Nuanced. - 38. Adam Gibson: Mixed Martial Arts, Entrepreneur & Community Leader

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Adam Gibson is a father, husband, entrepreneur, community leader, and black belt martial artist. Mr. Gibson is a father of two boys, married to his wife Stephanie, and owns and operates a martial arts school  in Chilliwack. Their business also provides a before and after school childcare program that picks kids up directly from school.  Adam is an avid athlete that loves martial arts, skiing, surfing, and playing golf. He also recently started dirt biking with his two boys. He cares about his community and is an active volunteer.  You can look more into his business and what they offer at Chilliwackmartialarts.com.Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Adam Gibson. It's a pleasure to have you on. I think that it's really unique to have someone with your background on because you know a lot about discipline. You know a lot about building yourself up, developing real confidence. And I think we're in a time right now where people say the word confidence. Maybe we try and act like we have some confidence. But it's not at the core. And so I'm hoping you can start with a brief introduction. And we can start with the martial arts background. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. My name's Adam Gibson, and I'm the owner Excel martial arts here in Chilwack. I've been doing martial arts for 20 years, and it's definitely a big part of my life. I'm married to my wife, Stephanie, and we have two boys, Roman and Kale, Romans 9 and Kail 7. So, yeah, dad and a business owner and husband, it's, yeah, lots going on in life, so it's good. That's awesome. You know, I appreciate you starting off with confidence. I was trying to think about on the way here. I'm like, you know, what's one of the most important values I can pass on or, you know, what can I talk about? You know, I'm kind of nervous.

I'm like, you know, this is a different experience. But confidence really was the key word that I kept coming back to. So it's interesting that you kind of started off with that. And, you know, confidence is something, you know, it's kind of a buzzword. It's like, oh, do you have confidence? You don't. It's a self-confidence. Are you low in confidence? It's kind of talked about, but it's hard to feel what confidence really is. I think I'm in a unique position teaching martial arts to really pass that on to others and help others develop that. I was thinking, I'm like, you know, can I give somebody confidence? Is that something like I can just like give to them? You know, like if I, if they're around me enough and they train in martial arts, can I just, can I give that

to them? And no, I can't, you know, like really confidence has to be earned and, you know, like you mentioned about discipline. Martial arts is really, it's always been a venue for that. I think people know that. But it's one of those things that as time goes on and people, grow. They start seeing martial arts. It's not about fighting. It's not about, you know, wrestling or punching somebody. You know, there's a lot of life skill development in there. And I think confidence is one of the first ones that people hit home on. So can you tell us then about your journey? Is there a time in your adolescence or in your younger years where you found martial arts and it helped you develop that confidence? And what did that look like for you? Yeah, you know,

I was never like a kid of low confidence, but, you know, I wouldn't say I was a person of high confidence either. So I think I was floating through life as a kid and getting by and, you know, life was not too bad. But I started martial arts when I was 15. So, you know, a teenage boy, you know, lots of things going on in those teenage years. My two buddies, Brent and Brian, they actually invited me to a two-week trial. And I've been playing quite high-level soccer. I was quite a busy guy. I was traveling all the time and playing that and doing all that. But I said to my mom, like, it's a two-week trial. Like, don't worry about a mom. And she knew that wasn't true. So, you know, I told her, I'm, oh, let's try it out for two weeks, summertime,

you know, I'll give it a go and I'll get back to what I'm always doing. And my mom knew that wasn't true. And after the two weeks, you know, we did sign up and we did get training together. So I started with my two best friends and, yeah, we trained together and kind of grew from there. What type of martial arts was it? Because, like, I know when I was growing up, they were always, like, compared and, like, they were put against each other as one might not be as good as the and one might be more beneficial or if you do one you can't do the other. So which one did you choose and how did you go about choosing? Yeah, I started off in martial art called Sunhengdo and, you know, they were starting to get into that mixed martial arts. So, you know, the martial art world is still

separated, you know, in karate, in judo, in jujitsu. You know, everybody still has their camps. But I think with the development of the UFC, mixed martial arts has become more prevalence you start to see it more often and so some hanged it was one of those people that were kind of going in that direction and that really interests us and uh you know for for us as young men uh you know we didn't see a camp we didn't see like oh punching's the best so kicking's the best so wrestling's the best uh and we kind of just i want to do it all you know give it's give all to me so that's what kind of started from there that's so interesting and i know i i figured out who my uh karate teacher was it was dan the karate man and she taught it central elementary

and just thinking back of like I was a person I would say who was pretending to have confidence I was acting like I had stuff figured out but my home life was not as good as it could be facing like struggles trying to fit in and I found that being able to develop myself through martial arts through karate

gave me a little bit more comfort within my body and a familiarity that I don't think everybody has I think people who run from dancing as I think about it more and as I listen to individuals like Jordan Peterson, how he talks about dancing and your connection and your understanding of music and your relationship with your body makes me think about those struggles for individuals who don't get rough and tumble play, who don't get to develop themselves. And so I'm interested to know what that experience was for you.

And coupled with that is your kind of experience with being able to feel comfortable in adversity if somebody's trying to pick on you or bully you, feeling that like I don't need to get into this fight. What was that process for you during that kind of martial arts development? Yeah, you know, I think martial arts is kind of a great leveler of people, you know, like inclusivity, inclusion is a big word these days and, you know, sometimes toss around as kind of a buzzword, but in martial arts has always been inclusive. You know, so I'm proud of that. You know, I'm proud that we run a business that includes all people. Because when you step on the mats, you know, if tall, small, you know, large, small, whatever your body type is,

whatever your ethnic background is, it's a leveler on the mats. And so, you know, there's not really somebody that's like a star that sticks out or, you know, this person has more confidence than that person. Everybody can be equal on the mats. And so I think their ego as, like, as a teenager growing up, you know, as a 15-year-old athlete, you know, I was good at sports. I was a straight-A student in school. Like, life is pretty good.

But when you step on the mats, all that disappears, you know. And so when you think about, like, fighting or, you know, going against another person or, you know, can I stand up against a bully, you know, those things really, you don't really think about those things when you're training on the mats. You know, it really becomes an art form. It becomes a peaceful practice. You know, it's kind of like the warrior in the garden that everybody keeps talking about. It's better to be a warrior in there, you know, a gardener, you know, whatever that saying is. but yeah I think with martial arts that that ego is something that you think it's prevalent you think it's going to be an issue you think oh that that guy's a black belt like he's probably

got like some attitude or a little chip on a shoulder or something like that but actually those people that train in martial arts are some of the nicest gentlest most peaceful people so it's why why how does that come about because you think people who are stronger they're tougher, they're able to win the fights. You think that these people are going to be the ones who go out looking for the fight, prove that they're the toughest on the yard. Where does the self-development come in, not just in your body, your physical strength, your relationship with movements, but with your mind and kind of developing that calmness. Because people who do train in almost any type of martial arts skill, boxing, karate, whatever it is, they're often the

most centered. They're the most calm in stressful circumstances. Where do you think that comes from? And how do you trying to elicit that from your students? Yeah. You know, I think parents are starting to realize this too. It's starting to become more normal and accepted. Like you talked about rough and tumble, you know, like kids need to be rough. They need to tumble with each other. They need to wrestle with another person. You need to get their hands on and get messy. And that's why I think, you know, COVID has been really difficult on a lot of people because they've had that disconnection. in martial arts we always have connection you know we're always hands on with somebody you know we're doing self-defense we're punching towards and we're kicking towards and we're blocking you know

like we're grabbing on we're taking them down and throwing them on the ground and we call that fun you know it's a lot of fun and uh you know kids these days uh it's hard for them because uh you know that's not allowed in a lot of places and for good reason you know like school you can't have all these kids fighting it out and wrestling you know they would never learn anything but also the same time um you know it's kind of almost been stigmatized that It's, you know, like fighting or wrestling or kids putting their hands on each other is, like, a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's a great thing, you know, like, if we think about our immune system and being healthy, you know, trading those germs with other people, you know, I obviously don't want to be all over somebody, but, you know, it's a good thing for your health.

It's a good thing for your body. But I think, more importantly, it's a good thing for your mind. And so we see these kids, and I had a parent yesterday come in, just like, oh, my kid's really rough. He's super high energy, you know, like, I don't know if this is going to be a good thing for him or not, and tried out class last night for the first time, and mom's blown away, you know, she's just super excited, you know. So she went from somebody that was super nervous about, you know, she's going to arm her child with all these skills and, you know, he's going to go and take it out on other people to really seeing an action. It's like, wow, no, this could have a really big impact on my child. And, yeah, we see it time and time again.

So it's one of those things that it's a pleasure for me to see because other people kind of, to see from the outside and they kind of get worried about, you know, somebody learning these skills and misusing them, but it's the opposite. People don't even, don't misuse it. Right. Is there like a respect that's developed or talked about in the classroom that helps people understand their role in society differently? I know that we'd always bow in karate before we'd do anything. Like, what are the kind of the techniques that are used to kind of instill not only your understanding of your body, but this kind of greater respect for the space that you're in, your teachers, your educators, like, where does that come from in the experience

of going through a class? Yeah, you know, I think there's different ways that different martial arts do that. You know, I think all martial arts teach life skills. We have a dedicated life skills program, and we have a psychologist and counselor on our board that develops a life skills program. So we have weekly and monthly printouts that are discussed in class. So we used to leave it up to, you know, kind of free for all, like, what am I feeling about talk about today, you know, and just kind of go from there. And, you know, there's always a positive topic to talk about. Now we're very intentional about it. You know, this week we're talking about respect, this next week we're talking about discipline, you know, all these different topics throughout the year that are discussing

class. And one of the interesting things that happens on the mats. And, you know, a lot of kids, they're just super high energy. They're just like, they're just like ready to go. Like you can see they're like they're shaking like just like just so excited they want to move like they don't want to listen to this guy like they want to get up and get moving and so we really try and channel that and you know it's interesting at the start of class we do a quick quick talk like one minute or less because the kids are just they're ready to go you know so the longer we talk is like oh I'm going to sleep this is boring come on guy get going here but what we see is after kids are physical after all people are physical you know say 20 minutes in the class we're working hard we're getting

a sweat going. And when we talk about those life skills, they actually hear it. They actually listen. And it's because their mind is open. So, you know, you've had a bad day. Adults come into the gym and they've had a bad day, you know, work went south today and they get sweat going. And then all of a sudden, we're talking to an adult, a grown adult about respect. They hear that message too. You know, they want to hear that message. They want to be filled with that positive spirit, that positive energy. And a lot of times it's able to instill when we're being physical. So if you sit through an hour lecture, eventually you're going to start nodding off a little bit and like, you know, you're going to take a deep breath because it's a little hard to sit there all the time.

But when people are physical, they actually are able to hear that message. And so it's interesting with kids. They go home and they say, Mom, I learned about respect today. And mom's just like, I just talked to you yesterday about this. You know, you didn't listen to me yesterday. I said the exact same thing, but all of a sudden you heard that from your instructor. And so it's respecting, you know, martial arts has traditionally been like a disciplinarian sport. You know, so we talk that people say discipline all the time.

And like, I want to give my kid discipline. You know, I want my kid to be a disciplined person. It's a great thought. But I've tried to change people's thought process to self-discipline, self-respect, you know, just a, it's a different word shift, but it's a really big shift. And discipline for me, it comes back to, I'm telling you what to do. go be a good person. Do this. I told you to do it. Go do it now. Like, it's kind of militant a little bit and it has its roles. You know, it's a good thing. I was listening to Scott Sheffield the other day. It was interesting to hear, you know, how the military can create that discipline.

But a stronger form of discipline is self-discipline when you create it yourself. And I think one of the ways we create that is our instructors always, it's mutual respect with the kids, with the students. So it doesn't matter if the kid's four years old or if the student's 60 years old. They're treated with mutual respect. And so by our example of, you know, talking to this person with respect, you know, saying yes, sir, to them, thank you, ma'am, to them, you know, they could do it back to us. Or we could say, you know, bow to me. You know, this is martial arts, you know, bow down, you know, like say thank you, sir. You know, do as you're told. That's kind of the way it used to be. You know, we're giving people respect. And in turn,

they give us that respect back. And I would say even more, they would give it back to us. So it's an interesting environment for sure. That is because I think that that's where the challenge comes in when you're the parent and you've had a long day, is that you're not having the conversation with your kid of why respect matters and why the word and, like, the approach matters and how if you do respect other people, doors open for you. And I like the idea of like playing, not just playing the way. game but playing like the meta game of like you want to be invited back to play the games and

i think jordan peterson does a good job of kind of breaking that down for people that we get like often young people get caught up and i want to win this game this soccer game this uh battle against a person this chess game whatever it is and i think that the part that is important to understand is you want to be the person who gets invited back to play the games in the future and if you build mutual respect if you work to be in a way that's uh reciprocal with others That opens more doors because then people actually want you around. They have confidence in you that you're going to play fairly and reliably. And I think that at the end of the day, you just want your kid to be respectful when you're in the grocery store.

So you yell it at them. And then that doesn't resonate with them because they go, you're not respecting me in how you're talking to me right now. So why would I follow that? And I think that having role models like yourself who help develop these skills and give it in a different way resonate. more. And I'm just interested to know more about that kind of approach. How do you work with this counselor, you said, who's able to break these things down and almost deliver it in a way that's like a conversation rather than a direction for students? Yeah, yeah. The counselor on our board, he's a board member, his name's Scott Williams, great guy. You know, he's really transformed

the thought process on martial arts. We always talk about martial arts's mind, body, you know, it's mental and it's physical, but we've really tried to focus on that mental side of things. You know, obviously mental health is important. We're talking about it lots these days and it's out in the community. And so we really put a big focus on it. It is conversational. It's, and again, it's not directive in the sense. Directive almost again sounds like that discipline. You know, you're being told what to do. You know, you should be a good person because I tell you to be a good person. Well, no, I'm going to show you to be a good person. I'm going to talk about it. I'm going show my example and hopefully I can do my best you know nobody's perfect I'm not perfect

my staff's not perfect but they do do their best and that example is pass on to that next generation and then it goes on from there you know it's interesting I was thinking about the word like failure like like like you said like playing the meta game like you know not just here for one win I'm here for you know I'm here for the long run as a as a martial artist and as a person that knows the process you know I've been doing martial arts 20 years. I see the long game in people. You know, I don't see like, oh, this kid's not perfect here today. This person's not perfect. Like, something's going on. You know, why is this person acting out? You know, why aren't they paying attention right now? I'm not worried about that short term.

I'm worried about that long term because I know the people that go long term, the people that stay, that train for three, four, five, 10 years, whatever it is, those people are going to be good people. You know, like, it just happens. And so one of the, like, we have a notice. like in the parents area where people can watch and it essentially says for parents please be quiet you know a lot of parents want to kind of be on the sidelines like hey Johnny pay attention

you know hey hey look at the instructor you know and it's like no let your kid fail right now don't say anything let them fail let us handle that let us as instructors and martial artists and black builds take care of that process if he fails today good good you know he'll come back next day we'll try again, we'll work on it again.

And so failure is a big part of being in martial arts. I think about how many punches have I thrown in 20 years. It's probably tens of thousands. Like, it's just ridiculous when I think about how many techniques I've practiced and repetition over the years. How many times have I failed? Probably tens of thousands. Like, it's, we're, we want to be successful, and I get that, you know?

Like, it's everybody wants to win. I'm a very competitive person. I want to win as best. can. But the older I gets and the more I train, the more I realize that failure is so important, you know, it's almost more important than success. Where do you think that that comes from within the parent? Because it's almost interesting to think about like they're, they're almost like ashamed or afraid that their child is a reflection of who they are. Yeah. And so if their child doesn't do well or they're not paying attention, then you're going to look at them and judge the

parents for that. How do you go about that? And where do you see that in the parents? Because it almost seems like they lack a little bit of confidence in themselves as like, I am a good parent. If my child's struggling, they're struggling. And that's life. And people are going to show up some days on the ball and doing things properly. And the next day, maybe they didn't get a good sleep. Maybe they didn't, they had a bunch of Cheerios or snacks beforehand and they're not focused the way they should be. And just letting that be okay. So like, we hear a lot in, yoga, that kind of like calmness and that, like, being okay with that moment. Yeah.

And so what do you see when that parent kind of tries to step and tries to leap in as like a helicopter-type parent? Yeah. It does come from a place of lack, you know, like the parent is making up for something that, you know, they wish they had done before, you know, and I don't judge people, you know, like there's so much going on in our lives, we're so busy. We, you know, we work on 9 to 5, we get home, rush out the door, get our kids to our activities, you know, get home, get dinner going, you know, get the homework done, go to bed.

Like, our life is busy. So I don't judge people, but I do see, you know, the parents that are just a little bit too much, you know, they want like, Johnny, come on, you can do it, pay attention more. Come on, you, look at the instructor. Like, it's just too much from the sidelines. Yeah, they're kind of making up for lost time a little bit. They kind of sense in the moment, oh, like all these other kids are doing well, but my one child is maybe not doing well in this moment, that's okay, you know, like, and so that's why I try and always tell, talk to parents about patients, like our program, yeah, you know, you can come here for six months and you're going to get some benefits, you know, something's going to happen. It will be a positive experience

for you. But if you stay for a year and a half, two years, five years, the experience is going to become tenfold, you know, like the people that are that stay long term, those people are so dedicated. Those families are so dedicated to our program. And I feel very blessed. I'm like, you know, they send me messages and like, we're so thankful for your program. You know, we wear clothes over the Christmas break for two weeks. We can't wait to get back going again. And they know that they know the experience. They know that something positive is happening and they don't want to stop that positivity.

So it's typically people in like the first couple weeks, first month, first six months where the parents are maybe a little bit nervous about how their child should be doing. You know, why is that person so successful? and my kids, you know, struggling a little bit, don't worry, you know, like if you're just a little more patient, just wait, just wait, trust the process. Good things are coming for your child and your family, so. Right. I'm interested to know, just to wrap this part of the discipline and kind of self-development, is that, like, where else are people learning these skills? Where else is this being promoted? Because it seems like, for the most part, our education system is overwhelmed and teachers are turning out children as best they can, but I don't remember being taught about respect and

responsibility. It was, again, kind of in that finger waggy way. Like, I went to Central Elementary and they had like a shark motto of like respect to helpfulness and this kind of motto, but it didn't resonate and it didn't give me an understanding of why. Like, you can say like to be a good person, but to break that down for people and to explain like, again, you're going to be invited back. People are going to want to be around you. They're going to trust you. They're going to want to open doors for you. They're going to want to help in your development if you display these characteristics. So from your perspective, as someone who sits down, tries to develop a plan on how to deliver this information, where else do you feel like people are getting this type of information?

Because from my perspective, as someone who's watched this rights movement increase, I haven't seen the same movement of responsibility increase because anybody who understands how like the constitution developed it was the belief that you get these rights because you have these responsibilities and you're endowed with them because of who you are as an individual and you're the cornerstone of the state and so we give you all of these rights and freedoms but you have responsibilities with those that's something i haven't heard as much about but it it dovetails to what you're talking about of this self-development and so i'm interested to know where you think other people are getting this type of information from and if it's lacking

how do we how do we start to fix this i think it is lacking and i think it's a big problem um you know i was thinking on the way over here i was thinking about confidence and how that plays into what we do but the other word i was thinking about to other words was self-responsibility self-responsibility is a cornerstone of martial arts if you're not responsible for yourself if you don't uh put that effort upon yourself you will fail and you and you won't you'll quit you know like Like, not that you fail, fails good, feeling is good, but, you know, quitting as a different thing. And it's always kind of, we're passing the blame to other people, you know, like, oh, the teacher at school isn't doing a good job for my child. Oh, the parent isn't doing this.

Oh, you know, the prime minister isn't doing this. You know, like, we're always passing blame on to some other figures. How about yourself? You know, what did you do today? And so we're really drilling that into the students. I was telling a parent last night. And, you know, our environment is, you know, a lot of kids that maybe don't do well on team sports really do well in martial arts because it is an individual sport.

It's also a team environment, though, too, so I think it balances out both. But I said to the parent at the end of the day, the success of your child here, it does come back to them. We're going to help them and we're going to work hard for them. We're going to be beside them. We're going to do as best we can to get them there. But it's going to be them that carries that forward. And so you see a black build.

Black build is a prime example of the person with self-responsibility. And so how many people are black-fills? Well, less than 1% make it there. You know, it's, it's, we, I think we have a great system. We really try our best and really have a system set up for success. But still only 1% gets there. And that's just an international average. You know, the black belts that exist out in the world, they're few and far between.

But it's those self-responsibility is really the key ingredient. And I remember I applied for a job, I think it was 18 or so. And I was nervous. I went into the interview and I was like, oh, how's this going to go? I'm not really experienced at this. And he's like, you know, what do you do for fun? You know, what do you, what keeps you busy? And I said, well, I do martial arts and I'm a black belt.

And he said, you're hired. Interview over. You know, I was like, that was easy. but he knew that the life skills that had been instilled in me as a black belt would translate into me being successful and me being a good worker, you know, and it would help his company. And so it was kind of a light bulb moment for me, how important a black belt is in the community, how important is at the individual level. Yeah, I don't see it in many places.

I think a lot of people are trying. You know, I think a lot of people see that, you know, that something's wrong, you know. society's going off on a different tangent. They don't really know how to fix it. But I think we're primed in martial arts to really be a part of that change because the physical and mental component combined together in that moment are so powerful. You know, a child can sit at their desk at school for six hours, and the teacher can be talking about all these things and really trying to lift up the community

and lift up that child. That child might be buzzing. You know, they're just sitting there. It's just like, when can I get out of this place? Like, this desk is not conducive for me. And it's no fault of the teacher. It's, I think we're just, and I think, I think the education system is realizing that. There is more outdoor classes.

There's more, okay, instead of sending this child to the principal's office to, you know, give them crap, how about sending that child for a lap around the school? Go for a run, get outside, and go for one lap, get back to your classroom. That child's going to do better. So I think people are realizing that in that combination. and so for us as martial artists I think we see success in that in a regular basis because yeah we're being physical and then at that moment we talk about hey you know maybe you should respect to your parents maybe you should respect the people in your community

maybe you should pick up some trash that's outside on the ground and it's not that nobody else has said it it's just being physical they're sweating and then all of a sudden light bulb we got them and I'm not taking that as a claim like we're the best and we're the only ones that are possible to do this, but I do see it. And yeah, I hope more people and more organizations kind of take that upon themselves. My boys and I started dirt biking last year. And I ride Harley, ride sport bikes throughout my life. I love that feeling. And so, you know, we went to Popcombe, Popcombe motor park, and I wasn't sure what to expect. They had some intro lessons. And, you know, they're nervous and I'm nervous. You know, just see how.

this goes and you know I'm very critical of coaches and leaders you know being one myself you know if I'm going to put my child into your program like you better be doing a good job like because I can't sit on the sidelines and you know see something not not so good and popcom you know they're riding around they're sweating they're having a great time and then uh one of the coaches john older guy um I can't remember his last name but uh he just kind of comes over to them and he says, you know, you're so important in the world. He's telling this to the kids. You're so important in the world. If you weren't here, you know, the world would be not as good of a place as when you are here. And I got all emotional. I was like,

I started crying on the sidelines. And there was just a beautiful experience because my kids, they were having such a great time. They were doing so well. They were sweating. And all of a sudden, this person said, they're so important to this world. You know, this place it's a better place with them here. And for like a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old to hear that, it was just like, bam, like he hit home and he hit home in the right spot, in the right moment. And so for me, I was so excited and so proud and just so grateful that a program like this exists in our community.

Here's people thinking, oh, it's a dirt bike. You know, they're a bunch of Yahoo's ripping around and burning gas and, you know, but no, it was so spiritual. and so beautiful. It's, yeah, it was a great experience. Yeah, I think that that can lack in certain, like I think of like soccer and basketball, but it's not always that you're ending that class off or you're trying to make sure that they take away something for their personal development or for their personal self-worth. Often we can focus too much on the skills and the techniques that we can forget about the value of just recognizing a person. And I think that that's so important.

Can you tell us about your kind of journey into starting this gym? What happened before that? You said you took a job and somebody hired you because of your black belt experience. What was that kind of journey to get to here today where you have your own gym? Yeah. You know, when I was a teenager, I started teaching pretty right away. I started when I was 15 doing martial arts, and I was a helper and leader, and I got involved very, very early. So even as a low color belt, I wanted to be involved and help out. And I saw people running their business, and I saw like, oh, wow, this is something I could do as a career.

You know, I was a smart guy in school, but I just hated being the desk. You know, I just couldn't do it. You know, it's so physical. I wanted to be active. And but I also wanted to, you know, be successful. I wanted to have money in the bank count. And the only thing at the time was, oh, martial artists are poor. You know, they're not successful.

They're always working three jobs just to get it by. And I was a little bit worried about that. I didn't want to, I knew I didn't have that type of energy just to, you know, work in all these different things. And other people do it. and they do a great job of it, but I just knew I wasn't one of those people, so I took some other jobs and, you know, maybe I'll go down a different path and, you know, hopefully that leads me to some level of success. And at some point along the way, that itch got back and, you

know, I want to be physical again and, you know, I'm not happy. I'm sitting on a desk. I'm sitting on a phone or, you know, I'm just not doing what I want to do. And so I got back into martial arts and got back into teaching. And yeah, I started identifying places where I want to do business. And I originally looked at the Okinawagon. I was like, oh, I want to live there. You know, I like the lake life and being out in the water. But then I started looking closer to home. I grew up in Mission. And I saw Chilac. And I saw Chilac being underserviced. I didn't think that there was enough martial arts servicing the area. And I thought there was an opportunity there. And I came here in about 2008, and I looked at the current building

that we were at on Better Road. And there was another martial art that was in there. It was called Family Fitness. And I'm like, oh, this is such a great location. It's a great spot. You know, and yeah, oh, they're lucky to be here. And a year later, they went out of business. They closed down and the building was free and available. And I kind of jumped on it. So it was kind of just the perfect timing of events. And yeah, it's meant to be. And so, yeah, we opened up in 2009 here in Chilwack, and so I think it's about 11, 12 years now that we've been at it. And, yeah, it's been a great experience. You know, we've been successful here in Chilwack.

I think what we're teaching and what we're trying to pass on to our students, I think people feel that. I think they recognize that. And, yeah, they promoted to their friends and their family. And so things have been good here in Chilac. I love it here, you know. How did you go about doing this with your wife? were you guys already together prior to that and you guys kind of developed this plan at the same time? Where did she fit into developing this gym? Yeah, she was a martial arts student as

well. So she was a black belt as well. She was training. And yeah, it's, I was kind of going this direction and she was always there with me. And, you know, it's funny I kind of threw her into, you know, like we were together. We had, you know, been living together for a long time in Abbotsford. We had an apartment together. And then we moved out to Chilach. And I kind of, she didn't have any training in, you know, teaching or, you know, running an office or running business. I didn't have a lot of those skills either. We kind of threw each other into it. And, you know, I, I brought her along for the ride. And, you know, she's not a type of person. She's not like, she doesn't want to be in front of the class. She doesn't want to, you know,

she's just not that type of leader. Well, she'll stand in front of a large group of people where, for me, I'm more comfortable doing that. So a lot of skills outside of her comfort zone that she really pushed through and developed. And, you know, even though that wasn't her natural being, you know, she did it. And so people, yeah, they saw me. I'm at the front of the class and, you know, I'm leading the class. That's fine. But there's no way we would have been successful without her.

You know, like, so it was really meant to be that we met in martial arts. You know, we trained together. We still started the business together. You know, it was not anything that we really visualized. We didn't talk about like, hey, we should open a martial arts gym together. Or, you know, it was just kind of flying by the seat of our pants. You know, we're young people. I think I was 24.

I think she was 21. And here we're teaching martial arts of people that are, you know, twice our age. And so we were talking about discipline and respect to people that are much older than us, you know. So it was kind of funny that we started this together. and, you know, it could have gone a different way. We could have failed, you know, but I think people caught on to both of our energies. And so, yeah, you got me up in the front, a little more exuberant, a little more outgoing.

But having a person that's got that soft touch, that detailed touch, that can go to the side with somebody and, you know, care for them and show them that love and compassion, you know, it's so important. And so I think both our personalities really were just like perfect to be running the business together. Right. It kind of sounds like that idea of the ying and yang and that balancing out. Can you tell us like what you admire about your wife? Because I think that that's something that often we overlook when we're doing interviews or when we're rushing through things is that we forget about the people who helped build us up, who helped open doors and make sure that we're taking care of. Because often we think of people who are like crazy. successful scientists or whatever they do, but they have to go home to a family that's going

to debrief with them, talk to them, figure out what went right, what went wrong, how can we do better tomorrow, share those vulnerable moments. Those are the people who kind of help you when you're being all energetic, go out into that where it's not fake. It's genuine because you do have a healthy home life and you're going into an environment and being yourself and not carrying stress or an argument or those types of things constantly. where you're able to go, okay, now I feel better. Maybe I had a tough day at work and now I get to come home, debrief, and start the next day back on the right foot.

So can you tell us about what you saw in your wife, how that developed, and perhaps how you proposed? Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think sometimes I can be a little bit of a bulldozer, you know, like I'm so excited and I want to go in a direction and I want to just do this and do that and get her done. Like, let's go. And, you know, I forget those soft skills, you know, and I think, yeah, I'm trying to develop

myself as best I can and try and change and grow. But my wife, it's definitely that yin-yang. You know, it's definitely that counterbalance. She has those soft skills. She has those personal abilities. You know, everybody likes her. She's kind. Everybody. You know, she treats everybody with respect. You know, so, yeah, it's not only the business, but in our home life, you know, she kind of sees those small details. I'm kind of a big picture guy, I think. And she's, you know, she's thinking about those small details. You know, we had a interior designer over to our house and I'm like, I'm thinking like, oh, dollar, dollars, dollars, dollar, dollar. And she's like, well, you know, like if we just change this, we just change this, it's not a huge

renovation. But if we just change this little bit here, it's going to brighten up the room. It's going to brighten up the environment. You know, she lights candles a little time. You know, she buys me, you know, colognes and different little scents. And, you know, at the gym, you know, it's a sweaty, smelly environment. You know, she'll bring a nice scented candle in and light it at the front desk. And so it's those little things that she takes care of that maybe, not that I don't see them, but I don't want to say I don't care about them, but I'm just so thinking about other things. And she comes in and, you know, kind of takes care of all those things. So it's, yeah, you know, it's funny. I was thinking about her on the way down. And people would probably

think, you know, like, what's a household of martial artists look like? How does arguments get settled in the household of black belt. And yeah, she can kick my ass if she wants. You know, she's tough. She's got skills and, you know, she's very physical too. And, yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about our proposal the other day. We were talking about the other day because we were up skiing.

And I actually proposed for Mount Baker on New Year's Eve back in 2009. And I set up this whole thing with my friends. And I took this jump and then I purposely bailed and I had this big crash and I was lying down like I was kind of knocked out like I was hurt. And, you know, it's funny. She's up there on the top of the hill laughing with our friends. So she's sitting up there like, get up, you know, like tough it up. And so, you know, I'm trying to sell it. So, you know, I just keep, I stay down.

And, you know, our friends, of course, they know what's going on. So they're like, you should go check on them. Like, I think he's hurt. And so, you know, I slowly get up and, you know, take off my board and, you know, had the ring in my pocket, which was terrifying. You got a couple thousand bucks in your pocket on a ski hill. Like, you drop this thing, it's gone. And, yeah, and then, you know, I proposed in the snow. And, yeah, it was beautiful.

And, yeah, it was really just combines, you know, my loves, you know, like, I love. I love her and, you know, it's a beautiful proposal, you know, I'm outside, you know, in the fresh air, you know, doing something I love to do. So it's like a perfect combo of just some awesome things. And it sounds like she said yes. Yeah, she said yes. Yeah. Hopefully she keeps saying yes. That's fantastic. And I think it's just so valuable because it does sound like you to balance each other out and just thinking about like the home development because it's something that As I get older, I start to realize that some people know how to decorate, but they don't know how to make it a home. Yeah.

Like there's something like intangible about making something a home in comparison to just a house or just a good looking house. Like you can hire people to decorate your house to make it look a certain way, but that doesn't mean that it has that feel, that comfort, like that warmth that's like, I don't know, it's difficult to describe. And so I think that there is such value in that. And I do think that that's something that often gets overlooked when you're proposing like, oh, maybe we should do this renovation or that, is that like, this can make it feel more comfortable, more warm, more familiar. And there's just something undefinable about what the possibilities of that could be for the warmth in that home and the sense of love and compassion for other people. Moving forward a little bit more, how did you go about developing the programs?

Because it seems like you guys are very busy. You guys run a lot of different programs from all age groups. So can you walk us through where perhaps your focus was when you started and then filling in those gaps along the way? Because I saw that you did like ninja training. And I like that just, it was like, that's brilliant. Like that's brilliant marketing. It's brilliant.

It's going to resonate with kids. And you can actually teach skills through that. So where did you guys start? And then how did you develop the other courses that you guys put in? And where did you see other gaps that you guys could fill? Yeah. Yeah, I think we started right away, you know, things were great right off the get-go. I had a big vision right away, and I saw a big school, I saw a big membership.

And so I started with a full schedule. You know, a lot of times people start their business small, and it's like, well, we don't have many people yet, so we'll start small and kind of grow from there. But I had a vision of being big right away, and it did happen. You know, our first month, we had over 100 students. And so there was a really great start, a really great get-go. And the thing about that was that we were so focused on the martial arts, like the martial arts, like there was nothing else.

There was no side programs. There was no ninja training. There's no child care. Like, it's just martial arts. And so we really focused on that and things are great, you know, things, things went well. You know, and then the next thing we kind of added in was our child care program. We started that in 2012, so about three years into the business.

And we started that solely because parents were complaining to me. They were saying, you know, like, hey, I'm picking up my kid after school after their child care. And then I got to bring my kid here late at night. And then we're getting home, you know, 7.7.30. You know, I'm paying for child care. I'm paying for this. Like, this is a lot. And I'm like, oh, like, yeah, that is a lot.

You know, I was kind of just starting off as being a father at the time too. So I was like, wow, yeah, that is a lot. That's a lot to handle. And so we kind of added that solely because, yeah, like these kids that maybe were having to go to child care after school. and, you know, mom and dad were so busy, they would never come into our gym. They would never be able to see our gym because, yeah, unfortunately, mom and dad had to be at work. You know, they had to be at work till 6 o'clock. So we started that. And I had a small vision for that. I thought, like, you know, if we get five, 10 kids in that, like, great, you know, that'll be a good service. You know, we'll make a little extra money. Like, that'll be great. And, yeah, that's turned into its whole thing now, you know, like, you know, we're licensed for 46 kids. So every day after, school. We have 46 kids that come to our program and they get to do martial arts every day after school. And so our business has really become 50-50, you know, like it's martial arts and we also do child care. But they both work together. And so, you know, like some people ask me,

like, oh, can we come for child care and not do the martial arts? And no, you can't do that. Like, the martial arts is the key component here. You know, this is our life skills program. When your kid comes here for child care after school, they're learning martial arts because That's what's going to make the difference in their life. You know, like, yes, I can provide a child care service and do as best I can. But when they step on the mats and they do all those skills and they train together, that's where they're going to learn their skills. So I think they both just helped each other be successful and, you know, keeps the ball rolling.

You know, after that, we've started to add these little things like, you know, little ninja nights and we've had some nerve forward nights and some movie nights and different things like that. Time to time we do some sleepovers of the gym. but all these things that we do they all center around martial arts so even if we're doing a Nerf Wars night you know the kids are super jacked they're going to shoot some people with some nerve

guns and so fine they have a have a blast but half hour 45 minutes of that say three hour event they're going to be doing martial arts you know that's still the foundation there so yeah it's that's so interesting and I just I want you to

elaborate more on what you've seen in these young people because I imagine that the experiences are so valuable and almost difficult to put into words, how that could change a young person's life. And without getting too specific examples, have you seen like someone come in one side of the spectrum, super angry, super aggressive, super inconsiderate, maybe trying to be chauvinistic and then move and pivot and start to be able to develop themselves in that way? What have you seen in terms of the life skills that you're providing through that program? Yeah, we've seen lots of that. It's very regular, you know? Like, it's, you know, again, people think that it's like, oh, my kids, you know, being bad at school, they're getting in trouble.

They're fighting. They're doing this like that. The negative things that aren't good. And if they keep going that way, sure, life might not be good for them. And, yeah, martial arts, it kind of levels that out. I know as a 15-year-old teenager, even from myself, I was angry. I don't know what I was angry about. just hormones or whatever, but I'd get upset at home and tell my parents off and, you know,

I'd throw things against the wall and, you know, just like, you know, it's like a 15-year-old twin temper tantrum is, I don't know what was causing that, but I was. And I think for me, martial arts leveled me out. And so I see it myself. Like people, people see this kind of calm, usually collected person, you know, pretty patient person. But in my younger years, I was very impatient, you know, and had that anger from wherever that was just kind of flowed through. So, I know it, I know it works for myself. But, you know, it's interesting. I saw this, I was thinking about this one kid, and East Indian boy used to teach and very low confidence. You know, he just came into the gym, just head down all the time, never talked to me, just never said a word,

just kind of floated through class. And, you know, he was improving over time. And, you know, I'm like, ah, you know, he could be better here, you know. Like, I'm, I could, I could, I could see something better in him, but just things weren't working. He was just, he was training and just, he's still confidence with staying low. And I found out that he's getting bullied at school. And, you know, he's getting pushed around. People were calling him names. They were, you know, separating him from his friends and, you know, kind of, they were making him be a loner. He didn't want to be a loner, but they were kind of just, you know, excluding him and putting him in the corner all the time. And not the school, but the other kids at the school.

And so I remember we talked and I said, you know, like we kind of have like a three strikeout rule. Like if somebody does something to you, you talk to a teacher, you talk to a parent, you know, you try and get other people to help out. And second time, you know, you talk to your parents. Like, you know, there's like you get your immediate help, the person closest to you. Strike one. Strike two, you're recruiting others, you know, your parents, you know, your grandparents, you know, you're letting other people know that this is happening to you. and strike three is you get hands on you get physical and you know of course that's not a message that's condoned people are like oh you know you shouldn't be teaching that but we see people it's

kind of like you know you put a nail on the desk and you know if you just tap that nail in there a little bit you know you'll be able to pull that nail out you'll be able to save that nail no problem but the more and more you hammer that nail into that desk there the more and more that nails gets ingrained and you think about a child or you think about a person, the more and more they get bullied, the more and more they get pushed around, when that nail goes fully in the desk, how easy is it to get that nail out? It's very difficult, it's super difficult to pull that nail back to reality. And so you think about a child and you think about somebody that's getting bullied. The more and more that happens, and we do live in a

hands-off society where fighting is condoned. And I'm not promoting fighting in any way. But when you see, especially your own child, somebody you care about, I care about my students a lot. And so I remember seeing this boy. And this is not the only time this happened. It's happened lots of times. And we've dealt to a similar situation. But I was thinking about him. And anyways, he's been trying his best and doing his best to be a nice person and try and get out of this bullying situation.

It's not happening. And so we had that talk. And probably about a week later, of course, the bully comes back. a couple of boys come back and push him around and like they're getting hands on with him and push him against the wall and all these things and he gets some space and he steps side kicks you know he just does a full out sidekick into this kid's gut and just sends the kid flying he's telling me he's like I sent the kid flying and uh you know so he just takes this kid off his feet just kicks him once and just levels the kid and then he grabs the other kid and he

threw the other kid on the ground and uh he changed that day That day was so important for him. It brought him back to reality. It brought him back to life. And his mom's calling me and she's just so thankful. She's just, you know, like, oh, I'm so appreciative of our program. She's so thankful of me. And, you know, she's just singing the praises and just so excited and happy that she's got

her kid back. And she couldn't do it herself. You know, she needed our help. You know, he needed our help. And, yeah, it was just so cool. The kid comes in the next day. and he comes in I think he I think he didn't want me to know because of course we we try and we tell kids all the time like don't do that you know like you know martial

artists don't fight you know we're patient people we don't get into ourselves into those situations so he thought I was that I was going to be disappointed in him and I went up to him and gave him a high five and told him I was super super proud of him like great job you know he handled himself well like he didn't he didn't beat the heck out of this kid he just stood up for himself. And so I was so proud of him. And that's just one moment. We see that all the time. You know, it's a, it's a pleasure to see, you know, when people are stuck in that low confidence, that low self-esteem and something happens. You know, of course, we don't want it to be a fight or a self-defense situation like that. But when something happens and they recover back to the person they should be, just get back to level at least. And then we can grow confidence from there. It's a beautiful experience and it's a special thing to be a part of. That's amazing. And I just think of like my previous experiences because I was bullied by one person in particular over, I think the span of probably a year or two years. And this person would work to break my own boundaries and prove that he could. And so like the first time I think I was like eight or nine. And he made me swear. And he threatened to beat the crap out of me if I didn't. And I was like, no, I don't do that. Like I'm not that type of person. And then, pushed that boundary, made me do it. And then the next time, it was just threatening.

But then in front of all of my friends, he brought a knife, held it to my throat. Wow. And I told my mom, I told anybody who would listen. And a few days later, in front of my mom, one of her friends and one of my peers, he went past and my mom was like, hey, you can't do that. And he's like, what are you going to do? And there's that moment of like, oh, this person that I've, I thought, like, she runs my mom runs my life, so he's going to listen and he couldn't

have cared less. And then having that like process of like, sometimes there isn't a parent that can step in that can fix this. This isn't something that's always so cut and dry once you get told on to the principal or whoever it is that that's going to fix the problem. It doesn't always do that. And I think that it's tough for people to want to grapple with that. And I'm interested in your thoughts to develop on that further because that does seem like

it's it's the tough thing to say it's the thing um in this conversation where people are going to go whoa whoa whoa violence we're like let's not go there like i'm all for discipline and education but there is a certain point where a bully needs to be told they can't anymore and there's not a better person to do that than the individual in the circumstance and it seems like the thing that's going to be the least popular in most people's minds because they just want peace and we're all calm and it's like that doesn't always work and so i'm just interested. Could you elaborate on that more, your thoughts on, on that dichotomy, on the challenge of saying that to a parent or a principal or an educator who's going to be, like, what

would you say to that person who's so on the other side of that? Yeah. I think, you know, principals and educators and teachers, like, they know this is true. Like, they work with children. They know it's true. But, you know, they're handcuffed in their job. And of course, they can't promote that or talk about that. It's, they're getting trouble and rightfully so. Like, it's not something that you promote on a regular basis. So, you know, martial artists. we're in a prime position where we can really take everybody's feelings into account. And almost every class we talk about not putting our hands in other people. You know, martial artists are peaceful people.

If you're getting in a self-defense situations, something's really wrong. Something's not right. Most of the martial arts, I would say 99% of our members never get in a self-defense situation. And so it's few and far between. But when it does need to happen, like it needs to happen. And so I think it, again, comes back to self-responsibility. We can recruit others. We do our best.

We talk to our parents. We talk to our mom or dad. We talk to our grandma and grandpa, our teacher, our principal at school. We try and recruit all these people for help, and hopefully they can help. But can they be there at every single moment? Can they be there to protect us? No. And it's a tough thing for a parent.

You know, like I homeschooled my boys for the first three years. You know, I didn't want to let them go. You know, I got, I raised them. I spent all these, all this time with them and trying to develop them into the people they are. And if I let them out and I'm not there with them at school, so are they going to be safe? Are they going to be protected? You know, for me, that was a tough thing to get over. They do go to school now and they love it.

They're having a great time. But, yeah, it comes back to that self-responsibility. So my kids do martial arts, you know, they've been training since they were three years old. My oldest is nine. My youngest is seven. my oldest is getting close to his black belt my my young guy he's about halfway halfway up to his black belt so for me i can feel confident that for the most part they're going to be okay i've given them the skills they've worked hard for the skills they've been training hard for

you know since they're three years old they put the time in so it does come back to self responsibility again we're asking all these people you know it's kind of like a gun conversation I was listening to Scott Sheffield. He was talking about how the average Canadians never put a gun in their hands and how disconnected they are from the military. And I thought that was so interesting because, you know, it's, most people have never punched anything. Not another person, but most people have never punched a target.

They've never hit a heavy bag. They've never, you know, gone against another person. You know, it's interesting you were talking about dance before. You know, dance and martial arts are very similar. I always tell people they're very similar except in martial arts. We go against another person. person. And so, yeah, it's, that self-responsibility is just so crucial. It's so important. And when we give ourselves the kids, our kids, the time and space to go into society and we've

given them these skills, they will be successful. It's guaranteed. It will happen. It's that helicopter parenting, and I'm guilty of it too, you know, like we stand over top of them and make sure everything's perfect and they're going to be okay. But we do need to let go and And, you know, if they fail this time, if they don't do good or, you know, something bad happens, they're going to learn from that. And, you know, like I said before, that failure, it can, it's tough, you know, nobody likes to fail, but it can be a super important part of learning. Right. You've mentioned it a few times, the belt system. I think of during my childhood was during the period where everybody started getting participation trophies.

they all started getting like I get and like I don't know if people don't realize this but when you're a kid like you know you know when somebody gets the real trophy and when you get this little ribbon that says participate like you know that this is not worth anything that goes right in the garbage like I don't know if people think that children aren't as smart as they are like I don't know if they like because it's getting it and looking at it and going like I don't want this like everybody has this they throw it out yeah and I don't know if people just, like, it's like, you almost have to be naive to think that your kids so not aware that they receive that and that makes them feel worth anything.

But those, that whoever believes in that idea looks perhaps at your belt system, at the belt system of martial arts and goes, oh, well, you have a blue belt and I only have a white belt, and now I don't feel good about myself because I'm not there. Yeah. I'm interested if you can talk about the belt system and in that vein of the people who would go, that's judgmental, that's inconsiderate to have people. at different levels and to be pointing it out and you're differentiating people unnecessarily. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, there's different ways of doing it. All martial arts have their own belt system. So I can't speak for other martial arts. But I can say that, you know, just from being around martial arts for the past 20 years, we do have a progressive system. So it's this balancing act. You know, the participation trophies, yeah, those are terrible.

You know, we're seeing the effect on the kids and they don't care about it. You know, they'll throw it in the garbage. It's meaningless. But the belt system is, I would say, the most crucial thing we have in our program. It's very crucial. You know, I see some martial arts, and they have white belts. And this person's a white belt for, like, maybe two years. And what they're going for is they're going for perfection.

And so it's like they're building up these white belt skills that will be just so perfect. You know, your white belt skills will just be, like, just deadly. You're going to be so awesome. You're an amazing white belt. how many people actually stick around for that? How many people actually stick around to make it to their next belt after a couple of years? Almost no one. The failure rate is extremely high.

And so it's not, I don't want to say the belts are related to a participation trophy, but if there's no measure of success, people will quit. We see it all the time. If we have a student that's been training for a few months and they haven't gone up to another level, and they haven't achieved their next bell yet, they're going to quit. It's guaranteed. And so for us as instructors,

kind of the business side of it is we're so focused on making sure that students are successful that they can get to their next belt. Because if we don't get them to their next belt, they're going to quit. We know this. We've proven it thousands of times. And so if we don't focus on their success, if we don't get them to that place and help them get to that place,

we won't be able to teach them anymore. And so now we've lost our purpose. And so, you know, we talk about all these life skills, talk about all this mental health, all this discipline, all this respect, all these things like that. I can't teach you if you quit. So I'm losing my opportunity to pass off what I feel is a valuable skill, something that's going to impact your life and you're going to be able to carry these skills for the rest of your life and you will be successful because of these skills that we're teaching here.

But if you quit, I've lost my opportunity. so making sure that students have a measure of success so they can see like like in our gym it's very it's very crystal clear who's a black belt and and not just their belt their color of their belt but their skills and just the people they are are just a reflection of our program and so when somebody watches them doing they're doing their skills on the mat there's always a wow factor they're like wow that's a black belt and so it's like there's no dispute like like like like that person's a black belt. Like, you can't compare somebody else and say this is unfair because that person is clearly different. And they've earned that over time. Um, yeah, I kind of lost my train of thought there, but, uh, is there like a logic to the color scheme of which ones go first? Because you think of like, I think it goes, is it white, yellow, brown, blue? Yeah. And like, why, why these colors? Yeah, like, there is different thoughts and different martial arts have their own thoughts about that, but white is kind of like pure innocence. Like, you almost don't know. Like, it's almost

like a child, like, you know, like you're a beautiful person, but there's just things that you don't know. Like, you're just so innocent. You're unaware of maybe what other things are happening in the world. You're unaware of the martial arts out there, the skills they're about to come, so you're just really pure and innocent. But I don't really think about that because black is almost kind of like people have like a dark cloud or something. Like, it's like a bad thing almost like, oh, the person's a black belt. They're like kind of like a badass. Like they're, you know, they can beat other people up or something like that.

So I don't want to connotate colors to the different things like that. But that measure of success is just really so crucial. So, you know, when we see students come in the gym, they have stripes on their belt. And the reason when we have those stripes on their belt is we can see what classes they've been to. So if we don't see a certain color on the belt, oh, they haven't been to self-defense day. You know, we have six different training days. And so, you know, we have a foundations day, which is kind of the basic martial art movements. We have a sparring day where we put on gloves and chin pads and figure and actually battle it out.

You have a forms day where they practice like their cata and their patterns and put all their moves together. Okay. Can you go through those in more detail? Because that's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, each training day has its own, like, we do mixed martial arts. So each training day kind of contributes to that mixed martial arts.

So we have students come to all those days. If you're not coming, if you're missing a day, you're missing a day, you're missing a. huge part of the program. So the foundational day, the A day, that's kind of the basic martial art movements, very across the board for all martial arts. If you go to a different martial arts, you're going to see those foundational skills, kicking, punching, stances, basic blocks, you know, different things like that. The sparring day, we put on the equipment, the gloves and shin pads and feet gear, and we put on some chest protectors so you don't get hurt, and you battle it out with a partner. You know, that's really hands-on, and, you know, you do those skills, you practice,

It's not a big free-for-all fight, but you're practicing those skills, and then eventually, you know, you start, you know, testing your skills and seeing how it works. And that class is so important because it really gives people that confidence and that self-esteem. You know, you can talk about self-defense all day and you can talk about, you know, you can practice punching and kicking all day. You can set up a heavy bag here in your house and go out of it for the next 10 years until you do it against another person. You don't know self-defense. So it's a really big confidence boost. It's a little scary. You know, you're fighting against somebody else.

But when people kind of get their skills and get their confidence and it starts coming together, you just see them rise up. And you just see that internal, that mental, emotional power start coming out. So it's really powerful. The forms day, it's kind of like dance, you know, like dance. You choreograph all the dance techniques and then you perform your dance. Forms and cata and patterns, that's like martial – it's not dancing, but it's martial arts, you know, your kicks and punches, your blocks, all your techniques, your movements. into that form. So it's a big skill builder.

It's really important for training. You know, you think about, you know, everybody knows how to walk. You know, it's like, well, do you know how to walk and then punch somebody

and then kick and then land in a stance and move? Like, there's a lot of different movements going on. And so it really challenges your balance and your focus and, you know, just your overall athleticism.

So it's another powerful day, I guess. The next training day we have is a self-defense day. So that's, we practice actual street level of self-defense. You know, we practice a system that actually the police use, the military uses. It's very practical.

It's simple, but it's effective. So we try not to dress it up too much or make it too fancy. It's just very foundational, and you can use it on the streets, and, you know, no problem. So, yeah, the next training day we do, we have, it's called a freestyle day. We do a lot of gymnastics and agility on those days. We break boards on those days. It's a lot of fun. And then the final day, we have.

have is a grappling day. We do more of the judo and jujitsu, more of the takedowns and on the ground self-defense. If you're actually wrestling, you're putting your hands on with somebody. So it's, again, that hands-on with not just kids, but adults too. It's when you're connected to another person, when you're practicing with another person, there's a lot of humanity there. You know, there's a lot of, you care for the other person. You know, you treat the other person with respect. You know, I think it comes back to, you know, like I said, you know, martial artists are very peaceful people. I know, like, if this person goes hard on me in class and, you know, if I'm not paying attention or if I, you know, if I'm not doing my best, I'm going to get

hurt. And so like there's a real awareness and real centeredness. You have to be here right now with this other person. So there's a lot of connection there that you build camaraderie with your partner. But then it also takes it out into that, into the street. So you know that, okay, if I perform these skills, or if I use these skills in self-defense against another person, they will get hurt. You know, it's really, violence, it could be very violent. And so I think it really humbles people. And so I think you had mentioned before about, you know, people that come in that are kind of chauvinistic or, you know, they're kind of just puffing their chest out and, you know, I'm a tough guy and, you know, all this stuff. And we do get those people from time to time.

you know, we've definitely built a family atmosphere as a positive atmosphere where I think that's kind of gotten out there in the community and people know that. But over the years, we get people from time to time that come in and try and be tough and, you know, do all this stuff. And it was funny. This one guy came in and this was years ago. But he tried to, like, I'm the instructor and he tried to, like, embarrass me on the mats. Like, that's a brand new student. Like, imagine coming to somebody's, like, business or home and, like, you know, like making fun of them or like trying to hurt them like just a really weird weird thought but you know from time to time we see these people and so this adult he uh you know we're in the

sparring class we got the gear on and all that stuff and you know he he's just his intention was to embarrass me and show me up and hurt me uh to prove whatever thing he was trying to prove and you know i let him do that for a little bit you know i'm capable enough to uh move around and take care of myself and defend myself um but eventually it's kind of like that East Indian boy that I taught you know I stepped back and I ended up kicking him in the side and kicking him in the guts and hit him a few times and and I found out a few weeks later that his ribs were actually broken you know and I didn't intend to do that not one bit you know it's I didn't want to hurt him I was just kind of trying to just kind of just keep that

distance keep that space and just just show him that you need to be respectful right now you need to, you know, just calm down. I don't know what you're doing here, what your intention is here, but, like, it's not going to happen here. And so, yeah, I found out, and I found out from another person that he actually got hurt. And, you know, I felt bad about it, but he also never came back. And so I felt I not only protected myself, but I protected our gym environment. Our gym environment is so positive. It's so welcoming. It's so inclusive. That one person like that could destroy it. It could destroy our business.

It could destroy the feeling. You know, right now, I think about our adult program. Our adult program right now, and I'm really upset about all these shutdowns and, you know, all these vaccine passports and all these different things. You know, our adult program is on pause. And they've been on pause multiple times throughout COVID. I've been really upset about that because our adult program is so strong. It's so good.

The people in there are so amazing. They're so positive. they go and hang out after class like they're all friends outside the gym they build those friendships because of the gym and so our gym environment is so important you know like it's so important to me that it's positive that it's safe that people feel included you know like I said you know like inclusion's kind of a buzzword um you know it's kind of tossed around here and there but no it's honored in the gym you know you can come from any background sexual orientation ethnic ethnicity and you're welcoming the gym and so if anybody tries to disrupt that I won't have any

part of that so right I just want to go back to that story about that person who came in because it does relate a lot to to that young boy who was being bullied in that if you're going there to try and challenge the instructor like day one it's almost like they're going there to show I'm better than the instructor I don't need to be here so if I beat him then his gym is stupid, I'm great, and I'm just going to leave now, I don't have to come back because I'm the best. And the only way from even my perspective to resolve that to make sure that this person doesn't start posting on social media about how he's better than the gym, well, I beat the guy

who runs the gym and I'm, look at me, like, that mentality would have been persistent. It would have continued beyond, I think, that day if I had to hypothesize just trying to put myself in that person's shoes because there is like maybe it's more i guess it would be more men i would suspect that want to show i'm the best of something i'm look at me um i'm going to show off i'm going to um puff out my chest and show that i'm the best and that mentality it's like there's not many ways when you're at that point in your life where you have got that mindset that's going to detract to you uh like a reasonable conversation of like weighing the pros and cons of doing that is not going to resonate with that person. And I've had friends who are now RCP officers

who've had people say like, oh, let's just roughhouse a little bit. And then they go out of their way to beat the life out of someone just to show how tough they are. And I've seen this. I've heard stories of this. And it's a very unique individual. It's not all men. It's a very unique type of male that doesn't want to be the best. That isn't striving for improvement, but wants to show, like, dominance. Yes. And in our society, that really doesn't work. It's very difficult to find an avenue to make that last long term.

Like, the meta game we were talking about earlier, it's very difficult to find a place to hang out, to stay if you're just going to be dominant. And, like, it kind of goes to wolf packs, which I've learned about through Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, where wolves don't kill each other every time or there would be no path. Yeah. They have to negotiate that relationship. So instead, they work on snarling and they work on puffing out their chest instead, rather than getting into the fight. And it's the same with chimpanzees.

They don't go straight to all-out war because then there would be no community. They try and find the best leader who's going to do the best over the long term. And so individuals who don't have that mindset, who are looking just to show that peer strength, that dominance, they don't last. And they have to be reminded that there are levels, that there is an instructor and the leader of this gym first. a reason and it's unfortunate that that person was injured but it's not like that person didn't go into it with almost the same intent to try and do to you because had he been able to post online I beat the professor the teacher so bad that like he had to go to the hot like that would be a bragging point for someone with that type of mindset yes and it's unfortunate that those

people exist but it also reminds us of the value of individuals like yourself who aren't looking for that who like throughout this interview if anybody thinks that you're looking at for that fight like there's no evidence of that that had to happen in order for the hierarchy to continue and that person couldn't find a place within that hierarchy because their only interest was being at the top yeah or being above the person at the top and that person can't live in that hierarchy in the same way and so I think it's just a reminder for people to consider the value of individuals like yourself who are willing to stand up to the bully stand up to the person seeking the dominant position rather than trying to build the people at the lowest

ring on the ladder up, their goal is to show that they're better than everybody below them. And that's a really unhealthy mindset. And I think just a really optimistic story that you ended up winning and that he did have to pay a consequence for his approach. And of course, we want him to heal up and be healthy. And I'm sure he is. But he, I'm sure, learned something or at least went away with his tail between the likes after that. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of ego out there. You know, a lot of people just thinking they're better than other people. And yeah, you know, there's other people that are, you know, professionals at this, professionals of that, and they are, you could say they are better than other people.

But a lot of those times, those professionals, those people that are really in those kind of expert level of their craft, of their profession, they're so humble. They don't have much ego. And for me, that's so important because it does cast that energy into the gym. You know, if me as a leader up top has this crazy ego or this attitude of being better than, that it's going to be pass on down and now all these children are going to be learning that all these members are going to be learning that and those people now yeah they're going to start taking that on the oh maybe I'll go to the bar tonight and you know fight somebody and test it out

you know so it really cascades down to other people um but yeah it's interesting about the RCMP officers and stuff like that like yeah people always like even my friends are like oh let's wrestle like let's let's have a fight let's go to the gym and like let's just fight you know have some fun whatever like that and for me it's a it's a dangerous person uh prospect because now you're putting me in that position where it's, okay, we're friends and yeah, we're going to have some fun. But your goal is to beat me. Like, you want to see if you're good enough to beat a black belt. And so now for me, now I have to, if I'm going to defend my honor or defend my respect, now I have to rise up and now I have to hurt you. You know, I have to

do something I don't want to do. And so for me, I keep myself out of those situations. Like when my friends ask, I say no, you know, if people, if people, if somebody in the gym, you know, maybe they have a good intention and they ask, you know, oh, let's, let's fight, you know, let's do some sparring together. And I just say no, you know, like I keep myself out of it because I don't want that to be a building block of, uh, of something going forward, you know, like, uh, and I don't, and I don't want to use my martial arts skills in a way that's, that's not positive. And so, yeah, it puts me in a weird position because, now my ego starts coming out and it's like, oh, okay, now I'm going to have to show this person I'm good enough, you know, like I'm, so the only way I can show them is good enough is, you know, by me hurting them, you know, it's super negative. And so, yeah, I, I tend to keep myself out of those situations. They're, they're few and far between. And that's just an extreme example of somebody that cross the line. But, you know, in a simpler example, you know, just kids in general life, like, they can stand up to their bully. You know, they can take care of them.

themselves. You know, even we talked with kids about just, you know, you've done three strikes out. Just give the person a push. Just shove them. Just push them out of the way. And they're going to feel how strong you are. You know, even your technique and your little push, you know, a seven, eight year old, nine year old kid can, they still have good technique. They got lots of power. And so there's many ways of, you know, avoiding those situations. And hopefully we never involve ourselves in those situations. But yeah, as martial artists, you know, we can take care of ourselves. We can take care of others. And I think for me, it gives me a courage to stand up when other people are, you know, being abused in a certain way or, you know, or their rights

are being taken away or, you know, they're being bullied. They're being left out of the group, you know, so if I have that personal courage to stand up for myself, I can stand up for others. And it's super positive. It's not about being physical or being violent. Courage, you know, comes from inside and, you know, it can cast other people. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. That's awesome. I'm also interested to talk about the adult self-defense classes because I don't know if you remember, but it was January of 2021, very beginning of the year. We started getting reports of people of women going missing. And it became a storyline that they were all connected. And I think this is an example locally of social media algorithms working against common sense reasoning and an ability to trust our law enforcement to figure out. the truth because there was a running theme of like, oh, this abductor must have gone from here to here to here and grabbed all these people and they're all linked and all the women are going missing and it's being covered up by by big RCMP or something like that.

There was like a narrative going around on social media and it was very interesting to watch because you heard from news professionals from individuals who can be trusted to a certain extent, who looked at the evidence and said, this does not appear to be connected in any way, shape, or form. These seem to be separate incidences. And then you had people saying, these people are all scheming against us so we don't protect ourselves. And from my perspective, I knew people who, women, who went and bought knives, who started

trying to, I think they thought they were protecting themselves by just arming themselves. People were buying pepper spray. They were buying all types of equipment to try and protect themselves, which terrified. me, because the odds, just like with a gun, just with firearms, the odds that you're going to use that correctly in that moment are extremely low. The odds that you're going to accidentally pepper spray your partner because they came home late at night and you thought it could have been a burglar, but it ended up being, the odds that you're going to misuse it, it's extremely high. But the odds that you're going to develop through a self-defense class and actually

handle things properly to be able to be calm in the storm is far higher. And so it alarmed me to see people who did not take self-defense classes start to purchase equipment that they don't know how to use. That you don't know how to use a knife. You just bought it thinking, well, now I'm going to be safe. But the odds that you're going to misuse that over use it in the right circumstance is extremely high. So I don't know if you remember that, but can you give your thoughts on kind of seeing that

and how you approach to that and what your self-defense class is about and how that's different than just going and buying a knife? Yeah. It was a tough time for sure because we were getting a lot of calls. And, you know, it did come back to us. You know, I did see it on social media. I'm like, oh, I wonder how this is going to go and how long it's going to go for. And but people were calling, women were calling, and they were trying, they were setting up

classes and different things like that. It was a tough time because the COVID restrictions were that we had to be physically distance. So we actually weren't allowed to have hands on. And so it really kind of hurt me actually, you know, I'm doing my best to follow the COVID rules and be respectful and, you know, we're going through this all together. But at the same time, this other thing is happening, women. are being abducted, things are happening.

I'm not going to discount their stories. I don't know if they're connected or not, but they're talking about it. They're scared. And when you get into that fear state, that's when you start making irrational decisions, like purchasing these weapons. So, yeah, I was in a tough place because, you know, I had to tell these women, like, yes, come to class, we're going to teach you the skills. But we can't really give you the full experience because we're not allowed to be hands-on

right now. And, yeah, so it really kind of hurt me on the inside that it was a tough. tough call, you know, do I follow the COVID rules right now or, or, you know, do I teach these women, all these different skills? And people did come and, you know, they gained confidence and they gained skills. So there was a positive benefit. I just, I just felt I wasn't able to give my best or our program's best. But in regards to the weapons and things like that, I think it's a mistake. But at the same time, I also have a feeling of, you know, if this makes you feel more confident, if this makes you feel better, sure, do it, you know. I just don't, don't recommend

minute, just like you said, because you don't have the skills to do this. And when you don't have the skills to do something, especially with a weapon, that weapon can easily be turned against you. So, you know, you might have this knife in your pocket and you pull it out, and then you swing and you miss. And now this person that you were trying to hurt you, they're going to hurt you more. And so it's really a dangerous perspective that, yeah, you know, as soon as you pull that weapon out, it escalates. So maybe this bad guy might be doing something bad to you, assaulting you or sexually assaulting you, these different levels of danger,

and it's hard to know what's about to happen. You know, all you see is danger in front of you, and it could escalate to something worse. But when you escalate it yourself with something that you don't know how to handle, it's really a big gamble. You're really going 50-50 on that one. So I don't want to say don't do it,

but, you know, I would encourage to actually train. If you're worried about it, if you're worried about self-defense, or if you're worried about somebody doing something bad like that, you should sign up for martial arts, you should get into training. And when you do train, you build real skills and you build real confidence. So I always tell people a lot of times, confident people don't get themselves into these situations.

You know, it's bullies, predators, you know, they have a sense, they have an energy, they have a feeling of weak people. They pray on our weakest, you know, the small kids. or the kid that's been left out. They pray on the woman that has got her head down on her phone. That's maybe she looks like she's had a bad day. Like, they get you at your weak moment. People that are confident, and this is kind of why I think a lot of martial arts don't,

they don't get themselves in these situations because they walk around with their head up. I walk around with my head up, I smile at people, I say hi. You know, if somebody that's, you know, looking for something bad, and you stare them in the eyes and you say hi, they're probably not going to, attack you. You've identified them. I've seen your whole face. I've seen everything about you. They're not going to put themselves in a position of being identified by the police because you've already made contact with them. You're walking down this trail. I'm walking the Vetter River. There's not many people out on the Vetter River right now. I see this person 100 meters away and

I'm watching them the whole time. Hi, how's it going? Good morning. You know everything about this person. You can easily identify this person, you know, after the fact, if you're okay, I guess. Um, so those people don't put themselves, like predators and bad people, they don't put themselves in positions where they can be caught or, or identified like that. So I think really the best thing is building real confidence. Come to the gym. You're going to practice these skills. You're going to know how to defend yourself. Even after a month, even after two months, you're going to have some solid skills underneath your belt. And that will translate into that internal confidence where you do walk outside and you do feel good about yourself. So, Um, yeah, it's, uh, it does happen from time to time. It does come in waves. So, you know, we try and respond as best we can and be helpful at the time as best we can. Um, but, uh, get yourself ready before that. You know, why, why are you waiting for a bad situation? You know, like come to the gym. Like, it's a great, great exercise, good workout. Good people are there.

Super fun to learn the skills, you know, uh, prepare yourself before, before that, you know? Absolutely. Can you tell us how do we get ourselves better situated? in terms of what you're saying, because, as to my knowledge, within the Fraser Valley, there's only a handful of martial arts places or places where you can train yourself. Do you think that this should be enrolled in curriculum at school where you have like a martial arts class that you can take? Um, do you think that this needs to be expanded where we're developing? Because as you might know, with Scott Sheffield, I asked him about the draft.

Um, in my mind, I'm thinking, how do we make sure that we have a healthy education of our rights, but also of our responsibilities and a role within the community and an understanding of the Brian Minter mentality is it comes down to community that's not I don't think taught very well in school and when it is it's more peer activism rather than genuine like I'm going to start a business this business is going to make me money but it's going to make me money so I can take care of my family and my community and it's going to have all of these benefits for the broader society I just I'm interested

did to know how do we take the values that things like the draft provide communities and get that into the hands of the broader community because my concern is that you have to pay for many of the programs that we're talking about so someone like myself uh we like i stopped doing karate because it just got too expensive we were paying for the the um the belt upgrades and my mom was like i can't afford to keep upgrading your belt and buy you uh like bows and nunchucks like i can't afford all of this. So it's either bowling or, um, which is affordable or karate. And then at a certain point, that even got too expensive. And so how do we, how do you see this problem starting to be addressed? Because I think of the, uh, the imagine high. And I think that that's a great

innovation. But you're picking and choosing what needs to be innovated. You're saying, well, technology is the future. Um, everybody's on technology. So we'll make it more technology advanced. and we'll open those doors, but it's like, what about the other people? What about people who need discipline, who need a parental figure? What about those people? What about the skills that have existed for thousands of years that people have developed? To give people a sense of self and sense of confidence, sense of belonging. Why aren't we prioritizing that?

Well, it's like technologies today. And it's like, what about the other values that our societies had for a longer, period of time than just technology. Yeah, I think, you know, martial arts is, it's such an old sport, an old way of life, I guess. It kind of pushes back against the future a little bit, and, you know, this whole meta thing, whatever Facebook's doing, you know, like, I don't like it. Like, it's cool. Like, I think I'll probably play it or, you know, get on there and do some things every now

and then. It concerns me because it really creates disconnection again. So, yes, okay, I'm still talking to you. we're conversating in this game, and we're playing together. We are connecting in some form. But when you're on the mats, when you're getting hands-on, when you're wrestling, when you're doing self-defense and sparring with people, you know, you're punching a target, you're sweating together, there is a connection there that can't be broken.

It's so strong, you know, and it's so positive. And so I did have a dream a while, like a long time ago that we would be in the school systems and like martial artists would be like a PE teacher. And it's not a far out dream. They do it in Japan, you know, like in Japan, you can take judo or you can take Kendo, and that's part of your P.E. And, you know, that was kind of, they had a militant way of society from World War II and different things like that. But that was their way of defending themselves. And, you know, listening to Scott Sheffield is interesting, but, you know, the Americans almost had to use the nuclear bombs.

That was like the only way that the war was going to end. And it's really sad that that many people. I've been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it's really beautiful. But if the war had gone hand-to-hand on mainland Japan, it would have been just so nasty, you know, and it's because those people, they had those skills. Everybody learned it, you know, it's part of their society. And it's not about, you know, creating like some self-defense society or some militant society. That's like kind of the bottom of the barrel discussion.

But it is those values. So, you know, like I did have a dream of teaching in the school system like that and almost being like a P.E. teacher that would come in for the day and, you know, teach all the classes P.E. and go. And I do do that. Before COVID, ever since we started, we opened in 2009, I've always been involved in the school system. So, you know, I've volunteered in the school system up until COVID started. We would go to schools across Chilac and we would teach their P.E classes for a couple of days. And the kids would get to learn. in martial arts and experience martial arts. And, yeah, I was always a super positive experience. You know, it's a win for everybody. The teachers were happy to have us and, you know, give the kids a different activity. You know, we were doing it for free. We're volunteering.

The kids were super excited to see us because, you know, maybe most of them have probably never tried martial arts. And it was good for us because maybe we'd pick up one student. Maybe we'd pick up two students, you know, grow our gym and grow our business. So it was a win for everybody in that regard. So, yeah, it's a tough balance because I do. I do see people that, you know, can't afford the program or, you know, struggle to get by and they're doing their best to, you know, just to make it through life. And, you know, some things are difficult to afford at different times. And I really feel for them. I will say I struggle in one sense that I've given programs for free for many people. And, you know, people in the community that, you know, I can't afford it. You know, they're on welfare. or, you know, on government assistance of some sort, and I've given the program for free.

And unfortunately, a lot of people, a lot of those people never committed to the program, you know, like they just wouldn't show up. And I don't know if they had other problems in their way, maybe a vehicle or gas or time or a job or whatever got in the way that they couldn't make it to the gym. But it really hurt me that I was trying to do my best. I'm trying to be charitable. You know, I'm giving a space here for free that should cost this amount of dollars. I should be getting paid for the service.

And unfortunately, the majority just never really took advantage of it. So it was really sad for me. It was really, it kind of made me pull back a little bit and kind of made me less charitable for a time. And I realized I was doing that and I was upset at myself. You know, I was like, well, try again. Like, why are you giving up on this? Like, you know, find somebody else that, you know, like, yeah, they can't afford it.

But they're going to give it their all. You might find somebody that's just an amazing special person like that. And so I'm kind of getting back to that now and trying to do that more often. But yeah, for a time period, it did hurt a little bit. So, yeah, I do see ourselves in the school system. When COVID's over, we're allowed to get back in there right now. Outside programs aren't allowed to be in the schools. But hopefully COVID finishes and we can get back out there and, you know, continue volunteering in schools.

That is a challenge, though. And I don't disagree that even working as a native court worker, you would see people's relationship with things change when they had to invest something into it, whether it's their time or some sort of financial investment. And that was my experience with skiing was my mom found a way to get the $70 together for me to be able to go skiing. I did it in jeans and a sweater, completely unprepared, but I was so grateful that there was that investment that I soaked in every second of being on that mountain and have. I've tried to ski every year since because there was something special about that moment. There was something within me that recognized that the odds of this happening was really low. The experience is like, it's unique from something like martial arts where, like, you could afford to go once. But with skiing, it's different because, like, how do you get to the mountain?

How do you afford the skis? How do you afford the lessons? How do you afford all the equipment? Like, it's so expensive on the front end that it really is difficult to get involved in. And so I was just like, the odds that I'm going to be able to get back here really, really low. And that's just how I felt during that first experience, which made me even more grateful for it because it was like, you're at the top of a mountain with skis. It's like, how often do you get to experience this? How often does the average person from downtown Chilwaukee where I grew up using the Prospera Center or the Chilawak Coliseum and just taking like a garbage can.

been and going down that and that had been my life for years and years and years to be at the top of this mountain was like this doesn't seem real really surreal and really beautiful yeah it's it's funny i heard you say that i can remember who you said that onto one of the one of your podcasts i heard you mention that and i was like oh i love skiing skiing is a big passion of mine and my boys were up on the mountain there last week and it was cold like don't get me wrong it was a cold snap everybody knows last week and so they were kind of whining and complaining and and I saw there was a person there that was in jeans like and and I remember myself in grade seven I saw a kid in jeans up on the up the mountain of hemlock and Sasquatch and I kind of

made fun of them for it and looking back at that I was like oh you know that's a jackass move you know but they looking back on it they just couldn't afford it but they were there and they were having the time of their life and it was just such a I know it's a beautiful experience because every time I go it's beautiful and here's my kids they're in like all the, you know, not the best gear, but, you know, pretty darn good gear. It costs a lot of money for me to invest to get them going here. And they're complaining about this. I was so upset at them. I told, I told them that story actually about the person, the jeans there that I saw when I was in grade seven. And, you know, I just wanted to humble them a little

bits and, you know, just help, hopefully they're more grateful that dad's doing this for them and, you know, trying to create this experience. So. Yeah. No, I don't disagree. And just going back, Like it just, it gives you that sense of like value that like this is something worth investing in and I've invested in it as much as I can ever since because there's something like I was telling Rebecca this. There's something like sacred about it for me now. Like there's something that I want to protect that and like I've had buddies go like, oh, do you do black diamonds? And it's like, I really don't care. I want to go to the top of the mountain and do a green run all the way down and just enjoy the experience of being able to be on this mountain because it's something that even thinking of like my grandmother. Like, the way you got to the top of the mountain before they had ski lifts was he walked to the top of the mountain in the snow.

Like, that seems crazy now to think about. And you pay for these lift tickets. But, like, you think of the cost to build these massive machines that go up a giant mountain. Like, it's incredibly, like, expensive to do this. And the way we used to was just walk up the mountain. Like, it was not some prestigious experience. And it's gotten there. And now we have, like, restaurants at the top of the mountain that are, like, an amazing experience.

but at the start it was like you walk up the mountain and then you ski down and that's how it started it's grown but having that appreciation I think is so important and it's something that we move into communism when we start trying to provide everything for free so there has to be some sort of buy-in financial otherwise canned foods I think are a good example of like trying to find some way of like you can give something yeah and you actually like not even for that person but they actually benefit more if there's some buy-in from them because if it's free, there's just less buy-in, there's less emotional investment in the activity. And so I do think that that's a challenge that all programs face when they're trying to serve like a disadvantaged

community is that you need them to invest something in themselves. They have to give something up in order to value it in some sort of deeper way. And I think that that sounds like what you're struggling with. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting going back to the belt level system. You know, like if we were all the same belt, we would be a communist system. And so we'd all be on this level playing ground, but why is that person better than me? Well, why is that person not as good? You know, oh, well, it's because that person has been here a month. You know, they've only been here two months. That person's been here six years. And so we're going to put each other on the same level? No, that's not possible. And so what was their buy-in? Sure,

they paid money, but their buy-in really was their effort. You know, they put in an extreme amount of effort. They showed up to class on a regular basis. Each class they come to, they give it their best. They try as best they can. And because of their effort, they've earned this position. They've earned this black belt, this brown belt, whatever it is. And everybody with their eyes open can clearly see that that person is talented and that person is special in some way because they did the work. They took that self-responsibility and no one can take that away from them.

You know, it's just so powerful. And it just leads to that confidence again, you know, all these things just start snowballing. And that's why it's such a positive example when somebody comes in the gym and they see a black belt. where they see an instructor, the biggest compliment I could really receive in our gym is your staff is amazing. You know, and people tell me that all the time. And that makes me feel awesome. You know, they, you know, parents would come up to me and, you know, just say, you know, that person went out of their way to help my child. You know, they stood beside them until they were successful. You know, when, oh, they tripped and got hurt a little bit. They got down with them

and made sure they were okay and took care of them. You know, like, if somebody, if anybody can give a compliment it's it's you know that our staff is you know doing that great job and and for me that's just you know I think about training our employees like you know I get this question all the time that people like people are asking like you know how do you get your employees you know how do you where did these blackbells come from you know where did your staff come from and one thing I'm super proud of is all of my staff were trained in our gym Really? Yeah. Wow. So they were, they started that white belt. They worked their way up and got up to black belts. You know, they started instructing. They took an instructor course. But they're, it's all in-house. And I'm so proud of that, you know, and especially nowadays. So it's, it's hard to find people for jobs. I'm just like, oh, man, like that sucks for all those people, you know, trying to find different workers and employees and stuff like that. I'm so grateful and I'm so proud that all of our people come from within the system.

that just kind of self-perpetuates the system because now those people grew up in that positive way of doing things and now they're passing it on to the next generation, the next group of people. And so, you know, I'm not going to take full credit. There's lots of people that help me and, you know, help us create the program and build the program and run it the way it is. But just to be able to see that pass down and just for that gym environment, that positivity to be protected. and when people walk in the gym, they feel welcome, they feel included.

Like, that's just so important to me. And, you know, and even if I'm not there, I know that's happening. So it's, yeah, it's pretty cool. That is really cool and, like, kind of incomprehensible when you think about it, because, like, you think how difficult it would be to find Black Belt and other people and to be able to develop them and to see their growth and to go from student to, like, master to leader. like that development within themselves, what has that been like for you to watch somebody develop over that time?

And I'm sure you've had other students who don't become educators have that type of development, but particularly with them to see them develop the skills that I guess you were teaching them when they were younger to now. What is that like? Yeah, some of the instructors that our staff were kids before. And, you know, like I raised them from like they were like eight, nine, ten years old. Now they're like teens or adults and they work for me.

And it's a super privilege. you know, like I feel so good about that. And, you know, I was one of mine, kind of my chief instructor in the gym, Ken, and super great guy, just, you know, awesome attitude, really tries hard for everybody. And I think about him as a student, he started as a teenager. He was heading the wrong direction. Like, he was going the wrong way in life, you know, just not good friends, not good people around them. You know, super great family.

But just the environment that he had at school and just the friend group that he was with, He was heading in the wrong direction for sure, and, you know, the gym turned him around. I know that 100%, you know, and I'm not going to claim that it was me that did all that, but it was the environment of the gym, that positivity that surrounded him, it really changed him. And so now you see him and you just see this awesome guy. You would never know that maybe that wasn't always the case, you know, not this positive person. And so he's a product of the system. And so it's not this mechanical machine, you know.

technology, it's people, people that are generating that, people that are caring for others, you know, looking out for each other. And people change when they're an environment like that. For sure. And I just think of that bell system and the hierarchy, and it seems important from my perspective, because you need to know who to look up to. And that's from my perspective, what I was struggling with and why I created this is because I'm basically saying that most people are not a role model, are not people to be admired. I am choosing a very select few. I think I've interviewed something like 47 people.

There's 100,000 people in Chilwack, and there's almost 200,000 in Abbotsford. I'm basically saying that the majority of people are not role models, are not people to aspire to be like, because we've all got stuff going on. And there are things you can learn from very select few people and ways you can develop yourself in a very specific way to grow. And I don't know if people don't always read. realize that, but that's always in the front of my mind is I'm, there are people who've reached out who've said, I'd love to be a guest. And I've said, thank you very much. It's very nice of you to

say, have a great day. Like, I'm not, I'm not looking to have everybody on. I'm trying my best to be selective because I do think that there are certain special individuals who stand out in one way or another that set an example or that push an envelope that maybe they don't even want to be pushing. Like, you think of the sacrifices someone like Brian Minter has made in his life. And did he get rich off of it? It doesn't seem like it. It seems like he's worked incredibly hard just to give something to the community and has, as he talked about with the light shows that he did, didn't make a dollar off of it. Actually went in and spent more money to do those things, but believed that that was his role in the community. That's a special person. That is not everybody.

Many people are looking for how do I get the freest, cheapest thing? The mindset isn't, how do I give more than I get out of this community? I think that that's special. I think that that's what you're doing by building up your own staff by saying, how can I build people up in this way so that they're more confident, so that they're not getting into fights and disagreements and having the confidence to go find their passion. That's something I keep trying to stress to people. I just did a talk to UFE the other day where I was like, whatever it is, whether it's baking cookies or whatever it is, find it, and try and share that with the world. Because if you don't, it's not just that you're keeping something from us. It's that we all miss out

as a consequence that people don't learn and don't learn to share their passions with the world because that's what the freedom that we've talked about in the past in the United States and in Canada that freedom is for you to figure out what you want to do in life and go do it. And I think it's so beautiful to see people who immigrate to Canada appreciate that seemingly so much more than we appreciate it because seeing the families within the community that have parents that immigrated here. They know hard work. Like, I don't even understand.

And I don't think I had it easy, but I understand that what I've heard the stories of living in an apartment, eight people to one, one bedroom apartment, trying to make it work, trying to get started in a new country, but just appreciating the freedom, the ability to figure out what you want to do in your life. And those people, to me, are something special. There's something to admire. There's something to humble yourself before and go, like, wow, what can I learn from this person that's different than what I can learn from like the grocer at my store like

there's something deeper about that person that has an understanding of the world that I don't think everybody has and I hope that that's what people get out of interviews like this with Scott Sheffield is he's he's that connection to me to the past and with the passing of betty white I just thought like this is one person where we all love betty white like everybody thinks she's great but why it's because she's that tie to the past she knew what world war two was like she knows what the great recession was like she has a deep understanding of that. And yet she smiles and she laughs and she's fun to be around and she's sassy and silly.

She gave us a gift of what it was like to endure hell because we don't understand what it's like to go through those periods of time. The recession that happened in 2008 is incomparable to what it was like to not have food on your table. For her to smile and laugh today is a real gift to our society. And the fact that we lost her is when I saw that, I thought of Scott Sheffield in that tie to our past and just another link cut. And that just makes people like him, to me, more important because now you're the only person who can tell us what these experiences were like because you've educated yourself on that. And so I think that of that is of individuals like yourself who are building people up so they can find their passion. Maybe it's not martial arts long term, but now they've got the confidence to say, well, what do I actually want to do in my life? And how do I share that with the world?

And so have you seen that within any of your students at all? Yeah, you know, it's funny. This little girl, she's super sweet. She just had to move to Abbotsford, so she had to leave our program. So it's sad that she was going. But here's a girl that's like, she's developed her confidence over the past like six, eight months that she's been training in her program. And she's leaving in a really positive way.

And that felt good for me. You know, it usually kind of sucks. Like, you know, so I'm quitting. I can't do this. You know, I got too busy, you know, whatever the excuses. It hurts a little bit, you know, because we want to keep working with that person, and keep helping them develop. And when they leave, it's never the greatest feeling.

But seeing her leave, I was just like, yeah, I feel good about her leaving because she's leaving a confident little girl, seven, eight years old. And, yeah, she's just awesome. So, yeah, you know, I super appreciate you saying that about others and myself and that you include me here today and trying to figure out what I have to say or, you know, what I have to pass on. And so I'm super grateful that you thought of me in that way. And yeah, it's, I enjoyed Scott Sheffield's podcast there with you because I love history so much.

Like, I think history is so important. Even as a kid, I read about World War II and World War I like Vietnam or like I just, I just thought all that stuff was super interesting. Maybe it's just the boy in me, the military fighting or something. But I loved history and I still read about it all the time. and I think it has parallels to what we're living right now. And, you know, it's interesting, you said about, like, these immigrants that come here and come for freedom, like Canada is such a beautiful country. I went to a couple protests, you know, about all the COVID rules and, you know, the vaccine passports and things like that. And I wanted to get involved and be out there and just be a part of the community.

And who's leading these protests? It's mostly Eastern European women, you know. And these women are standing up there, you know, like, they don't have to be there. They could be at home, you know. It's still more free than some of these Eastern European countries. But they know the sliding scale that can happen. They've seen it in their own countries. Their parents experience it.

And they come here for that freedom. And they can see certain things being taken away. They can see that sliding scale where something could go wrong. And so when I see these women, I'm just like, I'm so proud of them, you know, agree with them or not. It doesn't matter. They're stepping out of their comfort zone. They're stepping out of their safety. And they're doing a service.

Rather, it might be a good service or not. Agree or disagree. But they're risking some part of themselves. You know, they could get blasted on social media. They could be shamed in their group of people that they associate with in their city. They're risking a lot just so that history doesn't repeat itself. And so I find it so interesting. that, you know, it should be like, I don't want to say Canadians because Canadians are so

multicultural, but it should be people that have lived here for 100 years, 200 years, that are stepping out and standing up for our freedoms and our rights. But no, it's the immigrants, the people that came here 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, and they're standing up for all Canadians. I think it's super powerful. Yeah, I don't disagree. Before we get there, I'm interested to know your thoughts. We talked about it a little bit at the beginning. The UFC. Have you seen a rise at all in interest in combat sports and martial arts in that energy over the past, since you started it? Have you seen an interest increase? Because from my perspective, I recently got into the UFC and the fights that they put on probably two years ago now, but probably started kind of easing into it three years ago. And I find fighters to be the most interesting people. Like, I find, like, my favorite right now is Israel-A-Sanya.

Yeah. And I admire him so much. I watched, like, every YouTube video that he posts because there is that confidence there, but there is that humility to his family, to his community, to the people in his life that have helped him get there. There is, like, arrogance on the surface level to sell a fight, but then exterior to that, there is pure humility of buying his parents an amazing car. to buying his family a house, to making sure that his community is taken care of.

And I find many of those, Dustin Porey, these fighters, very, very motivational, very inspirational of like, why wouldn't you want to follow in these people's footsteps? Why wouldn't you want to take, like, a grain of their thinking and apply it to your own life? And I just think that they're some of the best role models because they really do risk their body, their health, their well-being to not only put a show on for us, but to give us that understanding, of what it's like to try and to put yourself out there and to develop a skill and to share that in front of the world. So do you keep up with the UFC at all?

Who are your favorite fighters? What are your thoughts? Because I'd just be, as a fan of the sport, I'd be interested in your thoughts. You know, not as much as I used to. I definitely was into it a lot more in earlier years, but I still love it. I still appreciate it. I still watch it, but just not in the volume I used to, I guess. But, you know, I'd say, like, the UFC is, like, 90, 95% garbage.

Like, the fighters there, they're jerks. Like, they're just bad people. They're just, like, want to, like, go there and, like, fight and, like, punch somebody's head in. Like, they're just not the best people. And they're not people I'm going to aspire to, you know. But there is people like Israel, Idesania and Desson Porier, George St. Pierre, Anderson, Silva. The reason why these people are at the best, like, they're easy names to drop and talk about. and they're more commonly known

because they're at the top of the sport and so it's easy to latch on to that top person and be like, oh, I like that guy. Yeah, well, he's number one. Like, sure, everybody likes number one. But it's kind of shallow in that sense. You know, I like them because they're martial artists. They're number one because they're at the top of their sport

because they are actual martial artists. They're not fighters. They're not go to the bar on the weekend and, you know, try and test your skills on people. They are trained martial artists. And a lot of them are doing it for their whole lives. And so when I see them at the pinnacle with our sport, I'm really proud of them. And just, like, I can relate it back to our program.

You know, like, we develop great martial artists as well. They just don't get seen on TV. So, yeah, they're really positive guys and positive people. And the women, too. Actually, the UFC women fights, they're my favorite. Yeah. Like, I'll tune into a women's fight more than I'll tune in to the men. Yeah, Amanda Nunes is a play.

Oh, so exciting. And she's so humble and positive, you know, I remember Rose, I used to mess up her last name. Namajunas. Yeah, Namajunas, yeah. You know, when she beat the Chinese fighter a couple months ago, you know, she cried after. And she just said, I'm so proud of myself. I did it.

I did it. I did it. I was crying for her. Like, it was so cool. But these people are actual martial artists, you know. So it's those people I can latch on to and talk about in our program and relate them to our program because, yeah, they are leading humble lives. You know, a lot of them have martial art gyms themselves and, you know, they use the money from their UFC wins to build up their martial art gyms. So they're creating an impact in

their community too. Have you noticed any increase though at all in interest or do you think that that's been pretty steady and what the UFC does, does it have any impact on whether or not other people are interested in joining the gym? Just over the years, have you noticed an increase in interest in martial arts? I think it's becoming more mainstream for sure. I wouldn't say it's like this crazy increase or the crazy reason why that, you know, our gym is maybe successful or not successful. Yeah, it helps. But yeah, I'd say if anything it's given people is that either they talk about their life skills. They want the life skills. So they're like, oh, that's cool. What is my kid going to learn? They're not worried about, you know, oh, is my kid going to be

a UFC fighter someday? Are they going to be some future Olympian or something like that? No, they just want their kid to be a good person. So it's, uh, um, if, yeah, if that helps us, then great. You keep doing it. So, right. And so let's get into something. I think people will be very interested in because it does seem like the, the tides are shifting. I'm going to play devil's advocate a bit because I think it's useful. I think your arguments will be sharper if, if you have to face a little bit of adversity in order to get them across. Yeah. So you've, you're an interesting person to talk to about the vaccines and what's going on. because you didn't just start when it started happening.

It's not like mania for you where this is brand new to you and you're just reacting to it. You have a background. Can you tell us about your experiences with vaccines from the past and how you've kind of kept up with this over the years? Yeah, you know, I've always been a believer in choice in medicine. You know, like I'm a healthy guy and I promote health. So, you know, I've always been interested in just overall health. you know, what impacts our body, you know, what does our food impact our body? Obviously, it's huge, you know, drinking water, alcohol, drugs, you know, and so people look at pharmaceutical

drugs and they kind of give it a free pass. They kind of just, you know, oh, it's approved, you know, it's safe. Well, no, it can be just as dangerous as alcohol and cocaine and marijuana and all these other things, you know, so I never give anything that enters my body like a free ticket. Like, you know, a lot of people say trust the experts, you know, trust your doctor and all the stuff. And that's fine. That's great. Um, but number one, I trust myself. So, uh, I think something we always promotes in our self-defense classes to is, is, is, is what is happening right? Does it feel right to you? If it doesn't feel right to you, stop doing it. Get out of there. And so it's not this, it's not this conspirator, you know,

like go down the rabbit hole. You know, we can, you know, like there's lots of things that aren't right. We could talk about those things. But I think the really the biggest thing you can trust is your own intuition is what's happening right now in our society. Does it feel good to you? Does it feel right? Does it feel like we're heading in the right direction? I'd say the average person would say no. And so for me and my family, we make choices about medicine, seeing this doctor, seeing a chiropractor, seeing a naturopath. You know, we got a team of people that are assisting in our health. So it's not that we're trusting one source and one person. We have a team and we take evidence from all areas and then we execute in our own family. What other families do? What other

people do? I don't care. You can do whatever you want. But it's such an interesting time that choice is not being respected. And, you know, it's, you know, there's so many things that we talk about, like, choice. Like, there's so many examples in history, you know, the right to vote, the right for a woman to choose an abortion or not, the right to, you know, take medicine. If you don't take this medicine, you might die. You know, the Jehovah's Witnesses are very serious about that. We have all this history of rights and freedoms across Canada. And it's been really under attack for the past, you know, since COVID started, you know. Right, but you started this before COVID. Like, you're, you had an interest in vaccines and well-being before COVID started.

And I think that that's useful because, as I talked about with Eddie Gardner, he's been passionate about trying to protect wild salmon for 12 years now. Yeah. He didn't just hop on the bandwagon when it started making the news. He was the one pushing it beforehand. And it seemed like you had an interest in this beforehand, which I, I don't think I'd have just anybody on to talk about this topic. I like that you have a background in this topic and you've tried to educate yourself on this topic in regards to your gym, in regards to your family's well-being prior to COVID starting because it's easy for people to go down whatever rabbit hole when things are bad. But you were a part of it beforehand. Can you just elaborate a little bit more

on that? Yeah. You know, for educating kids, you know, I've been teaching for, you know, close to 20 years. And I just saw kids' mental health and different things deteriorate, and their physical health were deteriorating. And so I started looking at reasons why, you know, and I kind of just did my own little research, you know, like, it's hard because people, you know, if I say anything about that, you're like, well, the doctors say this, you know, public health says this. Like, you're an idiot.

You're just one person. You're a martial artist. Like, it's really, they demean your experience and they kind of undercut your experience. and I think that's not fair. You know, it's like people say like, oh, do your research, but only if it comes from this spot, you know, like, so it's really close-minded. It's not, I don't feel it's that intelligent. I think people of intelligence really look at things from all angles and can take things

from all angles and make their own decision. People that are, I know I'm an intelligent guy. And another intelligent person might have a completely different opinion than I do, a completely different understanding and a completely different feeling of what is right. We should be able to make that our choice. And so what I saw years ago, and it tends to happen when you have kids, is, you know, like, how do you want to raise your kid? You don't know.

Like, you think you know. But like the average person, like your kid's born, you're like, oh, crap, like, what do I do? Like, I don't even know what to do on day one. You know, what am I going to do with day two and six months from a year? 10 years from now, there is so much, and it's a lot for people to handle. But for me, seeing kids in the gym, you know, I was listening to people. I was listening to what, you know, were happening in families' homes. And so some people were telling me that, you know, their kid has this condition because

they were vaccinated, and this thing happened, something happened, something went wrong. and for me that was just a red flag and yeah it's you know like it's it's tough because you know if you if you bring up an experience immediately you're going to get red flagged immediately going to be talked down to immediately you're going to be called you know some conspiracy a nut job person and so for me I don't publicly talk about these things and I and I usually never talk about these things publicly up until COVID started because it's just not worth it People, they have their own thought process, they making their own decisions for their own family, and I support them making those decisions for their own family. But if you make a decision that's like not mainstream or something, maybe you get all the vaccines, maybe you get half the vaccines, maybe you get none of the vaccines, each one of those people are going to be lambasted or talked down to as being wrong in some way.

Or de-platform this time, which is the one that concerns me the most, right? now is having, I've looked at a few accounts and they've been shadow banned, which means you can type their name in and they don't show up unless you hit see all results. And I have the screenshots and then you hit see all results. Then it shows the World Health Organization. And then you have to hit see all results again. And then you see the account that you're looking for. And that concerns me because these technologies have not proven very reliable in terms of getting the facts right in the long term. Yeah. The way is to say misinformation. and it's like, well, who's misinformation, you know, like Facebook's, like fact checkers,

you know, they've been proven in court, now they're opinion checkers, you know? So it's pretty funny that things are coming around. But for me, one of the things that disturbed me about vaccinations and the pharmaceutical companies was the censorship. This has been going on for a long, long time. This is not new. And so anytime that I felt, and this was long before the censorship became an issue over the past couple years, I just saw that maybe 10 years.

ago as something, I'm like, why are people not allowed to talk about this? Why is it such a taboo topic? And for me, I love talking taboo topic. People are like, don't talk religion, don't talk politics, and don't talk about vaccines at the Thanksgiving table or the Christmas table. I'm like, those are all the things I want to talk about. They're interesting. You know, they challenge my mindset. They challenge my thought process. I'm not claiming to have the perfect answer. But anytime somebody's censored, that's a red flag for me. You know, and it's kind of, when people are excluded, that, like, that really goes against my core feeling. And so when I see these people getting deplatformed, when I see people getting excluded or bullied or, you know,

put in the corner, that tells me there's something wrong with the other person. It's, you know, a lot of times it's not that person. A lot of times it's other people around them that have created the situation. So, right. So let's try and take this in a timeline. So back then, you're hearing from from students and family members that something's wrong how do you go about processing that information because to play devil's advocate someone might say well you might have

a biased group of individuals you might just you have a small subsection at your gym that's not all of Chilliwack that's not representative of the population those students might be interacting on the mats more other students don't maybe they're catching something there or maybe the vaccine or whatever is interacting with them being

athletic and having feet in their face or something like that How do you process that information so that people can get more of an understanding of the intellectual process you're going through? Because I think that that's where people start to think we're picking sides. How do you process the information when you're hearing that from parents saying, the vaccine seemed to have impacted my child? One day they're good. They get the vaccine. The next day they're not good because at scale perhaps you see certain people have problems.

And maybe you're just seeing an overrepresented part of the outliers. For sure, yeah, it's possible. You know, I think for myself, you know, over the 20 years, I've taught close to 4,000 kids and not in a short-term form. Like some people may be only staying for like a month or two or whatever, maybe six months. But I get the pleasure of working with people and families over a long period of time. And so we really develop relationships and communication on how they're doing.

And so, and a lot of times that comes back to how the kids doing. And so how's their mental health? Like, are they experiencing, you know, like, how. health issues in their life or are they struggling at school? We get to be a part of all of that. So I try and keep my mind open to other possibilities and not close off choice. And so I know, you know, a lot of the students, most of the students are vaccinated and some aren't. And so when you start separating people into groups, it becomes really dangerous because then you start looking down at a certain group. So I could make a claim and say,

people that are vaccinated are not healthy. They have all these health issues. Kids are experiencing all these different issues. And when you do that, you put them in this little box of negativity. You immediately think that's negative. And then I can look at the kids that are non-vaccinated. They're so healthy. Things are so great.

You know, those kids are so perfect. And like you said, I have maybe a small subset. And now I'm putting these people on a pedestal, like they're like just the greatest. And so when you do that, you start diminishing. people. You start taking away their value. And I hate that. It drives me crazy. And unfortunately, I see people diminishing people that choose not to vaccinate. They think like they're lesser than, or they're making the wrong decision or their killers or like they're spreading COVID or other viruses due to their own selfish decisions. When you're talking about

somebody like that in any other form, you are not the greatest person. You're not somebody I want to look up to. And so, for me, I just seen like this, over the years, I've just seen my students and families being kind of talked down to and demeaned and, you know, just called all these cruel things because they make a personal health choice. And that's where I'm just like red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag. And it's, I, again, I'm not, whatever choice you want to make, I'm going to support you. I, you can do what you want. But. But, as a martial artist, it's like asking me like, okay, well, you shouldn't support those people because those are bad people. You know, you should like kick those people out of your gym.

You know, you should just make sure everybody's separated. You know, we don't want to be around these people because these people are dangerous. It's like, it's the bully. It's the classic bully case. You know, that kid I talked about, the East Indian boy, he was put in, he, all the classmates excluded him because the bully was so overpowering and just so, uh, uh, uh, controlling of the other students that he got left out of everything he got put in the corner and he got talked down to and you know loser and fat and all these other things that he was experiencing and i see that i see that there and so um so this came up before covid there were some policies i think you had mentioned to me privately that were impacting your gym you needed to document

who was and who was not vaccinated am i correct on that and what happened there for the adults yeah like the vaccine passport or you know before oh before that started uh you had you had interacted with vaccine requirements in terms of documenting who needed to be vaccinated or who was vaccinated and who was not there was no penalty in that system but you had been required to do that which was not something you had dealt with previously am i yeah that's right yeah our child care program when we started that in 2012 uh it was a requirement under child care licensing to know who what childhood vaccines they've received and who hasn't and people could check off. I don't, I choose not to vaccinate and that would be fine.

Like there's no penalty for that, like he said. So it was just like an awareness for me like what choices people are making. And so I'm just trying to look at all these experiences around me and say, you know, like, who's eating good food? Who is getting a good sleep at night? Who's vaccine? Who's not vaccinating? Maybe this person's not doing all the vaccines.

They're doing some of the vaccines. you know, whatever. All these different factors, I'm just trying to build my own life. I'm just trying to protect my own children, make sure I make the right decisions for them too. And so it was never like an accusatory kind of like, oh, like you're making the wrong decision. Like you're eating junk food all the time. Like, you know, I'm going to put you down because you're eating junk food all the time and you're bringing your kid here jacked up on fruit loops every single day. It was never that. It was just an observation of, you know, just everybody's family experience and how I could craft my own family experience.

So, yeah. So how did you feel about the information you were receiving and required to take in? Did you have any issues with that during that period of time? Eventually, I just thought it was pointless because it was like, why do I need to know? Like, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nurse. I'm not dealing with any of these products with this family or this. child. It didn't matter to me. Like, it's just, like, a totally senseless use of information.

And it's, uh, it's funny because everybody loses their vaccine record. And, you know, parents are like, oh, I can't find it, you know, thinking it's like some, like, it's some big deal. Like, it's going to end this, end this relationship or something like that. It's like, don't worry about it. Like, it literally doesn't impact our day to day. I'm going to treat your kid exactly as I treat the other kid. So why do I need to know this information? So it's just one of those things where it was like a government requirement, but I just never really saw the purpose in it. Right. And then, so you've had those interactions and you've kind of developed some perspectives. At that time, what are your positions on vaccines generally? Like, we get these terms

anti-vaxxer, I don't know, pro-vaccine? Yeah, I don't know if that's... Okay. What camp are you in in regards to that during that period? Pre-COVID, what are your opinions on vaccines generally? because the common trope is that we're way better off as a consequence of vaccines as a whole, and it's good to vaccinate your kids, from my understanding. You can do a whole bunch of vaccines all at once, and everything's dandy. Like, there's no issues, and I've heard that with doctors on television. Like, it's not something that they try and keep a secret, that this seems to be effective. There's not much of a difference of getting all the vaccines done at once in comparison to spreading them out.

There's some doctors that argue you should spread them out. But the mass majority, I guess, say you don't have to do that. What is your sort of perspective on vaccines during that period? Well, I've just never been a fan of government and telling me what to do. You know, I want to live my life the way I see it, being respectful of others, you know, not hurting others, not taking from others, you know, just more of a libertarian mindset. I've had that kind of political view for a long time. And so a lot of the vaccination schedule was based on compulsory. compliance, like just get the parent in the door to, you know, get them on there on two months

and then four months and six months and a year. And like, just to get them complying so that they follow the schedule. You know, there's lots of discussion about waiting for this and, you know, spread them out a little bit more and people have different thoughts and feelings about it. And I think that's fine. My position has always been, like, just honor my choice, you know, and just leave me alone, you know, like it. So what is your response to someone who says, well if you don't get the measles vaccine if you don't get your kids the measles vaccine we could have an outbreak of measles and we saw that i want to say it's oh 2012 yeah yeah with the timothy christian school if i'm not mistaken um they had that approach of it's my choice

yeah uh children paid consequences for that what is your perspective on when somebody contrasts the right to choose with an example i think that that one's a pretty good one it's in the valley what are your thoughts on that yeah this all happened at the same time so it was interesting I could see all these things happening in kind of real time and at the same time. So it was really kind of a challenge my mindset and just challenged, you know, how I thought about things. And, yeah, I had about 20 my students that were part of that outbreak. So, you know, I was following how they were doing. I was asking, you know, how things were going because I was worried for them too.

And, you know, people in the community were concerned about it. And yeah, that's fine. they were so lambasted and just like just accused of like you're going to kill people like measles because of these people and this outbreak is because of you guys and they were really shunned you know and really they were really mistreated and flip side they could say well if they had had their vaccine that wouldn't have happened that's not exactly true you know i had other students that were vaccinated and they also got the measles not from our gym but just for from in the community, I guess.

And so it was interesting for me to watch just how people treat others in a time of discomfort, of a time, and like, you know, when things aren't, right. A little bit chaotic, yeah. Media's blowing it up and, you know, it's just like the world's ending, you know. And watching people treat other people like that over a decision they made for themselves about their own body, it really it disturbed me I wasn't

I wasn't happy with that I was really disappointed in that here I am trying to preach positive values and treat other people who respect and you know just be kind to others

and you're just making them think like they're like human trash because they made a different decision than you it really it didn't sit well with me then it still doesn't sit well with me now

so yeah you know of course different choices have different consequences. But if you're making a conscious choice for yourself, I think that's okay that you can make that. Right. And so coming to the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,

we start with the lockdowns. What was your perspective on that? Separately from vaccines, passports, what is your perspective on the lockdown of attempting to curb the spread by locking down? Were you supportive of that? What was your response? because I think that when we use these simplified terms of anti-vaxxers or pro-vaxers, whatever it is,

we miss out on so many other pieces of the conversation that I think are useful to understand a person's thinking. So could you tell us about your perspective during the beginning of the pandemic when we started shutting everything down? Yeah, I was definitely a concern for our business, our family, our students. You know, we're definitely a beacon of positivity in our community of people that come to our gym. So it's really important in their lives that they come and, you know, get to exercise and do all this thing. So it's interesting, it's coming full circle because even since the beginning, I always just said, like, we need to be active. Like, like, shutting down and, like, sitting at home and sitting on the couch is really detrimental, not only physically, but mentally. So since the beginning, I've been talking about that.

And, you know, again, I've been kind of lambasted a little bit about that. And, like, you've got to shut down because if you don't, you're going to kill people. Like, you're going to, it's going to spread between your students and, you know, it's going to be your fault. And it's just like, whoa, like, you know, like you're putting this weight on me that's really not warranted. And, you know, now we see the gym shut down again, you know, with exercise shut down again, vaccinated or not. Yeah. And it's coming back full circle. Yeah.

So it's. Did you have more confidence, perhaps, in our. systems during that period of time, during the beginning, in comparison to now? Like, what was your thoughts of the government of the decision to do this? We saw it happen in Italy, United States, Canada. Did you feel comfortable that at least we were all in the same boat of trying to do something together? There was at least some sort of consistency in belief that the lockdowns were going to have a positive impact? I think that feeling of optimism lasted for a couple weeks, not very long.

You know, I, as any, as any virus floats around, herd immunity is so important. And some people get their herd immunity from their vaccine and other people get it naturally. And I said in the beginning, like the only way out of this is herd immunity. It's got to go through the community. It's got, like, people are going to get sick and we're going to have to deal with it. But that was just like, whoa, that's so extreme of a thought. Like, people are going to die if they get hurt immunity. And so it was very confusing for me.

Like, this is one of the first times in history, or not the first time. time, but one of the few times where it's like, stay home, like, don't interact with anyone, like your social networks, your social, your physical outlets, all these things are just gone. And since the beginning, I've never been a, I never supported that. It's, okay, what would you say then to take a contrasting view? Brett Weinstein and his partner Heather Heying actually argued that we didn't do enough during the beginning. And we could have actually curbed the full spread of this. Yeah. Started addressing it early on. Had we held out on those and been more strict during that period, we could have gotten a handle on this

during those first few weeks of the lockdown. Had we expanded that a little bit longer and been stronger on tracing, stronger on figuring out who exactly had it. We could have come out of this pandemic. And their argument from then, and from my understanding, even to now, has been that the effects of this virus will not be understood for the next 10 years. And so best to curb it right from the get-go, stop it, and then get out of it. And their argument was when we started opening back up unnecessarily that they actually shouldn't have done that. They should have held out even longer and held that lockdown, despite it being unpopular

amongst people who believe in freedom, that that was actually the move. They're not experts in vaccines. They're not expert in that. But from their understanding from an evolutionary perspective, they were predicting that there were going to be variants before there were any variants. They were predicting kind of the consequences and what the Omnichron was going. going to look like way early on. They said it's going to get less deadly, but it's going to become more pervasive. They got a lot of things right. They even have talked about the possibility

that it is spread through a lap before that was popular, before that was mainstream to use an overused word. So what would you say to someone like them who have gotten a lot of things right? And they actually argued we should have been even more clamped down during that period and we could have gotten under control. Yeah. For me, I think it turned when I was talking to different friends and people in the community and people in my gym. I supported a hard lockdown initially and I supported closing our borders. My brother's a pilot for Canada and my other brother works baggage for Canada. And weeks and weeks and months went on when people were just still coming into the country and flights of people with COVID and just like people coming from China

and that area. And of course the thought then was like, don't be a racist. like, you know, like you can't exclude these people because if you do, that's like not Canadian, that's like a racist thought. It's not multicultural. And so that just shut that conversation down. And so the borders stayed open for a long time. And well, they never really closed. And so for me, when I started seeing that happening that the government wasn't going to step in and do something like that, like it kind of jaded me a little bit. And it's like, okay, well, if you're not going to do that, well, then we need to continue on with life. Like, you're not taking serious steps to, you know, at the time they were saying, you know, masks don't work.

Bonnie Henry's on TV saying, you know, don't get a mask. Like, it's not going to do anything. And, you know, there's all this misinformation from the government, you know, just like one day it's this, next day it's this. And then it flip-lops again. And so I think my trust in public officials, like, it's already low because I'm not exactly, you know, loving government at all times in my life. But it started with a little bit more confidence, it sounds like, when the lockdown started, and when you started seeing inconsistencies with the policies, that's when you started to get doubtful. Yeah.

So it's, so yeah, I don't think my optimism in the government being able to do anything and really protect us was really that high for too long. You know, the inconsistency just grew and grew and grew and they still are right now. And I think people know that, people feel that. And that's why I think when I talk about these things, people do engage with me. and, you know, they engage in the conversation, they talk to me. And, you know, I bring up a serious topic and they get involved because a lot of people know so many things aren't right, you know, and I'm not claiming to have the answer or, you know, be the perfect messenger of whatever.

But I always want to have an open conversation at all times. And if there's censorship in any form, rather it's vaccinations, lockdowns, masks, anything, if somebody's just locking it down and saying that, you know, this is the way. This is the only way. In a year, racist, misogynist, you know, like, you know, here's, here's Trudeau two days ago on, on French TV in Quebec, saying that anti-vaxxers are also misogynous and racist. And he's asking the person on, or he's telling the people that are watching the, in the, in the crowd there, he's like, what should we do with these anti-vaxxers? You know, how, like, what, what can we do about these people? You're inciting violence. You're, you're,

inciting hatred as the leader of our country, especially now when we're seeing, you know, unfortunately, the people that are vaccinated are leading the cases now, 86% of the people right now in BC that are leading all the cases here in BC. So clearly something's not right. But you're still driving home a message of hatred and division and censorship. Those things are really disturbing for me. And I don't know what it is if it's my martial art background or or what, but it's very dangerous that people are having these conversations. And the fact that our prime minister, our leader of our country is casting this out. And then it gets casted through media. And then media cast it down to the people. And then people treat others in our community

with disdain and hatred and just a vileness. It's disgusting. I'm really upset about it. Okay, you mentioned that you consider yourself a libertarian. For people listening who might not know, what is a libertarian by your definition? What does that look like in application? Can you situate us in your political viewpoint so we have an understanding? For me, it's being a fiscal conservative. So that's the right side of politics, the conservative side of politics, but a fiscal conservative, not a conservative in social values. And then they call it the left side, I guess, is like a, I'm just not lost the word there.

Liberal? So socially liberal. So, I'm, me as Adam Gibson is socially liberal. I talk about a lot of the social progressive values that we talk about here today or in today's world. But I'm also a fiscal conservative. So I think libertarian is the center. Sometimes people put libertarians like a far right wing. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Like, I'm talking the same progressive liberal values as you are, you know, I'm talking, my, my gym is one of the most inclusive places you can find, you know, so I'm supporting the liberal values, but at the same time, I'm, you know, fiscally conservative. So I feel that's the center, but. Right. So do you have different perspectives depending on the level of government? We have the federal government who has influenced, like, our currency and supported provincial governments in the decision making in terms of mandates and requirements. And then we have municipal governments. We have Ken Popo, who's our local mayor here. Do you have different perspectives depending on the level of how involved they should be? Because I've heard it said that closer to home, you're perhaps more left-leaning. And as you go outwards into the federal government, you want clamped-down spending. You do not want your federal government spending a lot of money in comparison to your municipal government,

who's basically running everything in your day-to-day life. They should have the primary influence over your life because they're right here. You elect them every four years. They're nearby. Whereas with your prime minister, you never meet him. He's more of a leader across the country and more in charge of our military and foreign affairs rather than the day-to-day operations of individual Canadian lives. Do you have different perspectives of the involvement you'd like to see from different levels of government?

Yeah, it's kind of flipped upside down. Like, you know, our local government is very fiscally conservative. You know, I think they manage our money here in Chilac well. I think the property tax increases are fair and needed, but they don't blow the bank either. So I think it's kind of reversed. They're doing a more, I think, a better job here locally. I think our mayor and our council here are actually really good. So I support them quite a bit.

You know, when you look out provincially, yeah, it starts getting, like right now here, Obviously, it's left, left with the NDP, and then you look out nationally, and the NDP and liberals have teamed up nationally, and it's left nationally. You know, the spending's out of control, you know, obviously. It's just like they've just blown the bank, and they could say that, yeah, they did it to support people during COVID, and, you know, and that's fine, that's great. But now you need to put an end to that. You know, you need to peel it back. You know, I think about myself, about my own family, and that's kind of where my political views maybe start from is, what if I just like, spent all the money and just like racked up the credit cards and like bought a new boat

that's fully in debts and you know everything is just debt debt debt debt what's going to happen I'm going to go bankrupt and and so in my own house I have to be fiscally conservative because we only have a set amount of money that comes into our bank and we have to spend that wisely but it's it's really I don't know it's government's kind of flipped it upside down where they're just spending spending spending spending spending spending look at what Canadians are doing Canadians are spending over 100% of their income. They're more in debt than what their income is. So it's really, I think, setting a society up for something not great.

And yeah, it comes back to that self-responsibility again. You know, like it's what are you doing to make your world better? And for me, it starts from me. I need to make sure that I'm sound. I'm healthy. I'm mentally, you know, present. Then I need to take care of my life. wife and my kids. And then I can take care of my business, my employees, my community. It gets

bigger and bigger and bigger. So I try and be involved at all levels. I try and be a community person, you know, and I contact our MLAs and our MP here locally. And especially during COVID, I've written lots of letters and communicated with them, had, you know, video, Zoom meetings with them just to share my perspective and just to, you know, ask for something what I feel is not right. You know, the whole vaccine passport here in BC, I think it's the most divisive thing we've ever done in this province. I think it's just disgusting and dangerous and it's divided to people. You know, we always talk about bringing people together and, you know, celebrating our differences, our multiculturalism, being inclusive. And then we take something and we take a

choice that somebody makes about their own body, about their own life, and we drive it home through our whole province and divide people, it's disgusting. And it's, you know, January 31st here, it's supposed to come up here. It'll either get renewed or it'll get canceled. I'm hoping it gets canceled. I've talked to our MLA, Kelly Patton, about this. We've had meetings about this. I've sent her letters. And I've recently, a week or so ago, I sent her another letter and asked her to cancel it. And, you know, it's, they've done their job. They've, I think 90% of the people here in BC are vaccinated. It's very high. I don't know the exact number, but it's very high. And unfortunately, COVID is still spreading. And so, yeah, there's going to be

some tough choices ahead. If we move on with our lives and just end all this and go back to normal or there restrictions keep happening, I don't know what the government's going to do. Obviously, I have opinions about that. But you've put something in place where it's clearly divisive, but you've had a reason why. And the reason why was that, you know, the vaccines will save us. You know, the spread will stop. People will be less sick. They won't be hospitalized.

Maybe they won't die. But unfortunately, COVID's still spreading, you know. Luckily, it's like Omicron seems like Brett Weinstein is talking about a weaker version. And I'm hoping this is our ticket out of COVID. that the, you know, it'll spread across lots of people, hurt immunity will happen, and, you know, we'll be able to get back to normal. But I don't want to get back to a normal where division and just separating people in society, bullying people inside, chorusing people, that's not a society I want to live in and be a part of. And it might not be a popular opinion. I've definitely got lots of flack from talking about like this kind of stuff. People have different difference of opinions, but my opinion really is if you're violating somebody else's medical choices, you're violating their privacy, you're violating their right to choose. I think you're on the wrong side of that. And I'm going to stand fast in that. I'm going to have the courage to just stay with that. And it might cost me in some ways. People might not be happy with me. They might call me an anti-vaxxer and belittle me and talk down to me or whatever. That's fine.

But I'm going to choose to live in a society that, you know, we treat others with kindness and respect and include people of all different choices. Right. So can I just ask, how does your political opinion perhaps differ from that of someone who's either left-leaning or right-leaning? Because I think that that's the only way to sparse out what a libertarian is in comparison to the two. So can you just give us an idea of how your political opinion actually looks when it comes to. to the application, like, what would it have looked like to have a libertarian approach to all of this, generally? Yeah, it's, well, you have to dig deep because are you, like, are you a healthy person yourself? Like, are you doing the things that you need to do to take care of your own body?

Like, if you're not doing those basic steps for yourself, if you're just abusing, you know, just eating junk food all the time and not exercising and, you know, just negative influence sense in your mind, and if you're doing all those things, it's really, difficult to convince you that like just like going forward and like getting out of this is the way to go. So that's one that's one area that's just to like elaborate on. That's one area we have heard very little from almost any level of government is healthy living. We know that sunlight causes COVID-19 not to work. For my understanding, I want to say it kills it, but I don't want to say something incorrectly. From my understanding, COVID-19 cannot survive in direct sunlight.

So we know that outdoors is a safe place to be. We were discouraged in the beginning from going outside. Then more signs came in. They allowed us to go to the beach, be outside. There were concerns about getting together places like Coltis Lake, where there's a lot of people near each other, touching things. Those were concerns in the beginning. But your approach would have been to push more, I guess, vitamin D.

We know that that seems to have some sort of impact at what level. I'm not a scientist, so I don't understand all of it. But we know that vitamin D, from my understanding, zinc, people with comorbidities, like being overweight, not exercising, these people seem to have a tougher time coping with COVID. They seem to have more deleterious effects as a consequence. These are things that I don't think are any longer disputed. I think vitamin D in the beginning was disputed quite a bit on whether or not it had an impact. It looks like that's pretty settled, settled science, whatever we mean by that. so you would have had more of a push or like the government should have had more of a push in your opinion in regards to something like that to get a message out of like live healthy lives British Columbians Canadians North Americans like why can they do both like why is that so difficult to do both and I think so again play devil's advocate I would say that their concern is we need something that's going to work that's got a high efficacy rate if we start telling people to take vitamin D I've had Johnny Singh on who runs beyond nutrition

it's tough to get people to actually commit to something a long term. So they'll buy the vitamin D, they'll buy, they'll go to the gym the first few days, but then they fade off. And so to play the government in this role, they would say, well, people are going to say they're going to do that, and we can say that, but the odds that people are actually going to follow through is super low. We've done ad campaigns in the past. They don't seem to work.

People don't seem to live healthy lives just because we tell them too. So we're not even going to bother with that. We're going to try and hit a home. run with the vaccines, with maybe the lockdowns with the masks, but we're not going to try on those other ones because maybe that's your role as a martial arts gym. Maybe that's the Johnny's role as the owner of a business. Maybe that's where they should go, but our focus is going to be on something that is high efficacy, high reliability in the beginning.

It looked like the vaccines had 80% success rates that's obviously been driven downwards and gone in the opposite direction. But that would be from my suspicion of what they would steal man to your perspective. of that they should be selling that product. They should be telling people to live healthy lives. Yeah, there's just so many core issues because we're kind of going back to like the lowest common denominator. It's like we're catering the whole society to people that are not taking care of themselves.

And so the government's job, in my opinion, is to change the messaging. Imagine if they had kept up the push of COVID, the push of the lockdowns and all these rules, it's been extreme and it's been really taxing on so many people. imagine if they had just put in 50% of that effort in exercising, eating healthy, taking vitamins. And regardless, if we can say, maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But we do know that when people do these things, they are healthier. And so that's where that trust gets broken. You know, like I've always had a skeptical view of government, but I think they've broken the trust of people across this country and this province. And, you know,

There's just so many inconsistencies and so many just like flip-flopping back and forth, different messaging, you know, this is going to work and then it totally fails, but we're going to try it again. You know, like, I think they've broken the trust of a large majority of Canadians. And it's turning into, I think, this maybe silent majority, you know, which is not good either, where people, they don't want to speak up, they don't want to say anything because they're so afraid that they're friends and people are going to blast them on social media. or they're going to be canceled out of their job or all these different things.

So they've created this dangerous environment where information and knowledge can't grow and can't input and we can't make this situation better because they hold all the cards. And if you try and input a new card, like, hey, go out and exercise, hey, don't talk about that unless you got your vaccine, you know, like it's creating that censorship again. And it's just so dangerous. It's so bad. And, you know, our government is really perpetuating that on us. And a lot of people, and I think more people right now, now that they realize they've got

vaccinated, they can't go back to their gym now. The restaurants are back on a little bit of lockdown. Ontario, you can't go to a restaurant anymore, vaccinated or not. And so they told that this was the way out. And now, again, their shots has been broken and has been taken away from them again. Like, when does that end? how do you get out of that? And so I think public health and government have an uphill battle because they have definitely broken the trust of too many people. Right. I would say, and this is again

playing devil's advocate, is that we do play to the lowest common denominator of our society. Our speed limits, we could make them higher, but we don't because certain people can't do more than 50 without getting into a car accident. Some can do a hundred on a straight path, maybe like Evans Road or a really long straight road. some people can do really quickly and have no issues with getting into a car accident. I'll give you an example, an extreme example. This person I know was in the ICU. This person aged is probably about, I don't know exactly, about 38, 40 around that age range.

Obes. Very obese. You know, just not really taking care of their health, you know, just, but in their mind, they think they're healthy. And so this person spent a vote about a month in the ICU. with COVID, almost died, and immediately came out of it and blamed the anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaxers put me here. They put me in this ICU because you didn't get your vaccine.

I ended up here. We know crystal clear the data, even since the beginning, people with comorbidities and people that are overweight or obese have a higher chance of being seriously affected or dying from COVID. We know this. This is mainstream thought. but we don't change the messaging around that and so make matters worse

this person in the ICU was asking once they kind of got out of that they were still in the hospital the food in the hospital is not great everybody knows that but what was requested from this person two liter bottles of pop and chips so they could eat that in the hospital

so here you're on your deathbed almost died they've brought you back and your first priority is to drink a two-liter of pop. How do you go against that? How do we know this? For people who are like, this sounds made up, like how you don't really request food when you're in a hospital, they deliver you food.

Well, you ask for your friends and family to bring it for you. Right. You know, so I'm not going to shame anybody. Yeah, I'm not asking for the name, but for listeners who are hesitant on, like, this sounds absurd. It is absurd. It is absurd. But that's just a general reflection of you have a group of people that really care about

their health. These people that are going to the gyms, you know, for whatever reasons, you know, like they go to the gym, they exercise, they do their best there, they go and eat healthy as best they can. And now they're being locked out of their gyms because somehow they're dangerous, somehow they're spreading COVID, that's a huge break of trust because everybody knows it's not true. Those people are the healthiest people. But then somebody on the opposite side, you know, chugging two liters and drinking, eating chips all day, and they're given a free pass just because they've been vaccinated, it's not right. And so, again, it comes back to choice. You know, each of those people chose to live their life that way. But taking away people's rights,

taking away people's freedom of travel, taking away people's social networks, you know, healthy networks. I don't know. It's not right. Right. And let's move into the masks now, because I do think that there was some inconsistent messaging from our provincial federal government, even within the United States, that masks were not effective. And I think the common response to that, like, I watched the news in the beginning, and just to see them trying to show how masks don't work was very, very curious to just approach it in the way that they did. But specifically, the argument for why they were a little bit dishonest was because we didn't have enough masks. Now, from my perspective, I'm no longer going to play devil's advocate.

I never believe it is appropriate for our government to lie to us. I believe, from my understanding, interviewing people like Scott Sheffield, listening to people like Jordan Peterson, that our role as citizens is to be the cornerstone of the state, is to hold our governments accountable, is to be representative. We are the government. We are the ones who comprise it. We vote. They take power. We guide their decisions by re-electing or not voting for them. based on our own perspectives.

That is the viewpoint from my understanding. Many people believe. If you don't believe that, you need to consider who the government is in your life. Because if you're not the cornerstone of it, then you are subservient to it, in my opinion. The government is here to protect our interests in foreign affairs. Locally, that is their role. That is why we give them authority. That's why we give them tax dollars, hopefully.

So from my perspective, it was never okay for them to lie. in that moment. I didn't think it then. I didn't think it was okay for them to lie then. I don't think it's okay for them to lie now because their role is to give us the best information possible from their understanding. And the thing that scares me and the thing that made me admire people like Brett Weinstein during like my viewership of him was that he was like, we need someone to come on the air, look us dead in the face and tell us what the hell is going on and admit where they don't know and admit where they're making assumptions or they're being optimistic, but we need a real leader.

And I think of people like Jocco Willink, who is one of those, a Navy SEAL who truly understands leadership at its core, who understands that when you promote someone to leader, most people's instinct is to push down and dominate the people that they just took over. And that is not a leader. A leader is somebody who builds up their team, so they're competent, similar to your circumstance. You had people you taught. Now where are they? They are leading the classrooms. You've placed them in positions of leadership as a consequence. I think of individuals like that as that is genuine leadership and something that we have seen in government. We have seen real leaders

in government who have returned their authority to the people. I think of Trudeau, the first one, who developed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, who put indigenous people into the Charter of Rights into the Constitution, who developed a system to protect Canadian interests and to give Canada an identity. We do have leaders who understand what it's like to be a true, genuine leader, to give that authority back to the individual and make sure that they are the cornerstone of the state. And when they made that decision, in my opinion, their thought process was likely something like, they don't understand why we're going to do this. If we tell them the truth, they're going to hoard masks. And I'm interested in your thoughts on this

because I think they have a point. I think with toilet paper is probably the one that still stands out to people most as something where people became incredibly selfish. And even more recently during the floods, we saw how people approached some of these events. So I don't know if the government is wrong in their analysis. I just worry about whether or not it's a good precedent to think that you are more intelligent than your constituents? Yeah, the masks are an interesting issue. You know, I, if they had said it in the beginning, like, hey, put a mask on, like, this is going to save you. Like, I think more people would have listened.

But again, they broke the trust by line and said, you know, they're at all different levels, federal and provincial, that, you know, you didn't need it. It wasn't airborne. It was more, you know, touching surfaces and you need to clean your hands and, you know, use the hands sanitizer and all that stuff. And then a couple months later, the messaging changed. And yeah, it could have been a thing to protect the stockpiles for the nurses. And I think I would have easily supported that. Hey, these nurses needed, they're on the front line.

If you really look at it practically, like, you know, is somebody's cheat to print mask that they made at home, like, you know, somebody sewed out their own sewing machine? Is that going to do anything for you? I think not. You know, anything with a logical brain can figure that out. You know, I saw it was interesting The kids were going back to school on Monday And they were talking about N95 masks

It's like, well, and I didn't really hear The whole article, but it almost kind of made it imply It was like, what are kids going to put N95s on now? Are they going to get properly fitted masks? Like, it just seemed kind of strange. That was the argument at the beginning, though, if I don't, if I remember correctly, was the argument that the three-ply kind of masks

were not going to be that effective and the goal would be N95s. And I think that even to go, to a deeper point, at least on masks, is that our government failed by not having enough masks to begin with. This was already a structural failure. Like, I'm not blaming Bonnie Henry

or Adrian Dix or any specific individual, but there was a failure to be prepared for a pandemic event. And to be prepared means to have the necessities required in order to fare through with masks. We know masks are, to a certain extent, effective. We use them in 1920.

We have footage of individuals in 1920. using masks during the 1920 pandemic. They don't protect against everything. But if I sneeze and I hold my hand over my face, the odds that it's going to hit another person is lower than if I don't wear a mask at all. And I just let it go wherever it goes. We know that when people speak, they spit about 10 meters into the straightforward. So that's going to prevent to a certain extent.

And so I think they should have been more prepared to the beginning. And this is where I wish constituents would be more clear. in their arguments. We don't have to debate the efficacy of any of these things. We need to understand what government role is and how we would have liked to have seen the pandemic handled because a lot of people argue things like, well, this was a pandemic. We were all under stress. But these things are prepared for.

Just like with the floods, the government had received documents that clearly told them these dikes are going to fail if they face certain structural challenges. They were not prepared for that. Now they're being sued and Abbotsford for by the farmers who are living there. And they have a very strong, compelling argument. I don't know how that will go, but they do have documents that show the government knew and did not act on it. And so understanding just government's role to be prepared for pandemic like events, to have a plan in place and to take these steps, remember when we had phases? I don't know where those went, but it's nice to remember that we had phases at one point in time.

We thought we were going to be free. Yes, and I think the phases gave people hope. And so just understanding, this is what we expect government to do. When there's a pandemic, that they have a supply of masks for at least the doctors and nurses within our province or within our country. That's not for everybody, but for our community. And if they don't, then that's a structural failure in that circumstance. Regardless of whether or not we think masks are 100% effective, 5% effective, it doesn't matter. Their job was to be prepared for that and they weren't.

So I would say that that's perhaps knock one on the government to be more prepared for the. the next pandemic. I have not heard many articles about what our plan for the next pandemic is. They happen about every 10 years. So the odds that one is going to happen in 2030, I would say pretty high. I'm not going to. Are we going to follow the same playbook here in 2030? Like, you know, this playbook hasn't been working. The other weird thing about masks that I'd like to talk to you about is their choice to remove the mask mandate for a month. Yeah. I think that that furthered divisiveness. From my perspective, when they were removing it, I was like, why? Most of the people who hated the masks have quieted down. They've let it go. They've calmed down. They've moved on

to other problems that they want to argue about. And so when they chose to remove that, when the vaccines were still rolling out, we saw a spike in, I believe it was the interior. We saw a spike in COVID cases. And when I saw that, I was like, well, why are we getting rid of the masks. Like, they're not doing harm. They're not increasing the pandemic. At best, they're doing nothing, but they could be doing something to help. And so why not just leave it in? Their choice to remove it and then bring it back in a month later, as cases started to rise again, to me, was them themselves being divisive. Because now bringing it back in, people were, again, unhappy. And it was, again, one of those topics to get angry about to walk into stores and purposefully not wear a mask.

And so from their own PR perspective, it seemed like a second error from my perspective of, what are you doing? Like, people have calmed down. There's no downside to this. Let's just leave it beat. So I'm just interested in if you remember that and what your thoughts were during that period. Yeah, for sure. No, I think you're right. And I think for me, the masks and the vaccines have just created divisiveness.

You know, like, and when you break trust, you lie about things, you create inconsistencies. that's just going to fire people up, you know, of course, like, you're not smart enough to know that? Like, of course the government knows that, you know, so it's this whole division that these things have created. I don't, like, I don't really care about getting stuck on, like, should we have masks? Should we have vaccines? You know, should you wear masks? Should you get your vaccine?

I don't care because it's your choice. Like, if you have a consequence of your choices, if I don't get vaccinated and somehow I get COVID and die, that's my fault. It's my choice. I made that decision. Nobody else did. If I don't wear a mask and I get COVID and get really sick and infect my whole family, that was unfortunately my choice. And yes, people will say, well, you could do that to other people. You can infect other people. I think the better argument, at least for masks, is that it's a challenge for a business owner to try and enforce something if it's not coming across the board. Well, I'll tell you what's interesting is that when you're engaged in physical activity, you don't have to wear a mask.

And so, you know, it's just this interesting thought process like people are wearing a mask sitting at a desk. But then while you're being physical, all of a sudden you don't need it. Yeah, I ran into that at the Chilliwock Leisure Center. And it was very strange that through a lobby as I'm walking through very quickly, but now I'm in the stationary place on a treadmill and I'm allowed to exhale. I'm exhaling more. So if I do have the virus, I'm kicking out more of the virus during that period than I would be just walking through the hallway. Yeah, so it's, again, these inconsistencies and, like, who has to enforce this? Like, business owners and, like, employees who are on the front line, we have to enforce the government inconsistency.

So people come in there, like, well, it was just like this last week, and now it's different, and they get upset. And, you know, it's like, the government has really done a good job of passing the buck on to local businesses, small business owners, you know, teenage employees at a restaurant. Hey, you got to put a mask on. Hey, we got to check your vaccine passport. like it's just been downloaded onto the society when it's not fair and so for me all these things they are divisive masks are divisive vaccines are divisive the only thing that can matter is personal choice it has to come back to personal choice and yes i know people are going to be like well there's consequences of that other people can get infected and people get all fired up about it but at the same

time. You know, it's interesting, just the bullying and just the aggressive behavior. It's almost given people a permission to step out of their comfort zone and, hey, don't get your mask on, put it on. Like, you know, like just talking down to people. If you ever did that in any normal circumstance, you'd probably find yourself in a self-offend situation. You know, like the aggressiveness and the way we treat others is just not warranted. And it's, for me, the thing that the government could have done, the thing that could have happened, this was a beautiful opportunity to encourage healthy living. It was such a perfect opportunity. This is a chance. It could have said, like we all know, we have all these, if you got multiple

comorbidies, you're going to be in trouble. If you're obese, you're going to be in trouble with COVID. This was a perfect chance to encourage healthy living, get active, vigorously exercise, eat healthy, take your vitamins. This was such a beautiful chance for the government to do that. And not once have they done that since the pandemic started. And so when I think about my trust and, you know, the inconsistencies and, you know, what's my personal, what am I going to do, what am I going to do for my family, what I'm going to do for my business, the only thing I can respect is personal choice because now when people come into my facility, I honor them. I honor their choice, what they think is comfortable. I got tons of students that still wear

masks. I got some that don't. You know, that's their family choice. And being connected to our families, you know, people on both sides, people that are like hardcore pro-vax, pro-mask, and people on the other side, they're anti-mask, anti-vax, whatever. Both sides have come to me and said, you know, you've handled this well. You've treated people with respect. You've honored their choices. And, you know, there's no win in the situation. No, there's no writer, there's no better way of doing things.

But you've allowed people to make the best decision for themselves and their family. And people thank me for it. And so, you know, I was worried about some of the members. I'm like, oh, there's going to be all these people that are going to quit. You know, like maybe they think things are dangerous. or, you know, that's not the right decision. I'm not making the right choice. But no, it's been the opposite, actually.

We're actually busier than ever, you know. It's, the membership is great. You know, the vibe of the gym is awesome. And people are super happy and they just come up to me. And if there is an issue, they'll come and talk to me and say, hey, you know, maybe we can do this better. And I'll say, yeah, we can do that better. But it's not putting people down. It's not putting people in the corner.

It's not booting people out, you know, getting rid of them. just because we don't see the right, the same wavelength, or we don't agree exactly, it's honoring choice. And I think Canada, that is Canada. That's our multicultural society. That's our, you know, the different ethnicities, you know, different skin colors, different gender choices, sexual orientation. We honor choice in this country.

It's really the bedrock of this country, I believe. and, you know, to stir up these issues and talk about masks, talk about vaccines, and, you know, stir up this thing so that we can divide people into different camps, different politics, you know, and I'm right, you're wrong, you know, I'm smart, you're stupid. You know, I think that's been the hugest mistake of the COVID pandemic. And I'm looking forward to it to end. You know, like I mentioned, I've asked Kelly Patton to, you know, put that out there. That's not to renew these vaccine passports. I think they've heard our province here and heard a lot of people in it. And it's time for the division to end. And the only way I think we can end is through choice. Right. So now that we're at the vaccine mandates, I'll raise Scott Sheffield in my interview with him.

We talk a little bit about it because he references what happened during World War II, how we weren't allowed to move province to province unless you had a. a valid reason to move and it was like one of the strongest mandates where you couldn't move and so you could argue that your mobility rights are impacted. World War II was before we had the right of mobility

under the Constitution but he uses that example and he says hey look the government pulled back once the World War II was over we all went back to normal thriving economy everything's good to go what do you say to because it was a valid

real world example of British Columbia being directly impacted. And a point, I think not many would be able to raise, but to say, look, government can overstep and then pull back when the time is appropriate. Yeah. What are your thoughts on that example? Yeah, you know, it's a libertarian me says, you know, personal choice should always reign as most important.

But, you know, I've been okay. Like, you know, the vaccine passports came in and I got tons of friends that are vaccinated and they're not going to restaurants. They're not going to places that are requiring these things. I'm one of them here. Yeah, and that's a super solid position to stand on because you've made a choice for your own body, but at the same time, you recognize that you don't make the choices for other people.

And so you're honoring people's choice by rejecting that passport system. And so I think it's really beautiful. I think those people that are double-vaxed and not using the QR code system. I think those people are beautiful people. And I think, yeah, they're special people that are really mitigating both sides and, you know, just trying to keep people to keep people together. And I think you can make a social argument, as I think I mentioned to you, when I don't know where these vaccine mandates are going to go, but you're limiting a certain portion of the population. And for me, I looked at the numbers and it was overwhelmingly indigenous people who were

not vaccinated, who were not carrying these passports, who were not checking the box. And I've seen some people try and push the indigenous community to go do that. But from my perspective, you, because they didn't have, when you were getting vaccinated, they did not have the passports. You were getting vaccinated, and I was getting vaccinated because I believe in the technology. I believe in the direction that we were going. I believe in medical innovation. So I supported it.

But when they brought in the vaccine mandate, it was like, I can't support this because you're now discriminating against my indigenous community, my family members, my community, and we're going back from my perspective to segregation. Yes. You are limiting where individuals from my family are able to eat. They can eat at McDonald's. They can't eat at Earls. They can eat at A&W or fast food joints, but they can't enter and sit down at an establishment. that sounds awful like some things that I remember reading about in a first nation's 12 textbook that I was not a fan of then and I'm not a fan of now and so until there was a system

and I doubt that there's going to be where you can make sure that individuals like my family like my indigenous community can still be treated equally I can't support this and that was one of my main drivers to not participate in that process I've never downloaded the QR code I will not participate with school I had to get testing done I'm fine with that. I'm just not going to participate in a system that further segregates my indigenous community. And in a time where we're talking so much about reconciliation and lost children, I feel like it's not that unreasonable for me to bring this up and say,

this is something where I can't just pick a team and go against, I support vaccines, I don't support segregation of indigenous people or people who are making a medical choice. As you say, I just think that the indigenous community might just be cleaner for people in terms of understanding that we have had limbs cut off. We have had operations done on indigenous people at Indian residential schools. We have been abused by provincial government. These people are not your heroes. These people are not the people that indigenous people look to for wisdom, for sage advice.

These are institutions that have constantly and consistently abused indigenous people. Try to remove our culture, try to control how we procreate. and really diminished our value. And that has been indigenous people's experience with government. Aside from the average Canadian who has a great view of government, that has been our experience. And hopefully understanding how many children were lost due to Indian residential schools, situates you to understand why indigenous people are hesitant to take your vaccines to go and get these medical procedures done. Just to respect that, as you said, choice.

Yes. Yeah, I know. If I was an indigenous person, I wouldn't trust the government at all. You know, the abuses and atrocities that have happened in this province and this country have just been insane. And, you know, it's really heartbreaking. You know, it's actually looking at my orange t-shirt in my closet. And it's like, maybe I'll wear that on the podcast today. But I don't know. I just... But I love that teacher because it says every child matters. And, you know, it's truth.

Like, I love that. It doesn't say only indigenous children matter. It doesn't say only white children matter. it says every child matters and I love that and so when I wear that orange t-shirt I feel really proud of that yeah it's interesting to see you know in the United States the black community the black communities responded with vaccination like that as well you know the Tuskegee experiments in the United States they intentionally infected black people with with syphilis and didn't tell them you know so yeah I can understand why people of color and different backgrounds

don't trust the government it's you've broken their trust and and that trust has It takes years to get back. It takes a lot of effort. So, yeah, I think to earn trust, you do have to honor choice. And anybody that, you know, I try not to be, like, hypocrisy is really, I hate hypocrisy if you say one thing. And then you're doing another thing. Like, it's, and I'm not perfect. I'm not a perfect person.

Like, everybody has their own problems and different things we navigate through life. but hypocrisy is really something that I try and avoid. I try to be consistent. And if somebody points out my hypocrisy, I'll hear them, and I'll try and change that, and I'll try and do better. So, yeah, I think choice really reigns free and, you know, healthy living. You know, I try and do that myself. This morning I got on my peloton, and I worked hard for 20 minutes.

I was sweating buckets. And then I came here. you know I did that because I wanted to have a clear mind you know like I didn't want to wake up this morning and I didn't have the best sleep last night I didn't want to come here and my mind be clouded or have other thoughts or you know just not be on a good track where I couldn't communicate or you know when I'm trying to communicate so I worked out you know I'm trying to live what I'm talking about you know I worked out I took my vitamins I pop some vitamin C and vitamin D before coming here I do that you know most most days and so yeah you know I think each individual does their best, you know, take care of themselves, take care of their body, take care of their mind, their spirit. You know, if you can do that as an individual, you will impact your community in such a positive way. Starting from the inside, starting from you and going out, like I mentioned, you know, start with myself, then help my family, my wife and my kids, then I can start helping my community. It does start from you. So, yeah, choice has to be

respected at an individual level and then we can progress out from the community well if i was a lazier interviewer i'd ended there because i think that that's a beautiful way to end this but unfortunately i can't um because i do want to talk to you about um what this process has been like for you you have been more vocal uh than anybody else i think uh at least in chilewack in terms of these mandates um as someone who's i've seen people post about freedom of speech freedom of expression As someone who's attended law school, who has taken freedom of expression courses, who understands the roots, who wrote a paper on the roots of freedom of expression, we do not have that to protect things that are common knowledge or things that are common tropes.

We have freedom of expression for controversial ideas, for ideas that are not mainstream. And certain ideas go from being controversial to mainstream. I think you can, I guess you could debate this. one, but I would say that the lab leak theory, hypothesis, is one of those ideas that social media organizations like Facebook, Instagram, took a very hard stance against, and the more we learn, the more that hypothesis becomes more possible, more likely, not true, not factually proven. China, I would say, is taking a huge stance against us having the sufficient evidence

to make a final determination. But I would say that the door is just opened wider to that being a possibility and more and more likely as we go on. They have not found whatever bat they were theorizing that started all of this. We know this started in Wuhan. We know that several doctors at the Wuhan lab were infected. We know that one of the individuals trying to speak out has vanished and is unable to speak. So we have certain information to indicate that at best these social media organizations were incorrect and that there is a certain level of importance to individuals speaking up with their freedom of expression on ideas that are more controversial. To their credit, I agree with individuals like Joe Rogan who say it is nearly impossible to operate at scale.

You're trying to make sure that there were anti-vaxxers prior to COVID that I thought were nonsensical, that I could never buy their ideas. They were trying to tie ideas that had nothing to do with each other together to make an argument. And we can all go on YouTube and find crazy videos of people saying that they're experts in the field that have figured out that there's crazy things going on that we don't understand. So there is possible nonsense and tomfoolery going on on social media. And I think they are grappling with that. And whether or not there's a malicious element or not a malicious element, I don't think it matters. I think the evidence is that the reason that we have freedom of expression and why these social media apps should work towards holding that. that true is because the best ideas are often start as controversial. They don't start as

mainstream and then become mainstream and then that's everything we know. Often the best ideas start on those outer curves and then work their way in and then it becomes common knowledge. I think of Pluto, we all accepted Pluto as a planet and then now it's not and that kind of that hit us all in the face and there's some people who still try and stand behind Pluto being a planet. Things change over time and Neil deGrasse Tyson was not popular. during that period for saying Pluto is no longer a planet. He took flack for that, even though how often does that affect your daily life? Probably never.

So that's why we have freedom of expression. And the idea is that there is no better way to sort out what is true and what is false than talking it out, writing it down, thinking it through, reading and understanding. And it's also useful to understand it. The philosophers way back in time had to really fight hard for the idea of freedom of expression, freedom of a speech. It was not something that was popular at the day for exactly the reasons that we're seeing now is because it's much easier to guide a population of people if they do not have access to hearing all the different perspectives. And there's no better truth-seeking mechanism than having open dialogues on video where you can see me talking, you can see Adam talking, and you can decide for yourself whether he's genuine, whether I'm genuine.

This is hopefully in my perspective the way out because you can decide for yourself. I'm doing my best to talk honestly, openly, have the tough conversations. It's come at great personal expense, in my opinion, for you though, because, and that's why the ideas are, I guess, controversial is it's been a sacrifice. And I guess whether or not we agree on all the details, I appreciate you for taking your role within our society seriously, because as I said earlier, I think that the role of the individual is to be the cornerstone of the state to hold the government accountable. regardless of whether or not you're right or wrong

you're holding the government's feet to the fire you're holding yourself up and you're taking a risk at great personal expense you're not getting paid for this you're not making money off of expressing your opinions and during a time where it's the least popular so I'm interested what this

journey has been like for you over these at least the past year in terms of mandates and what that what brought you to do this what made you say like I think I'm right there's lots of people who might think the same way as you do but they have not vocalized themselves on social media, perhaps. Yeah.

What brought you to do this? Yeah, it certainly has been risky, and I've at times been concerned of how things could go. But, you know, if you asked me, like, our gym was shut down for three months last year. And so, like that, or I guess 2020, I guess now. And we had a month last year as well. So, you know, if you'd ask me if our gym could be shut down for three months and survive, I'd probably would have told you no. I probably said, oh, we were going to go out of business and, you know, we'll be done and that'll be it. And, you know, we pivoted, we changed.

We, you know, just tried to work hard and, you know, stay on top of things and communicate to people and, you know, just check in with people and how they're doing. And things have been great, you know. Right now, we're the busiest we've ever been. It's just crazy how much growth we've had over the past, especially six to eight months. It's just so busy. and, you know, like I mentioned earlier about, you know, different people in different camps of, you know, pro-vax, pro-mask, you know, anti-vax, anti-mask, you know, I think I've earned the respect because I've been honest, you know, like it's, if I tried to talk one topic with this group and then, you know, I'll talk with one topic with this group, you know, kind of lie to each group just so I seem like I'm reasonable to everybody, you know, hopefully that works out. No. Like, I've been honest. I've been, I've been, the person. I've been saying these things all the time. I've been, you know, people come into our facility. I've been saying all these things all the time. We have real conversations. And so I think

it is, you do kind of get worried because it's like, oh, what is this person going to think about me? You know, are they going to treat me different now that they know, maybe I don't really see it exactly like this? And I think our relationships have grown stronger. I think people trust me more. They appreciate my business more. They appreciate the healthy lifestyle that we're trying to promote, you know. And so I think it's been good because I can live honestly. I can be honest. I can be who I want to be.

I can talk about my personal choices with my own pride and sense of being and have it respected. And while I'm doing that with those people too, even though they might be different from me and they might choose different from me. So I think, yeah, there is all this division and all this talk against different groups and different things like that. But if you're honest to people and treat them with respect, I think you're going to be even get closer. So, you know, even though I might have this opinion and somebody has this totally different opinion, I think we've come together. And so I think our business is a reflection of that. You know, it's nice to have like numbers and, you know, like is there metrics, you know, how's, how's business going and, you know, how's things going?

And all those metrics and all those numbers say that we're doing a good job. And, yeah, like, and I won't claim to have the perfect answer or be right. But I am speaking what I believe to be my own truth or my own understanding of things or my own choices. And just being open with people about that, I think I've earned the respect and, you know, they trust me because of that honesty. Right. What is the response been, I hate to say this, behind closed doors? Because I imagine, so I get very hesitant when people try and tell me that social media is a good metric of what's going on in society. Yeah.

Most people aren't on social media, despite common misconceptions that we're all on social media. Yeah, lots of people aren't. And those voices aren't seen. But social media acts as like a filter of what we think is going on. And so if something gets 100 likes, oh, that must be true. And in my paper about freedom of speech, I talk about technology and how I think podcasts are the way out because you can't say something that's patently false, but with the energy of something that's true. And I think that that's one of this, you can't fix that in social media. The only way to get out of it is through long-form conversations where you get to snuff out whether or not this person's genuine.

What is their life story? Who the heck are they? What have they done for the community? Are they a selfish person? Because the common thing is to say that anti-vaxxers are people who have not been vaccinated are hate people and they're selfish and they're gross and they're all the problems with the world are these individuals. You don't look that way to me. And so to have these preconceptions where we put people into one box or the other is I think always an error. And so what have those conversations behind closed doors looked like?

And do you get any sense of where this might be going? Yeah, behind closed doors, because, yeah, like he said, there's lots of people that aren't on social media. Tons. I would say the majority. So it's interesting. Like, I heard some stat. It was like, Twitter was like, the voices on Twitter were amplified by like 6% of the people or something like that. Like the small percentage were controlling, like dominating the conversation.

And I was like, oh, that's not good. And, yeah, in real life, like, I have real conversations with people. And lucky for me, I have a. a great staff that runs our business really well. They do a great job. And so I'm able to take time to have more long conversations with people, really get to know people. Whereas before, when I was a younger business owner, I was doing everything, teaching

class, you know, taking payments, you know, signing this person up, you know, answering the phone, like just doing, I had all the hats on, right? So I've taken some of those hats off and the staff do a great job of those other things. And so, yeah, I'm able to sit and talk with people and just ask. come about their day, how they're feeling about things. And of course, COVID is just like a main conversation right now with lots of people. And people are trying to have different conversations and try and get away from all this, but it does come back to it.

You know, people want to talk about it. You know, they're feeling different ways about different things. And so just being able to sit with people and talk to people, like, I'd say, yeah, I think my thoughts are mainstream, you know, like a lot of people do believe in choice, you know, choose to get vaccinated or not. mask were or not, they do believe in choice, but they're just so afraid of when they do speak up, like, who's going to, who's going to hear them? And so Adam, they tell me something how they've been feeling that's not mainstream, you know, and then Adam Gibson just loses on them.

Are you crazy? Why haven't you been doing that? You know, like the news, everybody, everybody's doing it. Why aren't you doing it? And so people are just afraid of like talking about sensitive subjects and then just getting destroyed after that. Like, you know, it's a really, like, kind of like it's bubbling inside of them and they're like, I want to talk about this, but then they get slammed on and then they're just like, oh, I'm never talking about that ever again. Like, and so it stops communication. And so I think I agree with you, like the podcasts, I think they are the way out.

I think they are the future because, yeah, when we talk to people, when we have a long-form conversation, if you're the same or completely opposite, you do build these beautiful relationships with people that you wouldn't think that you would have a relationship with because you took the time to understand them, you took the time to hear them, and just allow them to be the person that they're choosing to be. And I got tons of friends that don't see the world the way I do. And so it's a beautiful experience, you know, behind closed doors when you get to have real conversations when people aren't afraid to, you know, say something. Absolutely. And I do feel like, to be honest, to listeners, that I have self-censored throughout

this podcast. I have not looked, seeks to get involved in this conversation for exactly the reasons you've described. I do not want to be labeled as having a position that I don't. I don't want to be described as an anti-vaxxer. I don't want to contribute to vaccine hesitation, whatever the heck that is. I don't want to be a part of the problem, but I also don't want to remain silent. And I felt like you were the best person to talk to about this because you've done something I think is admirable, which is to voice your opinion despite severe criticisms, despite a lot of reasons not to, a lot of reasons to keep your mouth shut,

you've chosen not to. And again, to me, that comes at a sacrifice. Your business suggests that what you're doing works. I think that that's because overwhelmingly that's true. I think that's why Trudeau was elected, not this Trudeau, but the past Pierre Trudeau. I think that's why he was elected. I think that true leaders are people who voice their opinion despite the criticisms, whether you agree with them or not. And I think that that is a testament to the value that you bring to our community. And so for some listeners, I imagine they're waiting for this question, which is, are we going to see you run in politics?

Are we going to see you be involved in any way in this upcoming election? You have tried to hold our current government's feet to the fire, try and get them to answer questions and be responsive to their constituents. What can we expect in the next couple of years? You know, I do enjoy politics. I do like talking about it and I'm not afraid to voice my opinion or share my thoughts, I guess. But, you know, yeah, politics in their current state are so it's filled with vitriol. It's filled with hate right now. And, you know, I hope I'm creating an influence outside of that right now so that we can get back to a more healthy way of communication, you know. My wife is very much against me ever even considering that, you know, just because it's, yeah, people just attack you. just for no reason. Like, it's just crazy. Like, I do have a lot of respect for the politicians.

Like, you know, Kelly Patton, I've talked to a bunch here recently. I've met with the Lory Thronus in the past and John Martin. And so I've communicated with these people. I've got a lot of respect for them because they are standing. Their feet are in the fire all the time. You know, they can't serve everybody perfectly and, you know, agree with everything or do everything everybody wants to do. And so I have a lot of respect for them.

you know for me when I think about serving my community I think I'm doing it right now like it's our gym I think is I think it's a beacon of hope I think it's a place where people can come and their differences can be respected and you know but we can all train together we can sweat together on the mats you know we can high-five each other and support each other so I think that has big impact in the community and so we'll see what the future holds I'm not closing it off, but yeah, at this point, I think I'm in the place I need to be. That's good. And as I think I mentioned to you before, I admire your wife for having that position because you want somebody who's acting in your best interest. And I think if she was

pushing you into the, like into that position, that would actually be worse. I think you want somebody who's saying, this is not a place you want to get. This is not the place to stay too long. This is not a healthy, warm, loving place. This is going to be a, tough time. And it would be, again, going back to that serving the community, being that like cornerstone of the government is to make sure that our government is running properly. And I think that people forget that we need a strong opposition. We need the conservatives to the liberals. We need the liberals to the NDP, which sounds weird. But we need the contrasting views to challenge the other side. And I think that that's something I hope to see become more

healthy. I feel like, I guess, we're lacking a strong, healthy opposition at all levels of our government other than our municipality to ask tough questions, to ask controversial questions, to ask unpopular questions, regardless of how they're labeled. And I admire individuals like Pierre Polier, I think I'm saying his name wrong. Pahlia of, yeah. Yeah, I admire him. You don't have to agree with him. But I like that he's been consistent from the get-go. He's had the same position. You can look back his post. Everything's been relatively consistent. And I can respect consistency because it can depend on it. In contrast to things that are all over the map. And that's why I wanted to have you on. I won't talk this topic with everybody. Because you were talking about

this and when we met, you talked about how you did this before. So it wasn't like, oh, here's a marketing employ. Here's a topic that I can hop on to today because it's popular. I'm very hesitant on those types of people who are kind of making their name now post-pandemic to have you work and be thinking about these issues and be contacting government officials prior to the pandemic. I think lends credibility because it goes back to that Eddie Gardner consistency over 12 years to one problem rather than hopping on when it starts getting some news coverage. And so, yeah, I think that that's really important. Yeah. Well, hopefully we can stop talking about all this stuff here soon, and life returns back to normal. I am feeling optimistic lately. You know, like,

there's definitely been some dark times throughout COVID that you're very pessimistic. I've been very pessimistic and just really not feeling good about where our country and the future is headed here. But the past couple months, I've been very optimistic. I think things are changing. I think people, you know, want to return back to life and they want their personal choices honored and I think we're about to get there. I don't know how much longer it's going to be here, but I hope it starts with, you know, the passports being thrown into the garbage bin of history. And, you know, we got some healing to do as a province and as a country. But I think we're headed in the right direction. I think this all, this nightmare is coming to an end here soon. And yes. And I think we're lucky to have individuals and people might hate me for saying this, like Joe Rogan, like Jordan Peters. Brett Weinstein from the Dark Horse podcast, his wife, Heather Hying, Robert Malone, Peter, I'm going to say his last name. Macalla. To have these individuals who are willing to come forward.

One of them is the inventor, one of the original inventors of the MRNA vaccines. And to have these people coming out, I know you've posted about them, and speaking out and explaining from a scientific perspective what's going on has been incredibly valuable and more terrifying that we have. haven't heard studies from Bonnie Henry, a breakdown of what's actually going on in terms of the science. And we've been told by Mr. Fauci that he is science and he speaks for science. And that is very alarming. If anyone has a true respect and admiration, as Karen Bondar talked about, of the real scientific method of figuring things out, we know that things change and that all you have is a theory. And the only reason that it becomes a theory is because it hasn't been disproven yet. And so there's something to admire about.

these individuals who are willing to speak out like yourself and break these issues down for us and kind of give us an insight on what's going on. And again, you don't have to agree with them. But thank goodness we have individuals like Joe Rogan who has a platform of his eyes to share perspectives that might challenge your preconceived notions about what the heck is going on. And I think that that's valuable. That is what it thinking is, is to take a new information and to have those perspectives challenged and to grow. And so I'm just interested to know to wrap this up, what your thoughts are on being able to consume content through long-form interviews like that. Yeah. You know, I think this past week, you know, you've seen that the tides are

changing and things are changing, like the Joe Rogan podcast, you can say whatever you want about it. I hope people actually watch it before just, you know, it's blasted him or whatever. But he's leading all the media ratings by far. He is crushing mainstream media news. And I think that's great. You know, people, you know, people's time is limited. But they're choosing to sit down for an hour, two hours, three hours, to listen to a long-form podcast so they can get the whole picture. They could easily spend that time somewhere else. That's a lot of time that they're committing, but they're choosing to sit down and consume that. And that form, through Joe Rogan right now, he is crushing mainstream media news, all of them.

Left and right, it doesn't matter what your political stream, he's destroying all of them. And I think it's great, you know, and so I think you're in the prime position here. you're doing, you know, the same thing. And I think your audience is going to grow over time and people hear it more. And, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it takes time for people to develop a sense of belonging, a sense of trust, you know, just, you know, where am I going to commit my time to? Am I going to commit my time to listening to this podcast today? Am I going to commit my time to listen to Joe Rogan or whoever? It takes a long time for people to get to that place. but when they do, they're lifelong customers.

They're going to be there with you all the time. And we see it in our gym too. You know, like the students, they start off and like, oh, this place is a little different. They're shouting loud. They're doing hyas and, you know, they're kicking and punching things and rolling around. And yeah, you know, it looks pretty cool, but I'm not sure yet. And a few months down the road, they're committed students, you know,

like they're lifelong students. We've got people that have been there for 10, 12 years, you know, and they're still training. And so, yeah, I think what you're doing, here is a really great thing. It's a service to the community. It's a service to yourself. You're gaining so much knowledge yourself, but you're also giving the chance for other people to, yeah, for other people to get to know, a lot of people don't know me, you know, the people, they come to my gym, they know me, and we can build a relationship there, but there's 90,000,

100,000 people here in town, you know, so it gives a chance for a few more people to know other people in the community and just feel a sense of belonging here in Chiloac. And so yeah, I think it's a beautiful thing. And I hope you keep doing what you're doing. And I'm definitely going to keep following Joe Rogan and other people out there too. So it's awesome. Well, I really appreciate your work in building up the confidence of young people in our community for reaching out to schools to help them develop this. I do think that this is something that hopefully can get more into schools because it's something I personally would have benefited from. And I'm sure many of my peers during that time would have benefited from.

I think that your willingness to speak out on this is so valuable because it's not something that's popular right now. And that seems crazy to me because it's such an important topic. It's something that goes to the heart of every family. And to not have that conversation be popular or even barely acceptable is something that's very alarming. And I think at best we need more individuals like yourself willing to speak up. So I appreciate you being willing to be that voice for so many people.

I see the response that you get on social media, and that's a small indication of what people are feeling. And I think that it's important that they're able to support if they don't want to get involved, if they don't want to have their face all over the place, or start becoming the new face of it, that they can show their support for at least someone like yourself willing to speak up on these issues and stand by your values, because that's something that can't be disputed. You're allowed to have your personal values and share that with the world. And I think that that's exactly what you're doing, and we're lucky that you're willing to do that. And we just did three and a half hours.

Crazy. Yeah, time's been fine. I was nervous before coming here. I'm like, oh, hopefully I can communicate with all these different topics or whatever. And, yeah, I've enjoyed talking with you and it doesn't feel like three and a half hours. Well, perfect. We'll have to do it again sometime. Thank you, Adam.

Thank you.