all interested. There's probably nothing else the five of them are gonna be able to do together. That's gonna be a blast.
Are they going to, is it going to be the most effective training for them? No. And I tell them right off the bat, right? Like I want to see the kids in the kids class and I want to the adults in the adult class, at least sometimes. Cause the way I, I, we're going to teach something to a six year old in a 30 something. It's kind of different. Right. We're going to, somebody's going to get compromised somewhere in there, but you know, it's fun. Right. Like my philosophy, make sure they have fun and then learn something. Right. If you follow that order, tends to work out. Educate and entertain.
Connect with the K -10 entertainment. I agree and being open to those type of things and being flexible and all that stuff. I don't officially have a family class but I do have a mom that's a business owner that at some point she's been trying to help her kid for the last year or so that he's been with me. She's been trying to help him practice at home and all that stuff. At some point I'm like you know what it might just make more sense to you if you got a uniform on and all that. Yeah but I don't have the time. can't. I don't have the money. We're struggling with our business right now. I that's fine. I'll give you the uniform.
Jeremy (58:00.341)
You're always talking me up to your friends and your people at church and you're trying to find ways to help connect people to me and also that's enough for me for now. just come to class and if you can make it to the adult class that's fine but if the only time you have is when you bring him, if you're okay being on the mat with a bunch of kids and all that stuff, I'll make it work for you. I'll still get you to learn. yeah, and she's loving that now. So now she's getting to learn and she has more of an idea. He's still a couple belts ahead of her. And kids love
Kids love when they're better at something than their parents. They get to try to teach you something. Yeah. know? And so that's kind of, I think, helps solidify that relationship a little bit, you know, and make them even a little bit stronger than before. I just, try to be open with
I would love to see more martial arts instructors do that. It's so much of this that comes down the ranks from military backgrounds and they get that attitude but nobody wants to be talked to like that nowadays anymore. No one wants to be yelled at for saying, yep, instead of yes sir. I I might get my eyes real big and go, what did you just say? And the kids always laugh and I'm like, you're about to see smoke come out my ears, And they're like, sorry, yes sir. But I got a kind of reminder and that's fun but we have fun with it instead
Give me 10 pushups for that disrespectful tone or whatever. No, that's not what I want to be and that's not what I want. My legacy of passing down, if anyone else continues martial arts after me or whatever, I don't want them to have that background or they grow up and move away or whatever and they want to get their kids in martial arts. I don't want them to be scared they're going get yelled at from that instructor or expect that that's an okay thing. The world is scary enough. We don't need to create a space that makes people afraid to show up. Agreed. I love
It's a lot of fun. So what's next? Is the goal that this becomes what you do full time? That's my goal lately. Right now the job I've had for the last couple years or so is back to being outdoors, lawn and landscape type of stuff. It's a very physical job and then trying to have energy or capabilities to teach classes in the evenings doesn't always work for me and my body's... I'm 45 years old now and
Jeremy (01:00:11.799)
Mark got mad at me last night at dinner when I said this. said next to him, he's a lot older than I am. But I feel like I'm in my 60s internally. I think I'm catching some of that, like that last instructor I worked with that had a real bad arthritis. I think I'm kind of starting to understand where he's coming down with that. I can do something for 30 minutes at a time. I can do quick something, you know, demonstrations here and there, but I don't have the stamina to do it very long before I'm like this or I'm walking.
I showed off for my kids the other day in class. I'm like, look, testing's coming up this week. You gotta be able to run through this. It needs to look like this. Boom, boom. Did all the jump kicks for him real fast, like in quick succession, but my blood was pumping and I was like so excited. And two hours later, I'm walking down the stairs and I'm like, baby, why are my legs hurting so bad? I need to some salt bath. She goes, remember those stupid jumps you did in the class when you were getting on with the kids? so I'm like, yeah. It's front of the room energy, right? There's something I was telling.
I think I was telling my students that I remember this day really vividly. We're kneeling front kicks, right? So kneel down, stand up, front kick. And I was probably 16 and I was running the kids class. we would normally do 10 on each side or 15 on each side or something.
Jeremy (01:01:31.799)
And I just kind of put out a challenge. said, how many can we do? And I had this one damn kid, and we ended up doing 50 on each side. Because he wouldn't quit. And I wasn't letting him do more than me, because he was 12. This is 12 -year -old Greenbelt. And here I was, I think I had
And I remember for the next two days I couldn't walk because a hundred kneeling front kicks is a lot. Live and learn those lessons. Yeah, but at the time. I'm teaching shape now. I'm not in performance shape and practicing shape like I used to be, but I love it so much. I would love to turn this into a full type thing, but that kind of means more learning the business side of things and becoming a business owners and learning how to have eventually.
people teaching classes for me and under me so that way I can grow and work on other things, other aspects of that and getting in touch with more people in the community to try to grow our presence there. So that's the challenge now and that's my new goal, my expectation. was like, okay, black belt, fine, I created this curriculum from the taekwondo that I grew up in and some other things that I've seen and all that over the years and I'm loving what I'm teaching. I think it's real good, we've got real value to it and all that, but I need to get.
need to grow its presence if it's going to pay the bills for me and so that way I don't have to work an outside job. Physically every day where I'm doing stupid stuff that either kills my shoulders or pops my back or something like that. I pulled a muscle the other day a couple weeks ago and for the next two days in classes I'm sitting on the shield mats against the wall like that. Go do that again and switch your feet over here and trying to do it from sitting down and they were real patient with me. The kids were. They're like can I grab that for you know when I drop something.
I don't want to be teaching classes like that every day. want to be, and that's what I love about martial arts is I did a little bit of soccer, basketball, football, things like that, baseball when I was growing up and all that, and I enjoyed it for a time, but it wasn't anything that really got me going. And I don't want to see adults doing a whole lot of intramural soccer, baseball, football, basketball, you know, and all that stuff anymore as they get older and all that stuff, you know. want something that I can keep going. Right. want to be You need adults to move more.
Jeremy (01:03:43.479)
My grandparents, when they were in their 70s, maybe early 70s, they had been sitting down so much that their ankles were like swelling up and all that. It hurt them to walk. They eventually got those little right on wheelchair things and all that. I don't want to be that. I looked at that as a kid and I'm like, wow, that's what getting older. But then I go, I'm in the martial arts world and I see 60 year olds out there doing forms and kicking pads and breaking boards. I'm like, that's what I want to be like. Keep moving and you'll be able to keep moving. Objective motion.
That's my goal. So whatever it is, keep the business moving, keep myself moving. I would love for it to be the thing. I've got all these ideas that have come up in the last couple of years. I named my business Ninja Fit, not such and such as martial arts because I thought at the time that the American Ninja Warrior thing was getting blown up five or six years ago. Huge on TV.
that would be awesome. have a complex, you know, so we got rock walls over here climbing and the ninja obstacle course over here and in one corner here there's a room where they can learn a ninja moves and the board breaks and the weapons and all that stuff and I'm like, it'll be a complex, it'll be ninja fit and we'll talk about fitness, there'll be a smoothie bar in there. I had all these cool ideas and now the axe throwing thing's getting big and I'm like, okay, so I thought about doing that as a seminar, it's like a one -off seminar. We had a big open field in front of this place where I was training, teaching that before.
and I bought $600 worth of the stuff, the throwing axes, stars, knives, throwing darts, even just everything, and the boards to throw them into, and I contacted the insurance company, I'm like, it'd probably be smart to ask for help and make sure I'm covered on my basis, but I did that after I ordered all this stuff, and they're like, no, we don't want that, we will only insure you if you're in a secure location, like a boxed in place or something, like that's weird. I feel like a field out in the middle of nowhere is gonna be safer, whatever.
They don't have a box. They don't have something in the drop down for how that's handled. And so that was a challenge. But then I found out there's throwing trailers, ax throwing trailers and stuff like that. So I keep thinking that's cool little offset of my business at some point in time. We just call it Ninja Throws or something. And we hired out for weekends or parties and stuff like that. Teach them how to throw the stars and stuff like that. So I don't know. I've got all these ideas now that are just booming and all that to kind of grow business or different aspects of the business. But I got to get this thing.
Jeremy (01:05:59.927)
solid first and help them pay the bills so I can take a break from the day job or back off from it or something and explore those and grow those, the time and energy to grow those because the energy is the other part. Get home at 10 o 'clock at night, you wake up at 6 o 'clock in the morning to go working and be outside all day during the day and teach classes at night, get home at 10 and I don't want to do nothing else. I understand. People want to find you online, website, social media, where would they go? NinjaFit website I think has links to most of my social media stuff that's there.
Facebook Jake Meisner, it's a weird last name. It's -I -E -S -N -E -R You can find me there just Ninja Fit. You can find Ninja Fit on Facebook Instagram Twitter all those things Thanks for being here Jake. Yes, sir. Thanks for having me. I appreciate
Hey.