Latest / The Ageless Warrior Lab / Bernardo Faria on Building BJJ Fanatics, Business and Longevity | EP 57

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Bernardo Faria on Building BJJ Fanatics, Business and Longevity | EP 57 · The Ageless Warrior Lab

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Many times with the world champion.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they don't know what they do, they just do it.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that doesn't translate so well for education, right?
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, the one who sells the most is the one who can articulate concepts in the best way.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: When I was young, my goal for Jiu-Jitsu was to become a world champion.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, my goal is to be 63 years old, healthy, and training for the students and still give them a good round.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Ageless Warrior Lab.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm BJJ Coral Belt and Dirty Dozen member Dave Meyer, here to draw wisdom from Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to success in business, relationships, your long-term health, and making the most out of your life.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: What you're about to hear is a discussion I had recently with Professor Bernardo Faria.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: Bernardo is a multiple-time world champion in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, an IBJJF Hall of Famer, and BJJ Fanatics co-founder along with Michael Zenga and Michael Rearden.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: BGJ Fanatics is where many people turn for online BGJ instruction with over 3,000 instructional videos.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: In our discussion, we talked about BGJ Fanatics, online training in general, pursuing your passion, and how to keep training as we get older.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this is a lab, and I value your input, so please be sure to leave any comments you have on the YouTube video if that's where you're watching or listening.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: And now it's my huge honor to share my talk with Professor Bernardo Faria.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, Bernardo, thank you so much for making the time to talk to me.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Dave No.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure to be here.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Told you earlier, but congratulations on all the success with the podcast, with the YouTube channel.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's very cool that we started Jiu-Jitsu here in America.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're one of the first 12 guys to get a black world here.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're also sharing all the experience and stories and etc.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that is so nice of you to say.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Listen, I was so lucky early on to just be living in Southern California, which is of course where Horian came and then Hickson and Hoyler and the Machado brothers.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Higgin was my coach, Higgin JoJac, all the brothers.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel like uh adopted Brazilian.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Dario.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: No, really, it's family and the whole jujitsu world, as you know, it is really a family.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: We're all we're all cousins and and we we live or die together.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: So it's just so nice to talk to you.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Fully agree with you.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's the it's the best community ever.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: I had planned to actually be talking to you and Michael Zenga, one of your co-founders from BGJ Fanatics, but he wasn't able to make it.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe we'll catch him another time.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I have a bunch of questions about BGJ Fanatics and your thoughts about that.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then I just want to talk about sort of the business of online instruction, and then definitely want to talk about our personal journeys and training and you know, health and longevity and things like that, because I know we both care about that a lot.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: But just out of curiosity, in the tech space, so I do a lot of stuff in the tech space, as you may know.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: I created in my like my day job is animal welfare and created a very popular website called adopthepet.com, millions of users.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: We sold it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was just very successful.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I have an understanding of online marketing and things like that.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_03: And in the tech space, and really in business in general, when someone creates something, often they're creating something they say that scratches their own itch.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like there's a product that they wish existed and it doesn't.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so they create it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just wondering, with you in terms of BJJ fanatics, was it something like that?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Was it, man, I wish there was an online instructional thing so I could have it?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: Or what was your thinking when you create when you brought this to life?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so no, I think you were spot on on how it happened because the story is that in 2014 I met Michael.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's another Michael as well.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's two Michaels, we were three partners, right?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But this other Michael nobody knows because he doesn't do jujitsu.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he's more like behind the scenes.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But in 2014, I met Michael Zenger and he reached out to me to make a DVD.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was the first thing.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I had pretty much already signed it with another company, so we ended up not doing it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, hey, already signing with this other company here to make a DVD with Dan and Zanat.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Michael was a big fan of my game, the Hafker game, and the over under game.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he was like, exactly what you said, you know.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I still want to learn from you.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think he wanted to make the DVD more for himself than to everybody.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, and then he reached out to me and he was like, he reached out to me again.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, man, no big deal, no hard feelings if you're gonna do the this DVD for the other company, it's all good.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: But why don't you come here and teach a seminar?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even have a school or anything like that, but I can organize the seminar for you on the school that I train, and we get to know each other, and then maybe you can teach me a private too.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then one was one of those coincidences where back then my wife was going for me for most of the seminars, and for that one, she didn't for some reason.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like she stayed in New York and she didn't come.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So Michael was like, hey, if your wife is not coming, why don't you stay in my house and you teach me a private in the morning?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: He had mats in the basement before we go to the seminar.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then if my wife was going, I would probably stay in the hotel, right?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, yeah, man, that sounds good.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I stayed in his house.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then that night I remember that we we had to wake up like 8 a.m.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: to teach the private, and uh go to the seminar, and we were talking until like 5 a.m.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: or something, and talking about life, talk about business, talk about jiu-jitsu.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I did business in college in my hometown, but I didn't know much about business.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like Michael was a big mentor, especially in the beginning.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so he was telling you all about his business experience, you know, like everything he did, uh, everything he had a few schools for different niches in Massachusetts.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then most of the traffic was online, and was sort of like construction school, like a GC school.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: He had a food safety school, I think.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: In order to get a certificate to open a restaurant, you would take his school and the traffic was all online.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So then he was sharing everything and said that, and then we kind of became friends after that, you know, like and it was a very enjoyable night.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then since then, we kind of kept talking almost every day.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: We would call each other, and I would tell him the experience that I was doing with the digital marketing that I learned kind of like from him in one night, and he would share the stuff that he was doing there as well.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: But, anyways, the bottom line, I think it's what you said, you know, like Michael wanted to learn half green hand over under, and he reached out to me, and then we were thinking about that.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: We were like, hey, you had the opportunity to do this because I was living in New York, he lived in Boston.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, but how many people don't have that opportunity?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Michael also had done like three or four DVDs already, like Kenan Cornelius, uh Ding Lister, I think like the one of the Miao brothers.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he was already doing that as a side gig, you know, like making some videos and that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But in this special case, was like the mix of like doing the DVD and wanting to learn this specific game that fitted his game really well, which I think goes quote unquote with what you just said, like yes, exactly.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's that was kind of the story, you know.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and we we were always thinking, like, man, how many people want to learn from the world champion, want to learn this specific game from that guy, but they just don't have the opportunity.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: But now all of a sudden, if they can get a DVD or if they can get an online course, they can learn from that person from their home, and they can build their game, they can get better hit jujitsu.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, they call it scratching your own itch, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, all right.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, I'm gonna tell you just a little story about some of my background because it relates to this.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, I don't know if you know, but I and a guy named John Will actually released instructional DVDs very old.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, actually, it wasn't even DVDs, it was a VHS tapes.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: This was before the internet.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_03: This was like in 2001.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we started working on it, I think it came out in 2002.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it wasn't a scratch the edge kind of thing.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: In this case, I already knew John because he he literally taught me my first jiu-jitsu lesson.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_03: He was from Australia and he was a student of Higgins and happened to be out in Los Angeles, which is where I lived when I took my first jiu-jitsu lesson.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: So we already knew each other, and we had actually already gotten to Black Belt by 2001.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: But I had a friend who was a very prominent hop keto instructor in Los Angeles, a guy named Fari Borz Azak.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: And he was very well connected in the martial arts community and very well connected, like with associations of karate instructors and things like that.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: There were like professional associations.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: And this was even before the UFC, but it was people on the West Coast were starting to hear about Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and there was a crazy jiu-jitsu in action videotape, things like that.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, so karate instructors wanted to learn, you know, have some grappling in their school or something.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: And he was telling me, you should make this.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like you guys are good instructors, you should make a curriculum.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: And he was saying it for like a year or two years, and finally, because I didn't have time and I couldn't be bothered, but I was building my animal nonprofit.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_03: I needed a source of income, and I realized this could be a good source of income.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so John in Australia had a curriculum in his school.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: He's very organized.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: He came out to Los Angeles, we fit, we filmed.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a little different for me.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't doing it for me.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: I was trying to fill a need that somebody was telling me other people had.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it was a little trick because, you know, we didn't even call it Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu because we didn't want someone saying, I bought your DVDs and now I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like, no, you're not ranked.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's not.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: We called it grappling.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: It was VHS in the beginning and manuals, and we sold it.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: And we actually sold it to like a thousand different schools over the years.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: We would go to conventions.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was very popular.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: But we never, this was just as things were starting to come online.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think Google was getting known like around 2006, YouTube, you know.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: So in those years, people were saying we should put our stuff online.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we never, we just, it didn't matter to me at that point.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: We never got around to do it.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_03: And we were never thinking not only to put our own instructionals online, but the brilliant idea to host other people's instructionals because there's so much information out there.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_03: And it's a great use of the internet.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when you were young, well, certainly when I was young, if you wanted to learn martial arts, you had to go to the instructor.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: Or maybe you could go from a book, or maybe you could buy, you could put put in the mail money for a DV for a VHS video and then get that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, the the internet has made it so good.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's so perfect for giving information, maybe too much information, but we'll talk about that.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just so happy.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like I love BGJ Fanatics, so impressed about what you're doing.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I actually have questions about it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so, first of all, I want to understand you have some different brands, I think.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I've I've heard of Fanatic Wrestling and and maybe some other what are your different brands?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: What is it?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we started with BGJ Fanatics, and then we were making some success.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we were like, hey, why don't you try to do that in different sports as well?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: So then we build dynamic striking, which is for Muay Thai, kickboxing, MMEA, and then we build fanatic wrestling, which is for wrestling, then we build judo fanatics, which is for judo, then we build strong and fit for conditioning, and nowadays we have even like uh seats they learn, which is for dog training, but we do have a partner there for that one.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't we have no authority whatsoever.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we do have a partner who is one of the most well-known dog trainers in the world, it's called Nick White, which is such a great guy.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea was to try to do that for different sports, but jujitsu is the best one, like by far, like the and I think like we have a lot more advantage in the jiu-jitsu industry as well than we have in the other industries, and it's also like one of the fastest growing sports nowadays, right?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the US only lose to pickleball, if I'm not wrong.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And pickable ball attracts a lot more people because it's very easy to play, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: So right, so jujitsu is very special, and and so jujitsu is the main one, but we do have this other websites as well and this other niches.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna link to all of those.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: And what you're saying makes sense.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like in building businesses, there is subject expertise and there's platform expertise, meaning, you know, so subject expertise is you guys know jujitsu, you're a world champion, you know jujitsu very, very well that you're an expert at jujitsu.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: But the platform expertise, you guys have learned how to deliver content that doesn't have to be jujitsu content, it could be any content.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it sounds like Michael already came with a knowledge of using online instructional things like that.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: So that could be applied to many different things.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: And there you have a platform.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's very smart that you're looking for ways to use your knowledge and learn, use what you've gained on the platform that doesn't have to be tied to any particular subject.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: As everything in life, right, we realize it's not as easy as we think.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And for example, many other niches aren't already saturated, and we don't have too many, too much like a competitive advantage because we try to go beyond combat sports as well.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: We try to build like a basketball, football, and this and that, but there's a lot of things that makes it hard to work.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, in the basketball industry, the athletes and the best coach they don't need that, so like they're already like extremely successful with their roles, right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not very interested in creating an instruction, and when they do, they're not very interested in putting so much thought on that.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in the jujitsu world, it can become the best income for that person, so they're very interested in doing the very best and then create the best curriculum and Zad.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there is pros and cons, like everything else.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: So that's interesting because you need creators, and if you're saying that jujitsu creators are more inspired to to put content online because that can become a big part of their livelihood, that's a really good point.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just to clarify, like it's much easier to access the ADCC champion than the NBA champion, you know.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: As you can imagine.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, no, that totally makes sense.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: You talk about competitors, and there is a lot of content out there, and I imagine the biggest one is YouTube itself, right?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: Just a massive amount of free content.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You are 100% right.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So YouTube definitely grabs a market share on what we do, yeah, but in the same time, stop a funny for us.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's how people find about us.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a competitor, but it's also a partner, you know.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, and also like we try to differentiate our service from YouTube.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, YouTube, I always talk about that, it's all about like random moves, right?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna find a random technique here from this guy, a random technique from that guy, and it's hard to put things together.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: What we do, we try to sell the system, you know, like we try to sell the curriculum for that specific subject.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if we if you're teaching an arm bar, it's not just one arm bar, there's a sequence of moves for that arm bar from the best arm bar in the world, from this guy who won the ADCC, and etc.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then one thing that happens that's very interesting is as you can expect, the audience who buys the most on BJA Fanatics tends to be like hobbyist, older people.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Older, I mean like over 30, over 40, over 50.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Master Division, you know, like and then what happens, those guys they do have the income and they don't have time, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because they have family, they have a job, and this and that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't have the time to go on YouTube and try to search and feast for 20 different techniques that's gonna take them like 20 hours, you know, like right versus the young guys, it's the opposite, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the times they don't have the extra income, and they do have the time, so they tend to go more to YouTube than than the older guys.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's interesting, that really makes sense.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the older people have discretionary have more income and less time.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm certainly in that space right now.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and all of us, like there's one thing that works the same for all of us, right?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting less and less and less time in life, and one day we're not gonna be here.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I can time becomes more important as we age.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: Our time is running out.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: I actually, some of the first episodes, this podcast has interviews like the one that we're doing, but I also have what I call life lessons, which are just things I've learned from martial arts that I've used in life.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I did a few episodes early on about my whole view about look, you may have first of all, we all have limited time, and you probably have less time than you think because no one thinks they're gonna die young, but some people do, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_03: And so, like this is the time if you if something you care about, and I don't care if that's getting good at jujitsu, I don't care if that's being better to your family or helping the world, you know, things like I do, just do it now.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: Start start working on it because you don't know how much time you have left and get busy.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: Fully agree.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_03: So going back to YouTube, you mentioned it's also top of funnel, a place where people can discover you and come to you, which I think is true.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's probably how I first saw your stuff.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of that has to do with your podcast, right?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: So the BJJ Fanatics podcast, which is available on YouTube, is that what's the role of that in the ecosystem?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: Are you using that as a way to find new people and connect them to you know your other materials?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not, the podcast it is not the best way.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think the way that people find us the most is through the Huge Honor for Me videos.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like every guest we have here, I go there and I make like two or three videos with Dan that goes to the YouTube.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the one that I introduced the the guest, like, hey guys, I'm here today with Dave.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Huge honor for me, blah blah blah.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: That went pretty viral.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And also, we tried to grab like one, two or three clips, and then that goes to my channel, my YouTube channel, Bernardo for you, BGJ Fanatics.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then we also try to grab two or three clips and put on the BGJ Fanatics YouTube channel, and so we have two channels pretty much my personal and bgj fanatics.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way that people find the most about us.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: The podcast is more like talk about life, right?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the people who are buying from us, they want to learn the technique, you know, like they want to learn specific technique.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they go on YouTube, they search for like uh arm bar, and then John Dan and her how to do the perfect arm bar pops up, and then they they see the video, but if they want to get more information about that, if they want to learn the system technique after technique, they go to the website and buy.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because nowadays I'm a customer, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I also saw that every word, like anytime I'm teaching jujitsu, that's not my A game, I watch it BGJ Fanatics.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I have no shame to say that, you know, because I think like nowadays there's such like a great amount of information online that if I'm gonna teach guillotine and guillotine is not my A game, who and I to teach the guillotine?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I gotta watch Marcella do the guillotine before.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I'm gonna teach the hill hook and hill hook is not my A game, I gotta watch John Danner or Gordon Ryan before I teach.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think nowadays all of us can give the very best information to our students, and some moves we will trust that we are giving because we are good at that, but for many other moves, the vast majority, I watch BGJ Fanatics before the class.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's what I do.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna ask you about that, and I think that's fine.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: I have definite thoughts about that.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think people, especially when they're white belts, they assume that the instructor, especially if they're a black belt, is just the world's authority on everything.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like they just know everything.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: They're like God.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And nobody knows everything.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: And in fact, even a very, very knowledgeable instructor who knows a lot, a lot, a lot of things, there's so many different body types.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, no one knows every single technique with every detail in a way that's going to work for you, the short guy, you, the tall guy, you, the heavy guy.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's there's so much variation out there.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I think a good instructor is a good teacher, but it's kind of a tour guide, you know, like can show you the menu and can get you, let's just say, a blue or purple belt level on anything.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: But if you really want to go deep, then you got to go listen to an expert who really, really does that thing.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: Because like you said, yeah.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: On that specific subject, I fully fully, fully, fully agree with you.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And many times, like students come to me, hey Bernardo, how do I do this?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hugh Hooker is that I have no shame to tell them, like, hey, this is not my thing.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I can show you the basics, but if you want to become an expert on it, you might need to study a little deeper online, or I can bring the information, I can do the study myself and share the information with you, but give me a few days.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think, like, at the end of the day, it's hard to be an expert on every single subject.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And nowadays the expertise is all online.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's similar to a college education, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: You can have an instructor who can teach science generally and can teach you all the basics of science, you can become a very good general scientist, but that instructor is not a PhD in every aspect of science.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: They're not a PhD in biology and their PhD in physics and a PhD.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's like if you want to go deep, you're gonna have to go to people who've really spent their lives going deep in that.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: And there's no shame in it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I appreciate you saying that.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think the important thing is to just be honest, to say, hey, this is not my thing.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Here's what I know of it.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: Here's the best I can tell you.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: I don't do this in competition for these reasons, and here are the basics and go up to something else if you really want to learn it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and many times I even do the step beyond.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: I tell them, like, hey, give me a few days, I'm gonna do some study on this, and I come back too.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I do it.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I go on Vichy Linux, I find the course that has the best subjects, best guy.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I do some study and I come back with more information, you know, like but I think Jiu Jitsu reached this point.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think at some point in the Jiu-Jitsu journey, the instructor would teach his A game and very few moves outside of his A game.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very common to see, like, oh, this local school, the guy plays I don't know, Spider Guard.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And all his students were Spider Guard guys.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you ask them if they ever learn the other guards, a little bit, you know, like.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think nowadays, with this huge amount of information, we instructors, we can teach everything on a world-class level, you know, like because we can do the homework and bring that information.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think there's there's nothing wrong with you as an instructor going back and saying, Let me get back to you.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because at your level, you watching, let's just say, some aspect of heel hook attacks that might not be your A game, you're going to see a lot more and understand it a lot more than someone who is not a black belt and Brazilian jiu-jitsu looking at the same thing, right?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: So if the student goes and watches the same video as you, they're not going to get as much out of it as you watching that video and being able to interpret it because of your experience.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's true.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: And look, I know the best instructors are constantly learning new things.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I I've never opened a school, never wanted to open a school.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_03: My life is helping animals and, you know, helping the world and things like that.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_03: So I have not constantly sought out new things.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_03: Cause for me, a lot of my time is limited on the mat.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_03: I got a few hours each week.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to train and have some fun, work on something new.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: But I have a good friend who I'm sure I'll mention a little bit more because he is the best instructor I know.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: And I just feel that way.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's the guy I mentioned, John Will in Australia.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_03: And he is just extremely knowledgeable and extremely good in how he presents information and the order in which he presents information.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: He's really good.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: But he is constantly like when I go visit him, or he's constantly texting me, you know, from Australia, like, I'm working on this new thing, I'm working, like he's constantly looking, refining, trying to understand something, watching competitions and noticing something that happened and trying to figure out what happened, and then trying to figure out how to connect it on to things he already understands so he can present it in a way that's good.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so I think even if you're an instructor, having something like BGJ Fanatics as a tool, I mean, in fact, all the best instructors I know are watching BGJ Fanatics so that they can expand what they're doing.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost like, why wouldn't you be?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like not even pushing people to buy from us, which you should, but I think we have to nowadays with the level of knowledge that there is in the internet, we have to take advantage of the technology and study jiu-jitsu.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it could be at BGJ Fanatics or any other website, but I think we do have to do the homework as an instructor and also as a practitioner, because if you really want to get good at jiu-jitsu, I think nowadays you can go much, much deeper than 20 years ago, you know, like when I started.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's very true.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when you started and when I started, a lot of the things we do today didn't have names.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: It was just look, when I remember, I might be wrong on this, but I don't remember ever hearing the word half guard until I was a purple belt.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: It was just you got one of their legs.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: And we had some stuff, but once somebody started calling it half guard, and then we started paying attention to underhook over like so once you name something, it becomes more and more developed.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: I actually talked to Eddie Bravo about that too, because he was great on coming up with man.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was one of the first guys who started naming everything.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: That was very smart, and that was great exactly.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and once you name it, you can talk about it, you think about it more precisely.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: One question for you when did you start jujitsu?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: I started jujitsu.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, I'm the one doing the interview.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: No, I'm just uh uh I started ju okay.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: I started Brazilian jujitsu in 1990.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I started Japanese jujitsu when I was six years old in 1968.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm old.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I had I was a very experienced black belt in in jiu-jitsu the first day I met John Will and then met Higgin Machado.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I tell people what that got me on in a jiu-jitsu mat was bad blue belt.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because so I could I could beat all the white belts and I could beat in grappling on the ground, maybe some of the bad blue belts, but not the good blue belts.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's what 30 years of jiu-jitsu got me in terms of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu on the mat.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So a second, just so I digest this.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: So 30 years doing the Japanese jiu-jitsu, you think correlates to a blue blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu kind of.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I cannot say what that correlates to for anybody else.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: No, and to be fair, and to be fair, my or whatever it was, I guess it was 30 years old.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's how you felt.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's how I thought.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, my 26 years, because my jiu-jitsu wasn't all grappling on the ground, right?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: We did strikes.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: We did more of what you like the traditional, what I forget.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: The ground game was relatively to a yes.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_03: My ground game was similar like a to a judo ground game.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: I would, I knew moves, I would do this move or that move, but I didn't have the ability to really string them together and set it up and didn't have us any kind of sophistication around the guard.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_03: You wrap your legs around the guy and then you cross-choke them.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's what you do, you know.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you try to roll them over in a couple of ways, but so that's why I would say it would, it was much more than a beginner would know.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, there was a female purple belt, I won't even say her name.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: She's not training anymore, it's for a long time, but she's great.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And she was in that my first class, that first day I walked onto the mat, and she pulled me to close guard, and I had not done Brazilian jujitsu, and I see her caller, I'm in her close guard.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: I reach in, I put my hands deep, and I actually made her tap.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: I choked her out, which was very frustrating for her because she said you're not supposed to be able to choke someone out from close guard, but because nobody ever tried to, because you can't, you can control the distance, but it had been so long before anybody even tried.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I I was, of course, a big guy, I was stronger.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know that's super interesting.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was asking because I always hear about the Japanese jiu-jitsu, yeah, but I never talk with someone who did that for a very long time to understand really what it is, what it is not, and like uh what are the parts that focus the most and that so I just hear like Japanese jiu-jitsu and that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting to talk to you because you have the both experience.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: You have the Japanese jiu-jitsu experience, and I bet there's no better or worse, but there's Brazil jiu-jitsu is probably way more focused on the ground and on grappling, and Japan jujitsu guess more on self-defense, maybe.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, what you would call self-defense.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Japanese jiu-jitsu, that's a big term.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's many styles of jiu-jitsu, but yes, generally, what you what we would call in in gracie jiu-jitsu self-defense, standing, grab, escape from locks, things like that, escape from headlock.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: That's a lot of Japanese jiu-jitsu, some striking, some throws, but a lot of the styles are practiced without resistance.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like you grab my wrist, now you let me do the thing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: You grab my collar, now you let me throw you.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: So unless that jujitsu practitioner is practicing something competitively, or maybe practicing judo, it doesn't hold up when they get onto a jiu-jitsu mat.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: And now there's a continual game and their setups, and that was the real difference for me.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I would view things as individual techniques, like I knew uh what uh Kimura, I knew an armbar, I could tell you all the Japanese names for them, but I didn't train them so much competitively to string them together to understand that this leads to that and that leads to that, and like the positional control.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was just talking to a guy named Renee Dreyfus, runs a radical MMA in New York, and he also has trained in both styles.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: And he was saying that the hierarchy of control positions.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like, if you'd have asked me, is it good to be on top?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: I would have said yes.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: I say there's different ways to be on top.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: You can be what we call side control, you can be in what we call Tate Shiukatami mount, we can be on north-south, but I wouldn't have said which is better, or that one leads to another, or why why would you go for one and the other?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: And what do you do from there?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: It just wasn't being practiced that way for me.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was more like a menu of individual techniques.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, that makes a lot of sense.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks for sharing that.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: So going back to BJJ Fanatics, how are the instructional videos created?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_03: Like who who covers the cost of production?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: Does the instructor come to you, or do you tell them to record it and they send it to you?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_03: How does that work?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we have different formats, but basically we have like probably three or four options.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: One, we fly in here and they film here on our studio.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Two, sometimes we fly the cameraman to them and they film on their own studio.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And three, they film on their own and they send us the content.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we always try to make their life easier, you know, like wherever is easier and best for them.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of how we try to approach.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Many people we invite this guy won this tournament, or he's becoming well-known, so we reach out to them, but we also have an option on the website that they can reach out to us, which is called the Become a Coach.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think our whole goal with BGJ Fanatics is to kind of like serve the instructor, like we want to make their life easier.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's what I call like the win-win-wing.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: We want to find a situation where it's a win-win-win.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's good for them, good for the customers, and good for us.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is probably like the main reason why BGJ Fanatics have worked so well, because we provide value for instructors, we provide value for the customers while we also benefit ourselves.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a win-win-win, you know.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so that's kind of the idea.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like anything in life that you do, that you find this spot, the win-win-win, you're gonna do well, you know.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I bet that when you did when when you did your dog thing, was a win-win-win.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: Was it good for you?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Good for the customers.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: 100%, you're exactly right.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_03: You're exactly right.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, that those are the best, it's not uh a win-lose.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: There's nothing competitive.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's every if everybody sees some benefit, they all move together.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: In the case of the pet adoption website, you had the pets that needed to get adopted, you have the shelters that are housing them that need to find adoption.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so we created this database where you could search and put your zip code and you would see, you could say, I want a poodle that's two years old, whatever, and you'd see all the animals at all of the shelters.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: So it made it easier for you.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a win for the shelters, and it's obviously a win for the animals when there's an adopt.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's a win for the adopters because now they don't have to go to 16 different animal shelters.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe they weren't even thinking of adopting, maybe they were gonna go to a breeder, but now they realize, hey, look, there's a poodle right there, two miles away from me.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then you get the sponsors who paid for it because they were companies.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because they want to sell products to these new pet adopters, they're gonna have to buy food, they're gonna have to buy a leash.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: So they're happy.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's five winners there.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's and and then the people who are buying, they need to know what food.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: So it was just beautiful.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: There was like no loser in the whole situation.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, and I think like whenever you find that, then you can do that more, you know, because if it's been good for the shouters, good for the dogs, good for the sponsors, good for you.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now we want to do that again, you know, like again and again and again and again again.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's what happened with BG Fanatics.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: And nowadays, for example, I think there's over 1,200 instructors in the platform, and uh really over 6,000 online courses, and I think that's exactly the idea, you know.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we found the situation where it was a win-win-wing, and we were just like, okay, now let's do this again and again and again and again and again.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we're very happy with the products as well because at the end of the day, we're doing good for community, like we're helping practitioners to get better at jujitsu.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's very different than opening a liquor store, for example.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, it's it's good, it's good for society for sure.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing against the drinking, but it's good for society.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I agree.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh that's really interesting because I was gonna ask, you know, do you have like some way in which obviously you have some way in which you decide which instructors you use, but if you have a lot of instructors, sounds like maybe it doesn't cost you a lot to add someone to the platform.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: So especially if they're gonna film it and they do a good job and the content is good, and if they're gonna go out there and help market it, and you guys will split, it doesn't really cost you a lot to add another instructor.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: Is that what I'm getting from that?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, unless like when we fly the person here and we film here, of course there's costs associated.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we try to balance that to make sure that the business works well.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, that's kind of the idea, you know.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then we just want to do it more.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the more instructors and the more courses you get, better is the catalog, and the better options we give to the customers, and then we let the customers choose the products that sell the most, right?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: The one that they would buy the most, and then we try to rank the website accordingly.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: So someone can go onto your website and see kind of what's popular, and that can direct them to some of the trending section, and then uh everything's ranked by the by the amount of purchase, you know.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like interesting.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_03: So let's talk for a second about the difference between a good practitioner, someone who's winning the world championship, and a good teacher, right?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know they're different things.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: And and I would even say, as I think about it, even when we're talking about a teacher, there is a teacher who is good at explaining the details of a technique, which is a little different, which is exactly what you want for video, which is a little different than a teacher in a school who's also good at looking at the class and deciding how to present information and how to organize people and how long to talk for.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, those are like in-person teaching skills, and which student is ready for this and which student is not ready for that.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a whole nother level of what makes a good teacher and how who encourages people and when to push and when to back off.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: But it seems to me that a lot of that stuff falls away when we're talking about creating video content, and it's mostly what we're looking for is a good explainer of technique, I guess.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: You are spot on again, yes.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I could see though a role.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's nothing that says they just have to explain technique.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like they could say, listen, here's some drills for you to do at home.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_03: And they could still do some other teaching and say, here's the best way to approach this, but fundamentally, people are going there to learn specific techniques.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: You were 100% right.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And when we started the the business back in 2014, well, now our mind is like we gotta grab the champions, and like as long as you have the champions, you're gonna do well.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then learn by leader, we start noticing things.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, Oh, sometimes the guy is the champion, is the world champion, blah blah blah, but he doesn't speak English.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, the audience speaks English, and then we would see that instructional not selling well, and we would not even understand, it's like why it's not selling, but it's because of the English.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then we start noticing that oh, this guy is very good at his award champions and that, but it's not so much because of the technique, he's very athletic, so that doesn't translate so well for education, right?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: To teach a move.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that was another thing we we kind of learn as we go.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, the one who sells the most is the one who can articulate concepts in the best way.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think I would put like that the one who can articulate the technique on the very best way so the customer can learn.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: I always try to think that if the customers are selfish and they should be, right?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're spending their money to buy the instruction, so they want to get better.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: So who can teach them the better?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like who won the most, who can teach them the better.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, that the credentials help, you know, like if this guy can teach really well and he is five times word champion, he proved that his techniques work and he knows how to pass the knowledge.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a plus.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, if this guy knows how to teach really well and he has ten students that are world champions, he proved that you know, like, but we also have cases that the guy teaches really well, never being a champion, never had any student who is a champion.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: He just teaches well and people associate it with him and they want to learn from him.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, as a foundation here, I think it's like you in order to sell well, you gotta know how to articulate the concepts, the technique, what you're doing, on the very best way for an audience to learn online.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, listening to you got I mentioned John Will.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: He's gotta get his stuff onto VJJ Finex.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: He's so he will be so he's such a good instructor.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: He's taught so many thousands of seminars, he's so good.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: He he taught the.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: He is so good.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really, really gonna push him.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: But I think he was Lachlan Giles' first instructor, and he's yeah, anyway.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: But so one of the things John actually says is the best teaching situation is the the teacher is like the pitcher throwing the information out, and the student is like the catcher catching it.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: And the best situation is when you have a good teacher and a good catcher, right?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because you can have a very good teacher, but if a student doesn't have a good attention span or they just they're not a good student, then you know what can you do?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: There's only so much that you can do.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: I spoke with Horian Gracie, I interviewed him recently, and it was interesting.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: He took the position that there's no such thing as a bad student.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's totally his responsibility as a teacher to teach.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I really appreciate that him taking responsibility for that.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: But I think the truth is a student needs to take responsibility too.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_03: They actually need to not just watch the videos, but now go rep it, go train, maybe ask good questions.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I did while you were talking, I was just thinking here this an energy that you did.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that good?
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: How did you how did you say that at the catcher?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this this is John.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: That the teacher is the pitcher.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: He's gonna throw the information to you.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then the catcher.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_03: And the student, you better be a good catcher too.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so in in a live class, being a good student, being a good catcher means to me, first show, show up, don't be late, pay attention, right?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Don't be talking, pay attention.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: When the instructor says time to start your reps, just do your reps, like like be present, basically, be present, but also ask good questions.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, a lot of, as you know, jujitsu instructors, sometimes the instructor sits and everyone is circled around them.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: John never lets that.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: I never let that.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, put everyone to one side, like you're watching, and I will teach to this group and I will turn myself for what I want you to see.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because if everybody's around you, someone must have a bad view.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: There's not a good view from every direction.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: So part of being a good student is if you can't see what the instructor is doing and you're allowed to, get up and move.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like get see what you need to see.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_03: Don't be shy, basically.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let me just make one parenthesis here.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's super, super, super interesting what you're saying because the teacher and the catcher, right?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: When you're teaching a live class on the gym, as a teacher, you can also help the students, right?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: As you said, like you can use different formats and that.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think online it multiplies even more how good of a pitcher you gotta be because you're not seeing the students.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: You can't correct them.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you've got to be the best pitcher in the world in order to doesn't make sense.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's super, super interesting.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: I never fought on that way, like the pitcher in a catcher.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And open my mind here to think that, yeah, online you're gonna be even better pitcher than you are.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so so this is actually something I was thinking about too.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: It'll make the videos longer, but there is you can have the instruction, like here is the technique.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: You do this, you do this, you do this, you do this, here's the variations.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: Something else you could put online is to say, okay, if you are on a mat right now with a friend, here's what I want you to do, and I'll take do technique one, you know, like you could pret you could give something that someone could follow along with.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: And if I'm just watching from my car, maybe I could skip that.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_03: The reason I say this is one of the big innovations to me that John Will did was when I was starting, everything was always in a circle, everything was, you know, just whatever the teacher taught whatever they wanted.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: But when when John teaches, teaches his seminars, he gets everybody in front of him, he gets them, and he his first way of teaching the technique is without a lot of detail, just the basic key points.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: And there's maybe usually, let's just say four or five.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it could be grab, pull, you know, and he he gives that the basics, and then he gets everybody to pair up two at a time and line up the same way.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: So everybody who's facing me is doing the technique, everybody who's back is to me is getting the technique, and he says, Okay, step one, pull.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_03: And he looks across and two people do it wrong.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: He can see it immediately.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: He says, Nope, he changes that.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: Step two, step three, and he runs them through it a couple times at the basics.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone is now basically doing everything right.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: Then he says, Okay, the other side.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: And again, he makes the corrections there.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: Then he says, Okay, practice.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_03: And having done that, now everybody when they're because you know how it is, you give a technique and then you walk around to all the students, and these people are doing it wrong, but they've been doing it wrong 30 times by the time you get to see them.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: So at least by giving it that kind of a thing, you get them basically doing it right, and then he calls them back, saying, Now let's fill in more technique.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you could do something like that online too.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're super interesting what you're saying.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: That maybe even after the interview, I give you a comment, try to raise our something.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: But what you're saying is like you're changing the format, right?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can teach a jiu-jitsu class on the gym in this format, and then you're saying that John changed the format to this format, format, format.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: We just start testing at BGG Fanatics, and I was the guinea pig for that.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: A different format of instructional.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: So most of our instructional videos are two hours plus.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: John Dennis, for example, sometimes he does 10 hours, and and each clip is like we ask then like five minutes minimum, you know, like so you have time to explain the concepts, and and people can digest in the concepts and this and that.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I just start testing a new format which I call like the fast track BJJ.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: The promise is that the instruction is gonna be less than one hour, and each clip is gonna be like one minute and a half max.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Almost like on YouTube, you have the long form content and you have the shorts, right?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so and the it's being a success, you know, like so.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And and we also charge a little less for that because it's last time, so you're getting less content, so it's more affordable as well.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what I'm learning is that some people they do want to learn the deepest concepts and spend time watching one clip, but there's also an audience that they just want to grab the information.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Give me nowadays, for example, I think I have watched so many instructurals and I have done Jiu.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: For such a long time that even when I watch an instructional from Gordon or from John or from anybody else, I go straight to the point.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: I fast forward, I put where they're teaching the technique, and then I try to listen like a little bit of the concepts that they have.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very interesting what you're saying, because what you're saying is like on a live class, it changed the format and work it.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: We just kind of tested this here, and it's kind of working.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I would love to brainstorm more ideas of how the format could be changed.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: I have thoughts, and I'll also connect you with John because he'll have thoughts too, because he's also a consumer of your products.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, you you raise a good point though.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: For some people, it may just be preference or time.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I've got a lot of time, I want to go deep, or you know what, I just want to learn the basics of this.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: But it also may have to do with who is the student?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: Are they understanding?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like a beginner might need a lot of detail because they just don't know what to do.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: Someone like you or me can look at a technique almost and not even have the instructor say anything.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_03: Just show me what you're doing.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really funny, because I've talked to John about this too.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes the instructor is probably not on your videos because it's so detailed, but will be teaching something that is not what they're actually doing.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like they're not mentioning.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_03: You watch what they're doing when they do it and they're moving their hip a certain way, but they didn't say that when they taught because they now even realize that they're doing it that way because they just do it naturally.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have experienced that many times here.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like many times with the word champion, that that scenario that the guy is great at jujitsu, but he doesn't teach that well.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they don't know what they do, they just do it.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you ask them to teach, it's a challenge, you know, like and they don't remember every single possible detail that they're using it as and that.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this is very common.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, this is interesting to me that you guys spent time thinking about this.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: And like you say, there's no one, there's probably different people who learn in different ways.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so the fact that you're providing this new what you call it, it was the quicker one, BJJ fast track BJJ.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's going well, so now you're starting to spread the message to the instructors and giving that as an option as well to record.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, good.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's always the best thing, just have different formats, and especially if the instructors will work in different formats.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was thinking, you mentioned John Donaher, and I've seen his stuff, and a lot of people say like he's so detailed, like painfully detailed.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: But it's very popular series, and I know you've had other popular series.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm wondering, like you said, a good partnership is where everybody benefits.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure having John Donaher or I don't know, Craig Jones on your format has benefited you because they're out there and they're very popular.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_03: But you benefit them as well.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, you're bringing them income and stuff.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_03: Have there been instructors who were less well known who became more well known because of what they had on BGJ Panatics?
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think fanatics, do you think beyond the money that they've benefited in other ways?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, we get feedback from instructors that's very helpful for them because they get more access to same, they get invited for seminars, they get uh, you know, like they get private lessons, you know, like they get sometimes invitation for tourens and so that.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's definitely a win-wing.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you're 100% right.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: We it's it benefits us as well, especially having the very big names.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said in the beginning, like we try to facilitate their lives, you know, like so.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: For example, even I I mean, like I'm one of the instructors at BGJ Fanatics, right?
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have to keep myself accountable to keep filming, and it's hard to keep it up, like it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I try to film like also a month or also every other month, and sometimes you run out of subjects, sometimes you you just don't have anybody calling you to say that's time to film.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we try to do that for then.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, hey, you haven't filmed it in the last X amount of months.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you think you should film a new instructional?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you need to fly then here, fly then here.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you need to go there, you go.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a win-wing.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it opens doors for then as well, as like with seminars and that they're putting their name in the market as an instructor, right?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, so this is interesting because I was thinking that people they film a series and that's it, it's done.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's the series.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: You're saying that you have some instructors who continually are adding more information and and adding on, yeah, especially the ones that we noticed that there's a lot of demand.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: We try to say, like, hey, if you you made this instructional so well, you should make another one, you know.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and everywhere when we film, we feel we always try to tell him, hey, if this does well, we would love to have you back and film another one.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, John Dennis is a great example, like he started filming for us in May 2018, and since then, every other month he made one instructional video since May 2018 until October 2026.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, every other month he filmed one new instructional.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: John, as you might have heard about, he is the best seller in the store, and we're extremely grateful.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: Was one of those partnerships that, like, it's just like everybody's happy, you know.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a true one.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we we try to make his life as easy as possible to film and he's an ad.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes here.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: I joke with him that he's so obsessed with Jiu-Jitsu that I think his life vacation is five days in Boston every two months, where he's filming all day long.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't you never see him taking vacations and that he's always like coaching his students, traveling everywhere, and he's and that.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think his vacations like filming 10 hours per day here in Boston, and we go dinner every night and isn't that.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's his vacation every other month, you know.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_03: He's into well, that's good.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's why he's so good.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: He's really put diving in, jumping in with both feet.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: So, one thing I was curious about is when I look back at those videos I mentioned for what we called, we called it master class curriculums.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_03: I actually have them up on our website.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: They're old, they're kind of black and white.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_03: They're not, I mean, they're just old.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: And when I actually see what I was teaching, it was fine.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: There was nothing wrong, but oh my God, I have evolved so much, right?
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: So if I was to teach that move today, I would be teaching it very differently.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'd be making a lot more points.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have situations where someone has recorded something, let's say a few years ago, and now they've really kind of changed the way they do it, and they actually want to remove the other thing and replace it with an updated version.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: Does that happen?
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: It happens, and we tell them, like, hey, we can do anything you want.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so if you want to remove the old content, that's fine.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to keep the old content, and sometimes I we don't even know how to tell then exactly what to do because there's value on keeping the old content because some people like it, and there's also value in keeping everything fresh and new if they they didn't like it, but that happens, and I think like we as jiu-jitsu instructors and practitioners, our game keeps evolving, right?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, and the more I teach, more concepts I realize that I that I have, more I more details and that.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: So like my first halfcore instructional was in 2013, and since then I probably made another like two or three half-core instructions of the cup.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then I created a series for for old guys where I tried to teach more like focus for that audience.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so yeah, so 100%, and I think like I think that's the beauty of jujitsu, you know, like it's really complex.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there is so much to teach and to share, and I think it kind of changes in phases of your life.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your jiu-jitsu today is probably very different than your jiu-jitsu 20 years ago.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of things might overlap, but a lot of things might be different.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and you can teach your jiu-jitsu today than you have today, and you can also teach jujitsu you had 20 years ago, you know, like there's nothing wrong with that.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: No, you're exactly right.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's interesting, it'll change for various reasons, right?
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: It'll change sometimes because you've improved something, you learned something you didn't know, and now you do something differently.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: It'll change because something you used to do just doesn't work for your body anymore.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: It requires too much flexibility and you're older now and you just don't do that technique anymore because it requires flexibility.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: In that sense, sometimes when I teach, you know, if you only if you're the kind of instructor that only teaches what you do, there may be more basic things that the white belt and the blue belt need to learn.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_03: You don't do them anymore, either because it's just not a situation you find yourself in anymore, or your body doesn't like the position, but you still want to teach that because other people who are further back on the path, they need to pass through that.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_03: They can't just move to where you are now.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's one of the issues I have with people on YouTube.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_03: People go to the current latest thing.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like you see, a lot of people, you know, obviously foot attacks, you know, daily Hiva, just more advanced guard things.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you see people who are like white belts, blue belts, and that's fine for them to learn it.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_03: But then I'm always surprised sometimes when I get on the mat and I put them in a closed guard, and they have no idea how to defend inside of a closed guard.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because nobody has closed a guard on them ever in their life.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I always try to think, I fully agree with you, and I always try to think in jiu-jitsu as almost like three ways of learning, three ways of learning that's that are needed.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you have to learn the foundations and the fundamentals.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Spirit, there is no other way.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get good at jujitsu, you gotta learn the fundamentals and foundations.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then another level, you gotta expose yourself to as many techniques as possible because you gotta be aware of what's going on.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: If someone tries to do the beering bolo on you, you gotta at least know what's the beating bolo, you know.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you gotta expose yourself to as many techniques as possible.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: But in the same time, you know, comes the third level, you gotta funnel to your game, you know.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you should learn everything, but not necessarily need to use everything.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then what you're actually gonna use, it should really funnel as deep as you can.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I think like learn the fundamentals, which is the example you gave me.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like this person didn't learn it.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: Learn the fundamentals, open-minded to learn everything, expose yourself to everything, but then also be smart to dive deep on a game or or or two games, but don't try to use everything you learn because you're gonna overwhelm yourself and you're gonna become the the the doctor.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: Just a tech technique fly and swim and then run well.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's right, that's funny.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a technique collector, basically.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: There's another concept.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_03: I talked my buddy John in Australia.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: John will he he talks about hourglass training.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: And what he means by that is when you get really good at one thing, you can think of that as the middle of the hourglass.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like that could be, let's just say, half guard.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: You're very good at sweeping from half guard and then attacks when you come on top, you know, from half guard.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: Then the top, like an hourglass, you have many different ways that funnel you to half guard.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you're good at that, you want to have 16 different ways to get there, right?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then once you're there, you want to have 16 different options of things to do.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_03: So that's where it goes out again.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you you build a really good game here, you have many ways that are going to catch people into that game, and then you have many options of what to do from there.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, in case they're good at defending one, you don't have others.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: This was also a way that I observed that Eddie Bravo, when he was getting, because I trained with Eddie at John Jocke School for many years, that when he got into like Half Guard was his thing, you know, he he was so good at getting to Half Guard from so many different places, unusual places.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then once there, he had, you know, the twister and the neck crank and all these different options from there too.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I and I think that's a good way to just get good at jujitsu is to once you have the basics, I a hundred percent agree.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I also agree you should expose yourself to different things.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's basically the story of my jujitsu career because I was always training at Jean-Jacques school and Higgins school and going to a judo school and traveling.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_03: I would, I used to say, you might beat me, but I've seen it before, right?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I just I've been in so many different maths, you know, and you get so much different experience.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_03: But but then developing a game that is that hourglass thing that once you're good at something, you then find lots of different ways to get to the thing you're good at, and then you have lots of different options from there, which I think is a good way to go.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I I I fully agree.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I always try to think you should select that in like fundamentals, expose yourself, business march, it's a building game, you know, like right.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: So, just a real question on the partnership.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned there were three founders, and there's the two Michaels, and is it Michael Rearden?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is he the yeah, Michael Reardon?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh me, Michael Zange and Michael Reardon.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and Michael Rearden's a little bit more behind the scenes.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, Michael, I mentioned, was supposed to be with us, and since he's not, um are there any challenge?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm just kind of joking, but I was curious in terms of the partnerships, have there been any challenges in the partnership and any advice you have for people?
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: Because, you know, it's great to have partners to do things that you can share the workload, different people come with different expertise.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a big fan of if you're gonna start a business, have a partner.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: But as we all know, not all partnerships last, and whether that's a business partnership, a marriage, or whatever.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_03: So sometimes they don't last.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: Have there been any challenges in your partnership?
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: And do you have advice for people for keeping and having a good partnership?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know the first thing I would say is that I have heard that quote, the who, what, and where.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, like who you work with, what do you do?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, where so for example, in this case, man, it's true guys, great guys, totally honest, people that I can trust, friends, you know, like so the who the what we work with Fujitsu, so it's kind of like the dream, right?
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we're United States, country that I always wanted to live before, and Zanat.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so and then for example, one thing that helps on our partnership is that we are all very different from each other.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we we kind of like all have our fields on what we do, and I think that's very helpful.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think if two guys have exactly the same skills, it can be a crush.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, here it's more like Michael does more like of the deals and the and research stuff, research ideas, and this and that.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: I do more of like the face of the website, promote the instructors, and the and and and and like the systems inside the business, like the the marketing, the the and this and that, and the other Michael does more like the operation, the the foundation, and this and that.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a very good combination, of course, like as every other partnership or relationship, sometimes there is like a little disagreement, and this and that, but also the fact that we are three people, I think it's very helpful because it's always like two versus one, and then you uh so you never have a tie.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: You out there's never a tie, you know.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think when there is a tie, like it's one versus one, 50-50.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then it's like ah, you know, like but when it's three people, like, oh, I think this way, both of them think that way, right?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do that, or maybe one of them thinks that way, me and the other one thinks this way, let's do this way.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: So working really well, like we're we're together for 12 years, hope we stay together for another decade.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I I can see where you're saying, like partnerships, I think it can be hard, especially when the two of them have exactly the same holes, right?
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: Lane, yeah, lanes, they're in there in the same lane, or yeah.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're they're doing the same thing, and then you know, like, but I think the way we work, I think works pretty well.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just feel grateful, you know, like same way.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I feel grateful that John Dannigher, filmed with us, Gordon Ryan, and all the other shocks.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: I also feel very grateful for the partners that I have because I have no doubts that without Dan, I wouldn't be able to do what we did.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: Was also a win-win-wing.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, let's say it's a win-win for everybody.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, you mentioned having control of what you do, where you do it, and who you do it with.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_03: Four-hour work week.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have read that book.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know what is it.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's from that, yeah.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's from yeah, too.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I that was one of the first books I ever read, to be honest.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like since I started this, I read in 2014 or so.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but to be fully honest with you, I think the way it came to my memory nowadays on Instagram, there's always like those quotes from entrepreneurs, and I think I saw it on Instagram not too long ago, and then I was reflecting on that.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: Many times I see those quotes or I read something, yeah, and I almost pause and I think about that for hours, you know.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was like, that's that's that's super interesting.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, but that is yeah, I you might be right, it might be it might be on the book.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, but but he but Tim Ferris, I actually know Tim, he's a great guy.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_03: He might not have a story about that, but but keep going.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, we could talk about Tim behind his back, that'd be great.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I learned it from that book, but you know, he his book is also a synthesis of things he learned, so that may be from much older than that book or something.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have no idea, but that's where I mean let me tell you a quick story here about team.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, like okay, he came to Marcellus School in 2013 when I was not doing any business whatsoever, I was just a professional athlete and this and that, and he filmed with Marcellus for for for his show for almost two weeks.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, literally for two weeks, these guys coming to the gym, hanging out if they on the mat with us.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I kind of regret the the possibilities of great questions I could have asked him.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: But back then I didn't, it was not doing any.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: But if it was nowadays, I would have so many good questions to ask, and such a good chat.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing about my life that I was like, when I hang out with that guy for two weeks, didn't ask him any business question, any any any good question.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like we were just talking about Arnvars, you know.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like well, he's got a lot of good content out there, so you can find it.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_03: I have just a couple questions about sort of nerdy questions about the business, and then I want to talk about our training and longevity and things like that.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_03: Because I know that a lot of people who are watching are that's exactly what why they're watching, and they care about that as well.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm just wondering, I assume you run experiments on the website, you see what happens when you do this, what happens when you do that, A-B testing, things like that.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: Have you, and I had mentioned that you know, what in running the website, I have some tech knowledge too.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: Eric Reese, who is the founder of Lean Startup, that's where people get the concept, like a pivot and minimum viable product.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's all from Lean Startup.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: He was an advisor of ours and he's a friend.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm I'm nerdy into this kind of stuff.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_03: Have you are there any experiments that you remember that that did not turn out the way you thought?
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like you thought this is gonna really work well and it's gonna really increase sales, or it's okay, and it's like totally wrong.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: I would say most of them.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think like especially in this digital marketing world on the website and on marketing as well, like ads and z and that.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: You start accepting the idea that most of the things will fail.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if one out of ten works, it pays off for all the other nine failures.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we we we are constantly testing stuff, changing stuff on the website, running AB tests.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some things there is no way tests to run.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some decisions just like a decision, you know, like there's no way to test that.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: You just gotta move forward and see what happens.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say that especially as an entrepreneur, I think most of the things fail, you know, like and the and you gotta accept that and keep pushing and make sure that the failure doesn't kill the business, you know.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, there's uh Jeff Bezos from Amazon, he has a thing that's very nice.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not sure if I'm gonna be able to articulate very well what he says, but it's kind of like you go in and go out in the door.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you can get in and get out, that's okay, do it.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can get in and you cannot get out, don't do it.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, think that 10 times before you do it.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, like, if you can test something that doesn't create a giant damage on your website, always test it.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like there's a lot of value on testing and accepting that's not gonna work and you keep moving.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're gonna test something that's gonna dramatically change the business and could destroy the business, man, that one give like years of thought or something, you know.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I understand exactly what you're saying.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's a very human nature for us to feel that we are right, just to know in your gut that you you're right.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes that's true, but I've had the same experience with you in my tech product.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I, you know, I know if we just change this color, this is gonna be much easier to see this button or make that font larger, and everyone will see it because right now they're not clicking it, they don't see it.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_03: Or I know that if we just include this information in the email, many people, you know, whatever.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_03: And so many businesses either fail, especially digital things, or don't achieve their potential because whoever is the CEO or the founder is making these decisions from what they think, and they are not being data-driven, and they have not had the experience that you and I have had, which is when you actually test things, you discover that very frequently you're wrong.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_03: What you think is gonna do something.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_03: It maybe does it a little bit, but it doesn't have the big effect you thought it was gonna have, or it has no effect.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um but I do think there is a balance also between not being 100% data-driven, because there are heart things.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, for example, there may be something you could do at BJJ Fanatics that would be objectively a good business decision.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'm just guessing, I don't know, you maybe you could raise the price a bit and not lose so many people that it's still worth it, you still make more money.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're in your heart, your goal is to help more people and making the most amount of money is not the 100% only goal.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_03: You have another goal, which is to, which is a good business goal too, by the way, which is to be great for your customers so that they will be around forever.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_03: There sometimes are things where the data says to do one thing, but your heart and intuition says, Yeah, I don't care what the data says, I'm not gonna do that.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have one million percent.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a quote about I was gonna say a lot of quotes, right?
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I saw a quote about that for the for the small and medium decisions of your life, use data for the biggest decisions, follow your intuition or your heart.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because and if you meant the person you're gonna marry, like it's not gonna follow any data for that.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe where are you gonna live?
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like you're gonna live where you wanna live, you know, like or or maybe who you're gonna work with.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: And there's maybe you look at the person performance.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this guy's such a great performance in his life, the data looks great, but you don't get along with the person, so don't don't work with like so.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I think like intuition and heart has big place when it's time to make decisions.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna do for the rest of your life?
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we what's good is gonna be your your job, your like I chose jiu-jitsu.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if I look at the data when I was 14 years old, I should not have chosen jiu-jitsu.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's no money, everybody else.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do shits.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I follow my heart in that case and all that.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_03: I agree with you a hundred percent.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_03: So just before we leave the website and talk about our training for a little bit before we say goodbye.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm wondering, do you have a product roadmap?
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_03: Are there certain things that you're wanting to add?
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned you're experimenting some different formats.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_03: Are there other things that you hope to add to the website that you don't have now?
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: And AI?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is that are you thinking about integrating somehow AI?
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: We we always try to expose ourselves to everything, test on small scale, and then see if it's gonna work on other fun.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just today I had a call with the email marketing platform that you use that they launched a new chatbot that you can have on your website.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's already in the website, and now you're just trying to optimize, optimize, optimize it, and it's all AI oriented.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it helps the customer to choose which products they should buy.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: And since we have thousands of products, that that can be a challenge, right?
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where should I even start?
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: So so we are using AI for that, and and it's kind of going well, and we hope to keep it make it better, better, better.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about fast track with JJ, that's something that's going on.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: We launched a new merchandise website which is called the Kojo Fireware, which the message is continuous improvement, which is exactly the same idea for our customers.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our customers are always trying to get better.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we're always trying to do things in the community, you know, like so.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think we we serve the community with education videos.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we do some camps as well, and we're trying to plan something, a networking event for school owners, because I think that's something that we can also help like help people to teach better classes and that.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we we're always trying to develop ideas inside the jiu-jitsu community, finding that way wing, wing, wing, wing, wing scenario, and like where it's good for everybody.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the main goal here.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's very good.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I just want to note because I recall seeing you guys have done charitable things too.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_03: I remember during the pandemic, you raised some money for groups.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think you've done stuff with tap cancer out.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I'm an ambassador for tap cancer out.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get anything in return just to try to help.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer on try to return to society what we get from society.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: We always try to do something with charities as well.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like every time we hear something that happened that was bad inside the community that we can help, we reach out to the person.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: For there was one school in Hawaii that when there was the fire over there.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, in Maui, yeah, in Maui, it got burning, and we supported them during the pandemic.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think we raised$100,000 and we donated$5,000 to 20 schools to support for them to pay rent or whatever.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we're always trying to do things that can be beneficial for the community as well.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, we're grateful for this community, you know, like I think that's wonderful.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I noticed that, and that's just a good sign of that you are like you're jujitsu people, like we're all on the same family.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about just our personal training a little bit.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_03: You already mentioned that you use BGJ Fanatics yourself, and you teach, right?
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_03: You have two schools, or I have two schools.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: We just opened a second one this year, this year, yeah, 2026.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, and these are both in Massachusetts, both in Massachusetts, yeah.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: Bad for and Utah.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, we'll have links to all this in the show notes.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_03: And you mentioned that you are a consumer of your own content on BGJ Fanatics, which is great.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_03: In terms of how people develop their game, we already talked about like the need to have the basics down and then maybe go specialize in something, but you gotta have basics.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_03: I tell people, people ask me, like, what's the right way to do this technique?
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_03: And my first answer is always the right move is the way that works.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_03: If it works, it was it was right.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't tell you, I agree 1 million percent.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_03: I can't tell you you did that choke wrong.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_03: Did the guy tap?
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_03: You did it right.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's fine.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: I fully agree, fully agree.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_03: But we can also agree that there are certain moves and certain ways to do the move that will make them work much more frequently than I agree.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so I guess you know, my thought for you like you built your competitive game around a particular thing, half guard and like the over-underpass, you're expert at that.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Is that how you recommend that people, once they've got the basics, blue belt or whatever, that they do try to develop more focus, especially if they want to compete, that they develop more focus on their game and don't worry about being a tech technique collector and just try to strap things on that make sense for the game that you already have?
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, first I'm just gonna back it up 10 seconds here because what you said, like the red movie is the one that works.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: That was part of my half career game.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: When I started learning half career, I heard from everywhere never give the underhook, never give the underhook, never give the underhook.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then some of my past sweeps came from the underhook.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: The this position that people call like for you sweep.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes let the guy get the underhook, I go a little bit under the deep half girl, and I sweep from there.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I fully agree with you on that.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I'm a big believer that I think many times I talk about that as well.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think there's two cases, like there's one case that the guy is very versatile and he plays all types of games, and that's one case, and then there's another case that the guy is very well known for a very specific game, and I can give you examples of both, kind of like and I think like the majority of the champions, I'm not saying all, I'm saying the majority, I think they have a very specific shape, so which leads me to think that the last hard path might be to develop a specific game.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Are there exceptions?
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are exceptions.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: There are guys that they just do everything.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot one example, great friend of mine, Lucas Leprey.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's an exception.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_00: He he does the Nikot, he does the Toriano, he does stack pass, he plays Bodyfly, he plays half girl, he's good with takedowns.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: But that's that's not very common, you know.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like I would even put probably like Warren Ryan here being the exception as well.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like he's kind of good everywhere.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: But then, like, there's guys like I think myself, like I had half girl and I have like uh pressure passing, Roger Gracie, the fundamentals of us.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like what you're learning the first three months, pretty much, you know, like then the Miao brothers, you know what's the game, you know, like it's the Britney Bull, leg drag.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with the man's brothers, and then it's probably like Andre Galvan, he falls in the other bucket, like he's very versatile, yeah.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_00: He plays everything, and isn't that so and then there's Quabriny, the Spider Guard guy, you know, like so.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's these two buckets, and I think the majority of the champions they already have the specific game, and it leads me to think that in order to get the better head jujitsu faster, if you focus on a few techniques and develop like a lot of details, yes, entries that's the the hour the hourglass, lots of ways to get there and lots of things to do from there.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, and uh that that was my case, and uh and uh yeah, because I mean like if you think about that, how many moves there are in jiu-jitsu?
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's put a number like 1,000 moves.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now how many entries there are for those moves?
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Multiply that by 10.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's still so there's so much in jiu-jitsu to master, and I think if you try to master everything, you're gonna end up becoming a duck, you know, like that doesn't fly, doesn't swim, and doesn't run well.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_03: That is so funny.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I agree with that too.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, one of the things that my buddy John in Australia has mentioned that it's good to be on, like if you just want to get good generally at jujitsu, then fine, get get good at a lot of things generally.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_03: You're not trying to win the next world championship, but it's good to be on a mat where you have specialists, like so because you want the best half guard sweeper on in your game, so you get used to that, the best triangle choke guy.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Like, even if you're not a specialist, try to spend time with specialists because so you can get really good, at least maybe at what they're good at, or at least good at seeing it coming and stopping it, right?
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fully, fully agree.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I definitely agree.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was lucky in my career that I started Jitsu in my hometown, learning all the fundamentals there.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went to Sao Paulo.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_00: There were many different world champions who were specialists on each subject, and then I moved to Marcelus, and first of all, one of the gaps in my game was passing butterfly.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like if someone played butterfly with me, I would feel a little lost.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I moved to Marcellus six months later, they probably will solve it because everybody over there is so I was like literally exposure to butterfly every single day, every single row, and in a few months I was like, Oh, now I know what to do, you know.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so so I think you were spotted on that.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_03: One thing I think of when you have a good game and you're looking for things that maybe connect up very well to your good game.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_03: My friend David Mitchell calls it like strapping an another engine onto your ship that is already going and it it's not something totally different, it makes sense.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_03: Some it is good to do that, I think, to try to branch out because sometimes that that new thing you do attach, it works for you because it fits with your game, but it also opens up a bridge to something totally new.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think of it in terms of a sweep.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you can, if there's something you're doing and it leads to a really good sweep, that can open up a whole thing with guard passing that you can get good at.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like this constellation of things that connect up in different ways, but they do want to connect.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what my David Mitchell says.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_03: They who, by the way, has uh instructionals on your yeah, but don't have something out here and something out here.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_03: They want to connect up so you can move between this constellation.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, I fully agree.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think about jujitsu, there is there's the technique itself, then there are the entries, then there are the connections to the next move, then there are the finishes.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do you actually finish the move?
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do the double leg and make sure that the guy stays on the ground because he can stand up again, right?
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a lot of like parts of a technique, and sometimes we just learn the move and we think that that's enough.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, but now it's like how can you connect this sweep to your favorite guard passing?
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_00: How can you connect this escape to your favorite sweep?
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think once you develop those bridges, and I think your jitsu gets like much, much better, and it takes time, takes effort, takes a lot of studying.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_03: So you mentioned you're still on the mat a few times a week now.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, you're not actively competing.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_03: I notice it makes very good sense to me that people let me just first of all say if people are watching on YouTube, they see all the medals behind me, it's real, and I've actually got more, but not one of them is a gold medal at the adult uh division.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's all there are all many different medals before there was an IBJ JF, and there's a lot of gold medals, and a lot of them are, you know, at my different age level.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_03: So I just want to say I'm talking to someone who has won multiple gold medals at the adult, like best in the world, 100%.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_03: I understand why someone won't keep competing forever into master one, master two, master, you know, you got nothing to prove, you're busy, you're a school owner.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of other guys who maybe, especially ones who came later to the sport who never had a chance to even compete at an adult level.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_03: They were like me.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_03: I was, you know, 30, my first day on the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Mat, I was already like into Master's division from the start.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_03: Michael, right?
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_03: One of your co-founders, he's still competing.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_03: I still compete in masters.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I like that there are these opportunities to compete, but it's fine when people don't, people got it out of their system or whatever.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_03: But your body, how is your body holding up?
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_03: And are you modifying things now for your body as it is today that maybe you do differently than how you did when you were an active competitor?
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, for sure.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_00: When I used to compete, I was very disciplined and very determined.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to train a lot, I used to do the physical conditioning, I used to do the whole thing.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was very, very dedicated.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, my game doesn't require a lot of athleticism.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_00: But first of all, I had a lot more energy to push, you know, like to keep pushing, to keep trying, to keep I'm gonna insist in this sweep, and if the sweep fails, I'm gonna go for the other sweep, and I'm gonna come back here, and then and then when I'm on top, I'm gonna keep going, keep going, keep going.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays I don't have that energy anymore.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like back then I could try a lot more things without the fear of failure.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like nowadays I have to be a lot more precise, you know.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like nowadays I don't have too many options to try there.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_00: If one or two things fail, I could guess out and be in trouble.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like nowadays I have to focus even more in the technique than before.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_00: My timing was better as well.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Since I had more energy, I had better timing.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the technique was very important, but my timing was perfect.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have great conditioning, and is that that?
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, my timing is not as good as any anymore.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like I trained twice a week or three times per week.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I lost the timing, I lost the conditioning.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So the only thing I have left is the technique.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: So my technique has to be perfect versus 10 years ago.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it didn't need to be perfect because I had more connections, more timing, more energy.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And isn't that so?
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think the older we get, more efficient we have to become.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, like so.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the conclusion here after this this be more.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_03: No, I I I that's a great way to sum it up.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_03: Being you become more efficient, you have to become more efficient.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: I've certainly experienced that too.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_03: And I still feel I'm I'm very active in my training, but you know, I would be fine with a scramble.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_03: Let's scramble.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'll beat you with a scramble.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_03: How often do you train?
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_00: How often do you train?
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe never more than three times a week.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not traveling to try three times a week because I need I feel stiff the next day and I need to recover.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to learn here because I'm 39.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: One day I'm gonna be 63.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: So when you train, how many roles do you do?
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's more like positional training, live rounds.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: How's that?
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_03: So I train with Wolf Barnardo, who's um came out of Half Gracie and Half's Black Belt.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Kurt, yeah, okay.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_03: So he's he's very good.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_03: I love him.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_03: His technique is brilliant, he's wonderful.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_03: So he might say, Let's do something positional.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_03: So we're all gonna start in this position, and your goal is to do this, your goal is to do that.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_03: But then he always finishes the class with you know open rounds.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll do, you know, whatever we're being told to do.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_03: But I train open rounds with anybody and he does seven minute rounds and I'll do seven, seven minute rounds, no break.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_03: I never this, yeah.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_03: This is so this is a personal thing of mine, right?
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, like I want to be the first to start rolling, I want to be the last to keep rolling.
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_03: So if there's somebody else rolling and I'm able, but but how do I do that?
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I stay in good shape, okay.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_03: So when I've been fortunate to not have any injuries, it had taken me out.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of that is because I'm just chill, I'm happy to tap.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_03: I don't make people, I don't give people the kind of aggression that makes them turn the aggression on with me.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm very relaxed, I'm very friendly.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_03: Before we start rolling, I'm like, hey, how's your body?
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_03: Anything I need to watch out for?
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I get you knowing I'm gonna take care of you, take care of me.
• 1:20:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not that kind of aggressiveness going on in most of the matches, unless some new guy comes in and he wants to for some.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I've also noticed as I get older and look older, people tend to think I think that they need to go easy on me, which they absolutely don't, right?
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_03: But it's fine.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it's not super, super, super aggressive rounds, like it's more a little bit more playful, you know, fun rounds.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I've I have very conscious on my diet.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_03: I happen to, this is just for me, only eat plant-based.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_03: I don't eat animals.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's my own thing.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_03: But whatever, just have a good diet that works for your body.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's how and outside of fish.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So do you also work out?
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I have this from every day.
• 1:21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Breaking out is the most important thing.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_03: Every day.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_03: Every day.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Every day.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how long?
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_00: How many exercises and how long?
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_03: So I cycle through, depends on how my body is feeling that day.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_03: I don't decide in advance I'm gonna do this today.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_03: I wake up, like, what am I am I really tired my upper body from training last night?
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna go to the gym and do legs or something like that.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_03: Or if I didn't train yesterday, maybe I'm gonna do upper body.
• 1:21:41
  SPEAKER_00: How long is it?
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: How many exercise?
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I can't tell you how many exercises.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't count it.
• 1:21:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'm usually in the gym, at least I mean, this is like the biggest time suck for me, like an hour and a half, and I stay moving.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_03: I have this whole uh Bernardo.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know if strength and fitness coaches might disagree with me, but I believe that you want to keep challenging your body in different ways.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't always go in and do the same six exercises or something like that.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_03: I will do, I might do upper body, but I will move this exercise to that exercise to that.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_03: So while this is resting, now the pulling, so I I'm doing what's called supersets, so I can always be resting one thing while I'm doing the other thing.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And as the week progresses, I'm changing.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes I'll just move across the gym and I'll go to any machine.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_03: I don't care the machine, I don't care the angle, just to work a new angle.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like, well, I've never done this before, and now I'm doing that just to stay strong in all positions.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_03: My thinking is the gym is there to make me strong in the things that I need to be strong at for jujitsu and correct imbalances, something I never use in jujitsu.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_03: Use that in the gym so I don't have imbalances.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, but I'm in there for about an hour and a half and I'm moving in constant motion.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Even if it's something where you have a seated thing like leg extension, in between the sets, I will stand up and move.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like I just don't want to sit, I don't want to pause, I certainly don't look at my phone.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_03: Stay in motion, stay in motion.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_03: And the gym workouts, so I'll do a couple of those a week.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_03: I have stairs near my house.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_03: I run stairs, I run sprints, although I've had a little injury, so I can't be running my sprints right now.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I've switched for the aerodyne bicycle thing, which is just terrible in the gym where you move your arms and you move the bike and you have to hold it at a certain level.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I do it like Tabata style, like 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off, 30 seconds on.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_03: I'm very, very serious about keeping my body in good shape and good condition.
• 1:23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that that that shows and stretching too.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um stretchy too.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_03: At least three times a week.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I could, I mean, I could stretch for hours if I want to.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_03: Ideally, an hour and a half, 90 minutes, and I will move through everything.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_03: I've got a very comprehensive routine.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, including finishing with laying on, I actually lay on rocks because I like the feeling of that, and rolling on things.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm I'm very serious about that.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I think having done that for a long time helps you, like I'm getting the benefit of that now.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_03: But um, I will do rounds and I will go and but to your point, I'm not letting things go into the scramble anymore.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm much more conservative and and probably not the most fun guy to train with for some of the young guys, because I will just shut them down.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and funny enough, that that was my game in my entire life, you know, like my jiu-jitsu game, even when I was competing, was pretty conservative.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I'm teaching workshops and summaries and that, I always tell the students that, for example, if I'm on the mount and I can choose for arm triangle or arm bar, I go arm triangle all day long.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I miss it, I'm still on the mount.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm on side control and I can go for the scarf choke, or I can go for an arm bar, I go for the scarf choke all day long.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I miss the scarf choke, I'm still in the side control.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So now that I'm aging and getting older, I feel like the transition is not very hard because my game was already like I have a series on DGFX called Jiu Jitsu for old guys, and the the way that happened was like I was on a seminar, I shouldn't have came to TV.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, bruh, your game is great for the old guys.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was joking, I was like, are you kidding me?
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then he was like, No, man, you were always on the news, yeah.
• 1:25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when you were a border, you're always playing half girl.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's like doesn't work, doesn't require flexibility in your lessons.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, Man, that's kind of true.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, but that's very interesting because man, doing training jitsu three times per week, seven rounds of seven minutes at 63 years old.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's really impressive.
• 1:25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really, really impressive.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when I was young, my goal for Jitsu was to become a world champion.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, my goal is to be 63 years old, healthy, and training for the students and still give them a good round, you know.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like you'll you'll do that.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_03: You'll do that.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_03: Avoid illness and injury, you know, eat a good diet, be some disciplined, do some good exercise, keep your heart in good shape, and stay warm and flexible.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And you will be 63, 73, especially with modern aging stuff.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, who knows what's gonna happen.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, and I think the role of competition, you know, maybe you talk about that another time.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's great for people who want to compete.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a big fan of competition.
• 1:26:12
  SPEAKER_03: I still compete.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_03: The reason I still compete is I don't have a school, I don't get the enjoyment of watching my students get better or or compete, even if they don't compete, just watching them get better.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, it gives me, you know, it it's I would say it gives me a deadline, like get into shape.
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_03: I've got something coming.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_03: It gives me a little bit of uh fire underneath me.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_03: But what I struggle with is not the identity, like you got to be okay to lose.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like, because if you're not okay to lose, if you well, you know this when you put a lot of pressure on yourself, then suddenly the competition is not as fun, you know.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_03: You get like butterflies in your stomach, or maybe that's not the healthiest thing, right?
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_03: We all want to be healthy.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, I fully agree.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I think like even with my students here, like it's your choice, you know.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you want to compete, great.
• 1:26:57
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to compete, great, you know, like nothing's gonna change.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is a little bit of a faster way to get better at jiu-jitsu because you it you zoom in on your mistakes, yes, and when you compete, you're literally like putting a zoom on everything you do wrong, and when you're training always with the same guys, or when you don't have the adrenaline, you don't know exactly where your gaps are, and so competing helps on that aspect, but if someone doesn't want to do it, it's jiu-jitsu's for everybody, you know.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, yeah.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_03: No, not everybody, not everybody's into competition.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Look, even the Machado brothers, my coaches, one of the brothers, Hajer Machado, he didn't like to compete.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_03: So when when there was no BGJ in the United States and we all went to judo tournaments and we fought in black ball level and judo tournaments, there were some of them that were five person tournaments where you would have five guys and each guy would fight the other from the team according to lightest to heaviest.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was the fifth brother because Hajer didn't happen to like to compete.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_03: So I jumped in and competed.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_03: That was wonderful.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's you can be, and he's great at jujitsu.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I think you can compete.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_03: Cannot compete, you can do whatever you want, whatever there's something for everybody.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_03: I fully agree with you.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned adrenaline.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's the other reason.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_03: I don't need it so much anymore, but that was the reason that it was very important to me to compete.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've talked on the podcast a bit about what I call the circle of training, which is like there's a real fight, right?
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_03: We can't really practice a real fight because someone's gonna get hurt.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_03: And we don't even know exactly what a real fight is.
• 1:28:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is it one-on-one, one on two?
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_03: Is there a knife?
• 1:28:27
  SPEAKER_03: Is it on concrete?
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Is it on an airplane?
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is it someone jumping into my car?
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_03: Real fight could be any conflict anywhere.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_03: So, what you want to have is you don't know what that real fight is, and you can't practice in it every day.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you draw a big circle around it, and we can practice all of the skills and things that might be needed on that real fight when that happens.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that is you're a good striker, you're a good grap kicker, you're a good grappler, you have good some weapon defense, you have some good, you know, jujitsu sort of self-defense, you're in good shape, you're strong, you're flexible.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of guys train all those things, and I try to train train all those things just in case I'm ever in a fight, which I've been a long time, and I might need that skill.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_03: The one that you're guaranteed to need always is dealing with adrenaline and fear, and that is the one that most people never train because it doesn't exist in our on our mat.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we're friends, right?
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's very, very interesting.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_03: So that that's the one that you get in competition a little bit.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I agree, I agree, and everybody's watching, you know, like exactly pressure scary.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, I fully agree.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I fully agree.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that that's a very interesting point of view.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen a lot of people with a lot of different philosophies about self-defense.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_00: This was the first one I I heard this one on yeah, this way of articulating that made a lot of sense to me.
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, listen, I have really enjoyed our time.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry Michael wasn't able to join us, but it was a really fun conversation.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, thank you.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um what is what is your catchphrase?
• 1:29:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh tremendous honor.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_03: Huge honor for me.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a huge honor for me.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry that we didn't have Michael join us.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe we'll get him another time.
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_03: But keep up the great work.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_03: Good luck with your new school, and we will have links in the show notes.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I look forward to getting on a mat with you and feeling that terrible crushing pressure.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, let's do that.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this this is a great talk, Dave.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Huge honor for me to be part of the podcast.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh definitely want to share the mats with you and train together as well.
• 1:30:23
  SPEAKER_03: Have a great day.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you enjoyed my talk with Professor Bernardo Faria.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_03: There are links to everything we discussed in the show notes, including, of course, BGJ Fanatics and Bernardo's Academies in Massachusetts, where he lives.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks to my team, Robbie, Phil, Kyle, Angela, Bill, and to Ryan Peach Turner, my producer and chief editor, for your help.
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_03: And thanks also to the show's sponsors and supporters.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_03: You can see them on our supporters page at AgelessWarrior Lab.com.
• 1:30:54
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please take a moment and rate the show.
• 1:30:59
  SPEAKER_03: Now we talked about longevity in sports, and you can check out episode 48 called The Longevity Blueprint: Four Laws to Keeping You Training.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'll be back next week with more lessons from the lab, and until then, keep developing your strength, your wisdom, and go out and do good in the world.