Preparation Over Protection: Raising Resilient Kids | Sebastian Bates

Are we raising resilient children - or protecting them from the very challenges that would make them strong?

What if the greatest gift we can give a child isn’t safety… but preparation?

In this powerful episode of The Power Within, Keith Power sits down with Sebastian Bates, founder of the Warrior Academy, to explore how courage, discipline, and emotional intelligence can be developed from an early age - and why “black belt character” matters more than any title or trophy.

Sebastian shares his deeply personal journey - from being bullied as a child to surviving a life-altering base-jumping accident that left him paralysed. He reveals how resilience isn’t inherited - it’s built. Through community, language, leadership opportunities, and daily discomfort, children can develop the mindset to handle pressure, setbacks, and uncertainty.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The 3 C’s of child development: Confidence, Conduct, Concentration
• How martial arts builds emotional regulation and discipline
• Why early leadership roles (even for 4-year-olds) build voice and presence
• Practical tools to help children manage exam stress without overprotection
• ADHD as a creative strength in entrepreneurship

We also explore Sebastian’s Bates Foundation and its global impact - combining character development with real-world service, delivering over a million meals annually to vulnerable children.

This is a masterclass in parenting, leadership, resilience, and raising courageous humans in a fragile world.

If you care about child development, mental strength, emotional resilience, martial arts, parenting under pressure, and building confident young leaders, this conversation is essential.

Tune in for an inspiring conversation that will leave you equipped with the tools to lead with confidence, overcome obstacles and unlock The Power Within

email us at: info@motivuscoaching.com

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Transcript

Opening & Guest Introduction

Keith 0:00

Welcome to the Power Within, the podcast that uncovers the real stories and strategies behind leadership and personal growth. I'm Keith Power, and in each episode I sit down with inspiring individuals who face challenges, built resilience, and discovered what it takes to lead with impact. Through their journeys, we'll explore the mindsets and tools that drive meaningful success. If you're ready to grow, lead, and unlock your true potential, you're in the right place. My guest today is Sebastian Bates, founder of the Warrior Academy, helping children build inner strength, discipline, and responsibility. Using martial arts not as the destination, but as the vehicle. However, character, confidence, and how we learn to face challenges shape leadership long before anyone earns a title. My guest today works right at that foundation. Sebastian Bates. Welcome to The Power Within. Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here. I was surprised when I read this. But uh, you experienced bullying as a child. Yep. And martial arts became a turning point. What did it give you back then?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

So for me, it's it's any when you look back and you draw out the dots, right? Why do we do what we do? And you know, when I think about the impact of bullying in my life, it's probably the reason why I do what I do with the Warrior Academy and the Bates Foundation, right? I've literally spent my life, my adult life, helping young people overcome bullying and helping parents mentor their kids through that transition. So bullying was kind of fundamental to my life growing up. You know, it led me down this path.

Keith 2:20

So what do you now realize it was really teaching you the martial arts at that time?

Beyond Kicks: Character Over Technique

SPEAKER_00 2:27

When I look at bullying, it's one of those things where the the harsh reality of bullying is that we can't prevent it from happening entirely, right? And if you look at some of the schools out there, they'll they'll say they are a bully-free school, which is just a thing. You can't exactly. And so bullying is the ugly part of the human condition, right? It's where young people are learning about socializing and so on. But one of the harsh truths about bullying, which I've written about in the book Not a Victim, essentially, with a lot of bullying, we actually attract the bullies into our lives from the areas in our life that we don't feel empowered in. So if you don't fit feel physically empowered, you're more likely to attract physical bullying. If you don't love a certain uh trait or characteristic about yourself, you're more likely to be insulted or upset by someone picking on you for that and therefore invite bullying into your life. And so martial arts, and the key to all of this for me was why martial arts is such a good vehicle for this, is because it's essentially a holistic system to grow a young person into an adult, a healthy adult, right? And it's it's almost like extreme self-development because you might feel part of a community, but you're working yourself and it builds that emotional intelligence, that leadership, that resilience, um, which helps young people transition through Bully.

Keith 3:39

The martial arts is way beyond the physical. It's more the emotional and the intellectual development you're talking about then.

The Books: Warrior Method & Not A Victim

Grades, Soft Skills & Moral Compass

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, doing martial arts growing up taught me so much more than just kicking and punching, right? It's so easy for people to think, you know, you sign up to a sport, what do you get out of it? You kick a ball around on a pitch or you you throw a basketball, but you're also learning traits while you do that. The the beauty of about martial arts is the reality is you've got this moral compass guiding a young person, which other sports don't have. And so not only that, but it's almost got this disciple-like nature where you do have a strong aspirational role model that guides students, guides young people for several years on that transition um through bullying, through adolescence, into adulthood. So it's it's remarkable in the way that it uniquely challenges and grows young people from a self-development point of view, way beyond the kicking and punching. You talked about a book. What's the book about and is it available now? Yeah, so the book is called Not a Victim. I've written two books. The first book I wrote is called The Warrior Method. I wrote that in 2017. That essentially guides parents through the four-step warrior method that we've got uh that we've now used to work with over 50,000 families around the world. It's called the Warrior Method. It's all around developing your child's character, giving them what we call a black belt character. Um so that is our four-step methodology. After that, we've got the Not a Victim um book, which is the anti-bullying book I wrote. One of the things that I really realized is over the years, you know, 15 years working with so many kids around the world, I noticed so many parents coming to me because their kids were going through bullying, and parents just felt totally lost. They felt this element of guilt or shame that they couldn't help their child, they couldn't prevent the bullying, and they didn't know what to do. And, you know, oftentimes these parents would come to me after a class or something, and I'd, you know, I'd be looking at them and I'd see the same hopelessness and helplessness that I could see in my own parents' eyes when I was going through bullying. And I wanted to help those parents with that specifically. And so I wrote the book Not a Victim. It's essentially an emergency survival guide for parents to mentor their kids through bullying, right? So you can, this book has everything you would ever need to know about mentoring a child through bullying in the entire book. However, if you flick to the middle of the book, there are the six steps that we use, the six P's we call it, to mentor a child through bullying very, very quickly. And for a lot of parents, they can flick to the middle, and within two weeks, their kids, you know, transitioning out of bullying or making big steps towards that.

Keith 6:05

So looking back, do you think that that early experience with bullying shaped how seriously you now take character and responsibility in children?

Routines For Exam Stress & Resilience

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Character and responsibility. I think that we place a massive emphasis on the academics of young people. We push them into school, we put pressure on them for grades and academics throughout their life, often before they're even ready for it. But we don't have that same emphasis on soft skill development, which is essentially character development, right? And for me, I realized early on that if I wanted to, if you want to give your child good grades, develop their character, right? And their grades will magically start getting better. If you want to improve your child's character, grades and improving their academics won't necessarily have that carryover. And so fundamentally, what I really believe is that we don't need better educated leaders managing, you know, businesses, charities, communities, countries. We need leaders with a better character, a stronger moral compass. We need leaders with more emotional intelligence, more awareness, more courage. And all of this comes down to character development. So I think one of the one of the greatest ways I can help this planet is by bringing character development to the foreground, making that more of an emphasis than academics and encouraging parents to invest more in their child's soft school development than just their academics.

Keith 7:23

Excellent. And uh my daughter is 11 in Singapore. This is now the critical year where all the pressure piles on. They do what's called a PSLE, primary school leave-in exam, but it's an examination over a five or six week period, and we're concerned more about not what grades she might achieve, but her mental ability and her resilience. So I might be reading your first book myself very soon.

Warrior Academy & Global Charity Work

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yeah. There's some great things you can do. I mean, if any parents listening to this, who've got kids with, you know, going through exams, there are so many little things you can do to build their habits before they get to that stage. One of the greatest things you can do is, you know, a daily habit routine that reduces the stress that they may feel. I don't think that the solution is removing pressure from young people. I think that we bubble route kids too much. I think actually we need to put more emphasis on giving them the coping mechanisms, the coping skills, the habits, the routines to regulate their emotional system, to regulate their nervous system, right? To feel more grounded and to be able to breathe through pressure. And so there's so much you can do, you know, in in that situation, if you're listening to this, to actually prepare your child for it.

Keith 8:31

So you're currently in Dubai, in the UAE. You've got your books, you do your physical lessons and classes, but do you have anything else in the Warrior Academy that people around the world can tap into as well?

Entrepreneurs, Adventure & Real Impact

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah, so with the Warrior Academy, we um we've got a team of about 100 now. We teach about 3,000 children every week in the UAE and the UK. So we're the biggest martial arts academy in the Middle East. We've got four full-time academies here. And then alongside that, we've got the Bates Foundation Charity, which takes the concept of the Warrior Academy, which is primarily working with fairly affluent families in the Middle East, and provides that same course, that same life-changing black belt journey program into the harshest environments on the planet with vulnerable children. So I started this three years ago with 30 children in a homeless shelter in the largest or the third largest slum in Africa, just outside of Nairobi, and it's now grown to you know to sponsoring over 10,000 kids every single week. Wow. Alongside that, we we give out 100,000 meals every month. So we essentially give out over a million meals a year while taking 10,000 kids through this life-changing program. And it's my kind of vision for the Warrior Academy has shifted so much because of that. You know, if you look at what we're doing around the world, we're in seven to ten countries teaching 13,000 kids every week. But now we are influencing the mindset of young children growing up with abundance and so much opportunity here in Dubai and UAE, with how they can make a global impact. And so we give them direct connection to kids in the slums of Africa and the pools, Sri Lanka, India. So, in terms of our how you can be involved with the Warrior Academy, I do a lot of stuff for parents online, I provide a lot of content, make a lot of videos, do a lot of courses online for parents that are interested in that. If you want to be involved with the charity side of things, that's what we're up to. We've got a patron program where I take entrepreneurs, specifically entrepreneurs who are looking for more adventure and fulfillment in their life, on a three-year journey. And that three-year journey takes them around the world. They come with me on a scholarship tour. So I I've literally just come back from one a couple of months ago with a group of about 20 entrepreneurs, where we went to the biggest slum in Africa and we gave out hundreds of thousands of meals. We visited about seven different scholarship sites, so homeless shelters, orphanages, slum schools, and we did the largest martial arts display on the planet for 2025, which is quite amazing. We did it over a thousand kids in a slum, all with Warrior Academy uniforms on, and we filmed it as part of a documentary, which we're pitching to Netflix. So you can you can kind of see that documentary and see what we're up to. All really, really exciting. But the powerful thing there is what are we actually doing for entrepreneurs? Because, you know, so many entrepreneurs, they and there might be a lot of entrepreneurs listening to this, and this might relate. They build a successful business, they feel like they want to give back, and so they start donating to charities. But then what happens is that donation just feels like a bit of a tick in the box. They don't feel real any real connection, yeah, and they don't really know where the money goes. So there's no transparency or connection and no really feeling of fulfillment by doing that. And so I've kind of built what I wanted for myself and what I realize after speaking to so many entrepreneurs that they need in their life, which is adventure, excitement, fulfillment, and true impact. So that's what we're doing. That's that's kind of how you can work with the Warrior Academy, how you can work with me, and how you can work with the charity.

Keith 12:00

So uh the Power Within just found out yesterday we we're across 34 countries. So, how can a parent who wants to get involved or child reach out to you then, Sebastian?

The Accident: Losing Movement, Finding Hope

SPEAKER_00 12:14

So if you're across 34 countries and you're interested in, you know, the warrior method on the not-a-victim system or developing your child's character, give them a black bar character, any of the stuff I've been talking about in this podcast, the best thing to do is to find me on Instagram, I would say, or even YouTube. So Seb.baits on Instagram, or you can just type in Seb Bates on YouTube and I'll pop up. And probably this podcast will pop up. But um, you should you should see me quite easily then. Um if you're on this and you l and you're watching this now. But that's where I put all my content. I do, you know, m multiple videos every single week so that that's uh really dives into some of the the topics that parents often struggle with understanding or grasping, and I've got a real no-fluff approach. I feel like there's so much theory and fluff out there that I try and deliver short, sharp, impactful and relatable advice for parents that they can use based on all the experience I've had uh working with thousands of kids. Let's rewind a little bit now.

Keith 13:07

At 24 years old, a base jump in accident leaves you paralyzed. With doctors saying at that time you'll never walk again. In that moment, what was the hardest truth that you had to face?

Leadership Lesson: Touch, Presence, Words

SPEAKER_00 13:23

There are several moments throughout that journey where it'd be very easy just to lose all hope. I was a professional fighter, I'd spent a year and a half, two years training and fighting in Thailand in some of the biggest stadiums there. I was an extreme sports athlete, 500 wingsuit base jumps around the world. I would spend all my spare time hiking up mountains, jumping off them. My life was very physical. My resting heart rate was like 35. Wow. You know, so it just just just super athletic all the time, busy doing stuff. And then the universe forced me to stop and slow down. And really, I I realized that the route I was going, I probably wouldn't be alive another year. When I went through the accident, for the next 12 months, I was basically lying horizontal. I couldn't really move. The tendons blew off my left leg, uh, blew off my left ankle, both feet broke, both ankles broke, both legs broke. Miraculously, I I'd stayed alive. I stayed conscious enough to be able to get some uh support from an ambulance, the air ambulance couldn't come, so I had to wait four hours to get any morphine. I was taken back to the hospital, doctors looked at the x-rays, told me I'd never walk again. So 24 years old, going from super athletic, I can do anything, the world can't stop me, to you're never gonna be able to do anything again. I think the first thing that went through my mind is complete denial, you know. They can't be right, it's not true, you know, whatever. Whatever they say. And I suppose that denial helps you up until a certain point. Um, you know, for the first kind of six to eight months, that denial probably pulled me through and pulled me out of some very dark places. For those 12 months where, you know, I couldn't really walk at all. And if I did start to walk, it was with a limp. You know, I I had 15 of my closest friends die. And this is the harsh reality of extreme sports. You're kind of in this cult where the kind of sport you're in is more important than life itself. And that might sound so bizarre, but essentially, the only way you can justify throwing your body off a cliff is to say this is the most important thing in my life. And so, you know, for a lot of people they're willing to give their life for a sport like that, um, you know, pushing forward human flight and the experience they feel. And so for 12 months, I was kind of stuck just watching this go on around me. And, you know, I had I was filled with survivors' guilt. It was a really difficult time. Probably one of the lowest points of that was being in hospital. After about a year, I was referred to the pain clinic. And the pain clinic, for anyone who's been, it's normally people in their kind of 70s who go to the pain clinic where they they teach you how to live with pain um for the rest of your life. And they basically say to you, all the physios and chiropractors, whatever, and you know, the specialists there say to you, Look, you're never gonna improve. This is how life's gonna be, get used to it. But you you now need to be practical. This is what life's gonna be like. So, you know, the the steps now are how to live with it with lots of pain medication every day. That was probably one of the lowest points for me, because you know, up until that point I'd say quite positive. I still couldn't feel my left foot because all the nerves had basically died in the left foot. So when I when I went back to see the surgeon, um, you know, my mum drove me in because I couldn't drive, uh, went back to see him. And um when she left the room, you know, I spoke to the surgeon who had done the surgery, and I said to him, you know, I basically begged him to remove my foot. I asked him to remove the foot because I couldn't feel it. Uh, I thought that if I could, you know, remove that foot, at least I'd be able to walk. Maybe they'd be used, you know, put a prosthetic foot on or something. 25 years old I was then. That's what I asked him. And he put his arm on my shoulder and he said to me, something I'll never forget. He said to me, Sebastian, now is not the time to give up. You know, the reality of that moment is it's amazing how throughout throughout this period, medical professionals have been so pessimistic on everything that I was going through because they wanted they want to cover their backs, right? Yeah. Up to that point, it was like that was the most positive thing someone had someone had said to me. And then over the next year, I started to rebuild myself. You know, I used Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I couldn't stand up and fight, but I had all this energy and I wanted to compete again, and and so I used jiu-jitsu to do that. So your ground game improved no end.

unknown 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

So I already I had already done jiu-jitsu for a few years before then, but it started to become a bit of an obsession. And so I was training jujitsu two hours every day. I had to start from the floor, I couldn't do trips, like you know, there was there were so many things I couldn't do. But then I got really good at the things that I could do because I had all this energy to put into the the stuff that I could do, you know, without being on my feet. And before long I was competing all over all over the UK nationally, which is amazing. I could use my body again, right? And so yeah, it it was it was quite a journey going through all of that. Let's rewind a little to your surgeon.

Purpose Over Bitterness & Teaching On Crutches

Keith 17:48

Because there's a key point there for anyone who's watching this who's a leader of people in any way, shape, or form. The surgeon they did something different. They reached out and put their hand on you as they spoke and delivered those words. And when you're communicating with people, if you're communicating with them face to face, if it's something you really want to resonate, to put your extra hand on their arm and their shoulder, make a physical touch, that prepares, mentally prepares the recipient to take that in. And you probably haven't thought of that before, but that moment that surgeon either consciously or unconsciously reached out, touched, and then spoke words you haven't heard for a year. And that's probably why that has resonated so strongly with you as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, if you're if you want to make something land, you know, and really carry away, that's just such a great technique to use, isn't it? As a leader. So yeah, a hundred percent that would have made him an massive impact.

Keith 18:55

Maybe we don't want to stray too much into politics, but if you look at the expert at that, Bill Clinton, you watch when he engaged with people, he always put his hand on it, he put his hand in other places, that's another story. But he but he connected, and that surgeon connected with you, right? It's uh I didn't want to let that lesson go by that. So it's a great it's a great little hidden lesson there. Many people experience trauma, perhaps not as extreme as yours, and they either shut down or become bitter. What choice did you make consciously or unconsciously that changed your trajectory?

Identity, ADHD & Rewiring Recovery

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I had a business while all of this was going on, and I had about two or three hundred students in the Warrior Academy. The reality was, you know, I I suddenly realized I'd I had all this responsibility to look after all these kids that would that I was uh training. You know, I I had an assistant who covered me for a few months, which was great because it, you know, I managed to have this accident just before the summer holiday when everyone was breaking up and we had less classes on. Uh, but you know, a few months later I realized I had to get to these classes. And so I for about a year I taught martial arts on crutches. Um, you know, parents of their kids would drop their kids off, open the door for the instructor, and I would then walk in. And I think one of the hardest things was telling them that I'll, you know, I'd I'll be fine soon because ultimately these parents are investing their time and energy into a class where they want their kids to learn how to do martial arts, right? And um, you know, I I on one hand, I felt convinced that I would heal, and on the other hand, I had doctors telling me this would be my life forever, and then in the middle somewhere was trying to run a business so that I could afford to live. The beautiful thing about that is it kind of forced me to run classes without being super physical, but actually connecting with these kids through soft skill development, through developing their leadership, through developing their emotional intelligence. And I think that, you know, if if you if you had to force an instructor to teach on crutches for a year, they have to become incredibly resourceful and a very good mentor without just copy my techniques. Of course. And so, and so, you know, that in in some way, that kind of helped me quite a bit. But I think what stopped me from becoming bitter and resentful is I had a purpose, right? Every day I had to wake up and do something. I met my wife three weeks before this accident, and so um, you know, and now we've been together 10 years and we've got three kids. She's a key. Oh, I know, I know. And you can imagine this, right? So she met this extreme sports athlete, professional fighter. Three weeks later, this guy is in hospital told I'd never walk again. She's there through um all of the loss I experienced with my friends, the loss of my body, um, sometimes the loss of my mindset, the you know, the peaks and troughs that you would experience in that over several years. And so it's it's it's kind of remarkable how that relationship kind of sustained that in the early days. Now, if you ask her, because people ask her this all the time, you know, why did you stay with him? How what made you stay with him? And she said it was brilliant because finally he was staying in one place and she could actually go on date snipping. Always looking.

Community Loss, Risk & Perspective

Keith 22:00

On the bright side. So rewind slightly. You jumped forward to back into martial arts, etc., but relearning how to walk must have felt humbling. What did that process teach you about patience, about discipline, and about identity? Because you'd identified prior to that as the all-action man, right? So how did that humbling experience, how did you process that?

ADHD, Risk Profiles & Entrepreneurship

SPEAKER_00 22:29

So I think one of the first things when you go through a a life-changing, life-altering accident is a lot of the stuff that, you know, you you could have done before completely goes. And so I kind of later found out that I had ADHD and it's been impacting my life throughout my life and now my kids' lives and so on. And you know, a big part of why I did base jumping in the first place was down to ADHD and risk tolerance and all this sort of stuff, which is another podcast entirely. But but the reality was I was using my body a lot to regulate my nervous system, right? So you imagine I had all this energy, I was using my body to let it out. And one of the hardest things about having ADHD is if you can't use your body, what that then does to your mind, right? You you've got this, you've got this kind of Ferrari engine in your head, which you can't really use to, you know, you can't really use your body to calm yourself down. And so learning how to regulate my own nervous system, control my emotions while laying completely flat and still for months and not being able to do much exercise for years, certainly a lot less than I wanted to, and that I was used to, was exactly as you said, one of the most humbling, um challenging experiences, but also one of the most poignant transitions of character that you can go through. Um, one of the things you do have to be quite careful of is this this concept of identity. I totally agree with you. When it, you know, that shift in identity, um it's very easy to go from my identity as a extreme sports athlete, base jumper, professional fighter, to I'm now injured. And then as you're going through that transition of from denial to recovery, you then become identity, you identify yourself with I'm a victim of this accident, right? And so the the new identity can identity can be even worse. And this is this is what I think started to happen to me. I have been through so much pain, and for the last eight years, I every day I'd wake up and it would take me about an hour to be able to walk without a limp. And so I would walk 3,000 steps maximum per day. I would measure my steps to make sure I didn't go over 3,000, whereas other people would measure them to make sure they do 10,000, right?

Keith 24:29

Yes, yes.

Return To Jiu-Jitsu & Restored Agency

SPEAKER_00 24:30

And that was really difficult. I would lift weights all the time, but I couldn't I couldn't walk much without being in loads of pain. And so over time you start to identify with someone who can't do that. And then that changes your your your thought process around the decisions you make, where you go, what you do. Until around around three years ago, I was suffering without realizing from PTSD from this accident and the series of deaths that I had from friends afterwards, right? So survivors, guilt and PTSD from the event. And so my body was storing all this tension. My body was storing all this pain from the experience and this identity of a victim of this experience. And so what I discovered was working with a hypnotherapist was completely life-changing for me. Did I did a bunch of hypnotherapy, and during this process, which was you know quite intense, I had to say goodbye to each of those friends individually. And I realized that a lot of my body was holding on to all this guilt, the survivor's guilt, because I was taking more risk than most of them who didn't make it. And so I didn't feel like I deserved to be alive while all that was going on. And gradually this tension and stress and guilt started leaving my body. At the same time, I worked with a really great personal trainer who pushed me more and more to do more steps. And within a two to three month period, I went from never doing more than two or three thousand steps without being in agony, to doing five thousand, ten thousand, fifteen thousand, twenty. I was doing 40,000 steps a day for several years. And, you know, this was this was coming from a place of never walking to now being obsessed with it, right? So I removed, um, I removed a chair from my office, just had a walking power. I'd walk six plus hours every day. That became my my new identity, right? It was like this this journey from one identity to the next to the next. Um, and now I'm challenging that again, you know, and running's always been out, but now I'm doing an Iron Man and Shirathlons, all this sort of stuff. So it's it's um it's amazing how your identity shifts when the right mentors or leaders come into your life.

Keith 26:30

If you don't mind, I'd like to explore a little bit. You've mentioned a couple of times about the loss of a number of friends in a relatively short period of time. You mind me asking what were the circumstances of some of those losses?

Founding Warrior Academy: Role Models Matter

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, of course. When you look at skydiving, you jump out of a plane, you pull your parachute, you've got a backup parachute if it doesn't work. When you look at base jumping, you're jumping you're jumping off a cliff or a bridge or an antenna or a fixed object, right? When you do wingsuit base jumping, the idea originally was to use the wingsuit to get further away from the object you've just jumped off. But with all base jumping, you've only got one parachute. Terrain or proximity flying with wingsuiting is when you might have seen it on YouTube where they kind of follow the cliffs along. Yeah, I've seen. And so we you take this concept of wingsuit base jumping, which is actually relatively safe because you're getting further away from the cliff, to now going at faster speeds, a different glide ratio, and as close to the cliff as possible. And so a lot of these accidents um happen from collision with the cliff, from people going too close, parachutes not opening, sometimes people hiking to dangerous spots and falling off the side of you know sheer drops, parachute malfunctions, landings that are too hard, all this sort of stuff, basically. So it's normally impacts after the jump. But those numbers you said about around 15, that's a lot. Yeah. That is a lot. Yeah, it's definitely a lot. I'd be at the pub with someone, having a few drinks, jumping with them for a few uh a couple of weeks, and then you know, literally the next week you'd hear the news. That's crazy. You know, and the community the community is very, very uh tight.

Keith 28:00

Yeah, crazy.

The Warrior Method: Community To Lead

SPEAKER_00 28:01

You know, and so and so before long you actually this just becomes normal. If you're a soldier on the front line, right, and you're in a very, very high risk situation, and you know, conflict is every single day, um, after a while, you don't become numb to it, but you do you do kind of get used to this is the reality of the job that you're in or the you know whatever you're doing, right? And I think it's no different to this. Obviously, this is volunteer it's voluntary, people are doing it because they want to do it, but it's something that over over time it doesn't seem abnormal. It's obviously incredibly sad and depressing, and the experienced base jumpers actually expect it, you know? And so af after they they they meet young new base jumpers. You let's say you meet 10 new base jumpers, you you know, you're pretty certain three or four of them aren't gonna make it over the next year. That is and crazy odds. Yeah, it's it's it's scary, but that's that's the reality, right? You see in the film Point Break, it's this sort of this sort of uh this sort of lifestyle. In fact, a couple of my mates are actually the stunt doubles in that, but it's it's this sort of lifestyle that the guys have, and it's it attracts such interesting people from all over the world that you'd never you'd never expect to do it, but at the same time, you know, you might be experiencing all that beauty, but it's you know, such is the universe, all that pain comes with it, right?

Keith 29:13

I wonder if any studies have been done on how many base jumpers are actually ADHD sufferers as well. Yeah. I suspect is higher than the average population.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Totally. And I would say the same thing about entrepreneurs. I think that a lot of the time you need a very different risk profile to most people. Why would you give up a job and take so much financial risk and liability to put all of your ideas and effort into something which may not work and everyone tells you it won't work, and there's no certainty that it's gonna work in the first place. And that's why, you know, when I meet entrepreneurs, such a high percentage of them have ADHD. And I think when you when you do have ADHD, it's quite hard to find people you can relate to because they just sometimes your energy is quite intimidating and people don't know what to do with it. Yeah, you don't have to be a good thing. But when I'm when I'm with a literally, yeah, but when I'm with a group of entrepreneurs who are who are quite, you know, type A and going for it and really pushing themselves, the the percentage of those ADHD is much higher. And it's much easier for me to find my people. Um it was the same thing with base jumping. Any sport or activity or business or whatever, vocation, profession that has that requires a higher tolerance of risk, without a doubt, attracts more people with ADHD.

Keith 30:26

But also is a little bit, as you alluded to earlier, like a self-medicating thing. And I saw my ADHD, even by 30, I channeled it as a superpower, quite literally. And I wouldn't have achieved most of what I did without being ADHD, frankly.

Protection vs Preparation For Parents

SPEAKER_00 30:45

ADHD can be debilitating for some people, right? And there are there are lots of there are lots of levels to it. Yeah, um, but for a lot of people it it it's it's like a superpower. And I can have sickening work ethic, just I can forget to eat and sleep and just focus on one project for 10, 12 hours uh without even stopping, right? And that can be that can be really great if you've got a project, you're kicking down the doors and trying to make something work and you're being super creative and really into something. Um but then I can try and learn something and it just won't sink in because I'm not interested enough. Um I've got I've got a son who who's just been diagnosed with ADHD, and um it's funny now because I now I know I've got it, and I'm like, oh, it's hereditary. Okay, so he's got it. I can now help him with all the things that you know I I wish I kind of had extra support.

Keith 31:29

Yeah, exactly. When I was I'm older than you, of course, they didn't have Ritalin. So they gave me a drug called phenobarbitone, which is a barbiturate. It was basically to just numb me and slow me down.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah.

Keith 31:44

So it's great that the world has come on so far that they're identifying ADHD much earlier. There's a lot more knowledge out there and experience, and as you said, there's a lot of proof now coming out that it can be hereditary. So being a parent of an ADHD when you are ADHD yourself gives your son a bit of a head start. Let's go back to we touched earlier again about this. Uh you returned, you didn't just return walking, you went back to Brazilian jiu-jitsu and competed nationally.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

What did stepping back onto the mat represent psychologically for you, not physically, purpose and b you know, being useful, using my body for something. You know, if we're if we're not looking at this from a physical point of view, we're looking from a mental point of view, then it's it's all to do with feeling useful and being able to apply myself and feeling competitive. When you go from professional fighter and like extreme sports athlete to nothing, yeah, just the idea of rolling with someone on the mats and you know having some sort of equality on the mats because when you're on the ground, it was fair game, right? Standing up, doing Muay Thai would have been a different story. I would have would have been I wouldn't be able to throw a kick and balance in the other leg. But jujitsu was great and it was it was the great equalizer for me. It was like now I can use my skills, my energy, my discipline for something useful. Yeah. I mean, it gave it gave me purpose. I suppose it gave me control back in my life after so much I've been stripped away from it.

Keith 33:19

And then that control and that purpose, at what point did you realize that your journey wasn't just about your personal resilience, but instead about building something for others, especially children with uh your work?

Pandemic Reckoning & Building Back Bigger

SPEAKER_00 33:35

I mean, that that's evolved as it's gone on, right? So so initially when I first started the Warrior Academy, it was um I came I'd come back at sort of 20 years old from a um from a Thai boxing camp, and I'd I really wanted to work with a Thai boxing club, and so I took over a rundown inner city gym, and it was mostly 16 to 19-year-old young men who were going through lots of difficult transitions, lots of them were, you know, living fairly rough lives. They were, you know, drugs, alcohol, social abuse, domestic violence, all this sort of stuff. Some of them were sleeping rough. They would come into the dojo, which was the the top floor of this kind of rundown gym. They would kick their shoes off, come in, and probably start a fight with the nearest person in there. And it was just this room filled with testosterone, right? And so I was taking over from this group of lads. They needed to see a positive male role model, and they had never seen one. You know, the the the aspirational role models they had weren't healthy. And so when they saw me, you know, I bowed as I entered. I always called them sir, I always shook their hand, I parked my shoes. I didn't ask them to do any of this, right? And so what I would do is I would do all those things. They would see me do it just at 20 years old. And then I realized that I had to meet them where they're at. So this is long before the base travel accident. So I had to meet them where they're at. This is the start of the Warrior Academy. So I would do really tough training, incredibly tough fitness, incredibly tough sparring, and I'd be in the trenches with them through all of that to earn their respect. So you imagine 90 minutes into these sessions, they're looking at me as their leader, as their aspirational role model, as someone they want to copy because he can handle all this. He's one of the best at sparring here. He's he's tough, he's got strong fitness, and those are qualities that they respected. But then they would see me bow, show respect, call each other sir, park the shoes, all this sort of stuff. And before long, they started copying the things I did more than the things I said. And within a year, and this is just like parenting, right? Within a year, I wasn't forcing them to do anything, but they were just copying simply by being around me while I was showing the example. And before long, these guys were coming in. They were parking their shoes neatly, bowing as they entered, shaking hands, not drinking, not doing drugs, they weren't sleeping rough, they didn't have all the domestic issues they had, they were able to control themselves and avoid danger, avoid confrontation when they left the dojo. And we had 15 national champions from that one group.

Keith 35:53

How did you feel?

Quick Fire: Principles Children Need

Closing Reflection On True Strength

SPEAKER_00 35:55

It made me feel like I'd just figured out what I wanted to do. And I realized that if I had only worked with them when they were younger, four or five or six years old, if I could plant those seeds of a black belt character from a young age, where would they be? And that was the turning point, right? That was the turning point where I said, right, I need to work with younger kids. And so very quickly I pivoted and started working with primary school kids. And within a year, we had you know 300 primary school kids in our academy. And that's been our focus now for the last 15 years. We've been working specifically with young kids. Our kind of typical age group is seven to nine-year-olds, um, that crucial age before preteen. But we have we have kids now joining us from you know two or three years old right up until they're 18, 19. And now a lot of the kids who've been with us eight years now work with the Warrior Academy, right? Anyone who gets a black belt with us, we guarantee a job because we know they've been through the process. For parents listening again, can you just walk us through the warrior method in simple terms? Yeah, sure. So there's four parts of the Warrior method community, inspire, challenge, lead. And it's kind of like a circle, right? So if you imagine it, community, inspire, challenge, lead. Now, the first thing that we do when it comes to the the warrior method is we analyze your child's three C's. So if I was going to simplify character development into just three simple things, it'd be developing your child's confidence, their conduct, and their concentration. So when you develop all three C's to a high level, you develop what we call a black belt character. So the first thing we do is we analyze your child's breakthrough area. And you can go to breakthrougharea.com and you can have that free analysis yourself. We'll give you a personalized PDF report. The next thing we do is we then take your child and you through this four-step methodology where we uh make sure that they've got a safe supportive community that they trust and they feel a part of. Um then we inspire them, right? And when you want to inspire a child, you inspire them through role models and through language. The way you speak to a child literally paints a picture of what they'll become. So there is a huge step here in inspiring, giving them something to believe in. Um the next step is to challenge. So we look at the comfort zone and we uh make sure we push children out of their comfort zone, into the high performance zone, but before the hyperanxiety stage. So there's this middle ground where you push a child into something that feels uncomfortable, but it's within their abilities. And that makes sure that it's a repeatable process. So we give them a daily habit routine, a goal setting cadence, which lasts eight years. We break down the eight-year journey into literally daily steps for them. And so if they do those daily steps, they achieve it. And finally, the final stage there is to lead. Um, we teach kids as soon as they enroll with us leadership skills. So they'll be coming to the front of the class, teaching a technique with their instructor, copying what the instructor says while in front of 10 other kids. Even at the age of four or five, they'll be doing this. And so they become very good at public speaking. They become very good at um giving um orders or demands across to a large group. They become very good at controlling themselves under pressure. And obviously, when they're working with groups individually as well, it develops their emotional intelligence. And so that then feeds back into community. And so you've got this kind of flywheel effect of you know, community inspire, challenge, lead. And that that's basically how it all works.

Keith 38:54

It sounds simple, but there's a lot of thought gone into that and a lot of structure behind it. And as you say, you've literally trained thousands and perfected that. I need to follow up as well. And the way you were talking about this leadership early and presenting at a young age, both my daughters, we sent them to Montessori schools. Very similar principles involved where as you progress in age, you look after the younger ones, you take responsibility, you go up, you present, etc. So both my girls don't lack confidence or resilience and inculcated in them through the Montessori method. Uh I I would say yours is just a hyper advanced version of that. So many parents want to protect their children from struggle, right? As you said earlier, wrap them in cottonwood a little bit. How do you help parents to understand the difference between protection and preparation?

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Great question. I I think that parenting is this challenging balance of protection and empowerment. And so it's it's really easy as a parent to do one too much or the other not enough or whatever. Typically that comes from the teamwork you've got. If you're lucky enough to be uh two parents raising a child, then you're in this situation where you typically have one parent focusing more on empowerment, the other focusing more on protection. The kind of generic example of that is the overprotective mum and the dad who's always trying to push their child. And so the reality is you tend to find this balance naturally as a partnership. Sometimes you need to let the other partner do their thing and allow them to actually push the child and encourage that. But there is a point at which it goes too far, right? There's a point at which protecting goes too far. Um there's a point at which empowerment goes too far. So two very, very quick examples of that protection going too far would be jumping in too soon, right? So rescuing your child too soon, helicopter parenting, pandering to your child's knees all the time, especially as they get older. Um, the other side of this would be over-empowerment, right? Where the focus is on pushing your child so hard into something which they don't like, they can't do, and they realize that whenever they try something, they will fail and they don't want to repeat it. And so the key there is if you're trying to empower your child, you need to be encouraging them to understand that trying new things is just a normal part of life. Struggling with things and experiencing failure is just a normal part of life. It's what we do. And so there's so many things that we do with parents to help them achieve that. You know, a lot a lot of it is is having this kind of focus on um mantras at home, right? So one of the things that I say to my kids is we do hard things. So whenever they ask why, why do we do that? Why are we doing this? Or, you know, what why why are we doing the difficult thing? The family mantra is simple. We do hard things. And it just becomes normal, right? So that's the that's the culture. Like if you look at this from a leadership point of view, a lot of parents watching this might be uh running businesses or quite, you know, C-level types who uh who are managing teams. And they know all about developing the culture of an organization or a team when it comes to business. But have they considered the culture of their family, their family's culture? Um, a big part of that for me is having a culture of courage at home. I think that courage is the most important skill you can pass on to your child. If you develop your child's courage, their confidence will naturally grow, right? And we all want to give our child confidence, but we we try and focus on confidence hacks or things that develop their confidence. When underneath all of that is this foundation layer of developing their courage. And for me, courage isn't just the big one-off scary things like base jumping or professional fighting, whatever it is, right? Standing up and giving a speech or entering their first competition or whatever it is. It's the small things which make the big things in their life. It's having the courage to put their hand up in class so they can learn more. It's having the courage to say no to toxic relationships so they can protect themselves and their boundaries. It's having the courage to believe in themselves and seek more from life. And so if I could leave my kids with one thing, it would be courage, right? It would be the courage to ask more from life, to stand up for themselves and to protect themselves. And I think everything is downstream from that. So that is the that is my fundamental approach when it comes to balancing protection and empowerment and developing a fat the correct family culture for a black block character in your kids.

Keith 43:21

When you gave us the generic example of the mum and the dad, that's the case in our house, but reversed. We won't go there. But we tried to forget this five years ago. It seems like yesterday, during the pandemic, you had a personal and professional reckoning. What did that period teach you about success, status, and what fulfills you?

SPEAKER_00 43:46

I experienced COVID fairly uniquely, I think, compared to a lot of people, because I was running two businesses in two different countries. When COVID hit in Dubai, uh, my wife was eight months pregnant. Um we had we had been running the business for a year and we finally got it to a point where it started. To become stable. Then we lost everything within a couple of months. They kicked us out of all of our uh dojos because we were renting school halls to do this. There were lockdowns, you know, sirens were going off, drones were around looking for people on the streets. Um there were sirens going off, and when she was about to give birth, so I had to drive through all of that. The roads of Dubai completely empty, and I was bombing it down the streets to try and get to the hospital. You know, all this sort of stuff. Complete uncertainty. And then what followed was the UK going through lockdown, and we lost everything there as well. And so a few, some some really key lessons for me stood out. The first thing is I I kind of look back with a lot of gratitude because COVID taught me how resourceful and resilient I am as an entrepreneur and creative, right? And so the first thing I did is I really have my metal tested as an entrepreneur. And I think a lot of people, they've never experienced that in their business growth journey, right? So something like an economic downturn where the economy dips by 20 or 40%. We might experience that in the next few years or 10 years, whatever. And that a typical entrepreneur might look at that and think, that is a disaster. That's the biggest disaster we could ever have. I look at that now and I'm like, that is minor compared to losing everything uh during COVID while trying to support a family with a wife giving birth in a foreign country. And so, you know, you you have these, like you can kind of anchor back on moments, and your nervous system now as an entrepreneur is kind of a lot more calm because the anchor I've got of what's the worst case scenario is not even something that a fresh this is a they wouldn't even Do you know what I mean? They wouldn't they wouldn't think about it, and so you know, if we can survive that, then we can easily survive this, this, and this. And so the first thing I'd say is it gave me huge confidence in my resourcefulness and um resilience. What it taught me about um being backed into a corner, right? Because when you're backed into a corner, sometimes as an entrepreneur, that's when you're the most creative. And so I was coming up with all these products and ideas and services, and I'm actually I actually created a six-figure online business wh while this was going on with a friend of mine, a social media organization, leveraging loads of video content to create reels when it just started happening and it was it was great. And we carried that business on for several years before we before we sold it on. Whatever you think is the worst case scenario, you can still make it through. And one of the one of the most brilliant habits that it taught me when I can remember, you know, my heart thinking it's gonna explode just like panic attack. Have you ever been in that position where your heart's just beating through your chest and you just think, how am I gonna fix this? I don't know, I don't know what to do. And so I remember taking a piece of paper. This is something very similar to what the you know the samurai would do or the Vikings would do in a in a modern context, right? But they would meditate on the worst case scenario. And so I took this piece of paper out. I had a wife who's about to give birth. I've got two businesses collapsing around me. I've got no income. How am I even gonna pay for the birth? Because that's gonna be super expensive in Dubai. So I wrote down everything that could go wrong on this piece of paper, right? This was like Armageddon piece of paper, health, economy, everything. I turned it over and then I wrote down at the back everything I would do if that happened. So I had the worst case scenario and a plan of what to do if that happened. Suddenly, I relaxed, my nervous system relaxed. I took that piece of paper and I put it in a drawer, and then I took a fresh piece of paper and I wrote down what would happen if everything went to plan. What would be the best possible solution here? And the beautiful thing about that is you can't do when you're in a scarcity mindset, you can't focus on abundance and things going right. So you have to have a process of parking that. And then COVID basically made the Warrior Academy because while everyone was running out of commercial real estate, I decided to run in. Like the building was on fire, everyone's running out. We went in and, you know, got some great deals, got great contracts, and um while all of our competitors had basically closed up shop, a lot of them permanently, we launched and we went from within 24 months we were the largest martial arts academy, not just in Dubai, but the Middle East. You know, we had over a thousand students in in in one dojo simply because of our courage in that moment.

Keith 48:09

It's a common thread and a common theme. Um we've got sixteen or seventeen episodes in now, is people's courage, their creativity, their planning for scenarios, but they learn to pivot. That's definitely the key to those who've been successful. I want to finish on uh some quick fire questions. Just the first thing that comes to mind, don't po don't ponder over it at all. One quality every child needs more of today.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

Resilience.

Keith 48:44

One mistake well-meaning parents make too often.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Overprotecting, rescuing too quickly. One habit that builds confidence fastest. Keeping promises to yourself and having a list of evidence where you've been confident and courageous.

Keith 49:00

One behavior that signals poor character early. Lack of personal responsibility, blaming other people. Hope my daughter doesn't watch this. One lesson your accident taught you that still guides you today. Slow down but never stop. And finally, one word that defines a true warrior. Discipline. Sebastian has been an absolute pleasure, 100 miles an hour, and I suspect your life is always like that and always will be. And uh that's probably why we align. Thank you, mate. Thank you. What stands out to me is that your work doesn't romanticize strength. It grounds it, it shows that confidence, discipline, and resilience aren't about domination or toughness. They're about responsibility, self-awareness, and steady character. And in a world where children are growing up faster, noisier, and more distracted than ever, giving them a framework that builds in a strength might be one of the most important leadership acts any parent can make. Sebastian, thank you for the work you're doing and for joining us on The Power Within.