The Shintaro Higashi Show - Economics of Judo - An Interview with Jimmy Pedro

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

It's a simple reality: the more money that flows into Judo, the more popular it becomes. But how do the economics of Judo in America compare to those in other parts of the world? Is there room for improvement? In this special episode, sponsored by ⁠FUJI Sports⁠, Shintaro sits down with Jimmy Pedro for the third time to discuss the economics of Judo. Not only does Jimmy run his own dojo and the company FUJI Sports, but he is also well-versed in the workings of national Judo governing bodies worldwide. Take a listen to understand the economics of Judo and find ways to improve the situation in America! Join our Discord server and start chatting with us and other grapplers by supporting us on Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. We have a very special guest, Jimmy Pedro. Thank you for being here. My pleasure, Shintaro. I'm glad to be back. Yep, this is part of a four-part series with Fuji. We're sponsored by Fuji for these episodes. And today we're going to talk about Jimmy Pedro's top three most beautiful judokas.

You're trying to get me in trouble with the wife. No, I'm kidding. We're going to talk about the economics of judo exciting stuff sounds good yeah so you know when you're watching football baseball there's these massive sponsorships endorsements getting paid to do the sport uh we don't have the equivalent of that in judo uh but how can some of these young athletes stay in it or is there an avenue for some of these judokas to make money in the sport well it's a very interesting question i mean the economics of judo comes down to the number of participants in the sport per country right so if you look at the united states

we have about 15 000 to 20 000 people doing judo doing judo um the USA judo currently has about twelve to thirteen thousand paying members each member pays a hundred bucks each so you're looking at you know one hundred and fifteen thousand or one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in revenue as what they make in an annual basis I was just in Paris France for the European Jiu Jitsu Championships and they have five hundred thousand members paying members in their organization and you multiply for the European Jiu-Jitsu Championships. And they have 500,000 members, paying members in their organization. And you multiply that number times 40 euro,

I think the membership fee is in France, they have an operating budget of $20 million per year. And that's just from memberships. You know, so, you know, the economics in France is night and day compared to what it is in the United States, right? We're talking about judo, right? Yes. Yes, judo.

They said 550,000 members. In the United States, we have 15,000 members. Wow. So it's significantly different. And when I went to the offices in France for the Judo Federation, I was in their media room, right? um i was in their media room right and they had a full-time eight people were sitting at computers big screen tvs computers and all of them were on facebook instagram etc actively posting and you know marketing the sport to the world or to the french people you know what i mean a marketing department of eight in the united states judo we have like five people

that get paid to do judo full-time and that's across all areas of the sport so you're talking about significant night and day in terms of economics between those two countries wow so obviously that's going to leak over to the athletes and things like this right 100 so you know you've got you've got you know teddy reiner who's, you know, over a million dollar deal with his sponsors and stuff like that. I mean, he's probably making, you know, probably three, four million dollars a year in endorsements and competition fees and everything else. Where, you know, that's bigger than our entire operating budget in this country, you know, for every single athlete that we have in the United States. every single athlete that we have in the United States. Man, what a nice thing to have, like a full-blown sponsorship,

paid salary situation like you're getting from the New York Knicks or the Giants, or if you're in your neck of the woods, the Patriots and such, right? Well, you know what's crazy, Shintaro? So, you know, I did the economics one time on, let's say, Tom Brady, right? Tom Brady left and he went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, right? And I followed Brady from the Patriots to the Bucs, And I actually bought season tickets to the Buccaneers when he went there. But, you know, and, you know, let's say they pay him $20 million a year, right? As his salary. I thought, how the heck are they ever going to make that money back? But when I went

to the game, you know, and I saw like in the stands, if think about it say there's 50 000 people in the stands if one out of every four people has his jersey on which was the case right well that's like 15 000 people have a tom brady shirt on yeah wow well each one of those shirts costs like 150 to 200 dollars so you think about the economics they're making like two million bucks just off of his shirt jerseys and that's only the people that are in the stands for that game. What about the people that come to other games that buy his stuff? Or the ticket prices go for season tickets. They used to be $50 a ticket.

Now they're $150 a ticket. So when you do all the math and you add up all the value plus the TV rights that Tampa Bay now gets from the NFL because they're on primetime or whatever, the economics the economics make sense otherwise they wouldn't spend that money yeah it's amazing how judo has that kind of I mean a little bit smaller scale than the NFL obviously but if judo has that in the France and I'm sure there's other countries that kind of have that too right I mean Japan's a good example I don't know about Russia or Brazil or anything like that, but I mean, can you speak on some of those other countries? Yeah. So when, when EZO Gamba, he was the Italian head coach of the Italian team for a long time, he's Olympic champion for Italy. He went and took over the program in Russia back in 20, I think it was 2009 or 2012. He was the head coach of the Olympic team. And back at that time,

he was, he became the president of the fed of the Federation for the technical director of Russia and took over the whole sport. And, you know, when he took over the sport, he was asked, what would it take to have a full-blown program? What's the cost to send a Russian team to every single event on the circuit and pay all the athletes to be full-time athletes. And his operating budget per year was $20 million, is what he came up with as a number. And that's to pay all his national coaching staff, his senior national staff, his junior national staff, his cadet staff, paying every single athlete to do judo full-time,

where they dedicate 100% of their time to you know training in the morning training in the evening going to all the competitions training camps and having training partners plus all their travel and expenses throughout the world it was came to a 20 million dollar budget but he got that number and as a result of that they had three olympic champions in 2012 three gold medalists you know on the men's side came from Russia, but they invested in the sport. And where did they get that money? From Gazprom or one of the government? You're talking about from the government of Russia, plus all their sponsors, oil companies and beneficiaries. And really, at that time, it came from the government.

Yeah, I mean, Gazprom is the ExxonMobil equivalent of Russia. And I remember Gazprom on the backpatches of all these Russian guys. And I was wondering, wow, that's a pretty big company for it to be on a gi, you know? Well, if you think about those, you know, I call them Eastern European, former Soviet countries. Like, they love winning medals and proving themselves in combat-related sports. That's why boxing, MMA, fighting, grappling, jiu-jitsu judo wrestling they want to win in the macho sports in the strength sports they don't want to win in ballet and you know table tennis and things like that they're manly men that they you know so they pride themselves

on being the toughest and rugged most rugged and so they invest in those types of sports and that's where their money goes okay so how can us judo get there it's a question that's been asked many times over and there is a place for grappling in the united states because jujitsu is kind of doing it right do you have comparable numbers for bjj versus judo in terms of population i always assume it's like a 5 to 10x multiplier for jujitsu here in the states can you weigh in on that is it more i'd say it's it's it's over a hundred times multiplier at this point wow if you think about the number of people that practice jujitsu in this country right now i don't know this absolute statistics on it but it is well into the millions well into the millions it is no longer longer just, you know, 500,000. You know, you think about France

as a country has 550,000 people doing judo. Yeah. I mean, the state of, you could put France into the state of Texas. I mean, we've got 50 times, you know, the population that they do. And if you think about jujitsu today and how every single person, you know, knows somebody that does BJJ at this point, I mean, it's on every street corner. It's in every town. You don't have to drive more than five miles to get to a Jiu-Jitsu academy in this country anywhere. Very true.

You're talking about millions of people now practicing the sport. Well, so you think there's active more than a million competitors in the United States in BJJ? I don't think competitors, but I think there's millions of people practicing the sport of Jiu-Jitsu today, yes. Wow, that's incredible. So how can we get there with Judo? Can we ever get there? It's too hard of a sport. What do you think? We'll never get there in the sport of Judo in this country. And that's, that's never, um, you know, the UFC and mixed martial arts really gave a lot of credibility to the sport of Jiu-jitsu if you think about every every event that you watch

they always mention what what rank they are in jiu-jitsu who's their instructor at jiu-jitsu all the submissions they talk about they talk about their jiu-jitsu game i mean you can't beat that marketing and judo could never get that type of publicity you know from the commentators etc i mean we're gonna ronda did it when she was in MMA, right? She brought a lot of attention to the spotlight, a lot of attention to judo during that time. Yeah. Kayla just signed with the UFC last week.

She's going to be fighting in UFC 300. Yeah, home, right? Yeah. She's a judoka, so some attention will be on judo when Kayla gets there. The problem is, even if people wanted to go do judo, there's not enough clubs and it's not accessible enough for people to even sign up. You know, so, you know,

people aren't going to drive an hour to two hours for their kid to start judo. Right. I mean, you got to make it convenient for people. So until we have enough professional coaches and enough clubs for people to go to, we'll never grow. Okay, so hypothetical here. Someone cuts you a million, you know, $10 million check for growing the sport of judo in the United States. What are you going to use that for? The development of coaches in this country.

And also helping it put the sport into more high school programs, like having it get into the school systems. I just recently started a program called Judo Today. Judo Today is an organization that I started with a gentleman out of Florida and Israel Hernandez, one of the former Cuban Olympic team members and two-time medalist in the sport of judo at the Olympics. We started something called Judo Today. And in Florida, we've got approval from the archdiocese to actually have judo in all of the Catholic schools as an accredited PE credit. So what we're looking to do over the course of the next three to five years is we're going to have ideally 60 new schools all having

full-time judo programs inside the academy i'm sorry inside their private schools yeah and every kid in the school could take judo as a pe class at that school and they're going to hire a judo instructor full-time as a teacher so they'll'll get paid a teacher's salary anywhere from $45,000 to $70,000 a year to be a judo teacher at that school. And then when they're not teaching judo, they'd be a substitute teacher in another classroom. Yes, wow, that's great. So it's an accredited program.

We already have two of them that are going to start this year. And next year, we're looking to start a couple more. And if all goes well, they have 60 schools in the state of Florida where we'll have high school programs competing against each other and as an official PE credit. Can you staff 60 judo coaches that are good enough to grow each and every one of these schools independently?

We need more credit. You asked me how do I invest. We have to invest in the development of coaches in this country. We need to train in the development of coaches in this country. We need to train trainers and teach coaches how to teach judo properly in schools as professionals. And once we do that, then we can give them jobs. And when they have jobs, then they can do judo full time. So think about this.

Just like your local wrestling coach, right? Your local wrestling coach, what does he do all day? He teaches school. Does, yeah. After school, he's the wrestling coach at the high school. These guys are going to go into the high schools and teach judo three or four times a day as a PE class. After school, they can have their varsity program afterwards. Yes. For all of the interested kids that want to take judo seriously, they can have a five-day-a-week program after school,

and they'll get paid additional money to be the judo coach of that team. Yeah. Man, that's just a lot of money and manpower, right? But right now, you're right. We don't have the judo instructors in this country, the coaches that could actually go do it. Yeah. You know what happened in New York?

I signed up five private schools in my region on the Upper West Side to have a judo program like this, right? And we would send instructors to go in and teach Judo and et cetera, et cetera. And then after a couple of semesters, man, I ran out of black belts to go and teach these things, you know, because everyone has jobs. And then little by little, one by one, we kind of had to close shop because we just couldn't sustain. We just couldn't sustain. We just didn't have enough black belts to teach it.

You know, a lot of guys have regular jobs. And, you know, asking them to go to a school from 3 to 5 p.m it just we just couldn't do it and so now it was like the start of something amazing but then it kind of just fizzled out and died you know very sad it has to be your profession right it has to be when it's your profession now you're getting up waking up you're going and doing your job what's your job it's to teach judo in in in the school system that's your job after school if you want to coach you can be a coach if you don't you go home to your family you wake up and teach judo again so when it's your professional job how you earn your living you dedicate 100 of your effort to it right yeah and that's what you'll be successful and that's what we need in

this country you asked about jujitsu well every single school owner who opens up their dojo to run a jiu-jitsu academy does it as a business yeah their goal sure it's to help people it's to be around the sport but it's to do what they love as a job as a profession so they're open in the school so they can teach jiu-jitsu every day and have a great club and produce great people and teach people and maybe they have a competition team maybe they don't but at the end of the day 100 of their effort goes into growing their academy and in growing their sphere of influence and putting more people in the sport right and it's not an afterthought and until we get professional judo people to run their dojos like businesses and

they're all in if i don't make it i'm starving well when you're gonna put food on your table you're gonna charge real money you're gonna you know run professional classes you're gonna have different classes for different levels of people so everybody in the dojo is comfortable you're not running like a one-size-fits-all rec program and when you do it that way people appreciate it they have a better experience. They learn more. They're excited to be there. There's coaches excited to be there. And you can run a nice dojo and make a business of it.

And there are certain people in this country right now, you know, you look at Colton Brown, you look at, you know, Nicky Yanezka, my dojo's professional. You know, Jason Morris runs it as a full-time program. There's a lot of schools that are now doing it as a profession and those ones that are doing it they have hundreds of students yeah they don't just have 50 they have hundreds we have over 300 paying members at my academy right now doing judo full-time and just doing judo so it can be done i have like five staff members that make a living from yeah let me run my academy so how do we get the average dojo that's listening in right now how do we get those guys there they've got to open their mind and they've got to change their their mentality about you know you can't make

money from judo you know you're you're taking advantage of the system. Our sport is dying. In the United States. In the United States, it's dying. It's dying. We've got to resurrect it. I feel like right now, Shintaro, we've got some energy into judo. There are some people that are out there marketing themselves. I look at Justin Flores

is marketing himself pretty heavily. What about me? I'm doing the two now. Look at me. Shintaro's running a podcast. You're running your Flores is marketing himself pretty heavily. What about me? I'm doing the two now. Look, me. I was just going to, you were going to be second. Shintaro's running a podcast. You're running your dojo. You're doing private lessons. You're making your business around judo.

Travis Stevens does judo fanatics. He teaches judo at my academy. He's involved with Fuji. He's our marketing guy. He's 100% into martial arts. Colton Brown is coaching the national team. He's running his dojo. Aaronhen's doing judo full-time jason moore's doing judo full-time there's a lot of people that are dedicating their lives to the sport but they're sick their businesses are successful because they're all in with judo or martial arts they're not doing

another job and then trying to squeeze it in when they have time. Okay, so the best bang for these guys' dollar, right? Let's just say they're a nurse by day or a school teacher by day, and then they have their dojo that they're running at night. How do they make that transition? Number one, it starts by, I used to do this. When I started my dojo, I was working full-time at Monster.com, and at 5 o'clock, I would go to my dojo. Were you a recruiter there? What my dojo were you a recruiter

there what's that were you a recruiter no i worked in the marketing department i was i was the manager of their olympic sponsorships monster.com was a sponsor of the u.s olympic team yeah and you'd be a good recruiter too well i started i helped recruit olympic athletes to get jobs after they were done done with their olympic career so that time, I went and I started focusing on a lot of my dojo because I was a retired athlete. I wanted to make a living from judo, but I had to put food on the table and I had to pay my bills. So I worked as a marketing manager at that company.

After that job, I went to my dojo full-time. And what I realized was I could never get past like 60 students or 80 students in my academy. And I couldn't figure out why. So I hired a consultant from the martial arts world. I said, I paid the guy $1,000 a month to help me like consult with me and help me figure out why I can't grow my academy. And he said, number one, your classes are too hard. This is too intimidating for the general public to come in your Academy and train for an hour and a half I want

you to make your classes should make your classes shorter number one number two make them less difficult teach students don't train students and then they don't learn they're not there to get beat up and they're not there to like have hard training you understand these people come from jobs or these kids are coming off the couch they're not there to like have hard training. You have to understand these people come from jobs or these kids are coming off the couch. They're not used to doing things that, that physical for that long. Yes.

So make it easier and make it, you know, um, make it about learning and being better, getting better. The other thing is you need to structure your classes so that the beginners are with the beginners, the intermediate or with the intermediate kids and the advanced people have a path for them as well.

So you have to have judo for everybody. And so when I changed the structure of my school and I had beginners, intermediate, advanced classes, I said, well, what if I only have two students there to teach? He said, eventually, if you have the time slots, they will come. So I opened up all the time slots. I put in different programs. I wrote the curriculum for my school. He helped me from a marketing standpoint of how do we, how do we recruit people and get them in the door? You know, professional marketing campaigns, going around town, handing out flyers, being present at events, getting involved in the community, those types of things. People started coming in the door. When they come in the door,

they have to have a great experience you can't just throw them out on the mat and say oh go try a class with this brown belt or this black belt yeah you have to teach them like what is judo all about how is it going to help me or how is it going to help my child so we give like small introductory lessons started doing intro lessons at my academy making making people feel comfortable, you know, and doing like six month programs, 12 month programs and running it like a business. As soon as I did that, I went from 60 to 80 students to 150 students. Nice. Right away. Yeah. Right away. Within the next six months, I had 150 students and then I could hire more people to help me teach the classes. to help me teach the classes. And it just snowballed into what I have today, which is over 300 paying members.

Like I said, five or six people on the payroll, all making a living from doing judo. Three of them full-time, three of them part-time, but I have a professional academy. And what about Rondori? How soon do they do Rondori? To be honest with you, the recreational athlete shouldn't do standing Rondori until like two years of training.

Oh, I love that, Jimmy. I love it that's coming from you, who's like one of the toughest judo guys, right? You were a hard-nosed, like, training Olympian, and I love it that it's coming from you. Tell me more about that. The reason for that, in my opinion, Shintaro, is that people's bodies aren't ready for randori. They don't have the toughness and the hardness in their muscles. They haven't learned the movements of judo properly. So their bodies aren't ready to take those hard falls. But if you think about it, when you come in the door, you learn how to do your ukemi. You learn how to do your uchikomis. You learn how to do the skills of judo, right after you like understand the movements and you drill

combinations and you're starting to pick people up and your muscles in your body you're getting stronger physically and you have an awareness of where you're going to go when you fall and how you're gonna how people are going to throw you and then it takes that long to learn how to expect what's going to happen to you and it's not until you actually have that level of experience should you ever be doing randori because you can't control your own body you don't have the strength of the physicality to hold yourself up let alone hold your partner up safely great so wait and i honestly don't think you should push anybody into standing Randori if they don't want to do it. Yeah.

Wow. Okay, so the guy that runs a dojo in the middle of nowhere, first day puts on a white belt and then throws the guy out for Randori, what do you tell that guy? Don't do it? That's just a mistake waiting to happen. That's an injury waiting to happen. 100%.

Yeah, automatically. They don't know how to fall properly. Whoever they're working out with might not know how to throw properly and they're going 100% you know the intensity the adrenaline is there they're going at 100% and they're stiff as a board and when you're stiff in judo that's when you get hurt you know judo's got

to be fluid if you watch the Japanese when they train they throw each other so clean and the guy takes such a nice break fall he gets up without any problem at all yeah but in judo as beginners they crash into the mat they're not rolling so the impact and the risk of injury is super high yeah it really is wow that's a two years that's amazing i love that i'm not against having like situational newaza randori like they could be doing you know

newaza randori's yeah after six doing, you know, Nehwaza Randori after six months or 12 months to keep them entertained because that's safe on the ground, right? Hold down contests, turnover contests, like put them in situations where they got to finish the move. They can do that stuff, but standing Randori,

it should be two years. If they have no wrestling or grappling experience, and they're doing judo for the first time, it should be two years before they do Randori. I grappling experience and they're doing judo for the first time, it should be two years before they do rei no uke. I love that. Two years before on dori. And every single one of your students at your dojo

are USA Judo members as well? Yep. Well, no, no. Not every single member of my school is a USA Judo member, no. Hmm. No.

Do you require that later down the line? If they're going to compete, they have to be, yes. Nice, nice. Awesome. Okay, so let's just say a guy coming in, he's loving judo, he's a teenager, he're going to compete, they have to be, yes. Nice, nice. Awesome. Okay, so like let's just say guy coming in, he's like loving judo, he's a teenager, starting to compete. This kid

wants to do judo for a living. He loves it. He's not only telling you that he wants to be a champ, but he's showing up every single day, right? There are some personal finance obstructions or obstacles that can come up, right? So like with BJJ, you develop an Instagram account, you develop a following, and then eventually you start selling online instructionals. That same path doesn't exist for judo, correct? Very, very hard to do it in judo. Yeah. So how do you guide some of these teenagers who want to do this more full-time that don't come from a very affluent background where their parents could just pay for everything? What would you suggest for those guys?

You know, the path to excellence in judo, it's a hard road. But you don't necessarily have to go outside this country to develop your judo. You need to go to a lot of local competitions. I feel like most people, once they get good nationally, they stop competing in this country altogether. And they say, I'm too good to compete in the United States. I'm only going overseas. But if you look back at the champions, the real champions in the sport of Judo, you look back at Mike Swain, you look back at Jason Morris, or me, Rhonda, Kayla, whoever,

they always competed domestically. or me, Ronda, Kayla, whoever, they always competed domestically. Because when you compete often, you get very good at competing. Like competition is a different level of intensity. Even if it's at a local level, you have the same anxiety. You're sharp on the rules. Your transition game is on point. And you can actually develop and be you know you're better than the competition so you can work on new throws you can develop your judo and you have to do that

real time you can't do that in the dojo it has to be in a real live setting where the other person is fighting you tooth and nail to stop you from doing what you're trying to do so yeah i think you know 50 to 100 matches a year domestically, that should be the priority to develop. A young athlete, if they're not competing like 50 to 100 matches a year inside this country, then they're not really developing. And I guess it doesn't cost that much to do. I mean, it does, but it's not the same as doing 10 competitions internationally, right? Because that's just a whole other bag of stuff. You're talking every trip internationally is a minimum of two to three thousand dollars right minimum but in this

country you can drive five six hours you can get to a lot of really good high level competitions and as you know in the new york new jersey area now we have a lot of russian tons yeah former russians we got a lot of foreign people that fight at the local tournaments yeah some of those local tournaments those are harder than our national championships. Oh, my God, yeah. We have a Georgian guy here, a guy from Colombia, just locally, a guy from Russia over there. It's crazy. It's crazy.

You see, it's like, how is this a local tournament? That's what we were talking about, the Division I and Division II, you know, because then there leaves no space for the average black belt, you know, mom and pop guy to go out there and compete at a real local level, right? Yeah, so I think, you know, that young teenage kid that you talked about, he can get a ton of great experience by New York, New Jersey,

up and right tournament, Pedro's Challenge. There's plenty of good local tournaments for them to go to. And, you know, fight the cadet age group or the junior age group and then also fight the senior age group. They can get 10 matches in a weekend. Yeah. Fight 10, you know, it's like 10 good contests. Yeah. You do that every single month. You've got your 10 matches in a weekend yeah fight 10 written you know it's like 10 good contests yeah you do that every single month you've got your 100 matches in a year now we're starting to get match time so time on task or time you know fighting that is valuable

mad time for development and learning okay so let's say that's going to be significantly cost effective as opposed to going to international tournament going oh and one you know for nine events in a row right and burning through forty thousand dollars so we're already doing 50 to 100 matches domestically how does a young teenager fund that if they're not coming from right so they've got to get that you know when they travel if they're going to start traveling outside this country they've got to go start going to training camps a training camp is far better than going to a tournament and going 0-1 or even going 2-1. Because when you go to a training camp internationally,

and they can do that pretty affordably. In Europe, they have, I've been to camps, and sometimes they're just cadet age or junior age camps. They'll have 600 judoka on the mat for a 15 to 18 year old camp there'll be 600 bodies on the mat and they'll train two or three times a day during that camp so you're talking about like 20 randoris with some of the best kids in all of europe and you can go there probably for like 50 bucks a day that's food and your housing and everything included for 50 euro a day you can go to a nice training camp get 20 randoris four hours of judo a day and do that for 10 days straight you know and so for 500 bucks

you know plus your airfare over there i mean you're getting some valuable judo experience and that's how you get better it's a training yes so how do we get that money though how can we get for like that's the kid you know how do we get the money for the kid? Because you used to do Team Force. That was an amazing thing. You had a U23 program. All these different programs that kind of fed into this thing, right? I don't know how many programs are out there now. I've been out of the loop with that.

But are there still opportunities like that in the United States? I've gone out and I've raised my own money. I have three different sponsors that contribute to our program, Project Gold program, and they've donated the money to help us develop camps, clinics, and identify talent and help these kids get to tournaments and competitions. So we do help fund some of the top kids in this country with that money. And we also help organize a lot of camps and clinics around the country to get our stars in front of the next generation to inspire the youth to go on and do these things so i've created a fund to help these people do that uh we also have a non-profit booster club the team force booster club i have at my

school where i get all the parents involved with helping raise some money by you know putting on they they work all of my tournaments they do the concession stands they sell product they do raffle they do raffles we have golf tournaments things like that to raise money so that the kids from our dojo and teenagers that make the teams they have we have we we cover 50 or 75 of their travel when they go compete internationally or they go to the national level tournaments so i've done it on my own through my own school. So there's another avenue that just opened up Shintaro in Judo, and that's the National Training Center. They just opened one in North Carolina.

Chris Round, that's the National Training Center now? No. So in North Carolina, they just opened a U.S. Judo National Training Center in Colorado. I'm sorry, in North Carolina. Okay. Yeah, I saw a camp. I didn'tudo National Training Center in Colorado. I'm sorry, in North Carolina. Okay. Yeah, I saw a camp. I didn't know if it was legit or not. They hired a full-time coach.

They hired a full-time coach from Sweden. Wow. Oh, shoot. Okay. His job is to recruit kids, talented kids in this country, put them in that training center, and he has a budget to help those kids stay there full-time and also to help them travel to events is it a big budget

it actually is i think the budget for usa judo includes his salary the housing stipend all that stuff but it's around three hundred thousand dollars a year man that's reasonable which is why they're able to run training camps and things like that i legitimately thought you're gonna say like twenty thousand dollars how are they gonna do that wow that's good that's something it's a start who set that up it's through the u.s olympic committee so the united states olympic committee put a whole training center at like the university of north carolina and um yeah it's a lot of sports so taekwondo already has a full program there now a lot of the uh it's just like the one they used to have in colorado well they still have in colorado yeah but it's just another

training center on the east coast wow that's incredible that's incredible so kids that go there can get in-state tuition yeah they can get their college education so these young teenagers that you're talking about they now have a path to do judo and get some help with their travel fund so what i'm hearing mostly is like the person who owns a dojo who's running the club is sort of semi-responsible for raising the funds for the these teenagers and such to stay in the sport is that correct yeah it's got to be done by the local community because that local you know every every local dojo has a couple of kids that are going to come out of that dojo. The other way to get them to the next level is they need money.

So you're never going to get sponsors for people, right? Judo doesn't have the exposure for a sponsor to give money. It's more of a donation. Do you want to help this kid? Yes or no? If so, here. What can we give you in return? We're going to give you our time.

When we come back from our trips, we're going to spend time, share our stories, and bring you to the dojo for recognition and thank you but at the end of the day there's not a lot of get what you can do to give back other than show appreciation for what you've done to help us should judo be free for drop-in guests oh again i my feeling and my thought is always that free means no value yeah i agree you know people come to my dojo and they're like hey i'm here to work out etc etc i'm a black belt from x y and z and i'm like okay great that's it's 40 for dropping people like what you know like judo you shouldn't pay it should not be free i'm a black belt whatever i'm like i don't care like you know you're out here spending

50 bucks on Uber to get here, coffee, you know what I mean? You should support judo. It's kind of like my thing. We do the same. We do a $25 per class workout fee. You're training for an hour and a half, you're learning from the best in Shintaro. You're

a six degree black belt, you've been in judo for how many years, you've got a lot of experience, you've spent a ton of money getting the knowledge that you have, I'm the same way you want to come be a part of my dojo it's $25, my students pay $179 a month to train at my academy, $25

for you to drop in and work out with them, sure they're getting a benefit by working out with you, but you're getting a unique experience too, I pay for all these lights and and I paid 15 grand for these mats, and I'm paying my staff to help, and I'm sure while you're here at my dojo, you're going to take a shower here, you're going to take a water from my machine,

I got to pay somebody to clean the mat when you're all done bleeding all over it. Like, in a day, it cost me money to have you here. Yes, absolutely. I completely agree with you so do you think right i'm not trying to like price fix or anything like that but there's dojos that compete with each other you know and race to the bottom in terms of price when you have judo populated areas like california and hawaii and you know obviously it's illegal to price fix right you can't like get each other hey we're all going to charge this thing but like there should be some kind of a minimum right i mean for it to be a viable business don't you think it's a hobby if they're not charging real dollars i look at it as a hobby dojo listen

you know if somebody in my market was like a hundred dollars a month and someone came to my dojo and said you know hey the guy down the street charges 100 why do you charge 179 because i'm giving you a much better Judo experience. You're looking for a much better instructor. You're going to walk out of here a more confident, more disciplined, better human being by joining my dojo. And they're priced where they're going to give you value. And I'm going to over-deliver. Just have confidence in your program.

And I'm not talking about even the technique that you're going to learn. I'm talking about the overall experience that you're going to get from me and my staff. It's going to be night and day from what you get down the street. Yeah. I'm telling you, I was a part of that community for a little while too. And I remember you had an athlete house and I was able to rent a room there for a reasonable cost. I think at the time it was like 800 a room or something, right?

And I stayed there for like a year. And to be able to just live there full time and do judo with those guys, Kayla, Travis, all that, that was like an amazing thing. You know what I mean? It would be lovely if there were more communities and dojos like that, you know, nationally, domestically, right? I mean, is there anything like that out in California or Texas or? You know, San Jose State still has a judo program so kids that want to go to school and get an education but they have to find their own apartment off campus and rent out you know rent an apartment like anybody else going to college yeah but they have the

opportunity to do judo five nights a week at the university be part of the university program you know West Point has a judo program Texas A&m is a judo program like true there are judo programs that exist if you want to do judo in college unfortunately there's not really other than in hawaii there's really no high school judo in this country that's accredited it would be nice if it was more visible right like if there was a clear-cut path like if you're doing judo and you're going to competitions hey if you want to do college judo in college these are the options right hey if you want to go to a national training center you got colorado jimmy pedro and you got north carolina right and then there it was much more clear as opposed to like you have to kind of go to the tournaments do well and someone has to

approach you and sell you on the thing it feels a little bit weird you know so i wish there was a little bit more visibility with all the different programs available to the younger guys. Is that just a marketing thing that, you know, USA Judo should be on taking? Or what do you think? Because I know you run American Judo. Is that something that... There needs to be a talent identification program in this country by the NGB, by the organization. And they have to have a clear path of when we identify talent, what do we do with that talent?

What's the path for them? And we need to give them options. Like you said, we need to lay out what those options are. And if the organization itself could create the programming, they could go out and raise the money for those programs. So what they lack is they lack revenue. They lack money. But people don't want to just give money just to give money. What is my money going to go towards?

Right? I would start a scholarship program for kids. I would identify it as this is the LA 2028 fund. All of this money is going to go into developing our kids for the LA 2028 Olympics. Yeah. You know, if you're a believer in education, I want to create a scholarship fund and I want all the all the money for kids to go so that they can do judo full time. But they can also get a scholarship of five thousand dollars a year as part of this fund. And you've got to like figure out like programs that differentiate those programs.

Tell people what it is, what's the cause, what's the money going towards. the cause what's the money going towards and then you can raise funds because people want to do things where they you know they're passionate about or you've got to you've got to figure out how to use their money wisely because at the end of the day they want they want to see results yeah i mean i remember you doing a project 2024 is that still a thing that's been going and they did seminars for their guys and then they raised money and is that still a thing that's still going the covid covid crack you know that kind of kind of halted that for a couple of years right yeah nobody could host us for camps and clinics and things like that but yes we've changed the name to project gold so okay okay so project gold well i see i didn't even know that

you know and i'm kind of an insider with this stuff right i didn't even know that project gold and project 2024 and i was thinking as you were saying, like, well, whatever happened to Project 2024, I guess it's just like a new... 2024 is here already. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, it's... So we changed the name to Project Gold. So we still hold camps and clinics and seminars after tournaments and things like that.

I'm actually hosting... Neil Adams is going to come to my dojo this year after the pedros challenge nice i've invited neil to do uh do a camp for project gold all you know so we'll help pay for neil to get there and help cover his expenses everybody that comes to the camp puts more money back into the into project gold so that we can get you know hold other camps and clinics with other stars you know we have colton brown do some we have um yeah israel hernandez travis myself we have we invite some of the other olympians kayla's done some camps for us yeah edgy delgado i wonder why it's not so visible from where we're standing because like

it should be a little bit more visible like i'm not even i didn't i wasn't even aware of this you know until you said project gold i was like what you I never even. It should be more visible, right? Well, you're not one of the talents that we're trying to identify at this point. Which is why you're not in the target audience. That's true, I guess. So if you're like a junior competitor on the national circuit, it's visible. People know about it and they go to it. Yeah.

Oh, that's wonderful. That's great. Wow. So we took some kids. Last year, we went to Europe. Project Gold took kids from the state of Washington, Chicago, New York. We took a bunch of kids. We went on the European tour.

We went to the Birmingham Junior Grand, whatever it was called, European Open for kids. Went to the Junior European Open in Birmingham. We went to Slovenia. They went to Slovenia they went to Hungary after that they went to three events in a row and they did a camp after every tournament and I stayed there for a week Travis went for a week and Colton Brown was there with them for a week so we're trying to get Olympians to give back to help kids and yes keep them motivated we

brought a group of like 20 kids as part of Project Gold. Is there a minimum ability-wise? You have to have one X, Y, and Z to be part of this thing? Just want to be a dedicated athlete, purple belt or above, who wants to be serious about judo, who's willing to train twice a day and be part of a program. Okay, so how does someone join? Let's just say there's a kid that's a brown belt. He's 17. He's great. He does 50 to 100 matches domestically a year he lives in tennessee how does he be a part

of this thing just give us give us a call shoot us an email you know jimmy pedro at fuji sports.com info at american judo.com like info at fuji sports it'll get to me we'll look at the kid's resume we'll invite him to the next camp that we're going to run, either here in Boston or wherever it's going to be in this country. We'll tell them that we're going to be at the Junior Nationals

or the Scholastic Nationals. Come up, introduce yourself, say hello, let us watch you compete. We'll give you feedback on your matches. Feel like you have somebody that's helping you, willing to guide you. And then when we're going to go overseas, you know, and take a team somewhere, we'll invite you to be part of that group that's coming you'll have to fund your own way but we'll put you as part of the group if you come to enough of our

camps and clinics we'll start funding you to go places and do things that's the way that's the way how about the guy that's a black belt maybe in his early 20s you know not like a super high level competitor but that person wants to branch off doing private lessons, eventually own their own dojo, start doing seminars and such. How would you advise that person? Because that person, although he may never be an Olympian or produce an Olympian, that person's part of the system that develops the core group of guys that funnel into that system, right? Like the people that are eventually going to go to Project Gold or all the other systems. So how would you guide those guys in terms of keeping them sustained, keeping them motivated, keeping them really in the game to help judo?

I think that person, whoever that person is, needs to go learn from another coach who's running a dojo successfully. Yeah. Right? learn from another coach who's running a dojo successfully. Yeah. Right? Because it takes a business mindset to actually open and run a successful dojo.

And it can be overwhelming. You're not just going to open the doors and teach. You've got to understand the number one job of a judo instructor when they start their dojo is to bring new people in the door. If you're not bringing new people to your dojo, you're going to die, right? It's not enough just to be a good instructor. You've got to teach all of your students to become ambassadors of your dojo, to tell other people how great your dojo is

and how great the sport of Judo is for those people. And you've got to have them all recruit people to come into your door and to give judo a try yeah so that's the number one goal is to spread the word and bring new people to the club when we do that we're going to have a successful community and then word of mouth will get out because people say oh what are you doing today all my kids going to judo oh what does he do there oh it's not just about beating people up it's not just about learning how to throw man they're making my kids so much better he's so disciplined he's focused he's paying attention

he's doing better in school he's more athletic he's learning all these great skills like once we educate people on what judo can do for them then we're going to have a successful dojo and i think that that black belt instructor you're talking about they need to learn all of these things and the buzzwords and how to communicate you know on how to sell judo to people yeah how would you sell judo to people i just did we're gonna change your life judo is gonna change your life it made me who i was who i am today and i learned everything that i know through the sport the lessons were learned through the sport of judo so how to overcome adversity right how to have confidence in myself how to commit to a goal how to follow through and persevere when I don't succeed you know how to train hard you know gave me the work

ethic that I have had gave me the humility you know that I you don't talk about yourself let other people talk about you because they'll make you bigger than you whatever you could make yourself. So, like, there's so many things I learned from the sport. That's how I sell judo. And that, it will help you succeed in anything you want to do in life if you stick and stay with judo. I mean, Fuji mats, Fuji gear, all that stuff is judo related and you run those companies, right? American judo system.

Yeah, all of it wow that's that's really incredible so let's take pedro's judo center pedro's judo center of course and all those separate businesses yeah all of them right if you had 100 jimmy pedros right two jimmy pedros per state let that run for 10 years what would be the state of judo in the united states you think you think it'll be a completely different animal it would how would we do that you know because it would be like it would be like-minded like-minded you know one of the things that one of the biggest problems with with judo right now is that people are afraid to let their students go to other dojos they're afraid to go lose them they're afraid to lose them yeah and we need to judo what jiu-jitsu does really well it's a

community they well most people now welcome people from other dojos they train at other dojos they visit other dojos you know they're very welcoming they don't shut themselves off and say you can't come so we've got to spread judo out we've got to train with one another often because the relationships we create outside of our dojo help keep us in the sport of Judo. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, true. So like my kids that have stayed in the sport, meaning my teenagers, I believe the reason why they're staying today is because they have friends from Florida. They have friends from Colorado.

They have friends from different parts of the country. That's right. And they get to go places and do things and see these people and they're part of that community and there's somebody in this community which is why they stay that's very true interesting interesting so a hundred dojos run by somebody like me we would always train together we would always compete against one another. We would always help one another. Every dojo would be thriving and the staff would be making money. And then what would happen is all of the people underneath those people would see that there's an opportunity to be a professional judo coach someday.

And they would then hopefully go open dojos. Could you ever franchise with your thing and be like 50 Jimmy Pedro judo coach someday. Yeah. And they would then hopefully go open dojos. Could you ever franchise, would you think, be like 50 Jimmy Pedro judo centers across the country? Is that something that can potentially happen, you think? Sure, why not? Absolutely. That would be pretty cool, right? Yeah.

We have a second dojo now. We have Fuji Martial Arts, Woburn, Massachusetts, that we hope we have a judo and a jiu-jitsu program over there. It's about five miles from my existing club. And it's a proof of concept that we can run a second Judo Academy. It's run by a separate staff. And we pay $5,000 a month in rent. Who teaches down there?

Tyler Yonamori. Tyler Yonamori teaches classes over there. We have a Jiu-Jitsu instructor over there. Okay, nice. That's great. That's great. That's great. Tyler's a full-timer now, huh? He is.

I mean, I remember he was there when I was there, just athlete, grinding it. Now he made a living in judo, right? We need more of that. We need a clear path to a career in judo. So the American Judo System, we did a partnership with USA Judo, right, where every member gets access to our platform. They can learn. Yes.

See all of our videos online. They have full access to the AmericanJudo.com, right? Where every member gets access to our platform. They can learn. See all of our videos online. They have full access to the AmericanJudo.com, right? I still don't know how to log onto it, Jimmy. You're kidding. That's pretty good. It's confusing. So you gotta go to USA Judo website. You can use your USA Judo login membership and it's a single

sign-on and you can get right onto the American Judo System platform through USA Judo. But what we're doing with, we're Single sign-on, and you can get right on to the American Judo System platform through USA Judo. Okay? But what we're doing with, we're using the revenue that we're generating from American Judo System to create jobs for people. We've got Steve Cohen doing a coaching. He's in charge of the coaching program at American Judo. So he does live classes every month, Judo coffee and talk.

Oh, I saw that. Yeah, cool. Yeah, so we're paying Steve to communicate with other coaches to help make them more professional, to help them run their dojos, and to be a spokesperson for clubs and how to develop better juniors. We've got somebody doing social media for us. We're paying somebody to pump out content and do social media. We're paying people to come

on our platform you've got to be an olympian to teach on the american judo platform but we're paying israel hernandez we paid colton brown yeah travis myself like we to to put up content and new content for people to learn from yeah so we're running we're paying people to go run american judo system events so that the events that are run in this country are run more professionally so we're giving a good experience to that new person who's going to their first Judo tournament. They're getting at least a certain number of matches. They're getting in and out in a timely manner.

They're having a good Judo experience and a fun, friendly atmosphere. So that's going to help keep people in the sport because they're getting good experiences through the american judo system so i'm giving people jobs with the revenue we're generating to grow the sport with allowing people like tyler to do it full-time riley to do it full time dylan gardner is a new kid who helps and does judo full-time and does the social media for american judo so yeah helping people do judo as a as a profession is the key to growing the sport it really is great stuff man great stuff so thank you jimmy that was incredible where can people find out more about should they follow

you on instagram and send you text messages late at night or i'm actually i'm actually more i'm actually getting better at instagram especially little messages so yeah. So yeah, Jimmy at JimmyPedroUSA is my Instagram handle. And then my website's Fujimats.com, Fujisports.com for the best mats, facility equipment, as well as gear and gear in the world. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jimmy. That was amazing. Thank you.

My pleasure, brother. Be good. Yep. Thank you. Will do.