The Shintaro Higashi Show - How to Grow Your Judo Gym

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Shintaro and Peter have extensively discussed the economics of Judo in the United States. Now that we understand the current status quo, what can we do about it? More specifically, how can we grow our gyms to in turn help Judo expand at the grassroots level? 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. Thank you to our sponsors, Jason Levon, Judo TV, Fuji Sports. Thank you very much. You guys could sponsor us too. Yeah. Join us on Patreon. Sponsor us.

How much ever you can. And that's how we can keep doing this. I know I've heard a lot that people are listening to our episodes on the way to their gym just to get pumped up. I'm so happy to hear that you know thank you ryan yeah i i'm so glad i'm so happy that we're like we get to be part of your you know martial arts journey however it is i love it i love it so today it's kind of like i want to give away a little bit more i've been giving away judo instructionals and information on YouTube forever, but really how to like grow your gym, right?

And if you're listening, you don't own a gym, but this still could be for you because if your gym grows, you have more partners to train with. You could be more selective with who to go with. So it really benefits everyone, right? The more people are in the gym, I'm not just specifically talking judo, BJJ also, but more so judo because judo, let's face it, it's kind of dying in the gym i'm not just specifically talking judo bjj also but more so judo because judo let's face it it's kind of dying in the united states yeah that's why right like a

controversial quote-unquote statement made by jimmy in our previous episode i i mean i think people were disagreeing or agreeing to that point but i think that it's it's good we need to talk about it i think it's better to just face it as it is and trying to instead of trying to paint a rosy picture it is not doing well you know so how do we especially in the united states it's hard to teach it's really hard on the body and some of my main takeaways if you guys haven't heard jimmy pedro was on for three episodes and the very last one he was talking about how bad Judo actually is in the United States right now in terms of straight numbers. He was saying it's like one-tenth of the Jiu-Jitsu population.

And Jiu-Jitsu is great, right? Don't get me wrong. But Judo is just on a steady downward decline this whole time. So how do we grow it? That's the number one thing. We're going to talk a little bit about that and then different ideas on what we can do today yeah right now so all right so let's jump right into it so what will be the first thing so let's maybe we'll like contextualize better you're say you're in the middle america maybe there's one gym in the county one time yeah and there's like maybe five regulars every practice gets like maybe 10 people you know two black belts

maybe beginners rest yeah you want you are one of the ambitious brown belts you want to make it go to tournaments you want to be able so how do we let's start with that let's put that picture in our mind and then what would you do if you're in this if you're going first and foremost right if you're in the middle of nowhere and you have one dojo it the responsibility is on that owner the person who owns that gym right and yes that person may have a day job etc etc but that person's number one role is to fill the room yeah how do they do that right google adwords facebook ads getting the word out marketing putting stuff on social media. And, you know, people talk like, oh, Facebook ads don't work or this ad doesn't work or Google costs so much.

Yes, right? But it's a combination of all the different strategies because soft touches matter, right? They go Google Judo in my neighborhood. They see your website. They go to it, okay? They see it. They don't sign up, whatever, right?

And now there's retargeting ads that target you later when you're on Google and you see that gym again. Oh, very cool. You click on it, you interact with it. And now all of a sudden you could serve that same person, Facebook ads, Instagram ads. And now you go to their page and then you see the ads on your feed all the time. You click through.

Now all of a sudden you follow that page because that page, there's value to that page. They're showing technique. They're having seminars, whatever. whatever these pictures of the room so now it makes it easier to connect to that gym yeah yeah and then maybe you get uh you know you're driving by you see a billboard or something you know what six or seven soft touches maybe i'll take a look we'll take a look so a lot of every nudge counts every So that's marketing. So you have to be able to do that.

Obviously, you could go down the rabbit hole and do all these different things. But I think first and foremost, easy to do, website. Website, social media, those two things are free. Not free, but very, very low cost. Very cheap. Guys, you know, nowadays, it's so easy to put together a

nice looking website. You can do it all yourself just go to squarespace and we're not sponsored by squarespace or anything all those like yeah one of those website builders you can put together a slick website just use one of their templates pay 20 bucks or something you know you need that when someone reaches out to me to do a seminar at their gym and i can't google it and find it, I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? And then you see like a link on Facebook because they have a Facebook business page or something. It's just so difficult to like – it doesn't make me feel like it's a legitimate gym for me to like pick a date and then go visit. You know what I mean?

It's hard for me to put that on the calendar because what if I show up and there's no gym? Yeah, it's like a club. It's like a bunch of friends. Yep, I've seen gym reach out. There's three different addresses. It's like, which one is it? Is it a friend's house? And then you look at the pictures and all these different things you can do.

And you have to kind of have a business mind. And that's really the hardest part, really. You get good at judo or jiu-jitsu, you want to open up your gym, but you have no experience in business whatsoever. Yeah. How did you... I mean, you went to school for education and business school, too. So you have different expertise other than judo, too.

But how would you actually recommend judo uh gym owners in general to learn all these things like is it just a matter of like sitting down and actually being motivated enough to read through things and then do it or is that is there anything they could do to kind of speed up that process i mean i think everybody belongs to a gym in some way right we all go to the gym we all go take classes. It's just literally almost market research. I take classes at Equinox sometimes. I take ballet classes.

I go to this class. I go to do jujitsu at this gym. And I'm always seeing and interacting and asking questions. Hey, what kind of software are you using to run the gym? Do you mind sharing this information with me? What kind of marketing strategies do you have? So I'm always talking and networking with people. And then people are very, very open with me me they'll always share the information with me right

and not because i want to like you know people i guess people trust me in so many ways because they feel like there's a familiarity yeah with seeing me all the time on the youtube and all this stuff right but that's the best way to i think learn in the industry yes there's courses about how to run a martial arts school gyms and some of these subscriptions like cost thousands of dollars a month. Yeah. You know, especially the Taco No Guys. They have like business mastery seminars.

Gracie has a business mastery freaking course. You know? So you could take one of those courses. And I think, you know, if you have zero experience. Probably better than nothing. Yeah. Better than nothing.

You don't have to buy into their franchisee thing or whatever they're selling, but it's good information straight up. You know what I mean's a good point i mean we we've talked about this throughout all of our podcasts but taking like you have to see that judo you can't be you can't put judo on the pedestal it is to a layman's eye judo is just one of many many activities that you could do yes they could do go and take golf, tennis, swim, racquetball, pickleball, whatever, but there's judo.

That means you're actually competing with other physical activities. Right? So that's why you need to view it that way and then you need to go, how other, do you know these cycling classes, the spinning classes, they kill it, right? Kill it, crush it.

My wife just got a Peloton and I've been doing it. Of course you did. These Peloton instructors, man, they're so good. They're good. They're in shape. They master these classes.

I think it's like, just watch a video of Peloton. Don't look down on them. They're amazing. They can talk. They can select the right music. They structure their workout with their own character, with their music choice. They motivate you.

You feel so good. You want to push yourself. Judo has to be that way too yeah and there has to be money involved because capitalism that's what happens right because of capitalism we invest in r&d and develop new drugs and it goes through phase one phase two phase two trials and you know maybe we'll make some money back and there's competition between the pharmaceutical companies to innovate and create you know so judo too man if there's more money in the pot for people to have right yeah you gotta then we can come up with new ideas and

take you can take take more risks and then try new ideas out because we have some base that we can fall on and when you have a 200 person dojo you could hire people i have freaking seven eight people on staff at my dojo alone yeah you know what i mean one of them which greg reagan is in charge of social media period yeah doing a great job and he's able to right make a living by teaching kids classes doing private student social media period yeah yeah right so he's there i've seen he does i've seen comments on your content nowadays how professional it's gotten it's thanks to greg you could actually put a full-time person on it you know if i had a 30 person dojo and it was barely getting by there's no way i could hire greg yeah skills that he has there's just no way right right you know

so we live in a capitalistic society judo is not free anymore right we got to get rid of this mindset of like hey judo should be free i never charged for judo we don't do contracts you know i mean things like this you're committing your time hard earned time and your skill that you've developed 20 30 years right yeah you should take a commitment from somebody else people shouldn't be able to walk in and then let me teach me some judo and walk out yeah they shouldn't you can't do that right they commit to you you commit to them right and then call it a commitment don't call it a contract if you take this contract right it's give and take yeah other gyms other activities do that too you know they i my wife and i started taking golf lessons they want to push for the package deal more than package deal yeah just individual

lessons and you can tell like once you buy package, your instructor pays more attention to you because you know that they know that they could take more time and then kind of go through the actual, like, process of it instead of just trying to give you... And you value it more. Yeah, I value it more. You value it more because you're paying more as opposed to if judo was free, why would you value that?

I'll give you another example. I'm taking you to skating. Oh, yeah another example. I'm taking Yumi to skating. Oh, yeah? Yeah. I've been taking her to skating. Amazing. Yeah. And then Yumi's mom's like, I want to take skating lessons.

All right. Whatever, you know? And then I'm talking to the lady like, hey. And then one of the ladies, really nice lady, she's like, hey, you know, I do skating privates and this and that. And I was like, huh, maybe I'll skate too. Yeah. So now that's in my head, right?

privates and this and that and i was like huh maybe i'll skate too you know yeah so now that's in my head right and if i start skating and i purchase a 10 pack now i'm obligated to go that takes time away from an activity like jujitsu or judo that i also may be doing but if i was paying 40 a month for judo okay and if i'm paying 100 a session for skating for private lessons i'm gonna go to skating yeah of course because i'm paying more yeah right because i value that more now wow that must be a skill this woman's a figure skating champion she's really hot i'm gonna go there yeah right so competing against that you know yeah it's not judo versus all the another local bjj gym it's your it's uh as you're competing against skating golf tennis you know zoc sports touch football league all the nonsense that you and your tech friends yeah i know all the into like adult soccer leagues chicken wing eating competition that you had at apnexis it's like

peter where are you i gotta do this thing with my team oh my god you know what i mean but if you're paying 250 a month for judo you're gonna show up to judo yeah and if you're also locked in and committed for the next six months paying 250 a month you're gonna try to build a skill during that time frame right right so we talked about we talked about just online presence and marketing like at least having a good official website where the most up-to-date information is on and then you can add on like your instagram account youtube whatever and now the car we talked a lot about the contract side right so it's like it's not even we haven't even gone into like the actual content of the class it's more about the structure of the school right now yeah yeah you think that's structure you think that infrastructure has to come first then

what do you think is important right yeah and people like oh no it's product driven or it's marketing driven or whatever it is it's a spectrum obviously and all these things have to work together there is a bare minimum good enough product that you could put yeah right you need to be able to teach judo basically yeah a little bit yeah a little bit right you don't have to be a champion you don't be a five-time world champion you don't even be a national champion right you could just be a black belt period and have a successful program right i truly truly believe this uh you know people focus so much on the product of the judo or the whatever it is the martial arts i'm better than everybody i win competition. Nobody gives a shit right the average guy. That's like oh, I want to try something new

I want to learn something. Oh, I want to grapple I hear like all my friends are doing I want to learn how self-defense get in shape all the stuff the average person that's gonna find your gym That's gonna walk through the doors. They're not gonna care about whether you're a champion or you're a killer your competitor Yeah, they want to go to your Instagram see you talk and then see like oh what is this guy like and then after they've seen my youtube instagram maybe they went to sign up for a trial didn't show up for the thing right listen to a podcast down the line they kind of like have all these little soft touches over three or four or five months right so when they walk into the gym like oh this is that gym from the youtube and when i talk to hey what's going on if i was in a good mood and if i decide

to interact this person yeah it's very familiar yeah yeah people walk into the gym every day it's like oh you do that podcast with peter yeah peter you people know you by name yeah so like that familiarity is what people are sort of looking for because going somewhere new for the first time you've never seen it. You don't know what it's like in there. Very intimidating. Even taking my kid to skating for the first time, I don't know where it is. Do they have parking?

Will there be someone greeting me? I have no clue. I walk in. No one knew where to guide me. I had nowhere to go. I was asking one of the parents who was trying to put the skates on, and she was like, get away from me. I had to walk around and find the person. I was like, you work here, you work here, you work here.

And finally, somebody works there. It's like, I'll check you in. That's a bad example. That's a bad example, right? But maybe if they had an Instagram, I could log on and see what the facilities are like and the check-in thing is like. And I corresponded with someone who actually works there and then told me hey when you get there do x y and z now it's like oh i just got to show up is there parking yes there's parking oh i'll just drive there and freaking park yeah yeah done right and then once i get there for the first time it's very easy to

go to the second time especially if i had a good experience right and just kind of keep parlaying that and then pushing it down the road. Now, all of a sudden, they're trying to sell me a 10-pack of privates. And you think this is a point that... Which I'm posted buying. Yeah. You know, skating's fun.

Skating's fun. I'm two phone calls away from being like, all right, let's do it. All the soft nudges have worked on you. Yeah,

I mean, kind of, sort of, right? Being there, my kid having a great experience with that teacher and the teacher taking time out and talking to me and then the director showing up and then having

a conversation with me uh it really helped yeah and it was weird because yumi didn't want to go out there by herself so i went out there with her not during a parent of me class but the regular kids class i was the one crazy parent out there on skates with the kids. So that like drew some attention. So the teachers came over like, yo, what are you doing on the ice? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I kind of like, oh, my kid, this. I thought it was a parent of me. I'm making up a class, blah, blah, blah.

And they were like, fine. So two weeks in a row, they let me in that class. Okay, okay. Which is weird, but they put me on another level, right? Right, right. And now all of a sudden now oh hey what's up man like you want to do that private with the lady and you know they call me right now right today they're like hey you know i remember you want interested do you want to buy a 10 pack of

you want to just come in for a free private lesson and see where you know yeah bro they have me they got yeah you know but they won't they won't yeah because it's a bad example and then the longer i take time away now this friday i'm not going yeah i'm going to the dojo instead because i gotta cover somebody else right yeah now out of sight out of mind yeah you know the longer i'm away from that the more i'm like i don't need fucking take ice skating lessons yeah so this is how much was it again right now it's like how much was it again oh it's right this much for a time i'm not i'm not i'm not paying that no thank you right you gotta like strike while the iron's hot they could have sold me like three times yeah you know so this marketing strategy infrastructure

needs to be in place and i think the content calls emails the other stuff yeah the content like actual judo class you know if you think about it if you take a golf lesson from a local teacher they're not most of the time they're not a pga pro pga pros are so expensive anyway to like teaching pros and so they're not great teachers either sometimes yeah and yeah but people still go like golf is one of those sports where if you if you even if you're not great teachers either sometimes yeah and yeah but people still go like golf is one of those sports where if you if you even if you're not a top athlete you can still make a good living just teaching right and i think that's the point like that jimmy also mentioned during you know your conversation like it shouldn't be that hard to become a judo teacher no yeah like

it doesn't most people again we're competing against other just regular physical activities yeah of course it needs to be safe and everything but they're not most people are not coming through the door trying to become an olympian they don't need to go through the they're 90 of the people are not even going to compete. More than that, probably. 95%. Don't do it. Don't do it. Yeah.

And so, I feel like now I can already see the comments. Like, oh, you're diluting the quality of judo. Yada, yada, yada. And I think it also goes on to another criticism I saw. Like, Jimmy mentioned that, oh, I don't think beginners should do like randori until two years two years that blew my mind that yeah two years right you

shouldn't do that too long are we diluting judo like i think there's a lot of gatekeeping going on yeah which is detrimental to the growth of the sport so what what are your thoughts? I just threw a lot onto you, but yeah, hopefully we can find some common theme here. Obviously, I don't think everyone has to wait two years to do Rondori. I don't think that's the case, right? I don't think that's what Jimmy really mentioned.

Jimmy was trying to say either. Rondori should be an option. Rondori should be an option, right? Randori should be an option. Right. It should never be forced upon. And everybody that walks into the gym should have a dedicated beginner class to do comfortably. And this is coming from someone who ran a mixed class forever and ignored basically the beginners because I wanted to teach what I wanted to teach. That's kind of what I am and who I am. Right. And it's wrong's wrong that's the wrong way you need a dedicated beginner class and yes you'll have two or three guys and it sucks for six months but as long as

you're marketing and pushing it and getting on the phone calls and getting people through the door that class will grow yeah and that class should be right not the teacher the judo teacher the sensei or the professor rambling for 45 minutes straight it should be one hour like every freaking business yeah you go to starbucks you know what you're gonna get yeah this class has to always run it's gotta be consistent yeah it's gotta you have to have a certain level right yeah people expect and you have to deliver it yeah i go to starbucks get an espresso taste the same every single time everywhere in the world everywhere in the world i'm not saying trying to be a starbucks right but each class has to be one hour yeah if i want to go

in and get an exercise get a workout in i get a workout in yeah okay most people want to learn skills so you have to learn something right but it's a combination of skill and exercise yeah i want to learn something i want to get in shape right i don't want to feel danger i don't want to be scared i don't get slammed in my head yeah i don't want to be doing 20 minutes of break fall straight yeah yes you have to learn a little bit of break falls we don't need a long drawn out 20 minute warm up anymore we don't need that right come in one of the games that you potentially do is the warm up yeah yeah you have one hour beginners only run that shit consistently monday through friday guy comes four times five times a week that's sticky right it becomes a thing now in their life what do you do on mond Monday nights? I go to judo Monday nights, right?

Oh, do you want to go on a date with me? No, Monday, Thursday, Friday is all fitness. I do judo on those days. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's randori.

And sometimes then it's crazy. Then it's really up to me how I feel that day, whether I want to be up by chance. But if I know exactly, all I have to do is get up off my ass and walk through those doors and i know it's going to be a freaking five minute warm-up drill i'll learn something i'll exercise i'll do these three-person drills whatever it is and then push up to the end then fine i'm done for the day i got my workout in i have my friends there i go out to eat afterwards and that's consistently monday wednesday and friday you've got me that's dude that's what all these spinning classes do so well yeah every you can show up to any class yes any instructor any time it'll be you'll get a you get you know what you'll get exactly what

you're getting and you can push yourself yeah not push yourself, but it's still within the same range. I've seen judo classes. There's guys rambling for 40 minutes. Guys doing a 20-minute warm-up. Sometimes it starts on time. Sometimes it ends, whatever it is. Sometimes it already started. The teacher has to wave you.

Sometimes they're like, no, you sit on the side and kneel for freaking 20 minutes before I let you on the mat. Bullshit. Bullshit. And then we're doing them on door and I get paired up with some big stinky guy that's going to hurt me. Why would anybody want to do that? It's a horrible service, a horrible product. So we have to fix this.

Yeah. It's not diluting the sport by doing this because if you have, you attract a lot of beginners. They're just casual. Every sport has that. You think every casual soccer player goes out and plays 11v11 games? No. They might just want to go kick some balls around.

Yeah. But out of those, if you have that base, you can start funneling the more dedicated people, like amateurs that want to compete more locally and then on top of that you can get national players if that's what you want for your gym but you need this

consistent base and once those people have been through that yes is it hard judo coming in doing real gondori no it's not but doing that from the onset will create bad habits yeah you'll be stiff you'll be defensive you'll only do things that work for you and then you'll never take risks you know osoto heart osoto makomi works for me i'm just gonna keep spamming yeah

never learn to like fight out of bad positions defend certain things get in georgian a georgian b because you're not comfortable in it. So you have a very one dimensional judo and that's what happens. You have a couple of guys, three or four guys that are big, strong, do a certain type of throw that can beat everyone in the gym and then it's very, very bottom light. It's top heavy, bottom

light. You get three or four big guys and then five or six stragglers and one or two beginners. You get a 10 to 20 person show up per class. You do it twice a week. That's it. That's most gyms. Judo.

Right? So we have to fix that. And if you can't quite dedicate yourself to full-blown doing a judo program on your own, go to a jiu-jitsu school and say, hey, can I teach here judo twice a week? Yeah. That's the way to grow now, right? Yeah. Finding Jiu-Jitsu schools and then riding their coattails. No longer is Jiu-Jitsu riding the coattails of Judo.

Now it's the reverse. Judo people have to ride the coattails of BJJ guys and people are going to go nuts. BJJ schools already have this infrastructure. Most of them. Most of them. Right? They have a front desk person, dedicated people

who are just there day and night. People make careers out of Jiu Jitsu. If you phone call in, they will pick up the phone call. They will respond to your phone calls.

You can email them. They have a CRM system. They do advertising. They're on social media. All this stuff. And all you have to do as a judoka is go there and show up. They have a CRM system. They do advertising. They're on social media, all this stuff. And all you have to do as a judoka is go there and show up and teach twice a week. Build a judo program there. And I'm not saying go branch off and start your own gym and

compete with these guys. I'm not saying that. But that's the way to grow judo in the United States right now. Because jiu-jitsu is so much more popular and they have so much more money. And we have to find that sort of middle ground. U.S. judo is very focused on creating competitors and they have so much more money right and we have to find that sort of middle ground us judo is very focused on creating like competitors and they do this and that we need to grow the base of judo the people were just doing judo period you know i mean we're not trying

to hear shit on usa judo and their goal they're all part of the olympic whole committee right so that they have it has to be their goal their goal is to grow athletes yeah and they have only a limited amount of resources so they have to dedicate that but all this grassroots practitioners have to try to grow the base the foundation yeah so all right so let's look back into this hypothetical judo gym one judo middle of middle america one gym in the county so now you set up the website you have a big you know you have people coming in you you do the whole like hit it while it's hot you have the consistent beginner class that draws people in so what do you do then like do you try to grow more athletes there like is it just a

matter of like make operationalizing it and hiring more people yeah i think just adding classes right yeah so now all of a sudden you started with three times a week you should the gym with like some taco no gym or whatever it is now all of a sudden you have enough people to support these classes you have 20 beginners in each class yeah maybe now you have an intermediate class some of those guys graduate up it's like all right yellow belts and above could be in this class and in this class we'll do x y and z more gripping more nuwaza more all these things right so now there's a clear path people join and they know what to get and they know what the progression is yeah coming from a guy that has a gym that doesn't do any stuff by the way right i just know

the theory behind it i mean it works for me because i have i'm in new york city and all it's a different new york city is a different market because there's so many different market there's so many more judo people just because of the immigration population and then it's a lot more dense right so it's easier to find people yeah yes yeah so i think you just got to grow and then you got to add more classes. Yeah. You just got to add more classes. Like every day. Go to those classes.

Yeah. Every day. And before you know it, man, you look at those retention. Retention is good. Let's just say you have 20 new students a month, right? And maybe you have a bleed rate. Four guys quit. They move.

They get injured. Whatever, right? Yeah. So now you're like net, let's just say 15 a month. And then you're adding 15 new students that stay every month, every month, every month. And now all of a sudden, 10 months go by, you have 150 new people. That's a lot. That's a lot, right?

Now all of a sudden, you have more money. You could hire people. You could put people in the instructor program or whatever it is, right? Now you have intermediate and advanced guys. People will take it on leadership roles. And they become sort of advocates for the beginners. Hey, why don't you assist in the beginners program? Now all of a sudden, you have a community, right?

People, you got to teach the top guys, though, to talk a certain way and be nice to everybody. Not be like the martial arts douchebag goon that we all, you know, know of, right? We all know that guy. Yeah, yeah. The arrogant guy that maybe, we don't need that shit, right? So the top person. Yeah. Yeah.

That's top-down leadership. They have to, like, manage all those people. You know people you know now all of a sudden you have a thriving business 300 person academy let's say you charge 200 a month that's 60 grand a month yeah that's 720 000 a year now that you have to play with right let's just say rent 100 grand that's even high for the middle of nowhere yeah right it's probably much less now your margins are pretty good now you have 600 000 to play with. What are you going to do? Spend more ads, buy new mats, hire more people, hire a dedicated front staff, front desk,

maybe put a massage parlor behind the dojo. Nice shower. Nice showers. There you go. Nice showers, right? Maybe yoga studio. I don't know. But now all of a sudden, you could do things with that money. You could leave your nine to five and run that business period. Right. Yeah. And then once you

have one of those, your students coming through that system, you have a couple of black belts. I want to start my own gym. Affiliate. Be my affiliate. Right. I give you my blessing. Don't be like that guy from back in the day. No, you'll never, you'll stay in here. If you leave this gym, you're nobody to me. You're dead to me. No me no okay you could start a gym just not too close to my gym please right maybe we'll have an affiliation thing i'll give you all my information my curriculum this the things we use how we do it i'll show you everything right yeah i even give you my discount from fuji mats right let's work together i have this side of the town you go over there and we'll do like you know inter dojo stuff we'll have open mats on tuesdays and you'll have open mats on

thursdays and our dojos could train together now all of a sudden we have a bigger community to like thrive off right and then i mean now then you can have like inter dojo competition that could grow into a county competition and then maybe that could be the hub for the state tournament. With a 300-person dojo, you could gross

a million dollars. Yeah. You could gross a million dollars. That's amazing if you actually do the math. Yeah. And now all of a sudden

you have three dojos like that thriving off each other and each one of those gym owners don't have the scarcity mindset of like, oh, nobody go to that gym

or you're a trainer or this, that, this. Now all of a sudden you have these people feeding into the local competition circuit. Even though you're not pushing competition because we don't like competition for business, right? But the people who want to have the option to. If there's three dojos, 300 students each, right? There's going to be a small fraction of people that want to go out and do it. They could go out and do it. I think that's the key point. Like i can already see people say oh you're

diluting why aren't you having people doing randori like two years too late whatever that's not the point no like growing at the base base the base and then there will be people who want to because we're not saying oh don't do randori ever yeah we're not saying that's you know uh not compete ever like out of this base people who are more dedicated will choose to do it and you just have to provide the opportunity yeah maybe you know advanced class quick one or two drills and then all randoi or something you know yeah that doesn't work for most people yeah it's just for those when so you have the enough like big enough base there will be enough people to run those classes yeah you know the tough guy sensei right yeah that wants this kind of a thing

i did it i'm freaking tough uh you know this is what people want need no your target demographic is not you yeah you're an exception the survivorship bias you have a survivor bias oh i did it i competed i fuck i've trained eight times a week and whatever it is yes how many people did you make did you make quit like you know i mean they were cut out for it yeah okay and you were cut never cut out to make any money yes and you will forever be broke and you could have the 20 person dojo where you're the king of that 20 person dojo and then you could not let guests in and you could be the king of the room and like oh if you go to this dojo you're you're whatever and you could be that guy but no one wants to be that guy really it's it's not good

for the whole judo community it's not good for it's it's not good for the whole judo community it's not good for the community it's not good for that guy too yeah that guy's living in fear he's always worried like oh man if this guy came in and beat my ass in front of everyone and then they probably he probably blames the new bjj gym down the street with nice showers probably blame yeah everybody else to blame but yourself yeah you know so we all have to do our part and go in the gym. Yeah. Right? And then asking the students directly for referrals.

Hey, you know, we want more people like you. You must have people at work that are like you. Yeah. You must hang out with friends that are like you. Right? Yeah. If you're the cool guy, come to the dojo, you like working out, you're not hanging out with a bunch of losers.

You know, bring your friends to the dojo. You like working out. You're not hanging out with a bunch of losers. Bring your friends to the dojo. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And when you do that, this is why it's so important. You're competing against – you're not competing against just BJJ. You're competing against golf, tennis, soccer, just drinking. Yeah.

Drinking. Yeah. And you know what? There is a little bit of competition right because if i'm like i want to go join a grappling gym in this area judo bjj yeah me whoever picks up the phone call first whoever returns that phone call first whoever returns that email first gets the business yeah period yeah because people are gonna like i'm gonna shop around and you know it's not like buying a vacuum you you shop around when you you're at you're at

the level where like you've trained for a long time and you kind of know what to look for but these people starting out what do they even know you know the first place that calls because you do it right now i want to buy ice skates yeah pop open all the different browsers and go through it yeah call ballet studio i did it for my kid yeah i lay in my area uh scarsdale ballet studio this studio that studio ballet studio b you know central park dance like all the different ballet studios are open i'm calling each and every one of them which one's nice hey do you have a kid's class my kids whatever years old can i come in and take a trial class yes no yes no no this one didn't call me back dead they called me back late at night

like oh hey did you reach us i'm like we already planned out we already scheduled two trials sorry good that it's beginners kids class beginners class what's the difference really like how can it how much better can it be yes so yes right there is some competing against the other gyms in the neighborhood but really you're competing against netflix like you said ice skating drinking hanging out after a hard day of work you're gonna want to de-stress and unwind yeah sometimes those vices are beneficial like sports and effects and working out and sometimes they're not so good yeah you know so you're competing with that you know and sometimes just coming home on the couch and just lying down and vegetating

exactly yeah so and so you need to get the you need to do the basics right you know the website social media yeah just the sales pipeline yeah yeah have a clean gym you know and then you want to focus on the beginners you don't need world you don't need to be a world-class athlete world-class instructor you just need consistency you have to know you know provide a consistent experience and then go from there you can and then only then can you add more things like advanced class randori only class competitions and yeah yeah anything else uh i think we covered a lot but i think the interview with jimmy stirred up a lot of you know conversations anything else we missed like did you see any comments that you wanted to address because i saw i we did the 12 two-year randori thing

yeah i think community building stuff is important yeah you know uh but i think a lot of the pitfalls when the teacher or the head guy gets fulfillment of their social need through their gym yeah then it could be a problem i see right because yeah yeah and i've been through it because in my right when you were there yeah i was in my 20s right right i have my black belt friends who would come and train we would go out to eat afterwards and go out drink afterwards yeah and there's a segment of time that you can kind of do that right but it can't be a forever thing because that's always not a good look yeah they should go there to teach and to serve their students and have a service-based business yeah right that place cannot serve the needs of their sensei like i shouldn't be pulling from that gym because you're like playing flight

favorites now a little bit i guess yeah yeah and uh that and you know, the dating pool should be outside. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's Hinge for that. Yeah. There's Tinder for that. Yeah.

There's the museums in New York City for that. Yeah. You know what I mean? Right? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So. But you have to have a community.

Yeah. You have to push to build that community amongst the students themselves. Yeah. You already telling me about this. You've been telling me about like how, you know, there's a crop of, you know,

yeah. Green belts and Brown belts that go out to hang out. Kind of like how we used to do after class. You have to encourage that, but you don't necessarily have to try to, you can still have your OG member friends i mean i when i go we go out you know yeah it's and then they're all like eugene and adam they all still come and you guys can hang out but it's not like oh you have to be always at the center of all the social

events you don't want to first of all you shouldn't be yeah and second of all, you shouldn't be. Yeah. And second of all, you should just foster an environment for them to be able to have those things. And you shouldn't micromanage it, but you have to also make sure that they know that, like, hey, there's certain things that are not acceptable. Right? Microaggression. Try not to date in the gym. Yeah. Try not to date in the gym. All these things, like, should be sort of explicitly said or implied

yeah you know what i mean yeah like friends are like even at essentials like i go now i have a couple of friends there that i like share memes with and talk to yeah so now if i'm not there they're gonna be like where were you yeah yeah yeah yeah with no intervention from jt or his wife yeah who are the owners of the gym. Right, right, right. Sometimes the general manager, Marcus, is like, yo, where you been? Sometimes the teacher, Dom Jody, like, yo, where's my uke? Sometimes it's the purple belts in the class

that I train with. So they have this environment that's friendly and comfortable for me to be there all the time and talk to everyone. So now, all of a sudden, those community people bring me back if i stray if i ever show if i start doing ballet which i started doing on tuesdays at 10 a.m and you know that's oh yeah wait you're doing ballet again now no i started doing it maybe like five or six months

ago okay okay because the ballet studio at my kids gym my by this way they hired a new woman uh to teach the beginner adult class oh okay and it was the exact same time as jiu-jitsu oh and i was kind of getting a little bit stiff i was like you know what let me try to inquire about it yeah and they like sold me on it they did the whole you know hey come in like 200 bucks for 20 classes okay classes yeah and then i started going and i did like four classes and i was just like you know i like jujitsu better but i just quit okay you know what i mean i see yeah but if there were more people there yeah sometimes it's just me and the lady oh they're just like okay it's like a start of the I mean she just has to go through it and then build up her own yes

proper beginners yeah but I wasn't getting the vibes yeah oh she wasn't hustling yeah I mean she wasn't so flirty ah

no I'm kidding dirty dog no yeah no but I was going in the beginning it was fun and it was friendly and it was cool

but it was just me and her yeah and then I could tell sometimes she would show up and be like disappointed I know because I'm in the game right yeah like oh i'm here for just one person yeah yeah yeah you know yeah and then another time i showed up it was like me and two really old ladies who didn't know what they're doing yeah now my experience is like now she's only doing super basic stuff which i can pull through my sleep yeah it's because

wasn't consistent not enough of a community all the different things and then i stopped going two weeks in a row and no one reached out to me yeah oh my god fuck that yeah you know was there i mean that's the i mean it's no one said this is going to be easy to grow your but you just have to keep going and then be consistent i don't know what would you say like what would you have done in that situation like if you're just starting out your beginners class and yeah ballet not even ballet like you could see that like one one jack like young guy shows up and then two old ladies you try to teach judo, two completely different physical levels. What do you even do there?

It's tough. That's why you have to have a dedicated beginner class. You got to teach those two like you're teaching a class of 20 people. You have to be excited about it because they're coming for your energy. Yeah, I see. There's people who are great actors, people who could pretend to love it even when they hate it. Yeah. I'm not really good at that.

Right? Yeah. But you have to play the game, right? Because you're selling a service. You're selling a feeling. You're selling, like, your life's going to be better if you do judo. Right? And then you show up and you're like, oh, Jesus fucking Christ.

I've got to talk to these two players. Well, I don't want to be there either. All right. You do Kevin for 20 minutes and maybe I'll show you a takedown. Oh, man. That's not going to work for anybody yeah

right yeah so it's tough but you just have to play the game yeah yeah

you know alright yeah you guys who are listening can find me on Instagram reach out to me and if I'm in a good mood I'll respond

and then you know hopefully I can help you guys because I want to help the community I really want to grow grappling in the United States you know jud hopefully I can help you guys because I want to help the community. I really want to grow grappling in the United States. You know, judo especially. And like I told you, if you're doing judo now and you want to grow, partner up with the local jiu-jitsu school.

Offer your services, right? A lot of these jiu-jitsu schools who are sort of mid-tier to mega gyms having 200 plus members, they have the funds to pay their instructors. Yeah, yeah. What is it? Ask them. Do you pay $ is it ask them do you pay 30 dollars a class you pay 40 a class some pay 50 a class right whatever it is i would love to be there and teach for you yeah or even walk in and say hey can i teach once a week for free for a month right on thursday nights see if it happens maybe it'll help everybody catering your judo

instruction to the jujitsu people because you always have to teach to your demographic yeah yeah and then maybe judo starts going from there who knows yeah right we gotta we gotta save judo everybody yeah and another good way to kind of bounce different ideas off each other is to support us a patron and join our discord server we already people are already having conversations i try to help out as much as i can too but already there's kind of a community going on there with like different ideas being shared like on how to grow their gyms so yeah do that yeah yeah i'm not on there so much but oh you did you gotta be on it man come on you gotta you you're already that old sensei just like i am yeah listening to my own advice well anyway um anything else i thought it was a good episode we've covered a lot thank you guys

for listening a long one today yeah very long uh you might have to break it up into before class and after class guys have a dedicated beginner class yeah right and your job is to get on the phones and sell yeah watch boiler room watch wolf of wall street get on the phone hey can i get you to come to judo today yes or no what's stopping you so get excited sell that pen sell the the forget the pen no one wants a pen why do you want to do judo yeah i mean what do you need you need this backbone you want to grow a set of balls like what is it yeah and i'll come in i'll help you this is not to dilute judo if you know if we don't do it there's no judo to dilute you know there's no judo dilute yeah so don't even worry about it if you're listening to this and if you

can just believe me and have a contract and be consistent and sell on the phone and get people in the room and you have a 200 person dojo call me and i'll do a seminar at your gym yeah yeah and now there's more judo money in the judo community and we can help each other more yeah right and then your students will go off and start gyms and give you a seven percent franchising fee or whatever it is or maybe they do their promotions through you there's many many different ways to set these terms and make these agreements and a lot of them are difficult and people will screw you over because sometimes

that's the nature of some people right and there's money involved right yeah but how else are we going to grow the sport yeah there's uh yeah this is how we we talked about this before like what can you do right now for judo keep the money in the community yeah and then we can grow wealth judo dude yeah do you feel safe walking in the streets of new york city how do you feel on the subway every day do you want to be stronger yes or no yeah how long have you wanted to be strong tell me all my life your whole life yeah your whole life all right why don't you come in 6 30 on monday kbi i'll see you there i'm gonna change your life maybe not in those exact words and when they don't show up hey where were you we were waiting for you

we had a gi ready for you and everything coming to the door hey welcome to our dedicated beginner program yeah yeah you take 10 classes this is the rotating curriculum you get a yellow ball and you can join the intermediate class and you can throw down yeah really start fighting and you can't work in the streets of course it does yeah no one will touch you you can't already tell from the looks once you get to the end yeah let's do this you want to get in shape yes you do okay here's the contract you have to commit to me for six months i'll commit to you for six months yeah for six months i'm gonna make sure you're in these doors every day training yeah because that's what you want and that's what i want for you oh man do this yeah guys that this just reminded me of like one time i got suckered into buying a

like a private uh personal trainer at new york sports club yeah they sat me down in the office man i i was just like okay oh shit yeah i'll buy i'll buy 10 pack right now and then i because i fucking pay that i woke my ass up at 6 a.m to drag my ass to the gym at 7 a.m. Yeah, there you go. Before work. Guys, it works. I didn't feel great about it. No.

But I went. Yeah. But some people will probably feel great about it. And that's what we want, you know? That's what we want, man. We all want to grow judo. We all want to grow jujitsu we all love doing this we have to sell it yeah right this is how you sell it yeah cool all right we we i think we've emphasized enough i think people get the idea i mean comment down below let me tell you about judo today right now why not now yeah

why not now and yeah let's sell it keep keep growing it you know oh well you know i want to think about it what's there to think about what's going to change oh man this is like a month later two months later that's exactly what happened at new york sports yeah why not salesperson and then you circle back say did you say you wanted to be in shape for 10 years didn't you say you moved to new york city three years ago and you still don't feel safe why not today dude you've been waiting for three years today is the day to start that salesperson just kind of assumed that i was gonna buy it and i was like all right hey so okay what's the deal what how many do you want yeah how many sessions when do you want to start yeah i'll see you on monday and i was like be ready

for you and everything here it is take it home what's your credit card information that's exactly what happened i mean yeah i'm not saying we're not saying like scam people you know you know we're joking around but you know you know what we're trying to say right guys ever do this at all actually yeah yeah you you guys i think everyone's in the alt here everyone knows what we're talking about. We're kind of joking, but the point stands that you need infrastructure, online presence, beginner class, and then you can add more stuff. No randori. No randori. It's a beginner class.

Not everyone needs it. If you need the infrastructure, you don't have the means to establish, reach out to your local BJJ schools that do have the infrastructure. They could help you out and you can kind of go from there. All right, guys. All right, that's it.

Yep. All right. Thank you very much, guys. Yeah, thanks for listening and we'll see you guys in the next episode. Let me tell you about our Patreon program. Support us. All right.

All right, bye, guys.