The Shintaro Higashi Show - Inside Heritage Jiu Jitsu | The Shintaro Higashi Show

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Marcus Johnson joins the show to talk about the launch of Heritage Jiu Jitsu, a premium new BJJ studio in Morganville, NJ. Shintaro and Marcus dive into the design philosophy, his coaching background, running elite gyms like Essential BJJ and Marcelo Garcia Academy, and what it really takes to build a high-end academy from the ground up.From coaching at ADCC to navigating business systems like billing, merch, and buildouts—Marcus shares a detailed behind-the-scenes look into launching a modern BJJ academy in 2025.Join my Patreon for:✅ 1-on-1 video call coaching✅ Exclusive technique breakdowns✅ Direct Q&A access✅ Behind-the-scenes training footage🔗 Subscribe & Support Here: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show Links:🇯🇵 Kokushi Budo Institute (The Dojo) Class Schedule in New York, NY 🗽: https://www.kokushibudo.com/schedule🇯🇵 Higashi Brand Merch & Instructionals: https://www.higashibrand.com📚 Shintari Higashi x BJJ Fanatics Judo Courses & Instructionals Collection: https://bjjfanatics.com/collections/shintaro-higashi/David Kim YT/Instagram:  ⁨@midjitsu⁩ 

You have to learn how to be four different things. And I only learned, I only really took the fourth one more seriously in this process. Or am I going to, you know, maybe be okay with this being like the crowning competitive achievement I have and start to focus on this next chapter of my life. The Shintaro Higashi Show is sponsored by Higashi Brand. Train hard, live strong, wear Higashi brand. Hakuin AI.

Hakuin AI helps you measure, predict, and solve customer churn. Visit Hakuin AI and start your free churn audit today. Judo TV, your premier destination for live and on-demand judo coverage. Never miss a throw. Hello everyone, welcome to the Shintaro Higashi show with David Kim. We have a very special guest today.

We have Marcus Johnson. You are starting one of the most beautiful gyms I've ever seen. Yeah, man. I'm really excited. I'm in the process of opening Heritage Jiu Jitsu Studio, which is located in Morganville, New Jersey. It's part of Monmouth County. We're about 20 to 30 minutes from the beach.

We're off exit 118 on the Garden State Parkway. We have a 42 to 4,300 square foot facility that we completely demoed and did from scratch. So every inch of the space has been organized, designed and planned from the beginning with the intention of having a elevated jujitsu studio. Dude, it's honestly like I follow your stuff on Instagram and you know, we have a personal relationship.

We're going to get back to your jujitsu career and all that stuff. So people will know a little bit more about you in a few minutes, but I've been following your Instagram and it really is a stunning dojo. It's like, if anyone ever said like, all right, picture the best jujitsu school, the most gorgeous jujitsu school. It's really beautiful with like the color palettes and the tatami and the artwork and tell us more about the design aspect of everything. Like it really is an aesthetic gym. Yeah man, so I appreciate the kind words and the compliments. That's definitely something we are going for. I have I have to give credit where credits do

I have a really good visual identity slash branding guru mentor Consultant you would speak his name's Jorge and basically I brought my idea of the Academy to him and some mood boards I had created as well as some things I really liked. And I made a couple logos that definitely were not good enough. You know, I don't have extensive editing background, but I play around on the computer enough through my years

just running Jiu-Jitsu academies and making different things. And I brought it all to him, and he helped me kind of pair down what was unnecessary, clarify what was a little muddied, and highlight the best parts and really bring the brand and the identity together. I drew a lot of inspiration from, of course, within the industry of jiu-jitsu, but a lot from outside as well. As I think we see right now, jiu-jitsu and martial arts as a whole are really at the crux of this next level of industry popularity, where it's getting more mainstream and there's more people who

you would not think of as your standard martial arts practitioner getting into these sports and into these arts more as recreation and fitness. So that was a big goal was for us to have a brand and a product that was digestible, approachable, welcoming, and something that you would aspire to associate yourself with as well as doing the jiu-jitsu. So I think right now in jiu-jitsu, we're in a really beautiful spot and you see so many different kind of sex of people or ideologies of design or niches kind of develop within the sport.

And I felt that there was one that I wanted to cultivate. Yeah. So before we get into the nitty gritty of the interesting side of the build out and all this stuff, let's talk a little bit about your Jiu-Jitsu history. For those of people who might not know, you know, a lot of my listeners are Judo guys, wrestlers, guys talk a little bit about your Jiu-Jitsu history. For those of people who might not know, you know, a lot of my listeners are Judo guys, wrestlers, guys who are dabbling in Jiu-Jitsu

who aren't really plugged in to like the IBJJF landscape. So yeah, tell us about your experience a little bit. I've had my black belt for long enough to get my first degree. So I'm almost the first degree black belt, technically, right? Under JT Torres, I've spent the last five years or so training at his academy and also being the GM of his academy. I relinquished that position in the last couple of months to open my own. Prior to that, I had opened my own jiu-jitsu business, you could say, into Tommy Nidogo, in which I was bringing mats and private lessons to people during

the pandemic when the gyms were closed in New York City. That was something I did have necessity because at the time of the pandemic, I was working for Marcelo Garcia at his academy in the city. And this was my entry point into what I would categorize as professional jiu-jitsu. And it was at the Marcelo Garcia Academy where I saw the amount of revenue which could be generated by a Jiu-Jitsu business and the amount of prestige and hard work that goes into like these world championship caliber athletes and I was really impressed with all of this and thought that we could just brand and organize a little more intelligently and a little more particularly that we could really really make something special there.

So yeah, I spent a lot of time training prior to that as well at other smaller gyms. But this is when I really started to make jiu-jitsu my profession was at Marcelo's gym and managing essential jiu-jitsu, which was JT's gym. Competitively, I've never been like the strongest competitor, but last year I got third place at Master Worlds in my division. Master one, Black Belt, middleweight. Besides that, I've won some opens and placed at some other tournaments at Black Belt, both at Masters and I've placed at the adult level as well. But my real, I don't want to say strength, but I think the thing that I'm most notable for though is my instruction and coaching, as well as the business side,

of course. Yeah, in the corner of quite a few world champions in their campaigns, most notably, I was had the absolute privilege to sit in Fion Davies corner when she won ADCC. I was there when she won Nogi Worlds along with Professor JT. He sat in the corner for that one but we were there. I've sat in Professor JT's corner at ADCC as well as a couple other events. I've helped and sat in on Gianni Grippo's World Finals matches quite a few times, I think two or three. He's won some of them. He lost one at Depato but you know really really tough match though. My coaching I think two or three and he's when one some of them he lost one that the Pato but you know, really really tough match so my coaching I think is probably what got me like the most recognition and my ability to

Just recognize and disseminate information information like digest information see patterns and yeah bring it. You are a very good teacher I gotta tell you man cuz me personally as someone who has done privates with you You know when I jump back into the jiu-jitsu scene And I was getting a little bit obsessed with it in the last few years Like I was able to like learn from you and you're very good great at teaching You know difficult to understand concepts like delaheeva was not something that I was very good at You know the spider lasso into the spider delaheeva all that stuff that you kind of you know very complicated stuff that you do with the crab ride and the, you know, so absolutely you're great. I mean, who better than you to open up a gym to start teaching, right? Yeah, you know, I think the real reason that I have, I appreciate the

compliments too, by the way, I feel so flattered. I think one of the reasons that I've been able to develop this teaching style is because I am not a very good natural athlete and I'm not really naturally good at many things. So most of the things that I take interest in, I care a lot about getting better at. I think it's like a personality trait I have. Like either I care about something a lot and really want to get good at it or it doesn't really interest me nearly at all. So with Jiu Jitsu, I had to kind of learn the hard way because I wasn't an actual athlete,

like how these things worked. If you have a lot of natural athleticism behind you, you can kind of get away with winning without knowing exactly why everything happened, or your body can take over, or you can just be a good competitor. But when things don't come as naturally to you, you have to start to digest and analyze and understand them from a different lens, which then you can then engineer and spread that information back out to others

who are having the same difficulty in learning. So in the last span of like last year, right, I saw you training really hard, coaching a lot, teaching, running the gym and out of nowhere. I mean, not out of nowhere, you know, but from where I was sitting, you're like, I'm gonna open a gym and you just did it, right? So what was the timeline?

Were you always, was that always the plan? Or like, when did you fully decide like, all right, this is what I'm gonna do? Like, what was sort of the timeline of this thing coming to fruition? Yeah, so let me start by saying, when I started doing Jiu-Jitsu more seriously, I never wrote down, you know, a lot of people say like, oh, when they start doing Jiu jujitsu more seriously, I never wrote down,

you know, a lot of people say like, oh, when they started doing jujitsu, like I want to become a world champion. I want to open a gym. Like they set these like big and they're great lofty ambitious goals, you know, and I think they're very good for people, but I never really had that situation. My whole thing was I just wanted to see how good I can get. And in order to do that, make it so that I could do jujitsu as much as possible for a long period of time. And that meant being a professional in the industry. And of course, I wanted to compete

and I won a championship or two along the way. That's part of my story. Right. But I really looked at it from a more bigger picture, like how can I get as good as possible? That means you have to train for as long as possible. How do I sustain training for as long as possible? I need to be able to feed myself and pay myself, right? If I wanna train twice a day, but I'm working at nine to five, this would be very challenging. Right?

If I'm working in Jiu Jitsu, I can train twice a day and still hopefully support myself. So the gym came to be really, people have been asking me for a long time actually to come to New Jersey and open a gym. And I've had a couple of different people offer, oh, I'll help you finance it, oh, we'll do this, oh, we'll do that.

And I never quite felt comfortable for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't really fancy the idea of having a business partner with certain people. I also wanted to focus on my own Jiu Jitsu and my own training for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't really fancy the idea of having a business partner with certain people. I also wanted to focus on my own Jiu Jitsu and my own training for a long time. So when I was at Marcellus, people were asking me, I was like, no, I still have studies I need to do. I'm trying to get better, right?

And then when I was at Essential, people were asking me for a while, I was like, oh no, I'm still competing for myself and learning, I felt like I had a stride in coaching, and I was really happy where I was at. But there had been people asking me for a long time to open a gym and there was a need and a lot of people said to me for many years oh you do all the work at all these gyms to like keep them running like you're the one running the gym or you're the one doing the most work why don't you just do it for

yourself and I got us did a lot of work. I remember that. Yeah. Like, now that I am, I get what they mean. I get it. I get it now. Before I was like, whatever, like, you don't get it. But now I do get it. Yeah. So yeah, basically, I got third at Master Worlds. And then I sat on the podium. And I looked around to my right and my left to the guys who who won so Jamie Canuto won the division. I lost to my buddy Pedro and then there was another guy who got third Right, so I looked around and they're like we get the medals. I'm happy to be there I'm pissed I lost my semi finals match. I really wanted to fight Jamie

And then we all like take the pictures and hug. And they're like, all right, like, whatever, like, we're gonna go to our gyms and our kids basically like a conversation was had they're all Brazilian and me. So they did it, they had an English and they're like, and I realized through this conversation somehow that everyone there either had a gym or kids besides me, like this guy had a gym is that I had a gym and two kids, this guy just had two kids. And I was like, I don't have a gym or kids. And it kind of dawned on me, am I going to sit and grind away for the next year and try to move up two pegs to gold instead of bronze with no real guarantee or possible return

on investment and financial stability for my future family, my future kids, right? Or am I going to maybe be OK with this being the crowning competitive achievement I have and start to focus on this next chapter of my life? So I just kind of sat back and decided now is the time. I reached out to the most adamant of people who was asking me to open a gym, who was actually my first private lesson student ever in New Jersey. And he was one of the most adamant people

and we talked it out and we came to terms that I became very comfortable with. And man, he's a really good guy, shout outs to George. George is my business partner and he's the head of construction and nothing I could have done or nothing I've done here at Heritage was possible without George for a variety of reasons, many reasons. He's just as integral, if not more integral to Heritage as I am.

Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing. So when is the grand opening? Like, where can people find and look at pictures and videos? Like, you know, plug your thing a little bit because honestly, man, I saw this on Instagram. I mean, I've known you forever, right? But like, I've been watching it on Instagram as the things unfold. And because I can't go to Jersey

and you know, dip in every day and stuff like that. It really is stunning, Jim. So where can people find it and then take a peek? Yeah, so we're hoping to open June 15th. We still have a couple of little things to get off the checklist. They're installing our shower doors right now. So we walked across through the last shower now. So we got those. They're

getting installed right now. I have a professional cleaning crew. I don't know if you can hear the vacuums in the background, but they're making it from like a partial construction site into like a facility ready for the public. So June 15th of them were shooting to open fingers crossed. Everything goes well. I was actually just with a building instructor right before this call. And he was just giving us a couple pointers you know yeah who did me a solid there. So just check us out you can go to the website it's heritage dash BJJ.com or probably a better optical way to look at what we're doing is to go to Instagram and it's at heritage underscore BJJ right and also follow me personally it's MRJ underscore CGQ.

But yeah, check us out there, follow me, shoot me a message, check out our shop, we have some really nice merch, I'm sure we'll talk about that a bit later. It's heritage.sbga.shop. Yeah man, what a cool thing that you're doing over there. Do you already have staff and everything lined up? So I have one staff member, besides myself,

kind of lined up, he's actually coming here later today We're gonna go over some back-end processes Membership, so I know no no you don't know but no no the local jury Yeah local jury guys names Joe Joe winter his young kid He's a comp sci student like he's studying coding and he like loves martial arts In terms of like classes you're gonna full throttle teach all the classes yourself in the beginning and all that stuff Like what does that even look? What is the plan? Yeah, so the plan is for as long as possible I'm going to teach every class.

One, I really like to teach. I love that. Yeah, you're awesome at it. I'm very particular about Jiu-Jitsu. I really, really love Jiu-Jitsu. I really, really love pre-empt. I really, really love free and optimizing jujitsu. So I wanna make sure for a very long time that all the jujitsu that's being taught, and it sounds kinda control freak ass

now that I word it, right? I kinda can have a little bit of a bottleneck on it to make sure that the students are learning the right things when, right? Especially in this area in New Jersey, a lot of the students are learning the right things when, right? Especially in this area in New Jersey, a lot of my students are either going to be beginners, or people who haven't had a lot of high level training, there's a certain amount of like software updating we have to do. There's a certain amount of prerequisite literature, or like

studying that you should have at certain belt levels. And that's something that I think that's been lost through the, what I'll call the bastardization of the art. And it's just capitalism. It's cool. I'm not that mad about it. It's how I'm gonna pay my bills. But you know, things get watered down, right? One thing gets more popular, it gets a little watered down.

So we need to upgrade everyone's Jiu-Jitsu and get them up to speed with some stuff. And then we'll be comfortable with some people teaching, I feel. So is that gonna be sort of like a curriculum based thing that you're going to be doing out there or what does that look like? Like what is sort of the anticipated group size? Like how many classes are you going to run? You know I remember like when Colton opened up a gym out there, there was a mass defect. A lot of the top guys at a lot of the local gyms went to him so he already had you know pretty like high level mid-level guys. So I'll be offering from the jump three 630 a.m.

classes this will be Tuesday Wednesday Thursday then three 1030 a.m. classes will be Monday Wednesday Friday. So eventually once we can get everything going both of those options I'd like to expand to five days a week. And then I'm gonna have a kids program 4.30 PM, Monday through Friday, an adult fundamental and intro program, right? But it'll be like kind of mixed levels at 5.30 PM, Monday through Friday, and then adult advanced at 6.30 PM, Monday through Friday.

Saturdays, we're gonna have skills and drills class, which is a class that I've kind of came up with on my own that I think is a very beneficial class where there's not really sparring. You can think of this as a drilling time with light instruction, maybe some situational training, but maybe more like some eco and just like maintaining weight distribution,

things of this, where at the end of the class, you shouldn't be in a full sweat, you should be warmed up and there'll be open sparring after it'll be unguided. So it'll be like a 45 minute block of technique work, but it's a little more active, right? That opposed to just doing a static drill, you know? Maybe like sequencing,

where your partner has to do certain reactions or has to try to hold your weight, right? And then 45 minutes of just open sparring or you can keep chilling if you want after. And that's Saturday. Have you sold memberships yet? Have you started selling memberships? And then 45 minutes of just open sparring or you can keep showing if you want after and that's Saturday sold Memberships yet have you started selling memberships? So no, I have not sold any memberships yet

Because I do not personally believe in taking people's money if I'm not providing a service now That's crazy to me because I offered I was like, you know, let me be the first Member in your gym and I want to pay prepay the first month Let me be that guy." And you're like, no, you refuse that, which is weird. So it's probably because of my privilege stance of coming from having some capital, right? If I was opening this on like, back of some sort of giant looming loan, I'd probably try to recoup my expenditure as soon as possible. But because of the circumstance that I am blessed to be in, you know, I feel it's right, you know.

So June 15th, the door's open, you go in, the first person that walks through the door puts down their card, that's the first member? Yep, yep. So actually, actually I'm the first member because I had to test out the billing software. So just yesterday. Whoa, that's not that fun. Yeah, So just yesterday. That's not that fun.

Yeah. So just yesterday, I see D coming out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I thought about this, right? What if for whatever reason, it just, it just didn't work, right? So I signed someone up on the 15th, it processes their first month and their down payment for the uniforms, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

Yeah. Next month, auto bill comes up and it doesn't work right. But I signed up 10 or 15 people on that first day. Now there's 10 or 15 people I'm gonna have to try to resolve this issue with. Whereas if I did it today, on July 1st, or July 2nd, sorry, I did it yesterday, 13 days before anyone else will get auto billed,

I'll see this error. And I'll have 13 days to troubleshoot and resolve this error prior to it causing friction with my student base. Yeah. You know, this is smart, you know, and the barrier to entry for these kind of businesses, like if you did Jiu Jitsu your whole life, you want to start a gym, that's the dream. A lot of these guys don't know how the backend stuff works.

You got to figure out mind, body, like this is your bread and butter a lot of the times as you spent the last 10 years working on these systems, right? Did you, are you using mind body or like what is the sort of the systems that you have in place to make sure this kind of thing runs smooth for everybody? I'm not using mind body for a couple reasons. Mind body is kind of expensive and it's not really optimized for martial arts businesses and they'll even tell you that. They'll tell you both of those

facts. The representative told me that. They'll be upfront, like, look, we're not cheap and we're not really made specifically for martial arts. Yeah. In addition to this, they don't have as many integrations as I would like. So what do I, right? If you want to, or I guess I should say this, they've adopted integrations over time, but they're not as intuitive because they were after thoughts, they were add-ons, right? So things like mass emailing, online store,

client portal, they exist to some degree, but they're not very clean interfaces. They're a little choppy. They're a little buggy The mind body interface itself. I will say I'm very accustomed with I don't dislike it too much because it's like a giant index In my opinion. Yeah, it's very kind of bare bones II and that's good. No, no, I have to see our ambition Yeah, it's easy to undo stuff, but I'm not using them. I'm using a membership called Spark, right. And I chose them. Because they have everything it's made specifically for martial arts businesses, and they have everything integrated on the front end. So they made this after the fact,

right, it's a newer software. So they have last email very intuitively integrated rank system tracking, which I'm not going to do. I think it's kind of, unless I get like a thousand students, I think I'll be able to just look at people and watch them training, determine their rank, but stuff like that pre-built in. I'm devoting you. Yeah. David going to Blue Belt. How dare you? No way. You can retain all his judo belts though. Yeah Which there are none. So yeah, I'm using spark. It's pretty it's pretty good. It's nice I'll see you Shopify because I like online stores and there's yeah And the merch is nice, too

I bought the ghee and you know I was a little bit like jealous because you know I've been doing my merch stuff for like two three years now and then you know I give you some of my contacts like oh that sucks let's try this that this that and you come up with this nice stuff that's like better than mine I'm like what the hell's going on here you know but the merch is great the gi's like the super high quality I bought the rash guards I bought pretty much a whole lineup of the tops you know in the training gear like what where did that come about like you like that stuff or do you have a guide?

Everybody in Jujitsu wants to have judo also, obviously, right? But how did you do all that? I contacted a bunch of different factories in Pakistan and sent them all the same professionally made design file and said, make me this. Yeah. And then they all came back. I think there was four of them. And then I also went to a American based company who does white labeling and customization went to them as well. So I had five samples total.

And then I put them all side by side and looked for two different things. Looked for who made the design the closest to the file I sent and who made the design with the best, what I determined, quality, right? So material choice, the cut I consider part of the quality because I'm not a seamstress, I'm not a tailor, I don't know how to measure the cut of the sleeve, this.

So I look for cut and quality. And then I picked, depending on that, as well as communications, right? Because most of the factories, the price planes are relatively the same, right? But it's like, you gotta send money to somewhere overseas in Pakistan. You know, it's very, you know, for a good period of time,

I had money that was just floating, and I was like, wow, this guy could just disappear in Pakistan or wherever. Luckily, the distributor and the factory I go to, I have many, I got a couple different recommendations from other people that they also use him, so I know he's probably gonna disappear on me. Do you have any advice for, I mean, you know,

most listeners, that's their dream, you know, to open up a gym, right? It's like anyone who's getting good at martial arts is like, what are you doing this for? And you know, a lot of the time, it's not world champion, Olympic champion, because that's like a really, it's a pipe dream. But like the idea of being a sensei, a business owner running your own gym, it really appeals to everyone who does. Right, David?

I mean, I mean, some people more than others, I think, you know, some people, it's a flash in the pan and other people's more. But I do think the more you train and the longer you're in it, the it does occur to you, right? Because you're spending, I mean, you're spending so much time doing it. You know, it's like, you know, then I think the the older you are, you know, I think you can sort of make that separation between like, well, I don't want to destroy my love of this thing by making it my job, you know, if you're like, if you're an old person. And that's not to say that will

happen. Because plenty of people love it. And, you know, do make it their avocation or their vocation. But but I do think, you know, it's more when you're younger. You're just like, if I love pizza, I'm just gonna own a pizza joint and just eat pizza all day. You know, it's probably not good for you. It probably won't work out that way. But what impresses me about Marcus is that he, you know, he doesn't have those illusions. He's going through all the checks. He's doing the like the hard stuff, you know, having to be very detail oriented, follow up with stuff, you know, he has a very, he has a interest in design, which is obviously, you know, resulting in a very strong branding.

That's what you want to see, I think, in someone who's starting a business because they're going in with their eyes open. So I would say that if your goal is to open a gym, right, like it or the academy, a studio, a dojo, whatever you want to call it, right, like I'm calling mine a studio, it's all the same thing. Yeah. whatever you want to call it. Like I'm calling mine a studio. It's all the same thing. You have to learn a couple of things. Obviously you have to learn the martial art, but you're gonna do that regardless from training. You have to learn how to be four different things. And I only really

took the fourth one more seriously in this process, but I even went into... This is like even bigger than this question, right? When I went into jujitsu and I decided I wanted to do it full time, I always said there was like three things that I viewed it in, like as an athlete, which is like what you can do, right? What you learn, what you can output with your body. As an instructor, which is like you giving information

to others, right? And like helping them learn what's going on. And then as a coach, which is like how you help people with what they have already get better, like more individualized, more motivating. This requires more personal connection because you can be a great coach and not that good of an athlete

and not even that good of an instructor. You could also be a great instructor and an awful coach or you could be a great athlete and really have no idea how to teach or coach someone. So I always thought that you have to invest in all three of these things. And I studied people around me. That sounds kind of creepy, but I always studied people around me who I viewed having these three traits. Particularly at Marcelo's gym, I found people like distinctly different individuals who

are good at these three things. And then lastly, you have to learn the back end business processes. This is the fourth pillar, which I think even I didn't see at first, but naturally I saw that my only way to sustain myself in jiu-jitsu was doing this one. And to you, like your credit before you said like this became my specialty was running the gym itself. This is the hardest one. There's always going to be in time, someone who wants to train you to compete, teach and

coach is not always going to be someone who wants to do billing, back end processes, emails, contacting leads, maintenance of your gym, fixing a water fountain. The things for the day to day and to keep the business open, right? And those things are specialized knowledge and specialized skills that you can start learning immediately at the gym that you train at, right?

Say, hey, even if you don't have a job there, hey, I wanna learn this. How do you do this? I watch them. Hey, let me clean the mat for free. And then you learn, oh, hey, even if you don't have a job there, hey, I wanna learn this. How do you do this? I watch them. Hey, let me clean the mat for free. And then you learn, oh, hey, let me, you know, help you inventory these products, right? Especially young guys.

You're training, let's just say three, sorry, they're cleaning the door outside. So I don't know if you can hear it. You're training maybe three to five hours a day, minutes. Most of them are training one to three. But let's just say three to five, right? You got to sleep eight hours a day minutes most of them are training one to three but let's just say three to five right you got a sleep eight hours a day so we got 13 hours there there's 11 left let's say you spend three of them eating sleeping shitting whatever else you do fucking video game i don't care right you got any more hours Learn some specialized transferable knowledge and

skills that make you more of an asset and more valuable than the guy next to you. Yep. And you're going to move up the peg where you are. And then one day you're going to get to the top of the heap and you're going to realize you've done everything you need to do naturally to be the owner, to be the manager. Then you're gonna go into it with more confidence and more experience on your belt. But if you just focus on fighting,

for six years of your life, you just focus on fighting and fighting and fighting. And maybe you teach some privates and maybe you teach some classes, but you never take a look at billing. You never take a look at how to make merch. You never take a look at customer relations. You never take a look at, I don't. You never take a look at customer relations You never take a look at I don't know how to set up an electric meter how to switch the gas into your head Yeah, right

Then when you go to guys like that too, it's like doing judo forever. It's like I want to open my gym Like you've never owned a business before like you could have been learning this stuff the whole time You know like what you know, like it's the whole whole time, you know, like what? You know, like it's just a whole nother thing, you know? Do you, you're gonna miss Essential? Oh yeah, I mean, I'm still gonna go train. Yeah. I'm gonna go there. It's Tuesday now. I'm gonna be there on Thursday.

My plan is gonna be to at least go there Thursday mornings and train for myself. That's why I built the schedule so that there's no 10, 30 a.m. class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So if I wanna go travel for my training, I have from roughly 8 a.m. class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So if I wanna go travel for my training, I have from roughly 8 a.m. until 4.30 p.m. to figure that out. So with all the experience you have running gyms,

doing jujitsu, teaching, coaching, running mind, body, sending emails, everything that you've done so far, opening up this gym, anything that's surprised you so far? One, how expensive everything is. I used to joke around, when you're up to about 15 years old, you think in like $10 increments. Like, oh, I got this $70 shirt. That's so cool. I got a hoodie, it was a hundred bucks.

Once you get to about 20, it's like hundreds of dollars. In your 20s, you're like, oh, I got a $700 dinner at, I don't know, some fancy restaurant with my buddies or whatever it is, right? And then once you get to like 30 and like you're a business owner, like everything is in the thousands. That every, every invoice I received these days is in the thousands of dollars. And I'm like, dude, this sucks. Like I gotta work so much hard to pay these invoices off. So that was definitely a little bit of a shock. Things that I thought were very, very simple. Thousands of dollars. Vinyl graphics on the wall. Thousands of dollars.

Yeah. Permitting. The things that cost the most. What were they? Okay, I'll give you... So something that costs a lot for us here is we had to do this thing to the floor because when the units that we received here at Hydrogen they were originally two side by side units, okay? And I took out the wall in the middle, done. But both units at one point were tile showrooms. So the entire, from six feet up above my head height to the floor into two years,

everything was covered in different tiles, directly placed on the walls and concrete. So we had to rip out 4,300 square feet of ceramic tiles. And they had been there, their units were vacant for eight years. And then we had to grind the floor flat. No way, man, grinding on concrete. 26 or 27 grand right there, like just to grind the floor flat. No way, man. Grinding concrete. $26 or $27 grand right there, like just to grind the floor.

Geez. Wow. Of how much work we did. Because it was a lot of physical labor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Square feet of ceramic tiles. Yeah.

How'd you find your contractor? Oh, my business partner owns a construction company. Okay, that definitely helps. Yeah, that's like man. Just as if not more important than me Yeah, like another yeah Yeah, most people would have to deal with so much construction headache I still do but for the most part like he takes care of all the heavy lifting like he might be nice Yeah, some people like you have the heavy lifting. He's my GC. That's nice. Yeah, that's awesome. Some people, you have to deal with the GC, like my GC,

part owner. So it's a vested interest of his to make sure everything is done right and no issues arise. So what's the pricing strategy going to be like for your gym? Have you looked at the local market and have you done the average and the median and all this stuff and the region? What is the pricing strategy going in to open a premium boutique sort of high-end jujitsu studio that's really gonna stand out? What is the strategy for that?

Yeah, so I did a little bit of cost analysis of the gyms in the area, the academies in the area. I asked around and I found out kind of the average range is somewhere between about 160 to 225, depending on a couple of factors. Some people are paying a lot less because they've been locked into a rate for a long time, of course.

So I positioned myself at the lower end of the bracket at $175 per month. Just to get people in the doors a little bit more, make them have a little bit less friction lower end of the bracket at $175 per month. Just to get people in the doors a little bit more, make them have a little bit less friction about switching over if that's something they intend to do. But after I get X amount of members, I'm probably looking around 35 to 55 members, I'm going to raise it by $25 and it'll be $200 a month. There will be a one-time fine on fee that is the equivalent of one month's tuition.

So if your tuition payment is 175, the first month you have to pay 350. But with the sign-on fee, I'm giving everyone uniforms. So you're going to receive either a gi and a no-gi set or two gi's if that's your choice or two no-gi sets if that's your choice. So you're coming out way on top on that sign-on fee. We're eating a significant amount of loss of profit

on this end, but we will have uniform policy here. So I wanna make it easy, accessible, and also encourage people to own the gear. Because as you said, I personally believe it's very, very nice. It made me consider raising the price when I got them. But I was like, you know what? I'm a man of the people.

Man of the people. Marcus'm a man of the people. Man of the people. Wow that's amazing man so you're gonna do like a first 50 people get this price it's like a founders price all this stuff. Yeah so we have a pre-registrance list all pre-registrants will have additional considerations to their price point right now if someone comes in the door and they sign up for membership it's 175. If I look on my pre-registrants will have additional considerations to their price point. Right now, if someone comes in the door and they sign up for membership, it's 175. If I look on my pre-registrants list and you've been on the list since, you know, long time ago, right, and then you show up

after those first 50 people, you'll still receive 175. I think I'm on that list, right? I'm pretty certain I signed up for the thing, yeah. So, I'm good, I'm good. You on that list, David? No, I didn't even know that was a thing I think that's a Shintaro thing you saw how many memberships you have across the United States you must have a bunch of memberships. That was Colton's first member though when Colton opened up the gym I was like listen man I know you're open up the gym here's you know two months dues or

something like that I'm your first member I want to support your you know, so I was trying to do the same with Marcus But you didn't take my money. Yeah Once I can open for a regular class module. I'll accept all your money, but I want to be first I want to be first and I want to be the first member. That's that's the the thing so You know new the gym does well Marcus becomes a youtuber He has a million followers or whatever. Yes, and I could just ride the coattails of that Be like, that's right first student at Marcus Johnson's heritage BJJ and now it's a national chain I'm like, I was the first student. I was a first student. It's just for club really. It's just purely selfish reasons. I

like that uniform policy though because it can become such an annoying thing for people, I think. And I think you're doing it in a smart way because you have uniform policy, but you're allowing people to get in in a rational way. You're not just like sort of demanding people buy your merch. You're doing it in a way where it makes sense for them to do it. Because a lot of people, they're not going to have an opinion on geese anyway. And they look good.

They're good quality. It's a reasonable price. You're not asking them to pay like 250 bucks for the ghee. You know what I mean? So I think that's smart. And it really bends people out of shape, I think, sometimes when you have these policies that people don't understand. What percentage of your class are going to be ghee and no ghee? Good no gi just a touch on the uniform policy and then we'll go into that one I have a pretty lax uniform policy too so you can wear any key you want if you wear my rash guard underneath if you wear our key you can wear a different guard and then during

okay cool yeah at no gee if you want to wear my rash guard you go a different I'm going to be a little bit They limit the colors and the aesthetics of the gym, you know, we're going to require IBGF colors. Originally I was going to do white and blue only, but I've decided after seeing some black gees on the green mats, it looks good. But it's really just to promote team more than anything. Like you go to a gym and there's no uniform policy and everyone's wearing like camel gi, yellow gi, white gi, blue gi, rash guard, t-shirt underneath. Like it looks, it looks kind of bad and there's no like unifying identity, when you come inside of heritage you I really want people to feel drawn to being part of something Something bigger than them something they can aspire to be part of and part of a community and I think just having you know One logo on you can do that just a little bit, you know, it reminds you like this person is my teammate

It's not just like some person that yeah, I love that. I look man. You nailed that Yeah, I try my best to steal that from your last deal that that is here. Yeah. I love that. I love, man, you nailed that. Yeah, I try my best. I'm gonna steal that from my gym. Yeah. I think everyone should have some sort of light uniform policy. Like even if it's as small as okay, like you can wear whatever you want, but you have to put our patch on or wear whatever you want. Just wear our rash guard underneath and then just make a moderately tight rash guard, you know, 50 bucks. And it is what it is. People are going to buy rash guards any. Yeah, exactly. Very true.

Exactly. Gi, no Gi split. Right now I have Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for the most part, Gi, Tuesday, Thursday, no Gi. The change up here though is that on Wednesday, 630 a.m. and 1030 a.m., those are no Gi too just so that the the morning guys can get no gi right so the morning guys have three classes per week one of them is no gi the evening people have five classes per week two of them are no gi right on Saturday we're gonna have the skills and drills class which you can attend gi or no gi right if you show up no gi and someone else shows up Nogi, don't worry.

The drills were more than likely at least have some sort of modification that is applicable to Nogi. Most of what is taught there is not going to be that specific to the gi. Occasionally it will be, in which case I will assign a different drill or a different idea for the Nogi players. So I didn't do it with the thought of making content per se, but I arranged my security cameras on the mat in a Z pattern and zigzag so that you can capture every angle of the mat because my intention is to like I personally watch all of my training rounds. I do this at Essential because

I'm the GM so or I was the GM so I had access to security camera. So here I made it so that So, or I was the GM, so I had to access security camera. So here I made it so that the cameras are organized specifically for watching my training. Also, I have a couple of iPads that on stands that we prop up and I film and record my own, that's how I make most of those reels. And I'm going to allow my students to do the same actually. I'm gonna allow them to record their rounds.

They won't be allowed to post them really. I think that just starts to get a little hairy so that they can study them as long as they get their partner's consent. And I think as everyone communicates about it and is respectful, it will be no issue, right? And if there becomes an issue and they're like, all right, you can't do it. Right. I got to teach you like a child.

Come on, be an adult. Perfect. Um, that's perfect. Film study review on Friday nights in my classes will be Friday film study. Cause I know Friday night classes Sometimes are lighter at academies because you have to compete with well going out to dinner or getting a beer with your friends We're going to the movies hanging out with girlfriends So we'll do something a little different if it and if it takes off would be good like a Friday night film study

We're on Thursday earlier in the week I'll watch the rounds of the class pick a couple of different interactions I see in the students training or my own and then break them down and we'll drill that on Friday nights. That's perfect, man. That's perfect. I'm going to go bring David. I'm going to roll with him specifically, and then we could make that, you know, post that on YouTube.

And you're just going to see me punch his knee repeatedly. I'm just going to hold it. I'm just going to pound on it. I actually have one question for you, Marcus, just to step away from the academy. You've been doing Jiu Jitsu. Jiu Jitsu brings a lot of people. You meet a lot of different kinds of people in Jiu Jitsu, right? Like in Billions, they had John Danner on the actual show, being his creepy self with Paul Giamatti. And so I'm sure you've run into a lot of people, you know, just doing teaching and doing privates and whatever. And I

do, I've noticed that you're often going to like Ronnie Chang's shows. And I remember he slipped reference to an Omoplata into one of his bits. And I was like, this guy must train because you don't just throw that into a bit, you know, if you don't know, or if you don't train. And so I'm wondering who are some of the people you've you've run into in your career and you know, what can you what can you dish? Yeah, so I mean, Ronnie Chang, obviously, he's a friend of mine. He's a student and friend of mine. I met him when I worked at Marcelo Garcia's gym. And honestly, at first, I didn't even really know who he was. He was just there training and I tried to sell him a key. I tried to sell him actually I tried to sell him an AP and I wasn't even sponsored by AP at the time. I just had a bunch of AP

keys and I said he was wearing one and it was his size. I tried to sell to him. And then it turns around like in this weird full circle moment, then he got me an AP key instead. I sold to him from AP for free. It was crazy. But yeah, so I met him there and we just really connected because of the kind of similar Backstory of being Asian and pursuing a career path that is a little more of a passion and not really As you guys as stable or as like what Asian parents did approve of. They're like, oh, be a lawyer, be a doctor. Oh, well, I guess David Kim did one of those. Which one is it?

Accountant, whatever. Not either. I'm not either. He did all of it. You know what I'm saying? We just kind of linked up over lunch a couple times about that and then we did a couple privates and we trained together and we just became really good friends. He's a good friend of mine. I've taught Simon Kim quite a few times He's the owner of coat NYC in Cote Miami with coconut I didn't know that

Simon Kim he's the man. I actually taught him his first jiu-jitsu lesson ever with the Tommy to go I brought him max to his office in Manhattan and gave him his first jiu-jitsu lesson ever now He's training at a Gracie Wall Street or Upper West Side I believe. Really nice guy. You want to talk about attention to detail and just like a go getter and like an ambitious, hungry, but super friendly person. Simon Kim is, is the man. He's a big inspiration to me and just his ability to scale upward and see big picture and just make impact. I'm a really big fan of something explains your food Your your other interest food

Yeah, yeah, I eat a Simon Kim's restaurant a lot because they're really really good but I don't care what gym you trained at before what you mean train right now your Religion your sexual orientation your political views, you know any of that shit. I don't care about it Yeah, yeah, I don't care about it. Are Judo guys welcome? Yeah, yeah. I don't care about any of it. Like, you can leave that outside. If you wanna learn Judo too, come inside, man. Come inside.

I wanna share the Jiu Jitsu that I've learned over the last, you know, better part of 16 years and just share that with people. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much Marcus for coming on and guys look forward to me doing a dojo visit and then I'll show you guys how beautiful the gym is but you could always check it out at heritage-bjj.com

and heritage underscore BJJ on Instagram.