The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Keeping the Martial Arts Legit with Rob from McDojoLife | KEV Talks #30

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Rob's life trajectory was changed by one act from a friend. In our almost two hours discussion, Rob and I talk about:How his friend's suggestion changed his lifeRob's martial arts pathThe question that prompted him to start McDojoLifeBalancing tradition with being an adult martial artistInsight into the McDojoLife documentaryLife-changing surgeries Operation Smile facilitates correcting smile and cleft conditionsRob's vision of a martial arts convention for alland more!Thank you for subscribing, listening, and sharing the show.

One person reaching out, offering help, can make a huge difference in your life. On this episode of KevTalks Podcast, episode 30, Keeping the Martial Arts Legit with Rob from McDojo Life, Rob and I dive into that. What got him into martial arts? What got him into calling out fake martial arts and cult-like behaviors from folks? The future of the McDojo Life brand and program and documentary. And we talk about maybe a future where we can all meet up with our various martial arts heroes, products,

and everything in a convention, just like the Computer Electronics Show or some other big thing. So thanks for coming to the KevTalks podcast. Please go to KevTalksPod.com to read more. I also have go to BFS gear. That's breathe, frame, survive. That's the mantra that I created that I thought of is vital in jujitsu, probably in life, probably in your martial art, right? We have to get that breath.

We have to make space and frame literally in jujitsu, but maybe in our lives too, from work, from other stressors. And we have to survive. We have to keep showing up, right? And getting after it. So thank you for getting after it by coming to the Capitalks podcast. Please share this episode with others and subscribe to the podcast and we'll see you in my talk with Rob.

Three, two, one. Hey everybody. Thanks for coming to the Kappa Talks Podcast, episode 30 with Rob from McDojo Life. Today, we're going to try and keep the martial arts legit like Rob does and learn more about him. Rob, thanks so much for giving me your time, and it's good to connect, man. Yeah, dude. I appreciate it.

I love talking shop, so I appreciate you having me on. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's do the kind of standard intro before we get into the super cool stuff or the McDojo Life stuff in particular. But where are you from? Where'd you grow up?

Jacksonville, Florida. Yeah. Duval County. I love it out here, man. Like, I can't think. I've been around. Luckily, fortunately, I've been able to travel quite a bit and there's no other place I really think I'd love to live other than here.

Gotcha. So you're accustomed to the, the, my grandfather lived in Florida in Stewart for a while. My parents actually were in Jacksonville for a little bit. So I guess you're accustomed to the, the often afternoon storms and rain and you're like, Oh, it's so nice. And now it's raining again. Yeah. It'll, it'll usually rain for like all of 20 minutes and it'll rain real hard and then it'll stop and then it'll be muggy as hell for hours so i like it though um i've been to california california has something similar but it's not the uh on the clock two o'clock shower right but you know california has got a little bit more the weather i like just not a little more of the policies I like. Yeah, cool. So living there from there,

grew up, went to school. And is that where you, I guess, got your start in martial arts? And I know a little bit about your background from reading about it. Let's share that with folks. Listen. Yeah. So I started martial arts when I was 12. I was born with a cleft lip and palate. And because of that, I had to go through a lot of surgeries as a kid. And one of the things that kind of came from that is being picked on and teased in school. It just kind of happens. It is what it is. Right. And one day in school, I got jumped by a group of kids and they beat me for five minutes. The only reason I know it was five minutes was because they beat me from the time the first bell rang to the time the next bell rang, which is a five minute difference between classes. Um, and then when

the second bell rang, um, they all scattered and they kind of just ran away. Um, but it wasn't because of me, um, probably because they knew they were supposed to be in class and conditioned to the bell. Yeah. It'd be easy to find you if you just didn't show up so um two teachers stood there and watched the entire thing happen and didn't do anything about it and so a friend of mine who was late to that class i was laying there and i was looking down the hall and i could see him coming down the hall and he walked over he picked me up and he walked me to the nurse's office. He handed me a card for a free trial martial arts class. And he said, you need this. And I took it and put it in my pocket and moved on with life. That night I went home and I asked my mom if I could do it. The card was for karate classes,

a free trial. So I asked my mom and she said, maybe, which is not something my mom says. The next month was my birthday so i received a box it was just a one gift and when i opened it up it was paid in full karate classes it was 100 for the whole year paid in full so my first class was that night on my birthday and i celebrate every year so every year around my on my birthday i celebrate another year in the martial arts industry do you uh like break a board to celebrate as part of your celebration? No, I never break a board. Do you practice?

Funny enough, the karate that I was in, which is a misconception, which is always fun to talk about, though. But the karate that I was in was something called freestyle karate. Well, there are over 200 different versions of karate. So when people say karate it's not karate karate is like an umbrella term gotcha you have shotokan karate and ocean ru and you have like a freestyle karate or you have kyokushin karate there are a lot of different versions of karate so um not all karate practices kata the one that i practiced did not um and then certain karates don't do board breaking.

We did not, you know, our demonstrations were much different, but it was, it was something that was impactful to me. It was that moment in my life was allowing me to join martial arts and then eventually get to black belts. And now I'm a purple belt in Brazilian jujitsu.

And I fought internationally for two years on a martial arts team called team full circle. And then full contact six and no amateur boxer, And I fought internationally for two years on a martial arts team called Team Full Circle. And then full contact, six and no amateur boxer, four and two amateur kickboxer. I've been at this for a long time. No doubt. What difference? There's so many. Not to go through each one of them, because that would be its own multiple series and shows.

But what differentiates the style of karate that you practiced from kind of like me? People think, oh, you're breaking boards, you're doing katas, kind of as the standard flow. What kind of made yours, and what was the exact style, again, I apologize, that you practiced? It was freestyle karate. Freestyle, right. Back in the day, the particular art that I practiced was a very blended art.

So we had guys from JKD come in and teach us. We had Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guys come in and teach us. We had a lot of different people coming in and out of the door because my instructor was very big on cross training and making sure that you had an open mind to other things other than just what he taught. Which I'm fortunate because there's a lot of people who join martial arts and they say, this is the only one, this is all you need to know, which is bullshit. Like you should cross train, you should learn more, you should try to bring in other instructors, you should try to develop a wider palette of technique and ideas and thoughts. So I was very fortunate. And really, if you want to compare it to anything, it'd be like Joe Lewis or Bill Wallace style of karate where it was more geared towards kickboxing. So it was basically like kickboxing that was labeled karate.

Oh, that's cool. And pretty awesome to have your mom kind of lean into, right? Like, you know, the unfortunate violence that happens, you know, when folks are bullied. Right. And we like, yeah, we're going to find you a solution to be able to defend yourself to to hopefully either prevent make it less you know fight back all the all the all the pluses that i'm sure we'll talk about of martial arts in general of the various martial arts um because i would imagine some some parents go the opposite and then maybe over shelter their kids and and no i don't know how you do that in in the public school if you went to public school um you know environment but that seemed and you can you know here and probably what you do now like such a formative thing to say you know what

you're right we're gonna help give you the tools to to deal with this to to build confidence to to do all those kind of things um did it it didn't seem like it took a ton of convincing or was there a series of conversations you had to have before you got that birthday present with your mom? No, I think that she was aware that it was something I needed. Like I, I had consistently asked to join sports as a kid. So I wanted to do baseball, but she was worried if I got hit in the face with a ball, it would ruin surgeries. Football. Well, if I got hit in the face, it would ruin surgery. So most of it had more to do with my medical condition than it had to do with sheltering. I think she really just knew how much time, energy, and effort could have been erased had I suffered an injury that was possible. I think that martial arts had opened

up a window that was a little different in her eyes because she knew about the ingrained, I guess you could say, cliches of honor, integrity, respect, discipline and things like that. And I think that she knew I needed to be involved in something. At that point in my life, all I was doing was just doing school, then going home, playing video games, and then that was it. And so that lack of social interactions outside of school is not healthy. And then on top of that, you know, just sitting down playing video games all day, also not healthy. So I think she knew I needed some kind of an outlet. And I'm grateful that she chose that as the outlet that she would allow me to do, which is funny, because ironically enough, it's one of the only sports that you're guaranteed to

get punched in the face. You know, it's like, the only sports that you're guaranteed to get punched in the face you know it's like you know those other things are possibilities this one's going to happen so right and then you know i had a i pretty much started fighting right at 12 after a when i was 12 years old my first competition was a month after that i was there specifically to want to learn self-defense. Everyone joins for different reasons, but my goal was to stop getting my ass whooped. So I was trying to throw myself into as many competitions as possible, training it every day if I could. I'd be there before class started training. I'd be there after class was over until they kicked me out of the doors.

And I was there all the time. My mom would not drive in the rain and so whenever it would rain i would find rides to go there i was always there um and then after that you know i started full contact uh when i was 15 at a local nightclub called plush it was a 21 and up bar um they used to do these things called friday night fights where they would just let anyone in the crowd join to fight of course it was just a bunch of drunk people yeah uh but the reason i was able to do that was because the promoter was my instructor and he gave me a rule he said well you can fight but then you have to leave and also you have to

get your mom to sign a waiver so my mom had signed the waiver and then I was off to the races. My first guy ever fought was 30 something years old. I was 15 because it was a 21 and up bar. Like anyone and there was had to be at least 21 and up. So that's where I kind of cut my teeth in full contact and learned what it was like to have a rowdy crowd. And they were definitely smoker fights, you know, people in the ring with cigars, putting their drinks on the ring. It was a rowdy crowd and they were definitely smoker fights you know people in the ring with cigars putting their drinks on the ring it was a rowdy place but I got fortunate to be able to tape and film all those. Wow that's pretty awesome so so for you know for kids being bullied is that is that something you would suggest is getting some some sort of martial arts some sort of activity

to learn that self-defense like you did, or just, and I imagine there's no one size fits all to the, you know, that, that issue of bullying, but I guess, what would you, what would your advice be to kids that have a similar thing? First, first let's address the word bullying. I think that's a bullshit nonsensical word. And I think we need to stop using it. Think about the word itself, bullying. There's no solution to

bullying. There's no laws against bullying. And you can't really even define bullying because within bullying, we're talking about multiple issues that could span tons and tons of conversations that don't actually pinpoint what bullying is. If we start to dissect what bullying is, we start to break down the issues. We actually already raw laws and rules and regulations against it um so when people are campaigning against bullying cut that out campaign to get rid of the word the word is the word basically says that assault is now bullying stalking and harassment yeah you know like okay so if someone beats someone up it's very popular nowadays to say they were bullied no no no that's assault and battery it's a crime right we have rules and

laws against that treated as such you know if a child like there was a gentleman out there right now a friend of mine his name is tom de blas tom de blas very well known in jujitsu circles and he's been campaigning uh to get schools involved with his organization to try to get kids who were bullied into martial arts programs pro bono to allow them an outlet that's amazing yeah but as adults as the people in charge as the people and the lawmakers and the rule makers stop saying it's bullying when it's not. If someone's stalking and harassing someone, that's stalking and harassment. That has a rule against it.

Also, I think we should hold children to very similar standards to how we hold adults when it comes down to actions. I think that if a child steals something, do I think that that child needs to be put in prison forever? No, but i do believe that they should understand the consequences um and it's the same thing when it comes to bullying because nowadays it's much different than when it was when i was a kid i used to get bullied at school and then i could just stay home and it was done well the internet wasn't as prevalent as it

is yeah so what happens now is a kid gets bullied he gets filmed memes get made about it whole entire facebook pages get made about it. And then the entire school continues to heckle that kid until they kill themselves. Right. That's you can't escape it nowadays. So step one, stop using the word bullying. Start calling it what it is. The other thing would be find an outlet.

I don't think it has to be martial arts. I don't think it has to be sports. I don't think it has to be martial arts. I don't think it has to be sports. I don't think it has to be anything. I think just people have the need to want to feel accepted by a group or community. And something I talk about often when it comes to this, because obviously I'm somebody who was an advocate for anti-bullying, is what's the worst thing you can do to the most hardened criminal on the planet other than not prison really because they're used to that even in prison they're in prison what's the worst thing you can do the most hard criminal uh isolation probably isolation it is the worst form of torture isolate them and what happens when a child feels like they're when they're being bullied they're being isolated

a group of people they feel like they're alone and. They're being isolated from a group of people. They feel like they're alone. And so they're put in that position where not only are they feeling like they're outcasts, but they're reminded about it every day. You're a loser. You're a bum. No one likes you. This is us making fun of you. All of us think that you should be by yourself. You should kill yourself. You're ugly. You fat you're whatever right that's isolation they're being isolated away from being accepted and so i don't think it has to be martial arts i think it just has to be an outlet where someone accepts you and all it takes is one friend just one if you just had one person to reach out like for instance my story and how i started martial arts

i just got lucky i had one acquaintance at the time who now is one of my closest friends still to this day. He showed some type of care. He picked me up. Teachers didn't do that. They watched me get beaten. He walked me to the office and he took the time to say, hey, I think you need this. And I did. And it gave me an outlet. It gave me

friends. It gave me a place I could go where I felt accepted away from the place where I wasn't. And I no longer felt isolated. Yeah, that's a great, great perspective. You know, and for adults to your point, like adults with other adults, because there's so much inaction of, oh, I see that person like crying in the hallway but i'm gonna keep walking by and look at my phone or you know just that one little hey are you doing okay uh totally changes someone's life and literally could save their life to your point because they're in the worst spot maybe something happened in their family or or they are isolated to your point from co-workers or classmates or somebody else uh and makes a huge difference and

maybe think of you know one of the think random that popped up in my thread of this guy, and he started soaking himself in fluid, like gasoline or some kind of thing like that. And the title's like, hey, everybody helped accept, or nobody helped accept the homeless guy. And so then there's all these people looking, they're just standing there. He's doing this, he gets the lighter out, and everyone's just moving away, right? Just watching him. And then this guy comes up and takes the lighter out of his's just moving away right just watching him and then this guy comes up and like takes a lighter obviously he's talking to him and it's like that that one

difference that that one person to your point um can either on this on the spot it seems to save their life and you know or or show that hey we we do care and i love your perspective where it doesn't have to be martial arts um you know but something where you are part of a group and there's there's a lot of that out there a lot of of options, you know, what, what does that person like to do? You know, what are they should interest in or if it's your, if it's your child and then, you know, kind of steer them towards that. Because the other thing too, is, is you're not alone. You find when you start talking to other folks that have issues, problems, challenges as well, right. Which is, which is also hard to do when you're isolated, right. You don't feel like really talking to a lot of people. Yeah, it's kind of like all consuming,

you know, you wind up going down this weird spiral where you isolate yourself in order to get away from the people who were trying to harm you. And then so you self isolate, well, then after you self isolate, it puts you in a position where now that becomes a comfort blanket. And that comfort blanket is hard to get out of. Then all of a sudden now that thing that you're using to help you is harming you. And then it's hard to get back out because you're afraid. You're afraid that, you know, do you even remember how to interact with people? All the things that these people were saying about you are still stuck in your mind.

Are you that thing? You know, and you have this identity crisis where you start to believe the bullshit people say about you. And nowadays we have these, uh, these weird, um, acknowledgements that didn't happen before. Like if you get on your cell phone, um, we're looking for more likes, likes make you feel good. You're looking for comments on your post. You're looking for people to share your stuff. And it gives you like these great endorphins and it makes you feel good that people can acknowledge, you know, you know, when people get excited about going viral, oh my God, my video did this. So we're getting rewarded for some of the most heinous behavior.

If someone's being harmed, I could go over there and not film it and walk over and help someone, but I won't get a like, I won't get a comment. No one will share that. So where's my reward. I'll just be a good person like it. And then we live in a society as well where you're, you're shamed. If you do try to make politeness go viral, like people shit on people all the time who film themselves doing something nice for someone else why wouldn't we want that yeah if you ask permission why would we not want politeness and kindness to go viral right you know who are we being criticized by we're being criticized by

strangers online who did nothing for anyone else and criticize you for being polite like you should you should just do that and not show everybody but to your point like why not show the good i mean why not so much crap out there exactly so it's okay that someone can share a picture of a child being beaten by seven people which by the way i'm going back to the tom de blas thing where that he's yeah he's shown that because he's showing that as an example of hey I'm gonna help this kid somebody tell me who this kid is so I can get the program and it's worked He's gotten several kids in programs, but But it's not okay to film giving someone who's homeless a blanket, right? Like oh, well, that's embarrassing to the homeless person

Yeah, I'm sure the homeless person is going to go on their Twitter account tomorrow and go on their cell phone and go, oh my God, all these people know I'm homeless. They know they're homeless. What they need is someone who's kind to them, somebody to do something for them. And if I go to work, anyone out there, by the way, feel free to do this. Stop getting paid for your job. Just stop. Stop accepting paychecks. Oh, I can't do that. Stop getting paid for your job. Just stop. Stop accepting paychecks. Oh, I can't do that. I got to feed my family. Oh, I thought, oh, so you don't love what you do. That's how the internet works. It's like people go, oh, well, if you loved it and you wouldn't do it for the money, like, bitch, stop doing getting paid then. You do what you do for

money. That's not how the world works. Things aren't free in life. Right. Yeah. It's, it's a shame because if we made kindness go viral, if we had more people being rewarded for good behavior, then what we would have is more good behavior. So it's very simple risk reward, right? If I film a video of someone getting beaten and shot, that's going to go viral. If I film a picture, a video of somebody getting 20 bucks, yeah, maybe a couple hundred people will watch and 10 of those people are going to criticize the fact that you did it. And it's going to make you not want to do that. So it's astonishing to me, people's mentality because of the internet and these echo chambers of strangers who don't affect your day-to-day life whatsoever, but they affect your actions by criticizing, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely being a, I'm 49. So, so same,

like none of this existed, not even close. And then having, you know, a teenager and two other sons that just are in this world. And it's like, Hey, remember like, that's not the real world. It's cool. Right. Share things you exercise. Great. Share that, inspire others, all that, but don't let that drive your decisions you really make because it's not great. And I, you know, I have other family members that are younger too and it's so influential. And, and to me, one of the great things that I mentioned this with,

I talked to Travis modal elbows tight and I know you've talked to them and about, you know, this kind of stuff is the advantage of social media and podcasting and stuff like that is good. You know, I think transparent, open discussions and sharing that positive. So hopefully more of this is out just like, again, I think a lot of the great work that you've done or all the great work you've done with McDojo Life, right?

Exposing, you know, false martial arts that are dangerous. I mean, some of the stuff, and I'm sure plenty of folks exposing you know false martial arts that are dangerous i mean some of the some of the stuff and i'm sure plenty of folks you know that are listening have heard it and seen it uh is is just you know you actually try that in a real situation you're just you're gonna die right in some instances or or get hurt severely or you know that runs the gamut of of everything and then um to your point showing you know some of the videos which are stomach turning of of adults you know throwing kids right and and some of them die or hit you know just all this crazy stuff um and let me pause for a second for that you mentioned the time to blast work is it is the best way to get in touch with him to do that like on his instagram or something does he have

is it called a specific kind of effort to get um kids or other folks if you go to his instagram i'm sure there's tons of information i know there's tons of information about it on there and all the contact information and stuff like that will be located on his instagram i highly suggest people back that program yeah it does nothing but good for the community um i really i really love seeing those grassroots movements between martial arts schools. And again, he's a jujitsu instructor, right? So of course his network is jujitsu. It doesn't have to be jujitsu

and we don't have to just leech onto his program. It could be, anyone can do this. Anyone can go to your local school as an instructor and say, hey, I would like to offer five pro bono spots at my martial arts facility for kids who are being abused at your facility, at your school. Oh yeah. Kids who are having hard times, send them to me. I have, I can only afford X amount of spots, right? Because it's a job. I get that. But if you could have one scholarship a year, you know, where you go, I'll teach one kid for free a year. You just change. Well, imagine how many martial arts schools are out there now,

multiplying that up and see how many kids that you can affect. You don't know the power of what you do. Like, again, my friend didn't think he would be making McDojo life. Eventually that wasn't the point. My friend helped the person who needed help. And then luckily because of that, I've been fortunate enough to be able to get lucky and on top of that, bust my ass to be able to have a platform that I can help people. And because of his one act of kindness, we've been able to get people thousands of dollars back after they've been ripped off from athletic apparel companies in the martial arts industry who did not pay and did not send money out. We've been able to have coaches removed who were abusive. We've been able to shut down martial arts studios who wind up

having pedophiles inside of them. We've been able to go after these news stories that enlighten people and help people make better decisions when they're joining a martial arts school that's all because of one act of one person so you never know who you're affecting when you do one kind act and imagine if four of us did that well we could be affecting change on on a global scale just by giving a yeah it's not hard to give a it's actually easy to give a shit it's actually easy to give a shit yeah it's hard to ignore bullshit yeah no that makes sense it's like the like the positivity uh butterfly effect like you know do that one thing and then it it ripples and it makes a big difference either down the road or across the world literally i mean to your to your point like now you're you've reached folks all over the globe which is pretty amazing which your buddy probably never thought of when he was like, hey, try this class.

Yeah, it was strange, man. I went to karate combat, not this last time I was there, but the time before that. And I invited him out. I was like, hey, man, why don't you come to karate combat with me? We'll have a good time. And it was like the first time in a long time that he's seen me in a martial arts environment and it was kind of cool because a lot of people were walking up and they were saying hello and we were taking pictures and we were talking about things and we had dinner with Boz Rutten and the president of Karate Combat and we were we were it was like this weird thing where he got to witness like me being like a kid who was getting the shit beat out of him to being somebody who's recognized in an industry yeah and that's all due to one act of kindness that's great is karate

combat i know uh boss root and comments and stuff is is uh wonder boy thompson also involved in that or no he is yeah he's a commentator what they call the sensei so usually they have like three guys commentating and interchanges uh sometimes it's wonder boy but he's obviously he's getting ready for a fight so yeah i'm rooting for him if he wins that fight that means that he has a title shot again which i never thought i'd see him get again but after the complete clinic he put on his last fight um which is funny enough because i was in miami for another event when i watched his fight i hunted miami for one bar i could find which was like right off the the beach like yeah the strip right there everything there was like expensive and they didn't have the fight so i just went like two

blocks down to a local bar and it had one giant tv that was hosting the fight right when i walked in that was when the first bell rang for his fight. And I was like, Oh, we just made it. And I got to watch the entire thing. No one in that bar gave a shit about the UFC. It was just me,

Robin black. Um, and I think, uh, uh, Matt from Epic roll apparel and like one other dude. And we're just glued to this TV and watching him put on just like this beautiful art piece of a clinic of him kickboxing and showing off a sport karate and his karate roots like that is the steven thompson i know can be a title holder and so i

i really rooting for him i want it so bad for him and so if he wins this next fight that's in the cards wow yeah it's such a fun it's such a he wins this next fight, that's in the cards. Wow. Yeah, it's such a fun style. The amount that he moves, it's exhausting watching him move around and jump in. And you're like, man. But it's not like it doesn't put the work in to get there. But yeah, it'd be super great to see him fight and win a title, frankly.

It'd be cool to have him hold that belt. Yeah, man. Maybe I'll get lucky and be able to be there. Oh, yeah. I'd love to be there and support like the that when that comes you know i know his next fight on his dad's cool as shit too ray's awesome um they're they're just really nice people like they just are that that's who they are their entire family is cool um and they're very hospitable their gym is incredible if you've never been south carolina right yeah uh samsonville uh simpsonville um yeah simpsonville um it's an incredible gym it's beautiful it looks you know i've seen the um i think probably between him and then like sensei seth that's on there or at that gym a lot uh yeah it's enormous i mean it's pretty awesome

um i see mike and sensei seth do so much work together um and they every once in a while will have like a gathering and they'll just bring all these different youtubers to come and train together and it's at i see mike's gym and then uh steven thom Thompson's gym is you know a couple hour drive away but it's not that bad yeah um you know I think he's in Myrtle Beach um around Myrtle Beach area and then you can drive up to um the Simpsonville to go to their gym and it's really awesome gym I thought I was in the wrong place I like pulled up and they had yeah I thought I was in the wrong place. I like pulled up and they had, yeah, I thought I was like at a restaurant because when you pull up, it's a huge building. Right. That building is their building. And I thought it was like, oh, this is a strip mall and there's going to be like, it's going to be in there somewhere. Nope. You pulled up,

there's like tables and chairs outside, which is what made me think it was a restaurant. Oh yeah. Well, that's weird. So I pulled up and I walked in and I was like, no, this is it. Beautiful, like full on like coffee shop in the front lobby, like straight up Starbucks in the front lobby, right? Thanks. Multiple TVs where you can sit in the lobby and watch any of the dojo floors that they have. Multiple, I think four or five dojo floors right there on the on the main strip where they have curtains that will drop and raise and lower like separate them a beautiful audio system where

if you're standing in one of those dojo floors and the curtain drops you can't hear the music next door no kidding they have a full uh after school program that is separated almost so it's like almost in its own little building that you have access to through a door. So when the after-school kids come in, it doesn't interrupt anything going on. Pages, masks, bag racks, like you name it. It's a beautiful facility. That's cool. That's good.

Good. Put the work in. It seems like they're always giving back down there too with all those programs and the gym and everything. Yeah, that's cool uh and speaking of giving back your your mcdojo life journey started a little bit from us talking and then looking up from from another conversation with someone um that kind of asked why something wasn't being done can you kind of kind of touch on that what sparked off off the whole McDojo life? Yeah, absolutely. So I was in, uh, jujitsu at the time, um, which is still the current art that I've been working on, although I've been slacking. Um, so it's, it's a weird job that I have. Um, but I wound up going at the time, uh, I was at a jujitsu program. I was a striking coach there.

I was a kid's program director, and I was also doing like the back-end admin paperwork and stuff like that. So I wore a lot of hats there. And that day I was there for admin work. So I'm on the computer, like punching in contracts and following up with people who hadn't shown up or things like that. And my boss calls me and goes, hey, man, I'm not feeling very well. Could you do me a favor? Could you teach this class? And my boss, to this day, I think it's the only time I've ever seen him sick ever. It's like a machine.

So I was like, all right, cool. I'll teach the class. So I taught like an arm bar triangle choke and transition between the two. And then we sparred. Um, and then afterwards, because it was a noon class, most people during a noon class either don't work that day or they have to go back to work immediately. Right. So, but most people just don't work that day. So I'm there and we're just kind of chit-chatting after class. And we got on the subject of McDojo's and what that was and all that and McDojo stories and everyone left except for one guy. And that particular gentleman, it was a second class ever. He did a free trial class and this was his first official, I'm a paid member class signed up

nice so he pulled me to the side and he goes hey man i'm a little embarrassed i don't know what a mcdojo is and so i um i told him what i believe a mcdojo is which eventually became the basis for the five rules of the page and then um he just asked a very simple question he goes why doesn't anyone do anything about that and i was like i don't know like i don't i have no answer for you but it went down a rabbit hole in my mind i couldn't get out of which i still i guess never have crawled out of that rabbit hole that question is there is no regulating body to the martial arts industry that does not exist. There is no standards in this industry. There is no requirement. There is no certification that you need to start a martial arts school.

You literally can start a martial arts school with no martial arts experience. And as long as you're charismatic enough, you can convince people that you have some type of a skill. Right. And history has shown that that is 100% possible, that you can be successful as an instructor in martial arts and never have trained martial arts. It's it's fascinating to me. So like that night, I couldn't get it out of my head. So I started researching, like, well, what has there been? And the only thing I could find was a thing called bullshido forums and bullshido forums was like a really big deal back in the day yeah but bullshido forums since then has kind of like tried to branch out into bullshit of all kinds instead of just martial arts which i feel is almost impossible to do unless you have

experts in those areas everywhere yeah yeah so i stay in my lane i just stick with fake martial arts and cults but when it comes to what they were doing, I noticed a thread. No one had actually defined it. Everyone had different ideas and thoughts of what a McDojo was. No one actually defined it. And a lot of the arguments were very semantical. A lot of the arguments were very individualistic. Like somebody would be like, Oh, that guy got his black belt in like three years. He's not a real martial artist. He's not a real black belt. And I'm like, well, that's a bullshit statement. Like, what about BJ Penn? He got his black belt in three years. Are we saying he's not a legitimate black belt? Oh, well, no, no, no, no. Well, either it's a rule or it's a guideline. And what you're telling me is it's kind of more like a guideline. And if it's a guideline, we need to stop labeling it as fact. It's not.

It's basically just saying, well, he does an art I don't do, so I don't respect it. Well, why don't you just say that? Don't sit there and say it's a McDojo when it's not. Or people will say, oh, they charge too much, they're a McDojo. Do you think Lamborghini gives two shits that people think they charge too much? No, they're charging the value of what they feel their, their car is worth. Right. And a lot of martial artists, unfortunately are working two jobs and they're still not getting fine. And they're still not getting paid well from their

school. And I've noticed just in the last, you know, over 26 years in this industry, but and specifically with McDojo life alone, that most McDojos are not financially successful. They're McDojos because they choose not to learn business. Like almost every school that I've seen that is financially successful, almost, it's not even close to a McDojo. It's because if you start looking at what requires a good business to run, you start looking at things that require a good martial artist, discipline and dedication and hard work. Whereas the people who don't run a good business, they show up right before class starts. They leave right wing classes over. They never clean the mats. They never worry about budget.

They never worry about background checks because they don't care. Right. So you it's a breeding ground for a cult where it's like oh that guy charges too much we build world champions well what about the guy who doesn't want to be a world champion that's about as useless as a dick on my elbow he doesn't want that that's not what they're for and so you wind up getting these weird cults that breed not from the standard traditional idea of what a mcdojo is but from the opposite it's fascinating to me and i really have been fighting as hard as i can to try to redefine what people believe in that aspect because that's being passed down by people

who don't know what the fuck they're talking about right yeah it's one of many great points that uh you've talked about is the the perspective of well my art is better because of this right or that one's invalid because of that uh with without kind of the the more open mind of you know everybody's art is kind of their own right and and certainly there's different applicability depending on what you do in a situation and this and that, whatever. But to say that there's like a superior, you know, style over another solely is a, you know, seems a pretty single-minded

way to look at martial arts in general. And it's also, it's a disservice to students when we think that the only reason they're there is to learn how to beat people up. Yeah, that's projection. That makes a poor coach. A poor coach pushes the agenda of what they want onto their students. It's also starting to be a breeding ground for a cult at that point. But that's a different story. But a good coach is going to look at the individual and say, what do they want out of this? And do the best that

they can to provide that individual with a stepping stone to get from point A to point B, using martial arts as that bridge in order to help them reach their goals. So if somebody comes in, I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's say someone, which is an example I use often, I've seen it over the years where someone who's obese comes in to a martial arts gym. They, again, they've been isolated. They would like a sense of community. And that's something they're reaching out for. And they walk in and they go, man, my doctor told me I need to lose 30 pounds on my own

so I can get a gastric bypass or a gastric sleeve. They said I had to do some work on my own. And I know that if I go to a gym by myself, I'm not going to do the work. I know that I cannot afford a personal trainer and a dietitian. So martial arts seem like it'd be fun. I'd have friends and I could lose the weight. And of course, if you are a coach and you think the only reason that they're there is to fight and you start shoving that agenda down their throat, they're not going to keep showing up. They will not reach their goal. They will quit on you. And the average martial artist drops out at a year. Why? Because I think the average instructor tries to shove their own agenda down their student's throat. We should look at what the student wants and help guide them. Next thing you know, this guy loses 30 pounds. Let's say he joined a keto and everybody loves shit on a keto for good reason. But let's say he joined a keto, right?

And let's say that same guy lost 30 pounds because any activity would be good activity for someone who does no activity. Sure. Yeah. He loses 30 pounds like that, right? Then all of a sudden he gets the gastric bypass and then all of a sudden he loses an extra 150, 200 pounds. Best shape of his

life saved his life changed his life right then he goes online and starts showing off the aikido that he's learned that he's loved that saved his life and here comes some douchebag who goes oh that's bullshit that doesn't work on the street that's just as fucking stupid as me putting up a shelf in my office and someone walking in and going that won't work on the street that's just as stupid as me putting up a shelf in my office and someone walking in and going that will work on the street no i'm putting up the shelf why would i do that on the street that's the dumbest i've ever heard right because that bias goal is not your goal and we shouldn't necessarily on someone else's goals that are not our own if it's making their life better and their instructor's not lying to them who cares who

cares but martial artists are so self-deprecating in our own industry where we love to just attack everybody who doesn't do what we do the only reason we do that is because the guy who taught us did the same shit and we learned from them that's a great point learn behavior and it sounds like there's opportunity for you know you have a core curriculum in each art, I would imagine. Right. But you can still cater that as the instructor to the individual person. Right. So if, you know, say I compete a lot. Great. I'm going to I'm going to train a little bit different or a lot different or more often or whatever than other folks that just want to come in and to your point, lose weight, be more active, not be alone, be welcomed. Right. And by and large, it seems that the legit martial arts places are a place to do that across the different, you know, whatever art style and, you know, to your point, Nikita, and you're right, it is a that's an example that probably bowls to the top the most.

Right. That folks and you see the flips and I'm kind of touching you and I throw it, but to your point, which is a great perspective that I'm taking in, you know, from you now is, you know, but that guy, that guy loves it and it changes life and it made him better. And, you know, why, why does it matter? Because, because you think, well, what if someone attacked him? He's not going to do a keto, but you're who cares? Like, why do you care about that? It's a great point great point like as long as you're not his bodyguard hey they're being honest to him if they say hey man you're going to learn some self-defense yeah but in all honesty this isn't really a self-defense art it's more like an expression

there are videos and photos and countless articles written about Oh Sensei doing chi powers and knocking down 30 people at once and all that stuff, right? People are shades of gray. So, like, let's say hypothetically there's George Dillman. Let's say George Dillman in the beginning of his career, very much legitimate. He competed. He was a guy who fought people and stuff like that. But somewhere along the line, he lost his mind. He had a lot of yes men who made him believe he can knock them out with his cheap powers without touching them. Right.

But even George Dillman had to have affected someone's life positively. I mean, one of the things that he did for sure, that is a fact, is he did buy Muhammad Ali's gym. Like when Muhammad Ali's gym was getting sold, he saved that gym. So that's a good thing that he did. Even though me personally, I think George Dillman is a huge huckster and a fraud. I can't sit there and ignore the good just because I think the majority of what he did was bad. And it's the same thing with like a keto, just because 90% of a keto is not effective on the street doesn't mean that that other 10 does not have value and it does um you know i can laugh at certain shit but i can also give a nod of respect

to others yeah like you know dana white dana white does some of the most incredible things for the mma community and martial arts community i mean he really did make mma what it is today in the united states but he still slapped the shit out of his wife. So I can like him for things that he has done and hate some of the behaviors that he has done as well. People are shades of gray. And it's just something that I think people have a hard time doing. I think people have to flip that switch in their mind. They can't be on the fence about anything. And the truth usually lies on the fence. That's a good point. Good perspective. I mean, and, and along those lines, you know, a lot of stuff's called out. It's pretty obvious. And,

but it has an impact on the folks that are called out right on your channel. And we kind of touched on this. So do you get a lot of, of, you know, backlash from folks that are called out in videos or, you know, for, you know, being, being labeled as McDojos or, or from, from the flurry of comments from other folks when, when a video is posted on there, but, but that you directly get from some of those folks. Absolutely. It kind of comes with the job. I didn't think about that when I first started the job because I didn't know my, what I was was a job yeah like I started it as just like oh this seems like the right thing to do and I started writing like long form articles on Facebook before Instagram was like doing anything other than just

photos and for me when Instagram came out like I was just doing memes on there because I couldn't get anything done that I needed to get done but Facebook allowed me to right I wasn't get anything done that I needed to get done, but Facebook allowed me to. I wasn't doing anything on YouTube. And I noticed over the years, I guess because I just stay consistent and I don't stop, it feels like I've built a house one brick at a time. Every day, I just lay one brick in and I move on with my life. And then I lay another one. Next thing you know, I have a room. And I'm like, oh, this is cool. People know this room exists. Now you have a whole house. All right, cool thing you know i have a room and i'm like oh this is cool like people know this room exists now you have a whole house sorry cool and now we have a block

all right so you affect people through these daily grinds but like you were saying sometimes they do get a little butt hurt when you start calling their instructor a fraud like cults are a strange thing because we have cults in everything we do. The root word of culture is cult. So in our culture, our culture is made up of a lot of cults. If I post a picture of a puppy tomorrow, I guarantee you there'll be at least 10 people to make that political in some way, shape, or form. Those people are in a cult and they don't know it. And it's hilarious and sad at the same time when I post something and all of a sudden

this guy goes, oh, I bet you they voted for Trump. And then like 10 comments later, somebody goes, I bet you they voted for Biden. And in my mind, you're both in a cult. Right. You're both in a cult and you're not aware of it. And it is sad. Right. But when you call out the cult, well, then all of a sudden you start to get the backlash.

And it's the same thing. When someone criticizes someone, people who like that person will defend them. Right. What they don't understand is sometimes they're showing cult like behavior where instead of just going, well, you said that about Steve. Steve can defend himself. He's a grown ass man. They hop in like they feel obligated. Like I have to defend the cult i have to protect say something yeah yeah um and you don't you don't have to say shit oh well he said that don't agree with that if i say anything they're not going to agree with me back so i'm moving on with life but people can't do that so i called out like a guy named edon abel nick um edon abel nick nick runs a thing called the colossal system and he shot a student doing gun disarms with live ammunition.

That's a fact. He even made a video talking about the fact that he did this. He he lied on his resume. He got caught and then he blamed it on the people who built the website, but he never went back. So he got caught with that. He got kicked off a gun range doing gun disarms with live ammunition um that's a fact because i spoke with the gun range owner um i spoke with the special forces one of the gentlemen in the special forces unit that he claimed that guy had never heard of him a day in his life before he got on the internet um so he got caught in all of these lies oh by the way he did multiple seminars around the world where he had people paying full before they got before the seminar. He never showed up and never gave refunds. Also a fact that he admits to.

And even though I had evidence and proof of everything that I said, his cult followers went in droves to comment sections defending the man yeah and again you can like him for the things that he did good for you but you can't sit there and say he did not do the bad as well right that's problem with martial arts is we put these people on pedestals we've never met the moment we walk into a building the guy with the black thing around his waist that's high we automatically go that guy has honor and integrity and respect and discipline how the fuck do you know that instance right i would never do that to my barber i wouldn't be like that guy who discipline you know i wouldn't i'd never go to my mechanic and be like this is the most honorable mechanic ever like no he's got a job martial arts is a job where they're trying to teach you things. And of course, they can be deeper these cult leaders, unfortunately, are the cult followers.

They see the leader and they put them up on this high pedestal beyond reproach. No, we all I smoke weed. I drink way too much. I do not take care of myself dietarily. And I don't train as much as I should. Those are facts about myself. I am not perfect whatsoever. I have made mistakes. I have lied to people in the past, right? At the end of the day, I'm not perfect. I am not saying that I am, but your instructor fucking isn't either. So stop pretending they are, you know, it's a detriment. That's a great thing is, is, is maybe folks are the folks being honest with themselves where they are in their lives to be able to just put all that trust in someone instantly because they have a certificate on the wall. To your point, there's a belt around their waist that people know generally means something or should mean something, I'll say. Have you found to that, like for the folks that believe some of the magic,

no touch or, Hey, you know, and we've seen the video, all right, just do this and then stop. And I'll run at you, but I, I plow you over that, that guy. Is it, is it just generally folks that seem to need something? Like they want something to believe in, to be belong, like we talked about earlier, is there a common thread that you found or have you seen that aspect of not necessarily kind of the leaders of the cult, the McDojos, but the followers? Have you found trends in those folks as well? Well, we so I've been working on a documentary for a couple of years now. We worked on crowdfunding and getting everything started right before COVID. And right when we were about to film, COVID hit and that sidetracked it for about two years. Yeah. For anybody who forgets

COVID was that little thing that happened, you know, where people were terrified for their lives and martial arts schools were all closed at that time. Regulations were making it so difficult. So we had to put that project on the sideline during that time. And then now we've been full steam ahead with it. I mean, we're going good now. We've got Jocko Willink as an executive producer of our film. Dang. Adam, the president of Karate Combat. Good.

Yeah, man. The president of Karate Combat came on board with us. So we're working on the agreement now. And then now we're still in talks with Zoltan for Five Finger Death Punch, who's a third-degree black belt in jiu-j-jitsu um and then he might be coming on board so we've been full steam ahead to try to make sure that we can make something that is truly groundbreaking like it's never been done we want to make sure we do it right and that ain't cheap i even had a dude one time he was like why don't you just take your iphone and just like on, get in your car and just drive. I'm like, yeah, I'll just drive to Japan.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just eat nothing while I'm there. Oh, all those cost money, huh? Oh yeah. So the sound quality will sound like shit. Cause I don't have a sound guy to master it. Okay.

And the iPhone, if I get a little smudge on there, all of a sudden it looks like dog shit. Cause I didn't get a real camera. Yeah. Okay. Like get out what you put in. Right. Yeah. But when we were doing the documentary, the reason that I brought it up is because we did get to interview cult experts. We interviewed a psychologist. Um, we interviewed

a, uh, literally a guy who is a, uh, a high up in the Catholic church. She was a cult expert. We also interviewed a gentleman or a woman who is a psychiatrist. And she had like over 20 cases of people come to her who had to be helped because they were inside martial arts cults from things like rape, fraud, pedophilia, and even things like waterboarding. Multiple cases of waterboarding, which is wild. Yeah. Yeah. It's like people who were never in the military all of a sudden, which is wild. Yeah. Yeah. It's like people who were never in the military all of a sudden think that you're going to try it.

Yeah. You're going to waterboard you. Like, no, that's dumb. I've never been in a street fight situation where all of a sudden I had to be waterboarded. Right. Like it's a dumbest anyway. So we, but during those conversations,

we started to learn a lot about what makes a cult. And I actually have a interesting thing is most people, But during those conversations, we started to learn a lot about what makes a cult. And I actually have an interesting thing is most people do not believe they could fall victim of a con man. They truly don't. People do not feel they could fall victim of a con artist or a cult. They think they're again, they think that they got they got it right. But I actually have a series of questions to prove to anyone that that's absolutely ridiculous. All of us, any of us can fall victim of a con artist. And the questions go just like this, all right? I'll ask you, Kevin. So are you a doctor? No. Do you think you'd be better at performing open heart surgery than a doctor? No. Do you think you'd be better at performing a brain surgery than a doctor? No. Are you a lawyer? No. Do you think you'd be better at performing a brain surgery than a doctor?

No. Are you a lawyer? No. Do you think you'd be better at practicing law than a lawyer? No. Are you a mechanic? No. Do you think you'd be better at fixing a car than a mechanic?

No. Are you a con artist? No. Do you think you'd be better at understanding cons than a con artist? No. Exactly. People forget that a con artist can be a job, a career. There are plenty of examples of this where you had to practice and work on that craft to be able to manipulate people.

Yeah. It's not a thing that they just got lucky. Oh, all these people were naive. No. A lot of times people are very well educated who fall victim of cults. Look at the documentary Wild Wild Country that's on Netflix. That particular cult purchased land in the United States. And that cult was made up of doctors and lawyers and architects and engineers. And the cult itself built the town. The cult built the town.

It wasn't like they outsourced it. They built it. And so these were not dumb people. These were highly educated people. And next thing you know, the town next door, they start getting poisoned and killed because of the cult. Holy smokes. What people think is they think that they're smarter than they are. We're not. We all probably are smarter at maybe one or two things than most people.

Other than that, that's it. If I go to my barber, my barber is probably way better at cutting hair than me because they went to school and studied. Yeah, it's their thing. If I went to my mechanic, they're better at that. But that doesn't mean they can't be taken advantage of. I would have to go to a cult expert, a psychologist, or I'd have to go to someone who has been victim of a cult to really understand what that's like. Me myself, I've been studying cults in the martial arts industry for over a decade. And still to this day, I'm always learning

something. And it just astonishes me how naive people really are to think that they can't fall victim of a professional in their profession. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. It's, I mean, independent on where you're at in your life, what's happening, maybe you have that opening. That's like a need that needs filled. Right. And, and that person knows how to work it to be like, oh, I see a gap where I can fit in and get your money or make you do this or something, right? Joshua Fabia is probably a prime example of somebody

who did that to two people, did that to Diego Sanchez and Stefan Bonner. He started the school of self-awareness, even though ironically enough, Joshua Fabia has no self-awareness whatsoever. He took advantage of diego and quite literally fucked up the tail end of his career now diego that's who was his manager in his last fight last or last couple one of his last couple fights or something yeah like in the when he was doing mma all right and what's astonishing to me is that all the red flags were there. The public, the world was saying, dude, this guy is ruining your career.

Please look at this. But you have to remember, that's not how it works. There's this term called cognitive dissonance. And for anyone who doesn't know how that operates, let's say we believe that we were told from the time we were a child that the sky is red. And we never met anyone else to say the sky was blue. We never did. 20 years goes by. Sky's red, sky's red, sky's red. Then you go move to a new city out of your cult. And then all of a sudden they go, hey man, the sky is blue. And you're like, it's ridiculous because you've had this thought ingrained in your mind for 20 years.

Right. You have to make a decision, which is literally what the whole entire Matrix movie is based off of. Do I continue to believe the lie, even though I know it's a lie? I have proof, definitive facts that that is a lie. People have shown all the evidence. Do I continue to believe the lie or do I uproot my entire belief structure, my entire world and change my mind? Most people continue to believe the lie because when you're in a cult, you have to remember that, like, let's say in a martial arts studio, right? There's like little things that people do, even in jujitsu that are cult-like, like the term pre-aunch, pre-aunch, like, oh, you're a traitor. You went to go train in another gym, right? If you believe that's a bad thing and you've been convinced that's

a bad thing, when someone tells you that it's not a bad thing, you'll fight to make sure that your belief stays what it is. Or the gauntlet, the gauntlet where people get a belt promotion so they line up on either side and they whip you with a belt that has nothing to do with jiu-jitsu but if i told anybody that that's bullshit and they went through it they'll fight to the death to tell you why that's appropriate even though it's not not even close yeah but they'll fight for it because they were taught. That's what they believe. Even though the cognitive dissonance is right there.

I could say, how does that help your jujitsu whatsoever? They will not have an answer. Right. How does what, in what part of jujitsu do we apply getting whipped with a belt? Right. Is it a curriculum about getting whipped with a belt? Is this going to make your guard better? Like, no, it's not. It's just a bullshit ritual that someone came up with and guard better like right no it's not it's just a

ritual that someone came up with and people like well it's traditional no it's a tradition that was started by very specific gems i can make a tradition out of anything right traditionally i wear this hat that's my tradition it's not traditional because i don't i didn't start wearing the damn hat the wearing hats has been around right but me I started my own tradition right so when it comes to like belts belts and Jiu Jitsu didn't originally exist when Jiu Jitsu first came around there were no belts belts came later so it wasn't something that was developed at the beginning where the founder was like yes you must get whipped with a belt that's bullshit some dude just made it up and then some naive people

just went with it while they were being taken advantage of and now some dumbasses keep perpetuating that cycle and yes a hundred percent i am talking to you anyone out there i call you a dumbass if you think that getting whipped with a belt by multiple people is somehow a part of the jiu-jitsu journey it's not you're being taken advantage of if someone said that shit to me i'd be like no that's it do i not get the belt anymore right am i excommunicated right like no i'm a grown-ass man i can make decisions on my own i don't need to do it because everyone else is doing it that's that whole would you jump off a bridge if all your friends did comment right apparently a lot of you would although i will say i did just watch the accountant recently and ben

affleck does use his belt to whip someone in the face and then do some thread some things like that so i don't know according to hollywood there's there's belt fighting so perhaps perhaps that's the application or something like that i don't know yeah the to Hollywood, there's belt fighting. So perhaps that's the application or something like that. I don't know. I got you. Yeah, it's just strange because a lot of people, they really – they'll do cult-like stuff. And then they'll point at a different cult. And they'll be like, oh, that's ridiculous.

I'll be like, don't you get whipped with a belt? Well, it's different. They're like, okay, why? Because it's jiu-jitsu. Who gives a shit? Like fighting is only important in three places any feel free to correct me if i'm wrong but fighting is only important in three places and a martial arts gym or studio or dojo whatever you want to call it in an actual altercation where you have to defend yourself

or in a tournament setting whether it be an actual fight or tournament of jujitsu, judo, karate, whatever, that's the only three times that skill is going to be applied. So for some reason, we put this skill on such a high pedestal. No one ever in the history of any company, like let's say it's me, I'm the head of research and development, the CEOs over here, the CFOs over there, and we're talking about how to grow this company. We're going to make this company better. Then we're having this conversation about numbers. And all of a sudden the janitor walks in. We go, hold on. Steve here is a black belt in jujitsu.

Let's see what Steve has to say about this. No one gives a shit what Steve has to say about this. Because that has nothing to do with what's going on here. It does not apply with what Steve will say. We can't put our stockholders and a shareholders in a rear naked choke and hope they just pay us more. Right. So that skill is not really that useful until you need it. Kind of like swimming. Swimming is only important when you're in water. Right. That's it. Right. Fighting is important when you need to fight. But when does

that happen? So what else are we getting out of martial arts? That's the real question people need to ask. What are you getting out of this beyond kicking and punching and choking and throwing people? I think that's probably what I would say is not really a disagreement, but not a, like your three are like a directly tangible. When will you make these physical movements like you do in the gym outside of there, right? In a tournament, in a real fight or a paid fight or something like that but the i think it's more the intangibles um that you do get out of it right that the calmness you can have because you've just gone through adversity that the like we talked about losing weight earlier like super legit you can burn

losing weight from various martial arts because i mean you're moving all the time whether you're kicking punching doing both of those rolling all that good stuff. And to me, that's the I think, the mental aspect of pushing yourself, particularly if you're someone that hasn't pushed yourself in your life, or maybe others have pushed you right. And now it's up to you to do that on your own. That to me is the biggest value of it. And, and of course, and yeah, it helps if you can hip toss somebody that won't leave you alone and they grab you but but that's kind of the point right the point is that so many people put this skill of fighting on a pedestal and that's not the point at all right um people i think have this idea or thought of pie may being real like and anybody knows whoai Mei is? It's the character from Kill Bill. The old man on the

mountaintop who's invincible, that no one can beat, who's like 175 years old. That's not real. That's a character in a movie. That's not how reality works. Reality works like this. You can start at a young age and eventually maybe you can go well into your 30s

and even into your 40s. Hell, you've got guys like Yoel Romero who might be able, he might be able to do it. He's 50s, right? But when it comes down to it, most of us, our bodies are going to deteriorate as time goes on. No matter what techniques you have, if you've had a stroke, if you have cerebral palsy, if you've had, if you're missing a limb, if you've broken certain things, if you have arthritis, the list goes on of issues that could come up over a long period of time. So what did you get out of this other than fighting people is kind of the point. And you just mentioned a whole bunch of good things that you can get out of this other than just fighting people. And I think that when people

start to realize that early on, yes, learning how to defend yourself is an important skill but if that's all you got out of this i truly believe you wasted your time because that skill will diminish over time yeah other things might not your ability to teach people yeah did you help someone did you like for instance tom to blast he's not fighting mma anymore So what is he doing? He's using his platform to help kids who are in need to get them in programs to help them. Well, I can't think of anything much better than that in terms of using martial arts to help other people. And it had nothing to do with he himself beating people up, you know? So I just think that people maybe need to look at martial arts a little differently and then maybe we'd have more respect for other martial arts yeah absolutely you know and to that for adults that

are in martial arts so i've been doing jiu jitsu like four and a half years and and i think that's a i'm very i'm i'm 49 right so i'm one of the older guys so it helps keep me active in addition to working out all that good stuff and i'm a father so i'm a little different so i'm used to kind of teaching people either at work or at home as a dad and learning you know trying to be humbled at all that good stuff but um but it helps in martial arts right so when i'm in in jiu jitsu class and that new person comes in whether it's you know a man or a woman or the bigger they're small whatever and and you know when you're new you're just you're just gonna take you're just gonna get it right it's you're gonna go oh my god this is awful and then realize yes i want to do this or or i'm out right and so for

consciously and not just jiu-jitsu but whether you're um you know in taekwondo or karate or whatever art you're in right you are going to be better than the person that walks off the street right if you've been there for a few weeks for a few months certainly six months or a year or more and so you kind of you have really have obligation, even if you're not the instructor to like not screw up that person's like life and martial arts journey right there. Like you can, you can really help make a difference when you see. And the basic example I get is of course, when you're, you know, first rolling or even warming up or, or drilling, right. And, and you, you, let's say get in the mount and someone's not used to that, or they had an experience where they were getting beat up from someone,

you know, some bad it's flashing back to look to recognize them and realize like, do they look totally freaked out right now? Are they having a good time? And if not, you're not there to prove like you can beat the new person. Of course, like they're new,

just like you should be able to, just like if, if I, if I just started reading the book on computer programming and you're an ethical hacker, like you're going to ruin my whole setup, but that's not really what you should do, right? You should share that knowledge, help me get better. And so I like your point, not just if you're the highest level person that's had a successful MMA career, you're at the top, like Tom Abbas of jujitsu and all that. But really, if you've been there just a little bit, like help the

folks come in and think back to what it was like for you. You know, you couldn't throw a good kick either. You look like shit when you started. Right. But now you have a better kick. And so so help that person get better instead of just looking at him. And, you know, generally from from legit like I did Taekwondo when I was younger and then Jiu Jitsu when I'm older, have generally found, again, the legitimate non McDojo places are very welcoming with that. And that's what gets people to stay. I think in the good places, the folks that leave just don't want to do it. Right. And maybe they did get smashed a little bit, which is going to happen. Like you're going to get hit to your point. You're going to

get kicked or you're going to get, you know, choked and it's going to suck. And then it's up to you. Right. Other than if you're being abused or in the cult or, you know, choked and it's going to suck. And then it's up to you, right? Other than if you're being abused or in the cult or, you know, something like that, like the other part is up to you. So there is a give and take, I think, of be nice to folks, welcome them, help build them up. But, you know, for folks that want to get into martial arts, you got to realize that it's not easy, any of them, right? You're going to have to put some work into a legitimate martial art, whether it's boxing, wrestling, karate, taekwondo, jujitsu, whatever it is. And there's so many more. And it's fine. It's like, it's like your own tests, like check it out if you like it, and then go to the next thing on the menu and try something else

or realize, you know what, I just want to go to Planet Fitness. I don't want to do this. And that's cool. I want to add to that too, because I think it's an important thing for martial arts school owners to keep this in mind. A good business doesn't blame the customer. So if you're trying to run a good, solid martial arts program and people are leaving, which in the business we call that your retention rate, if your retention rate's dropping off a cliff and you keep blaming the student, oh, well, they're too lazy or it was too hard or they didn't like it. And rather than blaming them and saying, well, that's on them. No, it's not. It's on you.

How can you fix that? How can you make it a better environment for your student? How can you make it so that way they're enjoying the program? It doesn't have to diminish the technique, but what it does have to do is it has to be more, I guess you could say thoughtful in terms of what the consumer base is looking for. And most people are going to martial arts aware that it's not going to be easy. So if there are martial artists,

we don't cold call people. We're not just writing on the phone book. They already wanted to buy what we're selling. So what we're selling, hopefully we'll also come along with some respect and some camaraderie and a sense that people give a shit and free piece of business advice for that. For anyone out there, you want to help your retention rates right now, incorporate two, four, six calls. Two, four, six calls. If someone hasn't been there in two weeks,

call them. Hey man, I noticed you haven't been here in two weeks. I just want to make sure you're okay. Oh, well now I give a shit about my client. What most people do is they wait until the bill is overdue and then they go, hey, man, I noticed you haven't paid me in two months. That shouldn't be the first phone call you make. If you really care about your clients and you don't want to be a McDojo, run it like a business. And all of a sudden you'll realize that you're running it better and you're taking care of your clients better. So you want to keep better retention rates, stop blaming them for leaving, start calling them when they don't show up. And then all of a sudden you'll see your students become harder workers.

They'll stay longer because they see you give a damn. That's a great point. If the constant is you and people keep walking out the door, it's that whole, you mentioned Jocko earlier, but like extreme ownership, right? Like own, okay, what am i doing wrong and then fix it that 246 is great um it's almost not almost but it makes me think of so i do uh program management and healthcare it and so it's also a great concept i think to check in with your teams right in whatever business it'd be good like hey check in every couple weeks check in every month, check in. Because the standard kind of in business is once a year, we're going to do an eval and we'll talk about what you did well and what you didn't. But are you talking about that before the annual eval, especially if it's not a good one?

Because if you're not, and then if you're waiting until people are leaving your school, did you talk to them about it at all? Did they feel like they can come talk to you if they're like, hey, I don't know about this? And in addition to, which probably is asked across multiple disciplines, when am I going to get the belt? How do I get the next belt, right? That's a question in whatever discipline you can think of, but you got to expect those questions are coming. And now the question might be, don't focus on the belt, just keep showing up. or, okay, here's some things that you have to know to get to this. Right. And that varies across too, but, but knowing like that's feedback you're going to have to give. Yeah. Well, like setting tangible goals for students and requiring students right off the

bat to tell them how important it is for tangible goals. Um, no. I find that if the only thing that's set as a goal for students is belts, that's all students think about. That's our job to guide them. And so a lot of gyms are like this. They don't tell you to set goals. They don't say at the end of class, hey, guys, here's my goal for you guys for the rest of the week. I want everyone to try to get at least three sparring rounds in after class. You don't have to get them in right now. You got a whole week to get it done. You can get all three in the day if you want. But my goal for all of you is to get that done. That's a tangible goal. And most places don't set that and they don't put the importance of setting tangible goals onto their students. If they, because when people

come in, for instance, if they want to lose weight, if you're a good and a good trainer, you're going to measure them and you're going to find out statistics and numbers that we can find out. And then we're going to come back to the table in a week and we're going to do that again. And then we're going to come back in another week and then we're going to do that again. And I can say, oh dude, this week you lost five pounds. That's a tangible goal that I could see you getting closer to where you want to be. But with martial arts, they go, well, when do I get my belt? Oh, well, you'll get it when you get it. Well, how stupid is that?

Like, what about like, how about this? What I'd like to see out of you is I'd like to see you do these things. If you can do these things, I think that would get you a step closer. And then you do those things because you were guided by a good instructor. And then all of a sudden they go, okay, you did those things now. That's a good start.

Now I need to see you do these things because I know you can. Then you start. But if you keep setting those goals or at least instill the importance to your students that they're there, they'll set their own goals because everyone has different goals. Next thing you know, you have somebody who stays

with you for years. Long time. Yeah. That's a great point. I think another good supplement to that is the ownership part of it is to journal, right? Like I have a, and I need to, I daily journal better than I jujitsu journal, frankly, but saying like, what do I want to accomplish? What should I work on? What am I doing well, not doing well? I think can supplement from your instructor who's more in the know and sees you probably more objectively. Because again, like I think, oh, I'm good at this. And then I go roll with somebody else or an open mat. I'm like, oh shit, I don't know what to say. I thought of that thing, you know, the reality smacks you. And then, you know, knocking it down and then also not getting caught. Like if, if you're having that bad week, like it's not going to last forever.

And that happens to everybody. Right. So write it. Like people will say things like, I want to get better at my guard. That's not tangible. Yeah. That's, that's, and you're never going to reach better at my guard because every time you come into class, you're going to get better at your guard if you practice it.

Right. But if you say, all right, I'm going to go spar today. And during the open mat, I want to stop three people from passing my guard and go, okay, I can measure that. I can say, well, I stopped this white belt and I stopped this blue belt with the purple belt crushing me. All right. And now I have a new goal. All right, cool. We'll scrap that. Now I want to stop that purple belt from passing my guard. And every time I show up, I can, I can see if I did or didn't. Right. Um, but not, not having tangible goals is I think is where most people fail. That's a great, that's a great perspective, uh, for martial arts and life, frankly, which is funny how the parallels go in it. Yeah. They just go together, man,

which hopefully has been, has been a theme. I know it, uh, you know, you've talked about some of that before and, and, but to talk about the the speaking of kind of tangible the mcdojo life documentary is there a new timeline um for that to come out uh like what's the is there a release date or anything for that well it doesn't really work that way um so when you're working on a project like that release dates happen after purchase um release dates after completion so you we're not even close to that stuff gets picked up gotcha yeah so there are a lot of steps in between and of course i'm learning as i go but um when we first started of course it was about six months of preparation and planning before we were going to originally film we did three months of prep and that prep was like

all right well how are we going to do our, how are we going to do our campaign? When are we going to do our campaign? Which was crowdfunding campaign. What tiers are we going to provide for people? What can we afford? Who's down and all that? So it was about three months of prep. Then after that, it was like, okay, well, we have three months of crowdfunding because it was a 90 day crowdfund, which, by the way, sucked because we had two major obstacles that we weren't even aware were going to be obstacles one there was a guy apparently on some website um who was trying to do a documentary about red

belts and jujitsu he raised all these funds stole the money and disappeared so we didn't know about that going into our project but that came up over and over again and all it takes is one asshole to go on like this is just like that like i don't even know that guy right like i have no i didn't even know that thing was a thing until just now right so there was a lot of people who had donated to that and didn't want to donate to another documentary because they were jaded from what he did right the other thing that popped up was some douchebag on youtube found out that we were raising funds for a martial arts documentary about frauds and cults in the industry. He took a whole bunch of clips from my Instagram page and from my social medias, did voiceover work on top of them and put out like a 20 or 30 minute little short YouTube video and called it a documentary about frauds in the martial arts industry. That thing went 11 million views, 11 million views, all because the dude just piggybacked off of what we were doing. Right. And it was infuriating to say the least. Now I am happy

that there is something out there that did help further and expose these frauds so on that note i'm extremely happy but what it didn't do is it didn't do what we were trying to do that's a youtube video yeah like we're trying to make something bigger documentary so it did it did shoot us in the foot so it wound up only raising twenty thousand dollars even though we had backing of people like kelly slater we had people like john plannery we had it was being talked about like rogan never talked about the documentary but he talked about mcdoja life a lot during that time so like we had all this exposure that was being overshadowed by all this other crap that had nothing to do with us so after that it took uh i was like all right we crowdfunded for

the 90 days so now we're six months in. Then it's like, all right, well, when is everyone available to film? Because we have to remember on $20,000 budget with a crew of six people, that's not a lot of money. That's like maybe a couple days of filming. You have to remember that also has to be edited. That sound also has to be mastered. You know, like the equipment is not necessarily all of our equipment that's sometimes that's rented i had to pay for food

had to pay for hotels had to pay for insurance you got to pay for a lot of things so that money goes by like that so we wind up going okay well we were scheduled they were available to film three months after so now that would made us that would have made us like what uh so three months three months three months in right so we're nine months in gotcha and right about a month before we were gonna film cove it happened and it was like well and of course we were all told it was like two weeks to flatten the curve, if I remember correctly. Right. It's two weeks. Right. That was a fucking lie. Didn't quite work out that way. Yeah.

It was like a year before restrictions even thought about raising. And then we were like, oh, the restrictions are easing up in California now. Let's go and start scheduling to film. Well, again, this is a production company. It's what they do for a living. So it's not like they just drop everything and go. We had to schedule it out. They were like, all right, cool.

We got the time and date. A week, a week before we're supposed to film the second time, COVID restrictions shot back up. Yeah. Mother. All right. Well, that sucks. So then we had to make a decision. We're at a crossroads.

Like, look, all right, man. Well, at this point, we're roughly about two years into the project, if not a little bit more. And it's like, well, we have other people's money. What do we do? Like, it's just sitting in an account. Like, we haven't touched it, but it's like, what do we do? They're like, well, let's just go ahead and film. Let's just go and do the best that we can with what we have because we can make something good here. And we wind up working on the project. We wind up filming for three months, which if anybody looks at $20,000 budget, you can tell that I pulled an ass load of my own money.

And then they worked for free. I worked for free. And we just like, I was able to give them that original budget, pretty much all of it. But that lasted like no time at all. So they were working for free the majority of the time. Were you able to get any sponsors on board for that part?

No, no, no, no. Not during that part, no. During COVID, no one had money. During COVID, no one had anything. There were businesses closing left and right, so no one was investing in anything. We even had an investor who was going to invest like $60,000 and right before COVID hit, he had to pull out. He had to close two of his businesses. So it was like we got put in a position where it's like we just got to do with it what we can. Well, we came out the other end. We wound up putting together what they call a pitch deck, a sizzle reel, which is the concept trailer. And then we wound up putting together like an investor package. Well, that got around to a friend of mine named Jonathan Sadowski.

Jonathan Sadowski is a producer. He's a jujitsu guy as well, but he's also on the show called like sex life or sex love or something like that on Netflix. Well, he got ahold of the trailer and he was like, dude, don't settle. Don't settle. Like you have something good here. He was like, what you guys did with that short budget. He was like, get more budget. He was like what you guys did with that short budget he was like get more budget he was like you could make something great so he was like we were like well the problem is is that right now that we're trying to put together the trailer the sizzle reel and none is turning out the way we'd like it to turn out so he's like i got a guy for you he got us in touch with an emmy award-winning director his name's adam wood so adam wood is now the director of our film awesome that's happened to the project so far.

Adam Wood came on board. He got us in contact with his production team. So now we're all working together. He got us represented by a company called UTA, United Talent Agency, which is one of the top three talent agencies in the world. So we have that representation now. Then randomly, as we're still working on the project um mo from adcc

um i don't know if anybody knows mo or not but i have been talking to mo for a long time and i did not know mo was mo from adcc i didn't know that we were just i never like he was we were talking in the dms and i never really like looked through his shit. I was just like talking to a guy named Mo. All right. But we talked often. We talked about the fight sports controversy because Mo had like a page dedicated to just that, which he still does, by the way, a page dedicated to some shady things in jujitsu. But I talked to him mostly through that page. So I didn't know he was Mo. Well, randomly, he lets he asked me, he goes, hey, man, do you want to go to ADCC? I was like, yeah, but it was like sold out in like two days. I was like, I don't know how you can get me in.

He goes, I run it. That's cool. So I was like, all right. So I like he got me a media pass. Me and my homie, Matt from Epic Roll, we wind up going out to adcc had a blast and i happen to be in the back fighters area where they're getting warmed up and i had my media badge and i look over and there's choco one of the sponsors for adcc and i was like i gotta go talk to him yeah and i walked up to him super surreal uh i went to go walk up to him and he goes oh hey

rob and i was like dang but he had already talked about like some of the work that I had done on his show before, like specifically the kid in Taiwan who was putting a comb and kill. He talked about that story in depth. And so he goes, oh, hi, Rob. He goes, how's the documentary? And I was like, no fucking way. So I was like, well, I started telling him about the budget thing. off with like yeah man we only raised twenty thousand dollars but and he stopped me and he goes why didn't you ask me for money and i was like i didn't know i could do that dang right i didn't know that was a thing he's like you know i'm a supporter of what you do and then midway through the conversation adcc starts so he got pulled away and he sat down and you know he started watching the fights but i was like all right well let's let's call that let's see if he's being serious um which he's not a guy who's usually not right

right i mean he's a nice dude for sure like he's a super awesome guy he's much more polite and funny and witty than i think that most people would probably think if you think like jaco you saw him like him you were like navy seal jocko like You would think differently, but he's just a cool dude. He's just a dude. I had our team send him an email, which went to his assistant. We got a response in an hour. We set up a meeting. I got my ticket that day.

I flew out to the Victory, which we had already filmed with Dean Lister out there for the documentary originally. So I'm back there. And we had like a two and a half hour meeting, which is like above and beyond what I thought we'd be able to get in terms of time. And we just talked about the project and fake martial arts and the impact this could make for the world and the community. And then when it was over, I just asked him, I go, hey, man, is this something you want to be a part of? And he goes, absolutely. Shook my hand. A couple months later, several months later, we finally agreed on the terms. And now he is an executive producer of the film. And now we have been able to raise about one third of the funds that we need in order to get the project completed.

I'll find out this weekend if another major investor will be coming on board. And if that happens, man, we might be off to the races ASAP, but this project is extremely expensive. And what people don't get is I don't just fly by myself with a handy cam. I have a camera crew. Flying that equipment costs money. A ticket to Indonesia right now from where I am is roughly about $1,500, if not more. That's for me. Now times that by six, put all those people in hotels, feed all of them, pay for that insurance. And remember, I'm going to a cult in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere in Indonesia, where they do not speak English. So I have to hire a translator and a security team. So it gets a little more expensive than people would imagine. Think about it on the

surface, but that's just one of those trips i have to do that like seven or eight more times to different places around the world where i'm confronting frauds um you know like i wish i could name all of them but the stuff that we already filmed by the way is absolute gold um we had a fraud come in to teach a seminar about fake martial arts um i filled the classroom full of martial artists from different disciplines and this guy thought he was just teaching regular old people. New people. Dang. It's like a sting operation. Oh yeah. And then we did experiments where I tried to see if I could do the same thing to other people. So I completely invented a martial art, made it up, made up staff,

made up a whole bunch of quotes that don't exist, gave people titles that don't exist, like put a website up and we hosted a self-defense seminar and during that seminar i just taught him stuff i learned from movies because anyone can do that anyone can watch under siege 2 and learn the wrist lock anyone can watch enough with jennifer lopez yeah anyone can watch uh miscongeniality 2 and i just taught them shit that i saw from movies to show just how easy it is to manipulate people even though you might not have any experience whatsoever right they all fell for it I did a uh pressure point knockout on one of our camera dudes nice and he just he had no martial arts experience whatsoever I like tapped him on the forehead he laid out and looked like

he got knocked out they were gasping they asked if he was okay it's bullshit it's just a lie you just gotta slap his neck and put his feet up yeah that's so yeah after that though i told them the truth after the hour was over i go hey i know a lot of you guys they thought we were filming by the way for a demo video um for future self-defense seminars so it's gonna be a promo video okay then after the hour seminars. So I thought it was going to be a promo video. Then after the hour was over, I was like, Hey, just so you guys know, that's not exactly what we're doing. What I just taught you guys for the last hour was just bullshit. And they argued with me. They were like, no, it works.

I was like, no, it doesn't. I was like, it works because I told you it does like the wrist lock thing. I was like, just pull your hand away. And as I go to do it, she put up like this hundred pound woman was able to pull her hand out every time. And you could see on camera, I'm white knuckling my hands. I'm holding her hard. Right. And away every time, or the sweep was the funniest one because the sweep doesn't work at all. Yeah. So I thought people would call me on it they all fell down repeatedly the guy was like no man i fell i was like all right let's try it again now just put your foot down push harder i was like the only reason that this worked is because i gave you parameters for it to work like in real life they're going to fight you back they're going to

not let that happen to them yeah and so i gave them an hour-long seminar of legit technique i taught them rear naked choke taught them a front kick you know high covers body lock yeah and they were sweating their ass off in that second hour i made a little bit like so they can get the feel and they were so grateful that i did that um and it was cool it was just a cool experiment that seems like i was going to say that the real stuff versus fake, they could probably tell, oh, you've got to put some work into this jazz before what's practical,

what's real and practical feels very different than I would imagine Hollywood. We even covered misconceptions, right? Like size doesn't matter. Bullshit. Would you rather get hit by a bike or a bicycle? Would you rather get hit by a bike or a bicycle? Yeah. Would you rather get hit by a bus or a motorcycle? Like it's going to suck either way, but if I had to put money on, I'd probably rather be hit by the motorcycle than the bus.

Yeah. I mean, and you know, we hear that a lot in jujitsu, right? Like the size doesn't matter. It does. Like I know, I know people that are better strictly at jujitsu than me, but if I went like full bore, like you're not going to arm bar me. Like it's not going to happen. Right. And I'm not taking anything away from it. And certainly there are a hundred percent are people way smaller than me. They can choke the crap out of me that do it. But, but to your point, if a football,

if a college football player comes in and I'm like, you know, a two and a half year blue belt, like that's going to be a problem, right? This 240 pound top tier athletic person. And I've rode with some big folks too. And I'm like two or five. But to your point, it's like that makes a huge difference and it's going to hurt. And if they decide to actually like punch me in the face, like I'm done. Like it's tough, you know?

It's just not the only thing that matters, right? Size does matter, but there are other factors. Dan and Asanto call them attributes. It's just not the only thing that matters. Anybody who says size doesn't matter, watch any combat sport ever and ask yourself, why do they have weight classes if size doesn't matter? It does matter. There's a reason Mighty Mouse didn't fight Francis Ngannou.

A big reason. They didn't want to see somebody die in the ring or the old school like put the keys in your hand your hand like wolverine claws it's like okay well what happens when that doesn't puncture this person's skin and it cuts your hand instead now the hand that you need to use your keys to get into your car your house is messed up because you've just lacerated the hell out of it. Like weird concepts of the things that have never really been proven by people who have never tested what they do is astonishing to me. And there's a lot of it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And the, I think that

helping those folks more focused on the mindset of like, pay attention to where you are trying to avoid those things, as opposed to here's this thing the foot stomp the whatever you know along with the keys they're going to do this and then be like okay now we're going to set you up to do this with someone that's not going to let you do it right and see how good and you know like rogan talked about it too he's like oh you're going to bite me well that's cool what if i bite you back and i know how to choke the shit out of you like you're it's it but and i think that's the biggest benefit it sounds like not biggest but one of the great ones from that documentary where you show them the bullshit and then you show them the real stuff of

folks seeing like there's a there's a difference and there's a reason things are in movies and that doesn't mean some of the stuff's legit like sean patrick flannery for instance he's a super legit high level guy and so yes he does movies but he's he knows how to do that stuff for real like it's not that i don't like a good you know John wick movie and also another guy that, that trained, but you're not going to jump out. Cause you watch John wick and be able to do that or watch some of those, you know,

here's the women's self-defense things. And it's these real light hits and taps and chops and things. And you're like, it just, the average person that really trains gets hit like that, like hundreds of times. And it, I have a story hundreds of times and it I have a story for one of those I have a really interesting story so like back in the when I

first started mcdojo life it was the first couple years in there was like this popular video that was going around that was put out by a company called Marie Claire um big company right yeah so they started putting out they put out a women's self-defense video. And when you watched it, you were like, this is all the most ridiculous stuff I've ever seen. It's so ridiculous and outlandish. So I reached out and found out who did that. And when I spoke with her about it, because when it came out, like I posted it, a whole bunch of people started tagging her because they knew her. And then of course, like backlash and she was going to put out an apology letter that she never put out. And she was going to tell the public the truth,

which was, she was a fitness model. Yeah. And she got hired by them to put out a self-defense video, even though she knew nothing about self-defense. And she just made all of that up and admitted that she just made it up. And it went on this massive platform that had millions and millions of views to the women who were looking at that. And you can just go through the comment sections of people saying, I'm going to practice this.

This is something I'm going to work on. And it was bonkers. It was bonkers. It's just wild to think that people could just make that stuff up. Or Gabrielle Rubin, which was one that was hired by Tech Insider and her stuff like she talked about in one of her videos where if someone has mounted you just wiggle your hips and your hip will hit them in the groin. ever mounted someone I've been doing this for 26 years and I have never had someone moving away where their hip hit me in the groin while I was mounted right ever because when you're mounted you're not sitting on their hips right right like what what are you talking about like so she's just making it up and she's saying it with such arrogance and she's saying it like i know she has no idea what she's talking

about and these suspense gurus always kill me the most when they start talking in fact about sparring and sport martial arts being bad that's ridiculous yeah that's like saying in order for me to get good at baseball i should never actually play a game of baseball right like oh well just throw the batting cage it's all you need like oh play a game of baseball. Right. Like, oh, well, just go to the batting cage. It's all you need. Like, oh, playing a game of baseball. That's just the game. You mean the game I'm actually practicing to get good at?

Right. Because fighting people in the street does have rules. People think that it doesn't. That's a big misconception. They're called laws. Right. Yeah. There are rules in a street fight.

If I kill you, I go to jail. For sure. There are rules. So I don't know. People just have these weird misconceptions and they look at these self-defense gurus like they're they know everything and they don't. They're just talking out of their ass and they never have to prove their skill because they look down at sport martial arts because they think, oh, that'll never work on the street. Try it. Don't fight that guy. Right. Just because he's fighting for points right now doesn't mean he wouldn't fight to snap you in half if you really went after him.

I think I wonder if that's the if that's what's in people's mind is because the word sport is latched onto the front of that. They think, oh, it's just for fun or it's this or that. You're like, cool. But I mean, and for really any I would imagine any discipline, I'm just familiar with competition like in jiu-jitsu and not even a lot of them but it ramps it up a notch right when you go there to win your your little piece of metal but it's against a stranger and you're both going 100 it's very different than rolling with my buddy in the in the gym right and yeah we're going real hard but it's just very different. It's closer to a real thing.

And that's sport for points. But then when you get to these high level folks that are crazy going after it, right? Working really hard, you know, and just just super hard rolling. I mean, if you throw anybody in there, it's it's it's not trained like that.

It'd be a meat grinder. And if I think folks are so latched on to that word sport, jujitsu or sport typhoon door sport whatever well yeah but they're still fast and kick you in the face right and there's you know can still take you now and so that that's a great you know i'm glad you mentioned that because that's that's one thing i don't get even within the jiu-jitsu community right it's like oh that's sport and you're like yeah but it works right it's against other people that know what

they're doing also it's not like they're doing it against a brand new person. They just bring out there. And then they went, the rules of jujitsu were still the same. Like, okay, I need to take you down. I need to pass your guard. I need to get to a dominant position and establish and hold that position. Then I can submit you in a real fight, if that's your skill set, I need to get to a dominant position. I need to secure that position and I need to submit you. That doesn't change whether it's sport or real life. The only difference is now you've opened up new toolboxes for me. You're going, okay, I can also add these other things. Whereas self-defense gurus always go, I have these things. I don't have any of these other skills but I think by pinch you I

gouge you and hit you in the groin you don't need to go to class to learn how to do those things right you don't need to like are you guys actually practicing biting each other all the time in class are you poking each other in the eye for real no you're not are you grabbing each other's hair all the time no you're not are you fish hooking each other all the time? No, you're not. Because none of those things actually require practice. You don't need to practice biting. I practice biting all the time when I chew my food.

Right. So you've done it millions of times probably. So you're well-versed in the biting arts while in the fighting arts. So we talked about your documentary, other good combos. There's some more like future for you and martial arts that we touched on. If you want to get into it about bringing martial artists together, like multiple martial artists, multiple disciplines,

you know, kind of akin to the computer electronics show, or if you like, I like comic books, the, what is the annual big one? They do Comic-Con, right? Something like that. But for martial arts, what are your thoughts on that? And what is your vision or even actions you're already taking towards something like that? Yeah. So ever since I was a kid, there's been this thing, which is supposed to be our industry's biggest event, which is called the Martial Arts Super Show. And the Super Show was put on by Century Martial Arts, more specifically Maya, the Martial Arts Industry Association, which is more geared towards business. And ever since I was a kid, people I highly respected would go and they would do seminars or they would teach there or they would give panels and conversations. And I noticed it

was all geared towards business owners. It wasn't geared towards fans. It wasn't geared towards students. It wasn't geared towards assistant instructors. It was geared towards people who own schools, who needed business information to make their martial arts school better. And because of that, it was just really bland. It's just bland. It could be like, they even had great instructors there. I mean, Chris Cyborg taught a seminar there last time. Uh, Leota Machida taught a seminar there. Um, over the years, uh, people like Bill Wallace have taught seminars there. And even in terms of business, you have guys like Bill Clark and some of the figureheads of Maya. And so they had great

seminars there, but they really kind of shut out 75% of their audience by just saying only business owners. And I thought this could be so much better. And over the years, I just never thought about putting anything together on my own because they still existed. That's it. They were still doing their thing. So why would I want to compete against somebody who's a powerhouse like them? and then randomly this last year they canceled it out of nowhere they were just like yeah we're not doing the martial arts super show and they rebranded it and now they call it maya con and it's now being held at the u.s open sport karate tournament in orlando so now they're piggybacking off of that event so it's becoming a much smaller convention um a little more tight knit, but also still just geared towards the business side of things.

And so when that happened, I was like, oh, man, there was a huge hole here that needs to be filled. So I got together with Matt from Epic Roll, who's the guy who makes apparel for me, but he makes apparel for everybody, man. They're a powerhouse. They're going to be the biggest apparel company in the martial arts space i promise you especially now that they just merged with zoltan for five finger death punch they're going to be massive and they're already huge um and so i got with him and i was like i have this idea why don't we do a comic-con style convention where we let everyone in, we drop the ticket price, and we put in people in a different structure rather than doing it this old way that wasn't financially viable? What if we brought in martial arts influencers, which never got

brought into Maya, by the way? What about these major martial arts influencers? More companies than influencers? say that again before it was more that the big companies not the individuals like like you and other like influencers you mean yeah yeah yeah like why not use them why not get guys like icy mike or ramsey dewey or rocus or you know anybody who's really doing it out there for the industry on social media why not bring people in like that and have them do signings? You can meet your influencer. You could take a seminar with them.

Why wouldn't you do that? Why not do a panel with like the guys from Cobra Kai and have them talk about awesome. Yeah. Why not do, um, I not talk with Sean Patrick Flannery about his movies that he's done. Why not have a place where when a new martial art,

like let's say hypothetically, the new john wick was coming out there was no place in our industry to be like we're gonna premiere this a trailer here we could do that why wouldn't that would sell out in seconds man exactly why wouldn't we do that and so comic-con's been doing that for years when the new marvel movie comes out where do you think they premiere that trailer right there in comic-con and people get that first sneak peek of something yeah what about uh companies like uh hayabusa did these amazing sets of gloves that all represented all the marvel characters right yeah how awesome is that they didn't have a platform to like launch and say hey we're gonna

do a panel about our brand new line of gloves. We're going to do it on big stage at an event. They didn't do that. All these opportunities were just missed. How about guys who want to become stunt performers in martial arts? How do you do that? Why not have the 87, 11 guys come out and teach you? How about people who want to do mocap, which is the way that they set up a local uh yeah exactly so that way somebody could become a stunt performer for video games oh yeah why not bring out ea sports and have a booth there where people can play video games against their favorite ufc fighter so all of these things were just overlooked because they only focused on one part of our industry which is the business side

we can do that too we can also have maya there we could also have cobar systems there and if someone overlooked because they only focused on one part of our industry, which is the business side. We can do that too. We can also have Maya there. We could also have Kovar systems there. And if someone wants to learn how to open their own martial arts studio, we can have a seminar for that. We can even do physical seminars of jujitsu and judo and karate and taekwondo and eskimo, whatever you want. And we can do that in a three-day event and from start to finish, have something different going on, have tournaments right there on the competition, right there on the convention hall floor. Yeah. That's sponsored by a Mac company where every every two hours a new tournament starts an eight man bracket. Oh, here's what combat jujitsu looks like. Here's what karate looks like. Here's what sumo competition looks like and have it right

there where people can watch then what about the fun stuff what about like the stuff that's nonsensical the pillow fighting championship i saw a pillow fighting championship set up a booth at a jiu-jitsu tournament and it was packed because it was so fun it didn't matter that you're not going to apply pillow fighting to street fights who gives a shit it was fun right and that's the whole point is why not make it fun so that's what we're trying to do with our event that's cool we've been working on it for a couple months now um we're going to be going to international fight week this year me and my team uh so we'll be there during international fight week we're scouting locations it'll be at an mgm hotel for sure nice uh and then we're gonna do it

next year at that international fight week so that gives us an entire year to prep an entire year to advertise an entire year to gather um and then we'll be able to put some pretty amazing people in that room uh john hackleman agreed uh to do it um for five finger death punch agreed to do it. Oh, wow. Who else? Colton for Five Finger Death Punch agreed to do it. BMAC, who was a 10th Planet Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guy, he agreed to come in and teach a seminar. That's cool. We have a slew of martial artists at our disposal to come in, and we're going to make sure that it's just a fun event for everybody.

That makes me want to buy what you see a lot of videos of, those punching bag bag measure how strong you can punch things and put like 50 of them in there i'd probably make like 50 million dollars because everyone wants to hit them all the videos but yeah i mean that that just sounds amazing and and probably like you i picture like all the sponsorships you could have with all their merch everywhere and and for people would love it We even came up with a different concept for sponsorships. So like the martial arts super show or like most conventions, what winds up happening is you wind up sponsoring the event and then they'll

take that money and they'll, you know, put it where they need to put it. We thought about it is why wouldn't we break that down a little more simply because smaller companies who want to get their name out there, they can't afford a big package. So, but you have guys out there who will do like, who will show up for a hotel, for a flight and for like 500 bucks. Get some exposure. Well, a company can afford that. So why not individually sponsor these people? So like, let's say hypothetically, you have like a guy like Gordon Ryan on the other hand he's not cheap yeah bigger company can afford them so why not sponsor the individual events sponsor this panel sponsor this seminar sponsor this person they're

available and then now every time an ad goes out that's from them it's sponsored by that company which gives them way more exposure than just putting their name in a little section of a book. I was going to say that that's way more actionable and better exposure than your standard tiers of sponsorship. And it's on one giant banner. And of course the big money has giant logos and your logo is like way down at the bottom or, you know, or just the name of it or something. That's great. And so, yeah, it's like the, the, whatever booth or the, this competition sponsored by, or make sure you just, you know, that, that sends like such a great opportunity to get people to grow. Yeah. And you know, if you're a small company, you want to get your

name out there. Like we make a banner super cheap for us, right. Put that banner inside that seminar and every picture and every photo has your logo in it. Like you want to take a picture with so-and-so. Well, since you're the main sponsor of so-and-so, you're not the main sponsor of the event. So the event logo will be, you know, the little ones, but yours will be the big one. You know, like even if you only paid 600 bucks, you know, like, OK, well look, you, you made that particular event happen. So you are the main sponsor of, I see Mike who came in, who will come in and teach, right? You're that guy. So why not get that representation of your company, even if you're small. And I mean, I think it just opens up this windows of opportunity to make something that doesn't exist in our industry

that damn sure should. Yeah, for sure. I agree, man. Thanks so much. I mean, and during this whole time, especially the last probably 15, 20 minutes, just thinking about again, how you got started from one, one friend making one difference, getting you to get into martial arts, and then you putting the work in, you know, on yourself and, you know, changing how you do and then getting to McDojo life and now influencing the world already. Really look forward to the documentary and really seeing people's reactions and the insight that you get when that comes out. And again, this show, I'll definitely be excited to get a ticket, head out and check

it out. And I thank you for giving me the opportunity, Amanda, to talk to you and and really learn had a great you know i really appreciated this conversation it was fun just to talk to you let alone you know hear about mcdojo life and all the stuff that that you're doing um is is there kind of one message that you like to leave folks with um as far as the martial arts so if someone's listening to this and they've heard a lot of what we talked about already but if they're thinking about, you know what, I think I do want to try something that can kind of help them pick. Would you direct them a certain way or just have them kind of just get out there or what are you usually flipped with? Well, I get asked the question all the time.

What's the best martial art to get into? Like it happens all the time, which is which is an interesting question. And the answer is the one that makes you happy. Go do the one that makes you happy. art to get into yeah like it happens all the time um which is which is an interesting question and the answer is the one that makes you happy go do the one that makes you happy yeah chances are good unless you're a complete you're probably not getting into fist fights every day of your life right chances are good unless you're a fighter you're probably not going to have to get ready for a fight so what else are you doing this for find Find a tangible goal, set your sights on it, and use martial arts as that platform and do the one that's making you happy.

I could sit there and tell people, go do jujitsu. What happens if your coach is a dick and you don't want to go? Well, in your mind, that is jujitsu. That is your jujitsu experience. You will not practice it and you will not show up. So you will not be effective at it. So that means you won't be good at using it to defend yourself. But let's say you go to karate instead and you wind up going and you're practicing and you're working hard. You're going to be 10 times more

effective at that than are a hundred times more effective at that than that art you don't practice at all. So the idea is do the thing that makes you happy. And as long as your instructor isn't lying to you, and as long as you're getting benefit out of that program, that's the best martial art for you. That's a great, great point. Good, good way to end it. McGojo Life, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, check it out. Reddit, yeah, on there. Any other, McGojoLife.com, do you have a.com? Just signed a deal. Just signed a deal. Yesterday, signed a deal with Zen Planner. Zen Planner is one of those point-of-sale systems for martial arts schools. And they are building my website.

So you're going to have this amazing state-of-the-art website with all the bells and whistles to show off what Zen Planner can do. And on that website, it'll give me an opportunity because I don't like affiliate marketing. Right. Um, I think it's ridiculous. Uh, like, okay, so I only get, you get this commercial space for free unless I sell something like that's not how any commercial works. Um, but it'll give me a platform where like right now, all my sponsors, it's done through individual posts. Well on the website, if you want gear, stop paying full price, get a discount. If you want like a point of sale system for your martial arts school, get a discount. If you want supplements, get a discount. If you want gear, get a discount. Like all that stuff will be available right there on the website. If you want to research someone's

name, like, Oh, is so-and-so been on McDojo life? you can type it into the search bar and it'll pop up if i've ever done an article or a story about them oh that's great kind of automatically become an angie's list from martial arts schools and slowly but surely become this beautiful list of people to avoid like that's right someone's name that will push them to the top and people will know for a fact hey someone so was brought up on rape charges 10 years ago. Do you really want to train with them? So it's going to give me like a real big tool in, in the industry to be able to fight and combat these frauds more. That's awesome. So is that coming out in the next couple of months or so? Yeah. Like we signed the deal yesterday, did all the, the lawyer stuff. So we signed the deal yesterday. Oh, I did all the, the lawyer stuff. So we signed the deal yesterday.

And now that we signed the deal, now it's time to move forward and kind of like start nitpicking. Like, what do I want and all that? So that's going to take time to develop what it's going to look like, but it'd probably be a couple months, but once it does come out, you'll know,

because once you start typing in pretty much anything that goes into martial arts on Google, my website's going to be popping up so top of the list that's great that's awesome yeah so that'll be a great resource uh operation smile you have on your link tree i think on instagram already for smile and cleft condition so everybody consider giving to that a great work they're doing uh all around the world right that's That's a global, global kind of thing. It's an incredible organization. They really do. And, you know, in the, in the United States, the Shriners also do similar work, but it's only in the United States. Oh gosh. Operation Smile is global and they go to places where they are so impoverished that they can't

even afford food. So getting a major surgery like that is not something that they can afford. Well, Operation Smile, I think for every like 200 bucks or something like that, they're able to do one surgery. That's like, that changes a kid's life, you know? So that's a huge thing for me as someone who was born with one. Yeah, no doubt. We've changed a lot of lives, man. Thanks for taking some time out of your life to, for this show, for the KevTalks podcast listeners, check out my dojo life on all the platforms I talked about.

And Operation Smile, you can look them up direct or go through Rob's link tree. Rob, thanks again. It's great to meet you. Look forward to being in touch and just all the great things you have going on, man. Thank you for the support, man. It means everything.

Thank you all for sticking with this episode. Really good conversation and perspectives from Rob, who's been in the martial arts game for quite some time. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did. Again, please check out the KevTalksPod.com website for more information

and the write-up for this show. And be sure to follow Rob at McDojoLife on Instagram, Twitter, everywhere you can find him. He's got great videos on YouTube that he posts, some that are not so great. They're sad, right,

about folks abusing their power, their mind control kind of of other folks. But I hope this provided some perspective. And remember, one person, just like Rob said, one person changed his whole life, and now he's changing thousands or millions of other lives. You can do that too. Thank you for being here. Remember, if you're practicing a martial art, you're in a stressful situation. Breathe.

Frame. Give yourself some space. And keep showing up. Survive. Godspeed, y'all.