Episode 44: The Surprising Lessons From UK Black Belt Glyn Powditch On Building Efficient Businesses

Most entrepreneurs overlook a fundamental success skill that can be learned through martial arts: mastering your breath. In this episode, Glyn Powditch, a third-degree black belt in BJJ and savvy tech innovator, reveals how breath control isn’t just a survival skill—it’s a game-changer in both business and life. From optimizing Google ad spend to navigating corporate stress, Glyn’s insights will shift your perspective on how calm, strategic breathing can profoundly impact your decision-making, resilience, and growth.You’ll discover:

• The surprising connection between breathing techniques and high-stakes negotiations or assessments, inspired by martial arts master Rickson Gracie’s mastery of heart rate management.

• How AI and data analytics in digital marketing are akin to the breathing foundation—creating space for clarity and precision in decision-making.

• Practical tips for small business owners, such as leveraging reviews and social proof, echoed through Glyn’s entrepreneurial journey from auxiliary garage gym to international tech platform.

• The importance of debt freedom—how avoiding unnecessary financial burdens provided Glyn with the agility to adapt through COVID and seize new opportunities—an inspiring lesson for any entrepreneur.

Check out Glyn's Businesses here:

dreamagility.com 
sbgrossendale.com 

https://www.facebook.com/share/17EBAzW6KK/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to the Career Jitsu podcast, where we connect the art of jiu-jitsu with your career. Our mission is to empower and inspire you with engaging conversations and valuable insights from people just like you who benefit from the shared relationship between your workplace and the art of jujitsu, leading you to a more fulfilling and successful life. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Career Jitsu podcast. We are so excited today to have an opportunity to talk to somebody from the UK. This is the first time for us to have a guest from the UK. And I'm going to start with this question. In BJJ, are you learning or are you just showing up? And in your career, are you learning or are you just showing up? Because uh the gentleman we have here today is not just a black belt in BJJ, but he's also a black belt in business. So he is gonna give us some amazing knowledge and content for our listeners today. He is a third-degree black belt and he owns a gym in Rosendale, and it is called Straight Blast Gym. So those of you who are familiar familiar with jujitsu, you will relate to Straight Blast Gym because it is uh has a rich history. So he will talk about that and he will also talk about his profession. He is a uh he got his master's degree, got his MBA from University of Manchester, and he did his undergraduate in economics. There's a lot of different professional um things that he has done. He and his wife have co-founded a platform. It's called Dream Agility. So he is a chief technology officer for an AI platform that manages Google Ads. So he is gonna talk about that as well. So we are in for a good ride. So we can't wait. So thank you for coming onto our podcast today, Glenn. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yes, Glenn, we are Glenn, sorry, Glenn, we are so excited to have you on here. Jason and I were talking, like, this is such a neat opportunity to talk to somebody from England. Our listeners are gonna tune in because they're gonna love your accent, coolest accent out there. And I definitely feel like a connection because both of us, economics majors, undergrad, both of us MBAs, both of us focus in finance. I used to do some entrepreneurial work, and you are not right now killing it with your entrepreneurial work. So I am just so excited to get this rolling, and we're gonna get this rolling by starting with this. Tell us a little bit about your business ascent. You started out with some with a really solid foundation in business, economics, and finance, which I'm sure gave you the foundation to build. And you took that and you built on it, and now you have your straight blast gym and you also have your dream agility. Talk us through how that developed and some of the challenges you might have faced.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah. So uh, wow, it was um so I mean, I I started, didn't immediately go to universities, and uh, whatever you think you're gonna do, I can almost almost guarantee you you're probably gonna end up doing something you never imagined you'd be be doing. So I I think that's that's kind of important to think about. Essentially, I I went back in. I I went and did a bit of work ex. I I went, I left school, I went and went and worked and and was selling, I was selling insurance. Basically decided I wanted to to go back and study. And so I I did it part-time. So I did the job full-time, got day release, used my holiday to to study and and to attend classes, but I got some day release as well from the company I was with, got my economics degree, got a first, met my wife around the time that that sort of that, you know, I was finishing up the degree. And um, she was uh she had been basically heading up the human resources uh team, a company that had gone public, gone from startup to public. And so she um she sort of said to me, Oh, you want to be thinking about getting a professional qualification? I got onto the uh AstraZeneca finance program, did three years, they revolve you around three different kind of one-year placements and uh came to the end of that, qualified as an accountant, knew I didn't want to stay in pharmaceuticals. It's uh it's a slow industry, to say the least. And at that point, I had a a critical decision really, where I could have gone and worked for the cooperative here, which is a big banking institution. It is a cooperative, it's owned by the workers, but it's a big banking. Well, I I remember it had like uh, I don't know if you guys have like uh final salary schemes on your pensions. Um, but this was one of these that had like the sal the basic salary was tremendous. And so final salary pension, I think the pension was something like 28% or so. It was some incredible amount. So basically the employers contributing whatever you're putting in, they're putting in like an incredible amount of money into it. And it's guaranteed that when you retire, they're basically going to be paying you what you're retiring on. But I looked at the place and the place was just was just dead. And I was doing jujitsu all along throughout this. I didn't think there was a jiu-jitsu career, which I'm I'm now very much wrong about. And we'll we'll come on to that. You can definitely make money in jujitsu if you want to own a gym and you can be, you know, a multi, multi-millionaire. I've seen so many people do it. But I certainly at that time hadn't seen anybody do it, and I probably nobody had done it. But I had the choice between going to the cooperative and going to a dot com, which the dot com was paying way less. There was no pension. And my wife said to me at the time, the thing about going and joining a dot-com type business is you're gonna learn a lot there. You're gonna be pushed. And I was pushed, and it was kind of I think the the making of me, that was my first experience of Google Ads. And they'd said to us we couldn't we couldn't improve the Google ad performance there. And you know, they they were killing it and so on. And like I looked at it and it was like we could improve the Google ad performance. And I was just an accountant, but I was just looking at the the numbers and saying, well, here's the costs and here's the revenues. And like, you know, a lot of these things you're bidding on seem to be just losing money. And so that was a I continued on with the career. I became um, so I'd qualified as an accountant by then, went into a job I hated in the first time a proper account, true accounting role, hated it, went and worked for another dot-com called Will You Buy Any Car. That's the the guy who founded that, I'm pretty sure is a billionaire now. That that was another company that I went, another dot com that I went to, and I found that going to dot coms, you learn a lot from entrepreneurs. Like you learn way more from working for entrepreneurs than you do working in big companies. Like there's just no you're pushed hard. You see that they don't follow the usual rules, they don't confine themselves. You know, I I could tell you and I won't I won't tell you his name, but he his everything he would basically say was that if somebody said to him, You can't do this, he'd say, What was my jail time? And everyone would like look at him in the boardroom and be like, Well, what do you what do you mean your jail type? He'd be like, Yeah, how much jail time am I gonna get if I do this? And they'd say, because people would just say, you can't do this to to him. And I've seen so many entrepreneurs like this, and they're like, Well, why can't I do it? And they're like, Well, you're gonna get somebody that the the you'll get fines. And he'd say, Well, how much is the fine gonna be? And they say the fine could be 20,000 pounds, and he'd just get his calculator out and he'd go, Yeah, but like I'm gonna make at least 20,000 pounds doing this, and I might not get fined. And people gasp. And he was just like, right? So you you you see their mindset is is just different, really. And you it starts to make you realize that um how other people can think. And so I kind of uh went from there, you know, went on from from so I've gone, yeah, I've gone from like few.coms and so on, and then uh I became a gaming director for what ultimately is a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, it's like kind of the equivalent um of Fox in the UK to work there. And while I was working there, opportunity really came up. Um and my wife just basically took it and ran with it. And um, and from basically from from this opportunity, we found it, we ultimately founded Dream Agility. Uh we raised uh I think we raised three quarters of a million pounds back around uh the 2010, sometime around 2013, 2014, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

How did you raise that? Like Kickstarter, or did you raise that with private equity, or did you Yeah, you just just just um just angel investment.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah. So there are various sort of schemes available within the UK. I'm sure similar ones exist in the US where you know, in certain certain industry sectors, companies are looking, and and this actually is an interesting thing more more broadly, because this is the same sort of thing in South Korea as well. But there's there's lots of countries that will incentivize you if you've got a good technology, particularly technology, if you've got a good technology-led idea, you know, governments will fund you, they'll support you, and there's all these accelerators that are out there as well, which is how we were able to open offices quickly around the world and and roll out. So, for example, Coca-Cola has a a scheme. Coca-Cola has a scheme called, I think it was called the Bridge Program, where they basically give you an office in Atlanta. Uh, we were the first UK company to get um get placed on that. And they give you the office and and then they have you into Coca-Cola um and they have Coca-Cola executives work with you. And so they explain that them a lot of their marketing is based on the that there are only seven types of films, and they talk to you about the seven types of films. And I have one of their uh one of their former executives who was coaching for them on this program said to me, You know who you guys at Dream Agility are? And I'm like, No. And she's like, You're money ball. And you initially you think, oh, that's pretty cool that the time I had a you know, much better head of hair and everything. You think, oh yeah, it's you know, grab hit. And she's like, Yeah, you're that fat guy in money ball. You're the fat guy in money ball with the stats. And I was like, thanks. But that was essentially what you know, she said, you're in a market where, you know, it's kind of like the old mad men, really, a lot of the time. People are not asking the accounting questions of marketing. This is what she was getting from me. You know, nowadays we can with digital, we can measure even when people walk into gyms. Like our company has a tracking solution that when you do a deal offline, we can still pass the deal value back into Google Ads or into Met or you know, whichever advertising platform you're driving money through. And we can attribute that that sale back to the clicks that and marketing still doesn't really do that. Most marketing is still really kind of cost per lead. So that's kind of a kind of a summary of of where we've kind of gone from to sort of a little bit of where we are now in terms of dream agility career-wise.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

So, how long have you been working? When did when was it born? What year was dream agility born?

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Yeah, it's around around 2012. So the company, it's now, you know, whatever it is coming up 14 years we've been doing this anyway.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Wow, congratulations. That's yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Substantial.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah. And and so can you just like in a nutshell, like an elevator pitch, tell us exactly what you would do for what is a typical company that would need you, and what would you do for them that they can't do themselves?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Okay. Yeah, so uh I suppose there's two major uh types of companies we typically speak to. There's e-commerce and there's lead generation. A good example in e-commerce of the sort of thing that we we would do. So Chemist Warehouse is a 600-store retailer in Australia. They the last time I looked, they turn over about 3 billion Australian dollars a year. So they're a big entity, and they were the the first company that we put one of our AI solutions live on because there's different types of AI. Everyone thinks AI these days, they think it's chat GPT, and that accessibility makes everybody now an expert in it. I don't consider myself an expert, but I have been playing at it for a long, long time now. And there's all different types of AI. But the the main, the main one that we work with on e-commerce suppliers usually now is around just getting them to look at their conversion rate. And their conversion rate, almost every e-commerce company broadly converts around 3%. There'll be some that sell higher value items, like maybe on the luxury end, where actually the conversion rate can sometimes be lower as it as deal values tend to go up, conversion rates become more considered and can drop. Broadly, let's call it 3% on average, if you transact, if the deal's done online, 3%. And what nobody at that time was really looking at all was what why are you spending on the other 97% doesn't convert? Because that's essentially what you're doing. Whether you're advertising on Google, you're advertising on Meta, you're converting at 3% because your website converts to 3%. But like, why why don't you start switching some of that off? And that that was our fundamental question. We analyzed prior to going to live with this, Chemist Warehouse were like up for it. They said, Yeah, we'll we'll do it. Super innovative company, even as big as they are. There's not many companies that like that, are like, yeah, hell, we'll we'll go for it. And I I really love the Aussies. The Aussies are like, you know, they're very aggressive when it comes to this sort of thing. They'll they'll go for things and try them out, even when they're when they're big companies. And we had, it's on the website, but we had around 178% increase in return on ad spend at a reduction in cost when we put the technology live. And what the technology was principally doing was switching off, beginning switching off the the 97%. So you don't switch the 97% off in one go, but we'd already done we'd already looked at 600 million a spend prior to doing this, and we were like, we know that there's like we can switch 30% off in most accounts, and absolutely nothing will happen. And so that's how we got that that result.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

So you found, you basically found a program that was somewhat working, but it was grossly inefficient.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

So you said, let's find the things that are working, keep them, and get rid of the night, let's get as much of that 97% of non-conversions. Let's shut off those switches because you're paying for them. Right. 100%. Stop paying for those and focus on the what's working. You're saving the money and the money they are spending, they're getting a better RO. 100%.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

And and and as an accountant, this is probably like this is obviously really obvious to you and an economist, right? This is really obvious to you. But in marketing, one of the reasons this this doesn't happen is because agencies who've traditionally looked after the accounts, they're paid a percentage of the spend that they manage. So it's a little bit like fund management. So why would you you you don't want to switch the spend off when you're being paid 10% of whatever the client's spending on Google, Meta, or whoever?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

It's literally that compensation package is a conflict of interest.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

100%. And marketers as well, going back to the accounting side of it as well, you know, this is the argument for zero-based budgeting, is that you get this kind of corporatism goes on where the marketing department internally don't want to give their budget back because that's how they see it.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

That's how it is everywhere in every organization, correct. Like if we don't, if we don't use up our budget, then next year they're gonna be like, oh, you don't need that much anymore. Right. And what if we need it next year? So use it this year. Absolutely. Right? Survival, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And so I think it takes really entrepreneurially led companies like Chemist, the Chemist Warehouse of this world, even when they grow super big, it takes that kind of mindset sometimes to actually want to go down this route. Now, don't get me wrong, we've been very successful in signing up tons of big companies that have gone gone down this road and it's a great learning experience. There's an awful lot of people that just feel like this is too obvious. But what you have is the combination of the the the uh the in-house marketing team and the agency, essentially both of them don't want to move in that direction as a general rule. And so that's the e-commerce side of it. The challenge on lead generation is that the entire industry is addicted to talking about the cost per lead and to just driving leads. That's about those are the only two success factors that you get in lead generation. And it doesn't matter whether you're selling, you know, whatever it is that you're selling in the in the world finance and the deal goes offline. But the minute that the deal goes offline, you have the problem of what's the quality of the lead. And agencies aren't interested in that because they have no technology. And so what our solution does is it passes those deal values back into Google Ads, into Meta ads, and starts asking some pretty difficult questions of some of the decisions that could be made in its absence. You know, not all leads are equal, and certainly cost per lead. You know, you'll get agencies that will say we brought the cost per lead down. And it's like, okay, you've brought the cost per lead down, but what was what are the deal values that are being done from them? If the deal values are good, if the deal values are great, I want to be aggressive. I want to buy the entire market up if it if it makes sense to do so.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah, it's almost like the mistake a lot of people do is they focus on the revenues of a company. Great. Revenues can be beautiful, but if you don't factor in the expenses, you could have you could have multi-millions of dollars of revenue and still have a net loss. 100% because you don't have the full story. So you're giving your clients the full story. Right. So that they can make a value-based decision. 100% optimizing. That is that is heavy. That is heavy. That's good. That's good stuff. It's optimization.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

It's made I I'm sorry, Frank. You just I just want to get this in there. I what I of course. What I really like that you talked about there is that I think there's a big difference between leadership and entrepreneurship. And I think there's a lot of lead leaders that don't really think out of the box enough. And I think it was great how you kind of got ahead of the curve in thinking out of the box in terms of AI and staying ahead of that curve and stay and adapting. You were able to, you know, use your adaptability in marketing to really capitalize on this. And I I am extremely interested in this, and I'm sure that our listeners are. So keep talking. So yeah, this is yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Um, we got to just get some like free advice out here, too, for our listeners for more of a small business perspective for our smaller entrepreneurs out there who are using Facebook and YouTube and what? Just toss us out some value for these smaller entrepreneurs that are, you know, regional and they're trying to use the internet and the social media and maybe some Google ads. What are some can you name like just one or two things to beware of and one of two things to focus more on?

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I think uh well, one of the things that people always seem to get concerned about when they've got a new business, isn't is particularly if they think it's anything to do with technology, is not telling anybody, right? They they worry about talking too much. And I mean, maybe if you're in the militar if it's military, it's really is that, you know, okay. But um, most of the time the idea isn't the thing, it's the processes and the systems are what make people successful. There are plenty of businesses out there that just copy somebody else's because that will happen. And they just do it with better processes and systems. Right. So so that's yeah, I I I think that's one of the one of the things.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah, it's what's your framework, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the things like networks are super your networks.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Are you talking about wait, wait, are you talking about hardware network or your personal network?

SPEAKER_00 20:13

I think a personal network is really huge. Um, and this is a great thing with jujitsu as well, is that as you as you meet, like a GM is such a tremendous place to to meet people and to network. Open maps are tremendous places, competitions are tremendous places to network. But also in terms of network, you know, we now have a phenomenon really of the internet age where things like reviews, people that we we now trust the reviews of of other people that we've never met. So we've never met them, but we're trusting them. And we're trusting the amalgamation of their opinions as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Well, yes, yes, the amalgamations. Because if you have three reviews, people don't really trust that. But if you have 17,000, and that's from have you read Cieldini's Power of Persuasion? Abnor. Abnor. It's a great book, and listeners out there, it's like the Bible for persuasion. He talks about social proof as one of the pillars of persuasion. When you have a certain critical mass of people saying something, people tend to believe it. 100%. And I and I think that's exactly what you're talking about here with the power of reviews, as long as you have that critical mass, yeah. It speaks volumes and persuades people that that is a good product or service.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Um, we've started now with gyms. We we'll one of the first places that we'll start with gyms who are talking to us and and maybe they're just starting off and it's it's way too too early to use somebody like us for them. They might have 25, 30 members in their gym, whatever. The the number one thing for for me with the with them is to go and get as many Google, five star Google Map reviews as you possibly can. Like you can't have enough of them. If if you get, you know, you you start building them up, they'll grow with your business, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

So when you say that, like so a small gym that has 50 people, yeah, that gym owner. Should tell all of his members, hey, if you like what's going on here, please tonight go home, write a review, hit the five stars, let other people know so that we can continue to bring in good people.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Is that something that you would 100%? You can get a QR code off of uh Google Maps. Like you set up your Google Map, there's a QR code in there, and you can put that, you can basically print that out, have it in your gym, you know, in your reception. I I don't recommend leaving these things out, particularly like if you have a cancellation policy and it depends on gym's process and so on. But sometimes if you have a review out, someone has a bad experience, the first thing they're gonna on any level, or someone injures them or whatever it might be, there's that temptation that they're gonna just straight away heat at the moment, I'm gonna leave them a bad review. But what I would do is I'd have it there ready. And when someone has a positive experience, they've been promoted, they're you know, they're enjoying their training, you know, they're giving you great feedback, you know, having that QR code where they can just take a picture of it on their phone and then they've got it. And they don't have to leave the review then, but once they've got that picture of it, they can go at their own convenience and it'll take you right into the uh into the Google Map review section and they can just leave you a review. So super powerful. And things like Google will will, you know, Google will use whatever the people write in there about your classes, they'll use that in order to uh show against certain things. So if they talk about, you know, Jason's got a great kickboxing program, you know, I I came here for the kickboxing, but I ended up sight, you know, I ended up staying with the jujitsu or whatever it might be. All of a sudden, for kickboxing, that's ticking both boxes. Someone does a kickboxing search, right? That's triggering. Someone says they're bringing their kids for uh kids for class, you know, uh ki, you know, kids jujitsu, kids striking, kids whatever, that's then gonna refer that that just fires back in there. I bring my nine-year-old. All of a sudden, Google knows you, you know, you serve nine-year-olds martial arts. Um, and also thinking about, I think as well, just thinking about um what you perceive as you think your business is about and what your what your customers think it's about, is often very, very different. And so I think Lloyd Irvin said this years ago to martial arts instructors. He was quoted something along the lines of saying that really if you're in the martial arts business and you're running kids' classes, you're not actually coaching kids jujitsu, you're in the daycare market. And so he was talking about that a lot of jiu-jitsu instructors, even back then, this was I think like from what I understand, like 20 years ago. I wasn't I wasn't out of these, but 20 years, 20 odd years ago, he was basically saying you look at what gyms charge for kids' classes, and then you look at what daycare centers charge. And he said, for parents, they're they're getting way more value than uh jujitsu for their kids than at daycare, but daycare is often charging two, three times the rates that jujitsu is.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yeah, that's a that's a very good point. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Wow, this is just a great little teaching for small businesses, and I'd like to just remind my listeners that this knowledge and information goes beyond the boundaries of a gym. If you own a bakery, same thing. When a customer says, Oh my gosh, that birthday cake was delicious. Well, can you do me a favor? Please do me a favor. Go on Google, put a picture of the birthday cake on there, write about it. What did it mean to you? That is the that is the best way you can help me. And that could be an accounting firm, a chiropractic, it could be any business, any small business. There is you, there is your golden nugget. You need to take this and you need to run with this if you're not doing that already. And probably a lot aren't. Probably there's a lot of businesses that just don't know to promote that with the same consistency that we show up to the gym. That's that's number one. Your employees should know. First thing when they hear somebody compliments your business, your employees should say, Oh, can you do me a favor? Here's one of our cards with a code on it. Can you please just write a review? Right. That'll help me, that'll help the company, and I will read it. And if you tell the person I will read it, they will definitely write a good one.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yeah. Without without question.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Great, great. Uh, you know, I want to, I actually want to stay on this for the whole thing, but we do need to move and hear about you have a black belt, which is an incredible feat in and of itself. Can you talk a little bit about that, like how you got into jujitsu, what got you interested, what your first experience was like, and then your journey to black belt.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah, so I mean, I read about the UFC in, I think I was I was probably about 16, 17. I first read about the UFC in a magazine. And what struck me about it was, I mean, it was talking about human cockfighting, and it was quite a quite an alarmist article and how the UFC had been banned in all these different states, and it was all that kind of thing. But what struck me about it was that the Hoist Gra the small Brazilian guy, Royce Gracie, as I thought he was then, had basically the smallest guy won the contest. And that that was something that struck me about efficiency. I I didn't really do anything too much about it. My my sort of soccer career was sort of coming to a career at 17, 18, but like that was coming to an end. That'd been my main thing, and it was I think it was coming to an end. I I hadn't really realized it was, but it it kind of was. And and then I I kind of got into I'd got into strength training as well, and um, I started reading about Mike Mensa and I started doing uh sessions with Mike Mensa um on bodybuilding, like phone consultations with him. And obviously he was famous for talking about reducing the amount of time you needed to train. And it was kind of funny. I had the conversation with Matt Thornton once, the head of head of Straight Blast Gym, and uh, you know, we've been talking and he said, you know, your entire life, Glenn, has been about a search for efficiency. So everything with you is always about efficiency. He said Mensa, you know, jujitsu, you know, how you operate your businesses, you were always searching to like squeeze more out of the, you know, squeeze more out of it, squeeze more out of the lemon type thing. And so, um, and so yeah, I started to, I started to just train martial arts because it was really hard to find anywhere to train. And uh I eventually found um there's a guy called Lee Hasdall, who was, I think he was like, there's there's a thing over whether him or Ian Freeman were like the first professional mixed martial artists out of the UK. Um and Ian Freeman obviously went on to fight the UFC. But uh Lee Hazdall was in Japan in rings and you know, had a contract, lived out there. They basically lived in state these kind of stables, I think is how they described it, where you'd have teams basically, I think, and they'd all sort of stay together and train. I think he trained under Fujiwara on the grappling side. He's a very good kickboxer. And so I started training with him. He'd come back from Japan, I was training with him. He had a guy called Danny Batten who went on to become Cage Warriors world champion. And so I then started training, training with them. They were doing mixed martial arts, you know, and and then from Danny, Danny then got a Brazilian living literally on his floor to begin with. He got a Brazilian guy who'd just come over, was about to get his brown bell. And so I started training with him as well as Danny. And so I started doing privates with the Brazilian guy, Eduardo. And, you know, he just he was a small guy and he just used to, you know, two hours we go at it and he would, you know, he showed me a few techniques. We do a warm-up, but for the most part, looking back on it, you know, he was using me as spa and I just get the daylight speaking out of me. And so that was, you know, and that was a big journey. It was 40 minutes to an hour each way to go and train with him whenever I could, you know, and there and back. So, you know, it all adds up, and you've got a job, and I was studying at the time as well. I was doing doing the economics degree, so I had a lot going on, but you know, I I really love jujitsu and I'm just kind of stuck at it. And and certainly in the early days, I think it was very tough. And I think it's tougher in the UK to make a living at jujitsu than it is in the in the US. But I think a lot of that is to do with things like marketing. I think Americans do make more of an investment in their health. But yeah, I just I just stuck at it really.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Um and and plot Do you think Americans make more investment on their health than the English?

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, those who invest in their health definitely do. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

We are one of the most unhealthy countries in the list of bell curve, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

It's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Like so you're talking about the Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:20

It's it's like discussing, like, you know, if you look at things like IQ of men and women, like there's this whole idea, the statistics seem to be that on average women are a little bit more intelligent than men. But when you look at the extreme IQs on the bell curves, it tends to be that there's just and and chess, you see this with chess actually as well. At the elite level, there is just there seems to be an awful lot of the 1% of the men, right? Versus you you don't tend to get so much of that. And there will still be people that will say, well, that's because women don't get opportunities and blah, blah, blah. But uh, you know, bell curves are a thing and they sometimes don't don't work in those ways. So my my take on it is that I do think that Americans, those who think about their health, really go all in on a way in which I don't think so many in the UK do. That's just my gut instinct. I don't have too much data to prove that, but that I think Right. So you just see a difference in the distribution.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Yes, I think so. Okay, so gotcha. So you had a lot going on in your life, but you still stuck with jujitsu. Yes, even though you were very busy. Yeah. And then how did you grow that into your own gym being a member of the I just saw that? Thank you. Thank you. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Yeah. So I threw a lot of things, I trained an awful lot of 6 a.m. classes with other people that when I was training in Manchester at the Manchester gym. At one point I was living about an hour north, but working south of Manchester, and the gym was city center Manchester. So it's quite a journey. But I was um kind of living down there in the week, but I do a lot of 6 a.m. and and other professionals would. And that's another great opportunity, I think, for gyms as well, is the 6 a.m. But I I think for anybody who's struggling to train, 6 a.m. is a great, great time. If you've got kids, you've got family, you've got work commitments, you've got all these things, those are brilliant times to get in and train. Get up, get your training done, and then you know, your evenings, you know, can be your own. So so that that was one of the ways I kind of kept it. But but in terms of getting to the gym, in the end, the the kind of final job I had before we launched the company, you know, I had I think 50 odd people, you know, under under me in the in the hierarchy. We had a TV channel down in uh in London as well. Uh this was a a sport, this was basically uh a an online casino, essentially. But we had a TV channel, the poker channel, and and there was just a there was a lot going on. And there was just no way I could keep getting into Manchester. And so my wife said, Why don't we convert? We've got a double garage. Why don't we convert the garage and get some wait?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

I just gotta stop you.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

How do you say garage? Garage, garage. You can say I love it. I love it. Yeah, garage.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Okay, I just had to, I had to garage. You had a double garage. That's just so pretty. Garage. Okay, so tell us so you so you were having a hard time getting to to man to Manchester.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

You had a double garage and and yeah, so so my wife helped me, she's the practical one. So she helped me put mats up in there, like we matted the walls, and it kind of went from went from there, really.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

That's where your school came from, from like that, starting there?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Uh yeah, I started started there, and then I got the the neighbors started to complain about the uh parking around here because I had all these cars for all the people class. And so they started complaining. So in the end, as I was starting to get, I think I started getting letters from the council and stuff like that, and sort of the thing of whether you have permission and all that thing. So I I rented a unit, and then literally no sooner had I rented the unit, I've been years in the in the garage, but no sooner had I rented the unit than COVID basically shut the thing down. Damn, talk about timing. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

That had to hurt that so you got a place and then COVID hit.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Damn.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

It actually happened. My my buddy Michael Hines, even this was an even better version. So he he owns the SBG in New Brownfalls, Texas, and he was a professor in Korea, like a university professor in Korea. And his wife's Korean, his kids have been educated in Korea, and he at the same time moved his entire family to New Brownfalls, Texas to open a gym as their as their sole source of income. And then COVID happened, and he had the he had the same thing. And uh, it's an incredible story. He's got 350 members now, like he's blown it up. Yeah, yeah. But like it's incredible what to do in in adversity, you know, and then he had to close the school, and but anyway, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, so talk about like your resilience. So that happened to you. You get your own place. Now, how do you have the resilience after COVID strikes? What happened? Did you have to shut your place down? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Yeah, so we well, we there were some, we we read a lot of the rules going back to reading the rules. And one of the things was you could keep your, you know, you could keep your gym or your facility open if you were providing mental health support. Uh so that was that was one of the things. I'll say no no more on it than that, but we did have to close for quite some time. There was no getting away from it. But as people started to read the rules on it and like saw that like actually, this is a bunch, you know, a bunch of young, fit guys who train all the time and train for their mental health, you know, you start looking at it and going, no, this is like we're not a risk here. Um, you know, if I if I'd had a, you know, so you you look at these things, but yeah, there was a period where we had to shut. But I mean, I was fortunate in that I I had a, you know, my solely, my main source of income is not jujitsu. But for other gym owners, it was absolutely horrific because all of a sudden you're making rent rental payments in some cases of five figures a month, and you've got, you know, you've got your membership don't there, they're not working either, a lot of them, and they're not wanting to pay. So, so it wasn't as bad for me. And then an opportunity sort of came up while it was still, I I kind of looked at it and thought, you know, we've grown this so well. An opportunity came up to get a bigger space, literally just across. It was like twice the size, and I took it.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

So I I you know, I I I took that and then You took it while you were struggling with it?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah, because because I knew this wasn't going to continue. And I think one of the things about, you know, so so I think a big lesson, Frank, for for people as well is, you know, because I worked full-time while I didn't do my degree, I wasn't coming out with all this debt. I, you know, I I I I came out of it like, you know, pretty well. We I'm seeing people graduate nowadays. They've got 60,000. And it's like you're 60,000 in debt. What if you'd spent 60,000 on a business? What if you'd spent 60,000 on launching your jujitsu school? They'll lend you the money. You'll find somebody who'll lend you the money on reasonable terms. If you've got the business plan, you put it together, you've got some, yeah, you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

I just gotta stop you right there because this is what I meant when I said we are on the same wavelength. So I'm a teacher. Obviously, I believe in education, right? I tell my kids all the time college is not what it used to be. The debt that they're putting our children in is disgusting. 100%. And our people are letting it happen. Our parents may not, their hearts are in the right place, but they're not, they don't have the information to make the right plan. And for every one of my my kids, I do a spreadsheet, I show them because the government makes it easy to borrow. Any kid can borrow $120,000. And kids are coming out of schools in America literally with $120,000. Now that's fine if you're a chemical engineer, but you come out with a general business degree and $120,000, you're living with mommy and daddy. Right. And I expect this because my my supervisor and I are hellbent on making sure our kids know this. I'm gonna make sure all my kids watch this video and look at the time. It's 40 minutes in, and I'm gonna have them at least watch that clip of what you said from England, successful guy, black belt, his own business, and you just said it. The lack of debt gave you freedom. Yes, 100%. You were free. And if you had a lot of debt, you couldn't have done all these great things that you've done.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Right. No, you you absolutely can't. You can't. It it buys you that ability to to. I mean, I've got the I kept the book here, but you've got I'm sure it's a favorite for you guys and see it. But so this is Charlie Munger's uh Poor Charlie's Almanac. So he's uh Warren Buffett's right-hand man.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Well, I did not know that. I know obviously I know Warren Buffett, but that's that's good to know. Yeah, what's the name of that book? Tell us the name of that book again.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Yes, it's he's called Poor Charlie's Almanac.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Poor Charlie's Almanac.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Yeah. And it's a monster of a book. It's like, but it's all ideas. It's all basically business, business models, problem solving techniques, ways of framing issues and arguments. And it's a fabulous book. But it but it's basically a toolbox. It sounds like a toolbox. Yeah, it is a toolbox. And it's about, you know, that classic Buffett thing about being greedy when you know others are forget what I forget what the phrase is. Yeah, you know, no, I just want to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

When others are cautious, you be greedy. When others are greedy, you be cautious. Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Buffett's a genius. Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is this is so I this we could we could run this. This there is so much to tap into here. I don't even know which direction to go. I think we're gonna have to. But Jason, I've been kind of hogging the question, so I'm sure you have some of your own questions.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

No, I I want to get Glenn on twice, maybe even three times, actually. Yeah, you're coming back.

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Whether you want to or not, you're coming back on the show. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

But anyway, um they kill it in business and they kill it in life. Um, and you're an example of that because really you're able to think out of the box, like like I said, like I said before, you know, like you had that COVID shutdown and you had to think about, okay, how do I, how do I make this work? And I think BJJ kind of helps with that. You know, you you really learn how to uh how to adapt your game, how to how to build your game, how to be creative. And um, I think that mindset that BJJ practitioners have is um just great for entrepreneurship, you know, and and you that that's an you know what you did is an example of that. Do you agree?

SPEAKER_00 40:35

I think it certainly helps you with like ego management. I think that's a huge factor. You know, I I remember Matt Thornton writing about, you know, who is the I. And um, I was like 23, 24, and I didn't really understand what he was talking. I I had no comprehension of the ego, to be honest. You'd hear people say, this person's got a big ego or whatever, and you'd say, well, what is what does that mean? And some, you know, and you'd think about it, you think, oh, well, they're quite boastful, they're quite, quite brash and and you know, full of themselves. And and but what you don't really get taught is that, you know, a lot, a lot of people who are successful, it's it's kind of hard to be successful without having at least a healthy ego. And so you, you know, he was writing this, who is the I? Who, you know, what's what's draw, you know, who who are you? And um, you know, I guess I would look at it now and think it was kind of like quite yeah, at the time it was kind of like quite esoteric, but I started like really looking at it. And that that whole thing that we go through where you're having to to tap to another man, and another man that sometimes isn't even looking like he's trying. Like he could he could be he could kill you and he could eat a sandwich while he's doing it. Like that's a great visual, but so I'm gonna have to try that.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

I'm gonna have to try that with you, Frank.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Do you want to Jason? Jason, you might want to try tapping me out normally without the sandwich first. That's true. All right.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

But yes, I love that example. But but you you're having to manage it, right? And where do you where do you really get this kind of brutal feedback where everything you do is wrong? Like, you know, I mean, life can be like that sometimes. It can feel like that for periods of time, but you're not really then having a discussion with somebody who then says, Well, this is what you're doing wrong. Have you have you tried doing this instead?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

And so that reflection.

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Yeah, that reflection. So so really getting an opportunity to be coached with something that has the reflexive nature of it, where you I do something to you, Jason, and you choke me. And then it's like, and then you might say to me, like, I have conversation with my students all the time, like, you don't have to beat me. If you're a white belt, like your job is not to beat me. You're not gonna submit me. Like, it just isn't gonna happen. Like, there's two 25 years is too much. It doesn't matter how young, strong you are. If you're a white belt, you're that isn't gonna happen. But like, you don't need like, why do you need to do that? And they feel like they need to do it while they often are as well, are running around the mat away from me. So they'll do something really aggressive, it doesn't instantly work, and then they run away from me. Right. And I'm so it's like we're losing time here. I need you to engage, you're going to lose. Just accept you're gonna lose. If I want you to lose, you'll lose, but slow your breathing down. I'll slow my breathing down then because I feel more comfortable. I know you're not gonna knee me in the knee me in the nuts or you know, drop your knee on my shin or just stuff that like beginners do, and then we can just start to play. And then, and the minute that people start to do this, like I I actually a lot of the time don't even bother trying to submit them. We'll just play a position, even in sparring, we'll play a position, and it will just be like I'll constantly be feeding an underhook. I'm just playing an underhook the whole time with them. And I'll I'll be like, don't give me the underhook, don't give me the underhook, don't give me the under. And now we can work. You know, that that that day that we have that free sparring session that doesn't need to be about and trying to win is the day they really start to evolve. And that's because they realize that now they're they're becoming like a craftsman. They're Shape in their game. They're not interested in an instant result. You know, John Frankel, who mentioned earlier, you know, he he does he carves things, he makes things, he makes leather bags, and he'll take months doing them. And he just enjoys the process of it not being finished and just refining and refining. And it's a metaphor for how he approaches jujitsu and and how I think people can optimize their their learning, you know, is that ego management is to start actually looking at it. That this isn't about them having to be anyone. This isn't about them having to do anything. And and and another game they can play is just I'll say to them, just try not to let me do anything to you while you move into me. So move forward and try to shut down everything I do. Just try and deny me inside space. However it is, use your elbows, block me, make life difficult. Um I think that's a very different thing. I think that's a very different thing of trying to do things rather than going through an experience and just gradually progress. It's like progress is not getting submitted when you're a lower belt. That's progress. Not getting submitted, staying safe, not getting injured is progress. Controlling your breathing, using less energy is progress. And these are transferable skills that will help you in the workplace.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

You know, yeah, and it goes back to what you were talking about earlier about efficiency, right? Right. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

I just wrote that wrote that down as you said it, Jason. Look at that. Brilliant minds think alike clearly.

SPEAKER_02 45:27

Speaking of efficiency, uh, Glenn, in our um, when we talked earlier, you talked about Boss Rutin and um you talked about um I think her name was Belissa Granitch. I don't know if I'm saying that right. Yeah. Yeah. And then you took she's a clinical psychologist, I think you said, and she worked with Boss Rutin on breath work. So can you talk more like specifically about the breath work stuff that you've you've really learned about and how that breath work is so important to learn in jujitsu and in business as well?

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Yeah, and I and I think actually just for our, you know, our own psychology as well. So yeah, it's a great it's a great question. So Belissa was a child, clinical psychologist, especially children, uh child psychologists. And what she noticed, which got her into breath work, I think more deeply. I think she was doing yoga, but what really got her was just the fact that the children that were being brought to her, you know, disproportionately were breathing in a manner that she just found kind of foreign. And, you know, she said when they breathed, she noticed their shoulders would be going up and down and they were were struggling to really get enough air to talk a lot of the time. And uh essentially they were in fight or flight, you know, or what we call fight or flight. And and so that was what got her interested. And so I, you know, I went on a kind of journey with her in terms of the breath work. I did her certification, but I was reading just the other day about um Carl Jung. So, you know, Jordan Peterson quotes him a lot. He's sort of very much a kind of a Jungian, if you like. He's that kind of lineage, although I think Jung died like late 1800s or sometime around. He was he was certainly 18, he was around in the 1800s, late 1800s. And he had this thing of um, he actually I read this quote the other day that he was saying, you know, we can talk about a problem all day and we'll go through it and we'll try and rationalize it. He said, But ultimately, you know, the psychologist is going to come back to getting the person to take a deep breath and saying, you know, are you okay? And if they say no, take another deep breath and another deep breath, another deep breath. And so even back then, it was like this is the this seems to be the solution in psychology. And so you you see this situation all the time where people get themselves into fight or flight. Um, I was talking to my wife about we were talking about, you know, coming on here and you know, assessment centers. And when when kids are on graduate programs, you know, if they're going to government roles or they're going into a big corporate, they're going to go to an assessment center. And in every assessment center you ever go to, when you do enough of these, like there's a you start seeing them. There's always the blowhard who comes in and they're running their mouth and they're like the center of attention. And so you get given a problem to solve as a team, and they're the first one that, like, they're straight, they're already in fight or flight, and they're like, Yeah, well, what I think we've got this is a pretty simple problem. What we've got to do, guys, is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the the technique she went through was like, you know, my wife said this at the time, it's like you take a big deep breath and you let them say whatever they're gonna say, you assess them just like you would on a jiu-jitsu mat, or you're in a you're in a boardroom later in your career and you watch these people go. And, you know, a lot of the time it's like, well, we're on a we're on a two-hour clock. It's like, well, first off, you, you know, you let them all speak. And if this is going like going on and on and they're just talking, and there's usually one or two people dominating the conversation, it would be like, well, hang on a minute, guys. You know, we've got how long have we got for this task? You know, I imagine I've got a watch on here, I don't have one, but how long have we got for this? Just remind me, how long have we got for this task? And someone will, oh, we've got we've got 10 minutes, it might be on one of these assessment centers because they put you under pressure because they want to see the situation fail, right? They want to see what happens because then they never give you enough time at an assessment center. And they'll do this in military. They're gonna never give you will never get enough time that you need to solve this problem. What they're interested in is how you go about it given you're under this tremendous pressure. And so immediately you want somebody to be the timekeeper, right? And so you get so someone volunteers to be the timekeeper, right? So you're gonna be on the time. Fantastic. You've not said anything yet. What do you think about this, right? And you're already now establishing yourself as actually the leader in this situation by just taking the big deep breath, letting them, you know, shoot themselves off. You've you've you've already seen all their best moves by now as well, and how they're thinking about the problem. Because really, we're in if we're in an assessment center, we are in competition. And if we're in a corporate environment, we're also in a competition. That's the reality of it. You're in a competition. They're trying to get your job, you know, they want, or they want the job that, you know, you're both vying for the job above. That that that's always these games are always going on. Unless you're the unless you unless you're the billionaire sat there pumping the money in, like, you know, you're serving somebody.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

What I hear from that is the man who breathes best wins, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:16

Right. And how often do you see it in jiu-jitsu where you'll roll with some younger guy and they'll come and they'll throw everything at you. And you're just really just effectively managing the clock and managing, trying to manage their energy. You're trying to let them come out with all their inefficiency, keep yourself safe, make sure you're not getting injured, breathe more slowly than them, and ultimately you're going to win. And when when people ask Hickson, you know, about his matches with like Saulo Hibiero, you know, the roles I should say, but like Saulo, there's the famous story of Saulo going and training with him. He just won the Pan Ams at Black Belt. And Hickson, you know, Henry Aikins tells it Hickson had been out injured for six months with a torn groin muscle. And Saulo's at the gym wants to roll with him, and Hickson's kind of honor, and you know, he's Hickson. He goes down there and and and and has to roll with Saulo. And there's Saulo 25 years old in the absolute prime. There's Hickson six months out, 40 years old, or every year's torn groin muscle, hasn't rolled, hasn't trained. And you ask Hickson, you're Saulo, why Saulo lost? In Saulo's book, it says the last time I rolled with Hickson Gracie, this is one of the submissions he caught me with. And he shows this arm bar, I think, from from guard. But Hickson actually tapped Saulo to pressure. And if you when you ask Hickson about those types of roles, he'll say, the reason all these guys lost to me was because they didn't know how to breathe correctly. And they'll ask me about the arm lock, they'll ask me about the choke, he said, and I'll, you know, I'll show them, I'll show them some, I'll show them some details on what I did. But like it's probably not that different to what they knew. But the reason I beat them was they didn't manage their their heart rate. And that's because they don't know how to breathe properly.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

So how how would you translate that parallel there in in business? Like, you know, breathe, being able to breathe in business. Can you give an example of that?

SPEAKER_00 52:09

I think even if you think about your day, your day's work, like if you're if you're if you're still commuting these days, you get in the car, somebody cuts you up at the traffic lights, jumps the jumps the line, you know, all those sorts of little things that irritate us, and we get into we get really angry over it, or we can get really angry over it, and we're sat in our car, and like we're not gaining anything from it, but we're kind of like offended by their driving and how they're behaving, and we allow that to impact us. And so you're sat trying to get to work sometimes in a in a city center, and you've you've been pent up for an hour in a car just trying to get into the office or get into to see a client or wherever, you know, you can't get parked up anywhere. It's just right, or you're on a train or a subway and you're stuck like this with people, and whole experience is horrible. They're in your space, and you're just a lot of the time we're in fight or flight, like so often during our day. And then you get to you get you get into work and someone says the the wrong thing to you at the wrong time, or you literally you've not even got to your desk, and three people already are like, Have you seen the email that's just dropped in? Blah blah blah. We're immediately like bracing ourselves, you know, for like what's coming. And so again, I think that just ability to try and constantly remind ourselves to take that big belly breath and just slow everything down and just feel like, yeah, does that work? No, you know, maybe not. Let's do it again.

SPEAKER_02 53:43

Yeah, you know, that has that helped you for with with breathing in jujitsu, uh like learning how to breathe in jujitsu and breathe, even at work, like when you're in front of a classroom teaching kids, like if you hold your breath, like it's gonna be a long day, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, this is what the Stoics always say. Marcus Aurelius always says, it's not what happens to you, it's how you interpret what happens to you. And the breathing allows you to interpret it in a way that, okay, I'm bigger than this. Right. This is not a big deal. And yes, I use this funny thing was when I started jujitsu, because I was older, I started at like 50 years old. Everybody said, You're breathing. You got I'm like, my breathing, what are you talking about? I just need to bench press more, I need to do more sit-ups, I I need to match these people. My breathing, what that is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

It's the uh it's it's the rocky, rocky uh montage. We need a montage, right? And definitely, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

And when I did learn five, it probably took me until like really bluebelt, until I actually, when I'm rolling with somebody, especially like the uh the spazzy young athletic white belt, I definitely tell myself, wait a second, I want to be I said exactly what you say to myself. I want to be breathing less than he is. So whatever I need to do, you know, fight for my grips, relax, try to just keep my position. Um I'm not matching him. I want to be breathing less than him, as much of this role as I can. And sometimes I get it and I'm happy, and sometimes I don't.

SPEAKER_00 55:14

One one thing I've found with it as as well as I've kind of gone on the journey, and it's took me a long, long time to realize is there are times to actually hold your breath. For example, if and by hold the breath, I mean like really just keep breathing in as long as you possibly can. I don't mean actually truly hold it, but like breathe in way, way longer than you ever would have thought you should. And so I'll do that on triangle chokes. If I'm in a triangle choke, I fill my body up with as much air as I possibly as I brace, which is the same as powerlifters. Powerlifters do this when they're going for like a one rep max. So anacondas, darses, body triangles. I will fill my belly up with as much air as I can. I have an interesting uh thing on that. I was watching, I did a class the other day with um where I'd watched Gordon Ryan talk about escaping a body triangle and how he escapes it to the what he calls himself the wrong side, because he tells he showed some UFC commentary and the UFC black belt, whoever it was, the BJ black belt, was like, oh, you know, he can't escape this way. And Gordon Ryan Lynn cut to him and he's like, I escape that that way every single time. And so I went through this detail and there were some brilliant details of it. And then one of the bluebelts said to me, We did an isolation round of it. So we we introduced the technique, we had to go at it, and one of the one of the blue belts and said to me, He said, Oh, he said, You didn't mention breathing on this. So I just filled my belly up. He said, And to be honest, I didn't really need to do much. I did one one thing that Gordon said, and that just broke the body triangle. And I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

So I'd go Well, I love that advice. And we've got a guy, Vlad. Just listen to that name, Vlad, at our gym. And he gets you in a body triangle and you just want to die. You want, he's got long legs, he's a Russian guy. Um, and he has his wicked left. When he gets you in that body triangle. I do not tell Vlad about this, Jason. I'm gonna try that. Next time he gets me, he's a black belly, he's just a savage guy. And I'm gonna try, I'm gonna fill my belly up, but let's see. I will let you know. I will get back in touch with you and let you know. I probably won't survive, but maybe if I survive longer, I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_00 57:22

That that's the that's the key thing, right? So, like I was saying this about like Henry Aikins. I was training in Costa Rica at the Hero Academy. It's a it's a brilliant cause. Um, and they get they basically look after hundreds of local kids there. You know, it's pretty poor country, Costa Rica, and they provide jujitsu and uniforms and they get all these top instructors come in. Beautiful, it's in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, beautiful place. And uh, we'd done a couple of hours training and Henry got me in his soul stealer, which he has, you know, if you if if you're someone familiar with his instructional material and he's got a very successful online business, you know, doing these instructionals on like Hicks's approach to jujitsu from like his 12 years training with Hickson. And uh he puts people in these soul stealers. It's basically a modified scarf hold. And he puts these videos out of like how long can these black belts survive in his soul stealer? And if you're in the room, you'll literally watch him just roll with multiple degree black belts and just tap all of them to scarf hold. And they're tapping like he gets that soul. It's like uh, you know, it's like I say it's like the Bret Hart sharpshooter. Yeah, the minute it's on, you know, they're like, it's over. Everyone's like, oh, it's it's gone, right? You know, they're looking for the referee's decision, the guy's tapping, right? The pressure's horrible. Henry's, you know, not a small guy either, and he knows how to place his weight. He's it's just horrific. Wait, what's his full name? I I gotta look this up. Henry A. Dickens. Um, he's he's a really well-known instructor, like particularly for older grapplers. I think he he coached Cron a lot.

SPEAKER_02 58:55

I think Hickson's first black belt, right?

SPEAKER_00 58:57

He he he was um, I think he was Hickson. I think the claim is he was Hickson's fastest American to black belt, something like that. I think he was maybe his third third American black belt, or or s some. I know there was Dave Karmer, I think was was Hickson's, I think it was Hickson's first black belt, but like there's always controversy over who, you know, but but Henry was Henry was definitely one of the one of the early ones.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

Uh yeah, but get but getting back to that breathing, Glenn, uh, you you mentioned the scarf position, right? So getting into that quesa position and being able to know how to breathe when you're in the top on that position, you know, just that exhale and distributing your weight correctly, like through them. I remember feeling this. I had a judo instructor who was literally all Japan national champion. And he was like a hundred and probably a hundred and thirty pounds, like soaking wet, 130 pounds. And I remember when I was like a bluebelt, he got me in a Kesagatame position and like just relaxed and breathed out, and like like every single breath of air was just squeezed out of me. I could not move. And then I was like, he felt it was like a 130-pound person that felt like he was about 300 pounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:07

Yeah. It's it's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

I know what you guys can do.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

And he he got me, he got me in that. Like we'd been training a couple of hours. It's boiling hot. You know, I don't want to give my and I there is a caveat at the end of this, so I'm not giving myself, you know, too much of a you know, pat on the pat on the back. He he put me in that soul stealer, and because of the br I would have tapped immediately prior to learning to train. I mean you know, I've been at Black Belt a while even then. I'd you know, I think I was like maybe second degree, first, first, second degree at least. I think second degree. And he put me in that and I would have tapped prior to the doing the breath work without doubt.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

And he was So So your technique was to breathe like in, in, in, in, in. Is that what you did? Or did you hold it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

In that, I would go with it. In the scarf, the scarf holds kind of unique. I go with it. So if they squeeze, I exhale. They'll usually relax at some point a little bit, and then you feel. So you've got it, it's kind of you've got to breathe with their movement, really. That that's what I've kind of figured with it. And there are some techniques to it. Like if you spend time in this, I've recently realized that the biggest thing, I think, in the in this position is to get your shoulders to the mat, just like you would escape in a rear naked choke. And that does sound ridiculously simple, but that's like the best escape I've found. And I've spent so much time in it because I'm I find it's such a great position to teach people to breathe properly. Because you what you do is you tap people, you tap everyone in the room to it, then you teach them to breathe properly. And I've got like now purple belts that are like I just can't tap with that anymore. They they just their breathing's that good that that I can't tap them. But as a second degree, you know, up to you know, well, certainly as a black belt for years, you know, first degree black belt, I didn't breathe properly at all. And so I've got purple belts now that are way better than in that position, like uh are almost invincible in terms of the breathing, at least from what I can do to them. Um where before they would have tapped instantly. And I've tapped black belts, I've tapped guys at the you know the highest levels in that position, in terms of at least black belt, or they've been UFC fighters and so on. If you get them in that position, you can you can tap them to pressure. But once you teach them to breathe properly, that position changes completely. And and Henry's been good enough to go on someone. I went on a podcast and talked about this, and then someone had Henry as the next guest and who'd been in there being a soul stealer and said, Is what Glid said true? Did he survive your soul stealer? And Henry said, Yes, it is. What Henry didn't tell him was that literally once he abandoned the soul stealer, he armlocked me about five seconds later. But mount mounted me and armlocked me. But he gave I he then just tapped me out. But the point was I survived that and I survived that the I wasn't gonna tap to the pressure of the breathing. I I had to tap to him, you know, mounting me and then he was gonna break my arm, basically. So I had to obviously tap to the armlock. But like being able to control your breathing is a way more transferable skill than being able to escape an armbar. That's the thing. That's what this really I think starts to teach you is that you have way more control than you think.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

It's like your foundation of your house, you know, that that fundamental breathing is so essential to everything else. We always think about technique and skill and learning flashy techniques, but sometimes we forget about that fundamental and breathing being that fundamental foundation is is extremely important, you know. In jujitsu, like we're talking about right now in jujitsu. And I want to get back a little bit talking about that your business in in dream agility, because that being an AI platform, that is almost like the breathing in jujitsu. That AI platform is like your breathing of your business, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:52

100%. That that foundation of actually being able to look at your data depending on which type of business model you are. You've either got great data, but you've got a lot of inefficiency in it, or you don't really have real quality data at all if you're in lead generation for the most part. Your your data is so limited. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

Rank, you got anything, buddy?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:16

I've got like literally eight pages of notes.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

I know, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:21

There is no way for me to provide a summary. Man, we we've been talking for an hour and 12 minutes, and it just flew, and I really don't want it to end. I am going to have to be concise as possible to give our listener. I think it's actually, Jason, do you think it's that time? What time is it, Frank? It's your favorite time of the program, tap out time, where upon your tap out from this session, we are going to give you, wrap up nice and neatly some of the golden nuggets from our podcast. And I can have to tell you, Glenn, man, this is like you'd be such a cool guy to just have a brew with at a pub and just chat about philosophy, jujitsu, business and life. Man, this is this has been such uh such a pleasure to talk to you. So easy. Such an easy interview to do. Um, all right. So without further ado, you said something that I'm gonna shout out to all my students and all students everywhere. And Jason, you have plenty of students because you're a teacher. And it is this what you think you're going to do is usually not what you end up doing. Young people there, Clean is a living example of a guy who flowed like the water. He he went to his schooling, he had some ideas about maybe corporate America, and then he went his own path. He followed the opportunities, he was flexible, he was open to ideas. So um, to the younger people, to our younger listeners, don't put so much pressure on yourself when you're getting off on your career. The direction, have fun rowing in that direction. Maybe you'll stay that way. Maybe you'll twist and turn a little bit east and west, but it's the journey that counts. So enjoy that journey. The second thing you you said that was very interesting is you juxtaposed the two worlds of stability in the corporate, the big corporate environment, and risk in the smaller, more volatile environment. And while there's no right or wrong answer, I do appreciate that you said your heart wasn't really in the big boat. Your heart was more in the canoe that could tip over, but that was more agile. You took the you took the risk, and through that risk, you learned a lot and ultimately you end up building your own business. So the way that our listeners frame risk, we hope that you can be inspired by this and understand that risk is a good thing if you're following your passion. Right. 100%. Right. I have to just mention, and I'm gonna use this in my own head, your buddy who had the quote when people said, you really can't do that. You can't really do that. All right, so just tell me what the jail time is so I can make a decision. I love that philosophy. Tell me what's my jail time, and then we'll talk about whether I want that. Is just talk about a way to frame risk. You're not being ignorant. You're not being ignorant. Tell me what the jail time is, and then we'll make a decision. So I just I think that's one of the most I'm gonna, well, I don't know. My my students are probably a little young for that one, but I really do love that. You talked about, you gave us some really good tips. Everybody out there who owns a small business, we just got a mini seminar on free information that is very valuable. And I'm just gonna summarize it right here. Your idea is not the source of your wealth, it's the process and system that you develop around it. But if you don't believe our speaker here, if you don't believe Glenn, look at the car industry. Ford came up with all the best ideas, but after that, when it comes to sedans, Honda Accord, right? You can't beat and Camry. They took our ideas and they made better processes. The Japanese taught us that. The Kaisan. Yes, excellent, exactly that. Perfect. And that's also a good restaurant around here, too. That's good sushi. And you talked about the power of networking and your personal network and how jujitsu and open mat and going to competitions gives you that social network to not only build yourself up, but build your business up. Dead on. We know in our gym, like everybody in our gym is so cerebral and successful because it's a thinking man sport, right? I love, and this is this is applicable to all small businesses. Get all of your people, both your employees and your happy customers, to go on Google, hit the five stars, and talk about an experience. Have your have your barcode, your QR code ready for them. Anytime you get a compliment from now on, it's like, hey, your compliment and meet happy, can you please share it? Bam! That's that's worth the whole price of this entry into our podcast right there. And an overarching theme that you talked about is efficiency. And you should definitely listen to Andrew's, Andrew Valencourt's podcast. It's on official, he's an engineer, talks about efficiency all the time. When to use your energy, when to not use your energy. You would appreciate that, Glenn. So please, please look that up. And how important efficiency is, especially when you're getting a little bit older, technique and effect, being effective is better than just being a savage, right? Gosh, and I'm sorry that I'm rambling on, but I'm not going to leave any of this stuff out. It's so good. One of my favorite moments of this entire podcast was when you said that your lack of debt gave you the freedom to do the amazing things you're doing. And I want every young person before they spend $70,000 a year on a college, and I'm not saying it's always a bad decision. Sometimes it makes sense. Please understand that lack of debt is freedom. Period. Freedom to do your own business, to be your own boss, freedom to work somewhere else. And if your boss is mean to you, you can say at that moment, you either treat me with respect right now or I'm out that door. Your choice. That's what the lack of debt gives you. And I love that. My students are going to definitely listen to that. And finally, to wrap it up, the whole mindset in business and jujitsu of ego management, the healthy ego versus the unhealthy ego. BJJ can be brutal and a little bit violent sometimes, but it teaches you damn, I have a lot to learn, but it also gives you the confidence. And Sam Snow, our last guest, said he likes the balance of confidence and humility that he gained from jujitsu. You, Glenn, all also said the same thing, just in different words. And that is something that will help you on the mats. And that is something that will help you in business. And finally, I don't know, another one of my favorites. I keep saying my favorite, but I loved this too. And I completely agree with you. You said if you want to grow in business or if you want to grow on the mats, stop worrying about instant winning results and start playing. Be open, have fun, relax, enjoy, and consider growth your win. You don't need to leave with the medal. Did you grow? And if you did, you won. Right. And I just want to toss out a book called Quiet for our Glenn. You said something very interesting. You said when you're put in that assessment competitive environment, how the extrovert starts out. Here's what we're going to do. Their legs wide apart. First, let's look at the and yes, the world needs extroverts. And that's not a bad thing, right? But this book on quiet echoes some of the sentiments that you just talked about that introverts who think first, look around, listen, and then come out and speak many, many times have the greatest value. And there's a book called Quiet for introverts out there that you should read because it talks about that being an underrated skill. And I like that you brought that up because there's a lot of people that are not extroverts and they're not going to grab the reins right away. And there is value in that too. Um, and finally, I'm gonna look up the soul stealer. So when I get out of Vlad's figure four using my breathing, then I'm gonna reverse it, get him in the soul stealer, and tap out a black belt. That's what's gonna happen. Amen and hallelujah. That was one long review.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:53

Uh tapping that's the call to action for you, Frank. Learn how to use that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

Yeah. I just hope Vlad is not watching this because he's gonna destroy me if he is and laugh, and laugh with his uh Frank, Frank, no. He's so nice too. He's like, Frank, no, no, you are a beast. You are a beast, Frank. He's a very kind, he's a kind monster.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

Yeah, the call the call to action for our for our listeners too is like get this out there. Uh Glenn's this this podcast needs to get out there. So, you know, and Glenn, if you have any information that you can share with our listeners about dream agility, we would love to put any information in the description. So if you're listening to this podcast, um please check out the description. Glenn will have some information in there about dream agility, what he does for work. And uh, if you were listening to this podcast, you will see how valuable his work is.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

And let me just, if I could just cut him for one second. Glenn, who is your like what size business can use what you have to offer? What's your what's your sweet spot? What's your target market?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:02

We have everything. When we started off, it was literally mass typically massive companies spending an awful lot of money, and we've still got plenty of them. So it's everything from companies who are spending hundreds of thousands a week on Google ads through to now just increasingly an awful lot of jujitsu gyms, fitness gyms, relatively small, relatively small lead generation businesses. So we span the whole, the whole sphere, really.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:29

You have the whole gamut. Yeah. So like a small business in Dudley, Massachusetts, if they were interested in in learning how you can help them market and become bigger, better, more efficient, that would make sense for them to connect with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:43

Yeah, we we have a case studies page on dreamagility.com. So there's there's case studies in there. It does start with some of the bigger companies we work with, like Galleries Lafayette, who are um the kind of like Parisian Bloomingdales. Uh if you ever go to Paris, Galleries Lafayette is a uh Gallery Lafayette is a place to go, without doubt. Take take your wife there. Uh or maybe maybe don't, because it's pretty luxurious. You you you want a big credit card if you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:12

But yeah, I'd probably end up going to Target.

unknown 1:15:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:17

But yeah, so so it's it's it's everything. So some of the but there's there's also case studies on there of of of gyms that we've worked with and smaller businesses, and it's literally everything from engineering companies, you you name it. Uh, we've got power generator companies down in Australia that we work with. So we're global. Most of our clients are in the US. Um, but we're we are all all over the shop, as we say, in the in the UK. We're always interested. And and the other thing I I find as well, uh, and I've I've been um I've actually signed up with we we haven't mentioned uh uh Keith Ferratsi, I think it's how you pronounce it, but yes, never eat alone. Always talk about Keith Ferrazzi.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:55

I always talk about his Beyond City. This is what nobody does it alone. Yeah, nobody does it alone.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:00

So so this is it. So so I've joined his Beyond Connections, and it's just a it's just a great remark. This is online programming for networking, it's been phenomenal already. Uh the number of people that I've not even started his formal course, and I I must have like connected to a hundred plus people on LinkedIn and had multiple WebEx conversations with people. You know, we're now you know, it's almost like you can turbocharge what he's talked about because we can jump on a Zoom, right? Like like we're doing. Right. So we yeah, I've been I've networked like crazy, course hasn't even begun yet. Um and and so for you. So you're taking his course. Yeah, I'm taking his course, and it it's been it's been absolutely fascinating because you know, one of his main things is like, you know, it doesn't really cost any of us, you know, half an hour on a call. If somebody like, I don't mind if somebody's too small for us right now, or you know, it doesn't really matter. If I can if I can help them along the journey, I know that at some point, like I've had so many conversations where I've helped somebody, you know, even five minutes given them some tips and they've referred somebody else onto me, and it's been worth a fortune, you know. Right. Literally just that referral, just that five minutes of giving someone your you know, undivided attention and time to help them and and maybe think about like like the things of Google Maps, like getting your your Facebook recommendations, getting people who are serving you, getting people who've worked with you in the past. My my wife got a friend of hers a job where she just helped her with her LinkedIn. And, you know, it was quite incredible the the leap that um this individual made in terms of her career by literally my wife just spending a bit of time on her LinkedIn profile. And then somebody she used to work with went, My God, I didn't realize you had all this experience. She basically got effectively headhunted by somebody who she used to work with who didn't realize she had anywhere near the experience she had. And that was just my wife just spending time getting her talking to her about what should be on her LinkedIn profile, teasing out of her things that she'd done that she'd never even thought were relevant. And so I'm a big fan of, you know, if you've got anybody in Dudley, Massachusetts that wants to have a, you know, a quick Zoom call, whatever their business is, I'm I'm always interested in, you know, business. I always learn from people as well. So it's a you know, it's always a two-way. I I discovered, I don't know if you guys play paddle, but one of the things that's come out of Beyond Connections is how fast this paddle market is growing in the UK. It's kind of like a kind of like tennis to me. I don't really that's probably pickleball.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:32

I bet it's pickleball.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:34

It's exploding. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:36

It's getting big here too. It's getting really big.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:38

I've learned a ton just from having a a chat with a guy here who's kind of leading in that area. And you, you know, you learn about an entirely new market, how people are spending their time. You know, I didn't know this was such a thing. And then I'm on Instagram this morning. I'm seeing guys who train at one of our other uh gyms down the road, and when they're not doing jujitsu, they're they're playing pat they're playing paddle or pickleball, as you you caught guys call it. Yeah. So it's amazing how you you see this thing suddenly, you're like, oh wow, that's what they're doing, and you're aware of it. And and I feel like you grow through your this is you know another aspect of the the social network. You grow through growing your social network and and having conversations with people and learning about them and and helping them and and and so on.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:20

And that's what our podcast does, right? That's a piece of that whole process.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:23

100% community-driven growth.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:26

Yes, yes, and givers gain. Don't forget that. Givers gain always. We're giving a lot, and we'd like to say thank you. First of all, thank you so much, Glenn, for thank you. Thank you for your fascinating, fascinating conversation. It was so much fun. Thank you. It just flew like that, went like that. Um, you're gonna stay in touch with us, I hope. Yeah, 100%. No, and you have friends here in the United States. So make sure you use your connection, right? Come come visit us. I need to get back on. And you can write off the whole trip because you have business here. Write off the trip. Let's go into Boston and have some fun. To our listeners, please do us a favor. If you know anybody who's business, who has a business, who's trying to grow it, send them over to the link, Glenn's link, which is included in this podcast. Send them over, have them look at some of their case studies and their advice. Also, please share this with every single person you know. Put it on your Facebook, share it with people you think will get use out of it, and help us continue to grow. Look at us. We're in England. That's where we are now because of our listeners, right? They propped us up and here we are. So we love you, our listeners. Thank you both for a great, great conversation. Thank you. And I hope you enjoy your weekend.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:40

Enjoy it, yeah. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:43

Thank you, Glenn. All right, have a good day, guys. All right, peace out. Peace out.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:48

Well, there you have it. As we wrap up today's episode, let's take a moment to reflect on the powerful connections we've explored between the art of jujitsu and your career. In your workplace and in jujitsu, you learn to adapt and navigate challenges. So remember that persistence and the courage to embrace the lessons you learned are the keys to your growth both on the map and in your career.