Episode 48: One Community. One Mission. One Powerful Jiu-Jitsu Movement

Discover how Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can transform lives and communities! In this episode of the Career Jitsu Podcast, we chat with Ray Freeman, founder of One Community Jiu Jitsu, about his mission to make BJJ accessible to everyone. Learn how Jiu-Jitsu not only builds physical skills but also fosters mental resilience and community spirit.

Key takeaways:

• Ray's journey from foster care to brown belt in BJJ
• The impact of Jiu-Jitsu on mental health and trauma recovery
• How One Community Jiu Jitsu is changing lives in underserved areas
• The importance of humility and emotional control in martial arts
• Future plans for expanding Jiu-Jitsu programs in schools

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Ray's background and journey in BJJ
02:00 The role of Jiu-Jitsu in mental health
06:00 Starting One Community Jiu Jitsu
10:00 Impact on kids and community
15:00 Future goals and vision

Check out Ray Freeman's Non-Profit Jiu-Jitsu Club: Www.onecommunitybjj.com

RayFreemanBJJ on social medias like instagram/tiktok
Www.givebutter.com/OCBJJ is our donation link

What's your biggest challenge with finding accessible martial arts programs? Drop it in the comments!

#JiuJitsu #MentalHealth #Community

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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. This episode is brought to you by Nine Lives Jiu-Jitsu. Nine Lives Jiu Jitsu was built for people who understand what it means to tap, reset, and come back stronger. Cats have nine lives and grapplers do too. Since 2013, 9 Lives has been creating premium classically designed gis for practitioners who respect the art, embrace the grind, and truly love the game. 9 Lives Jiu Jitsu has a clean design and a timeless style built for the mats. Because when you look good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you roll good. Check them out at 9LivesBJJ.com and enter the promo code Career Jitsu to receive 25% off your first order. Welcome to the Career Jitsu podcast. We are so excited here today. We have Ray Freeman. I am gonna start with asking our friends, our listeners. Most people think of jujitsu as changing lives on the mat, but have you ever really thought about jujitsu changing entire communities? Because this gentleman is changing entire communities because uh he is a non-profit, founder of a nonprofit organization called One Community Jiu Jitsu. One community jujitsu, he will get into what it is um and explain what his mission and his vision is with his club. So we are excited to talk about that. And we're also excited to talk about the fact that um he just got his brown belt in BJJ. Raise the roof! Raise the roof. He is a brown belt in BJJ uh under Renato Tavares of the Carlson Gracie lineage. Um, so uh congratulations on your brown belt, Ray, and welcome to our career jitsu podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Much appreciated, brother. Much appreciated. Short correction there. I actually got promoted under the Leo Picanya lineage. Fras Azab promoted me, but nonetheless, it's all good, man. I certainly appreciate the congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

It's been a long 11 years in the world. It is, it is definitely time to celebrate, Ray. That's a wonderful accomplishment. And a lot of us are just, you know, trying to get there, and it's good to see people get there, and that's an inspiration for us. I am as a teacher, I'm a high school teacher. One of the things you learn as a high school teacher is that there's no such thing as a bad kid. There's such things as a kid who has had bad circumstances, but little people, kids, are really wonderful creatures. And if you can give them a way out at a young age, it's one of the biggest gifts you can give. So I am so excited to hear about your journey. But before we jump into what you do with one community jujitsu club, I'd like you to tell our listeners how you got introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu 11 years ago. What was it that clicked you into doing it? What was your initial feeling about it when you went? Some of your ups and downs, and what how'd you get to your brown belt? A little of that journey, and then we'll bring in how that then blossomed into one community. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I'll try to keep it as short as possible, but it's a pretty long story. So um I started in 2015. Um, but I was a fan of MMA for about eight years, you know, prior. I I saw the rise of you know, Rhonda Rousey. I came in with Brock Lesnar. I was a fan of, you know, pro wrestling. I came into MMA with Brock Lesnar and saw the rise of Anderson Silva and all those guys. Um in 2015, I was gaining a lot of weight, you know, settling down with my my girlfriend at the time, current wife, and she's a great cook. So she was feeding me good food, man. I was gaining a lot of weight, and I'm only 5'6. I was approaching 210 pounds. And I was like, I gotta do something to you know, manage this weight. And, you know, be being a fan of MMA, figured I'd try judo, was actually what I wanted to learn because I was inspired by Rhonda, just finishing people like instantly. One minute it was her fight. It's like, that's what I want to do. I don't want to be in this for a long time. And I walked into a jujitsu gym that was having a private lesson. A soccer mom was getting her private lesson. The coach told me to jump in there and see how I did, and quickly, within seconds, she jumped on my back, choked me. That happened three times in a row. I was instantly humbled. And the feeling that I had was I never want to feel like that again. Uh, and I was instantly, instantly humbled. And I was like, man, I have to learn this, or else, like, I'm super vulnerable. And so that's what really created that initial spark. About six months of training is when the real light bulb went off. So a little bit more background. I grew up in foster care. My mother lost her parental rights when I was 12 years old. It sent me and my sisters into the foster care system. And when I aged out of foster care, I carried a lot of trauma into my adulthood. And when I was at that six-month mark in jujitsu, I started to realize what it was doing for my mental right, like helping me with the traumas, letting me know that anger was not gonna be the issue out of my situation, letting me know that being sorry for myself and sad for myself was not gonna be the answer of that situation. Even though those feelings are all valid, how can I say? I think there was one day on the mats where I was literally like being submitted, and I felt this anger and sadness about the helplessness. But I also realized that that wasn't gonna help me in that situation, and that's when it clicked for my traumas, right? For my traumas in in foster care. And so two years more of training, I got my blue belt, and uh a couple years after that, my initial gym, American Top Team HD, here in Kansas City, he closed down, and when they closed down, I realized that Kansas City, Kansas, a city of a hundred and seventy thousand people, had no Brazilian jujitsu spaces at all. Couldn't believe it. But then I also realized that why they didn't have a jiu-jitsu space. Jiu Jitsu is very affluent, and when you look at Kansas City, the the demographics, the average income for a household is right around thirty thousand dollars. It doesn't leave a whole lot of expendable income to pay the average memberships in the KC Metro, which are approaching$200 a month right now. And that's that's kind of the the origins of one community jujitsu club. That's kind of how I got really my initial martial arts in me. Like that's where it came less of me training jujitsu and more of me becoming a martial artist is where I started giving back to my community. And um, yeah, that's how one community jujitsu club.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

So so tell us about one jujitsu community. You have your own gym, your own mats, and then you get sponsors to you know, obviously you have costs involved, so you get local sponsors to help. How do you pick the kids? How many kids do you have? Tell us about the genesis of this idea from seedling to where it is now. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

The genesis, you know, it it all started as an idea of like, man, if we can have jujitsu in schools, then maybe like we can reduce some of the high behaviors we're seeing. Maybe we see less school shootings, maybe we see less fighting. That was kind of my thought. Is like maybe these these kids that are committing these crimes, they don't have that sense of belonging. Because I know I experienced that as I moved from home to home in foster care. And so I started a GoFundMe and we raised our initial$5,000 capital to host free jiu-jitsu classes. I made an agreement with the Catholic Church to let us hold classes in there. They had a space in an abandoned elementary school building. So if you could think of a classroom from 20s, uh elementary school classroom from 1920s, still with chalkboard on the wall and everything. That's literally our our origin space. 700 square feet. Once you get about 12 bodies in there, it's pretty full. And we just ran with that for about four years until we grow to our new space or or the space that we're in now, which is at Turner Wreck. It's a little bit bigger, closer to about 2,000 square feet. And in that space, we can fit about 30 kids before it starts to feel full. And more recently, we've established partnerships with the public school system. So we are in Lindbergh Elementary School and we're hosting 22 students there right after school. They leave their classroom, they have their ghiz, and we have instructors deployed to that location. Because again, we're in an area that doesn't have jiu-jitsu, right? We deploy guys from the suburbs of Kansas City to these locations. We pay them to be there and and teach these kids jujitsu, and it's been working for two years.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Damn, that is quite a story. How you had the idea. You said something that really clicked with me. You said, first of all, that uh you've been through some difficult times and that jujitsu was your mental therapy. I can't tell you how many guests that we've had on this show that have said that exact thing. That jujitsu is my therapy, it's my way to get it's my way to handle my issues in a healthy way. If I miss it, my mental state goes down. And the other thing that you said that I thought was interesting is like everybody else the first time you started jujitsu was it like opening up a can of instant humble. Instant that that woman who tapped you out three times, you're like, holy crap, you know, that is like magic. And I think a lot of us have ha share that experience. You go in and it either turns people away, like, oh, I don't want to do this, I don't want to, I don't want to get my ass kicked every day, or people come in and say, I wanna, I wanna know your powers. I want to learn that. So I so you you took those two things, two things that are gonna help these kids, right? You have to be humble, you can't be angry and bullying, and you need mental therapy. And that's a what I don't want to say, I hate the word one size fits all, but in a kind of in a weird sense, it is a one size fits all. It becomes what you needed. What you get from jujitsu is different from than what Jason gets and different from me, but it helps all of us deal with whatever problems we're dealing with, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

This is why I think jujitsu is invaluable. Here's the thing, man. I get, and I'm not blaming and I don't blame these, you know, jujitsu gyms that make their money. That's how jujitsu's operated internally. But I truly think that jujitsu is so valuable that it's invaluable. We need to get this widespread. I think that it would be great if we start with this, you know, from the age of four or five years old and grow with these tools to not only handle ourselves physically, but to handle ourselves emotionally, mentally. How do we interact socially? Like kids, we really aren't learning that. And the humility factor, I gotta hit on that because you usually don't hear people talking about that until they come out of jail or they come out of prison. They're talking about, oh, I wish I would have learned things differently, or they have a severe accident or or or something horrible happens to them, right? I feel like jujitsu is one of the only activities that we get to experience as humans that gives us that stuff that we that those guys are learning without the severe consequences. Although we have severe consequences in jiu-jitsu. It's not prison, it's not death, it's not, you know, being medically, you know, i in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

The humility thing is so important. There is uh a student, one of my students came to me and she's in an AP class, and she sh she she does she's smart, she does great in the class, but there's a kid who's a total genius in the class that tells her things like our class average, because the c classes kind of compete for class average, our class average would be so much higher without you. Why are you even in this class? And this kid gets like hundreds all the time. This is an example of a kid who's very smart, he's a great student, but if he took jujitsu, he would never say that in an academic setting because he would know because he would have been taught the jujitsu. And think of the ripple effect of that. This poor girl now who's proud that she's getting her low 90s, high 80s, is now feeling like she's dragging the class down because there's not the element of humility in there. So I love that you're you're you're you're working on this with kids. Jason, I mean, you know this because you teach you teach kids all the time and you always teach them about mental jujitsu. I love Jason does this for the kids. He says, We're gonna learn jujitsu, but we're gonna learn mental jujitsu, that social, emotional, humility, kindness. So, Jason, you can see this connection.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah, I think the beauty, you know, the beauty of jujitsu is that it knows no boundaries. You know, I think that I love the story that you used, Ray, about how you started and you just contacted a church and you said you found like the basement of a church and it was like chalkboards written on the walls or what uh chalk on the walls or whatever. Um, and I'm just like, I was envisioning that in my head and just thinking to myself, how beautiful is jujitsu to like be able to like start like that. You know, you hear of stories like of somebody walking into some academy that has these beautiful mats and has such an amazing facility and a professional facility, and you think, wow, I want to join this school. But you don't hear about stories about, you know, finding the love of jiu-jitsu and finding the value of jujitsu from something that started with uh almost nothing, you know? It's such a beautiful story. And I think it ties in with your mission, Ray. I really love the mission of One Community Jiu-Jitsu, in the sense that, you know, you're getting you're getting a chance to make changes in kids' lives that normally wouldn't be able to experience um the beauty of jujitsu, you know? You know, I personally feel, I don't know if you feel the same way about this, Frank and Ray, but I feel like schools in general, they're failing. They are failing kids in respect, confidence, and discipline.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, you know?

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah. And you're finding a solution for that. You're finding a problem, honing in on that problem and finding a solution for it.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah, I think the school, you know, has American school systems been so systematic for so long that there's been so many rules, so many things that have been written that kind of ties some of these teachers and principals, it kind of ties their hands a little bit. And I I've kind of gotten that sentiment from some of the admin that I work with. Is like, and I think that's why they lean into our program to help, is we are an after-school entity. Like, we aren't the schools, although we are taking the mats and bringing jujitsu into the schools. I clearly explain to the parents and the students, this is not school. Like, we are doing jujitsu and you're learning lessons that you are gonna take. You're learning lessons that you're gonna take into school, but this is we are in school right now. Like you're learning jujitsu, and you need to act accordingly. Like we make our kids, you know, take their shoes off before they get onto the mats. We we take breathing exercises, we bow in, we line up, we we respectfully shake hands after class, we we treat each each other kindly as we're doing technique, and we talk about how to apply that during their school day.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

That is I I want, I hope everybody, all of our listeners are are are hearing this, and I hope this sparks somebody else in the educational field to consider doing something like this in their area because you said it, access. It's an access thing. Other things, other activities, even in you know, a lower socioeconomic strata, you you can still get. But you're right, jujitsu is expensive because the mats are expensive, because you you haven't it's it's it's not expensive because gym owners are hiking up prices. It's the cost of having a gym, insurance, the mats, the facility, the instructors. There's so many, it's a it's a high-level sport. So for you to be able to have the resourcefulness, and like Jason, I love your point about him having no place to go, he goes to the Catholic Church. That is exactly what you learn in jujitsu. You learn to work with what you have, right? If you're not a big person, well, you learn learn to work on maybe butterfly guard because that's gonna help you as a smaller person, right? If you're not a fast person, you learn to use pressure passing instead of regular, you know, the cartwheel pass or the sumo pass.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

So do you feel like your jujitsu training helped you be more resourceful in in then taking on these challenges?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Brother, there's no way I'm doing any of this without jujitsu. Even a inkling of that's that's honestly the scary thing to me because I truly don't know what my life looks like without jujitsu. I don't I know I don't start a business, I know I don't get physically fit, I know I still don't have a healthy way to deal with my traumas. And it scares me thinking like, what would have happened if I didn't find jujitsu? Like, that's the only way I was able to have the gumption to even try this. Dude, I was a blue belt when I started One Community Jiu-Jitsu Club, right? Like, think of the imposter syndrome I had to get through to say, I'm gonna lay match down, I'm gonna teach classes and to all these white belts, right? Because in my head, if it wasn't me, it wasn't gonna ever happen. In my head, a blue belt can pass on a lot of knowledge to a lot of white belts. And that's kind of how it began.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

So tell us a little bit about how students find you. Can you tell us a story about a student or two that like how do they find you? Do they go for total free? Or is there like if you're a rich kid, you don't you don't have you have to pay whatever$150 a month? If you're like semi-poor, you gotta pay$70 a month. And if you're poor, poor, you get to go for free. How does it work like that? And can you talk about a couple of kids that maybe you are able to turn around in their life, some of the challenges they're facing?

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Yeah, sure thing. So right now, we are currently operating our in-school programs are 100% free to the kids. Our community center program is$25 a month to the kids. Wow. Yeah. That's so and that's really just to make sure that they have a little bit of accountability piece, right? Just show up. One thing that we realized in six years of doing this was sometimes with the community center programs, people would not show up. They would sign up, but they wouldn't show up. And so that little bit of accountability really helped make sure they at least showed up.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

A little skin in the game, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Literally, right? And you you and I know$25 for jujitsu is literally like it's literally free.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

It's just a token. It's quite literally basically saying that, yeah, I'm really gonna come. I'm really gonna come to class. So otherwise I'm not gonna spend$25.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Absolutely. But the in-school program is 100% free as of right now to the kids. Um and more recently, we are looking to partner with another nonprofit on a cohort space, um, something that really isn't available here in Kansas City, Kansas. Uh, just to give you a little overview 20,000 square feet of space. The other nonprofit already focuses on boxing and s and strength and conditioning, so sports performance. They're adding batting cages for baseball guys, a golf simulator, and our jiu-jitsu program is going in there. So this Wow. I know, dude.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

They they share your vision. They do this, they have sponsors to help the kids get in. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

It's just their niche has always been boxing and sports performance. We've always kind of talked about how to collaborate over the last years, and now this opportunity is rising that we can both kind of help each other. It'll be a good fundraising mechanism for both of our. our missions because we'll have such a value proposition that we'll actually be able to charge a a typical membership, especially to people that can afford it.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Right. You'll have like a hybrid approach. And yeah, the ground belt. Is that is that in your area? Is that like drivable from where you're teaching right now? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

So it's actually about three blocks away from my house, which is a nice perk. From our other locals.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

So you could walk you could I could ride a bike, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Walk, ride a bike, exactly. And our other locations, so it's all within about 10 to 15 minutes drive. Which is a big hurdle for a lot of our families transportation. And so we're trying to figure out solutions to work around that. And a lot of that is partnering with the schools on identifying the kids that really could benefit from having a bus. Pick them up from school take them to their facility. That way they can get the services they need. And could you tell us a little bit about like uh an experience with a kid that you might have had that little wealthier man there's there's so many but um I mean one thing the one that I'm thinking of is a little girl I call her the anaconda and uh anaconda she's only been training probably about eight or nine months. She will tell you and her mom will tell you they've tried every sport everything and she nothing stuck. She hates throwing balls she hates kicking balls she doesn't like ball at all. But when she started jujitsu she was like this is the best thing ever and I mean she's grown so much on the mats that she's gotten a leadership role I went ahead and promoted her to gray and white belt after she competed twice this past year and took gold in one and really just showing that that potential right that potential for for the growth of these students. Another kid that I want to talk about is a student who he's on the spectrum and he's been with us for about two years now. And this kid with about the six month mark they shared a story where the kid was helping his grandpa move some things out of the house and he went to take a step off the porch and fell. When he fell he did a breakfall and he rolled through it and he he told me that that helped him not get hurt in that situation. And I mean so we have mental components and we have physical components I tell people the warm-ups have helped me in my day-to-day life way more than uh arm rolling. You know what I mean? But those are my two experiences.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Man yeah I mean those are those are great stories you know and I think you know one other part of that is the social and emotional control that these kids get too um you know I think it's great to hear stories of people winning trophies and gaining the physical skills that they need. But I and I think but I think like you know your your kids a lot of your kids are coming from you know maybe they're coming from trauma too or they're coming from some experiences that aren't too too good at home. And it's their outlet, right? It's their outlet to get away from that and be able to uh be in an environment where they're working with other kids and they're being physical with other kids but they're learning how to control their emotions because you know I I think like controlling your emotions is more important than anything really if you can control you can learn all the physical skills in the world but if you can't control your emotions there's always going to be problems you know they say 10% of life is what happens to you the other 90% is how you react damn that is the Marcus Aurelius stoic philosophy that I absolutely love.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

And the funny thing I just wrote it down it's right here in my notes Marcus Aurelius because I'm getting that vibe from you is do you do you follow that philosophy?

SPEAKER_00 26:06

I've honestly never heard that name but I'm gonna look it up after this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

You gotta look it up you got Marcus Aurelius Meditations and to all of our listeners this book is exactly revolved around that philosophy you can't control what happens to you but you can control how you choose to react to it and how you choose to frame it as either a failure or an opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

So bam yeah you got to get that book you got to get that book I will yeah and teaching kids um those things you know those are those are things that that will really stick with them I want to play devil's advocate a little bit here Ray um so I'm an administrator so let's let's assume I'm a I'm a school administrator and you come to me about your program and you start telling me about your program and my response to you is Ray, I'm sorry my kids come from a lot of trauma and I'm afraid to have jujitsu in my school because if you're teaching these kids how to choke each other, I can't be having that in my school. I can't be having kids running around my school choking each other. What's your response to that?

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Yeah well so I always that's when I I'll share for one my personal story which I think it goes a long way but then I also explain to them that this is what we'll what we'll do in collaboration is we will track those behaviors throughout our program. Our goal is certainly to reduce those behaviors especially based off of my personal experience. And uh you know if if if if given the chance we would love to plan A come in here during the school day and teach these kids how to deal with their emotions and and use jujitsu to do that. Plan B would be to run an after school program targeting those kids that you think have those high behaviors. Plan C would be to bust them to one of our already established locations. And so that's how I would approach it really makes it difficult for the admin to say no, especially if I've already done the fundraising components. If if I'm being honest Jason that's the biggest hurdle they don't usually have too much quarrels with learning jujitsu. It's how do we pay the the the instructors how do we get the mats how do we cover the insurance those are the the bigger components that I've noticed over the years around so they're not concerned about liability? Absolutely but you know that's an easy fix. We cover our own insurance and then we add them as a um uh as an additional insured so we cover a million dollar policy and and that usually kind of alleviates those pains.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Wow that's smart that's very smart and also I mean you could make the argument look at football how violent football is way more football way more violent way more injuries look at soccer a lot of injuries in soccer look at lacrosse that's a really rough sport where checking is total it's hitting people with sticks is totally allowed look at schools who have gymnastics that's freaking dangerous schools that do swimming that you know so and yeah wrestling wrestling is at every school wrestling if you if you learn to slam somebody and you're not on a mat, you slam them on the pavement that's worse than getting an arm bar. You know so you could definitely make the case that let's look at every sport they're all have a component of controlled violence that we learned from one of our other uh podcasts the word of control violence so this is nothing different. Yeah I'd say we have more control with more control. It's more control yeah and honing in on that too right when you're when you're going to sell the this program um to administrators I think focusing mostly on the benefits of jujitsu will kind of outweigh those fears right absolutely absolutely the other thing is you can also say like a quick little snippet would be you can tap out of anything that's uncomfortable. A running back cannot tap out. When they're running and some other guy's coming at them head down there's no tapping out you're having your collision you you could tap out anytime you want. And also in jujitsu we talk to our partners hey you're a lot bigger than me you mind going let we're gonna do a flow roll you can't do that in football you can't do that in wrestling you can't do that anywhere else it's modified to fit the needs of the person right it is so you have a lot of arguments on your side yeah and the one million dollar policy you know money money does talk very loud.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

No it does brother it does surprisingly enough that policy doesn't it's not the most expensive in the world I mean it's I think it costs us about 1500 bucks a year excuse me which I mean is is a substantial amount of money but to to to alleviate the pains of the schools it's yeah yeah it's worth it it's a good ROI on that.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

Yeah definitely nice so Jason how we do one on time I want to make sure that we don't with we're doing okay I got a I got a question that uh I thought would be I mean it might be a little bit tough to like answer spontaneously um but if you can look at where one community jujitsu is going and where it could be like 30, 20, 30, 40 years from now, what's the legacy that you would like to leave behind um in the in your jujitsu club you know man uh that's an easy one actually for me.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

So okay good good I've seen on social medias you know there's been a list of things that people think that should be taught in schools. On that list is things like home skills, accounting taxes, self-defense is one of those things. And I've heard that so many times over the years that I feel like jujitsu is the answer. It is one of those things that should be taught in schools. That is the legacy of one community jujitsu club I think that if we are successful in our mission one community jujitsu club would eventually cease to exist. That's what I pray for like I think most nonprofits this is where the nonprofits go wrong a lot of nonprofits are supposed to be on a mission. If you're on a mission you're supposed to solve that mission. Our mission is to get jujitsu in schools very simple. Once jujitsu is in schools nationwide we don't need to be involved anymore. Like why do we still need to be taking people's money? That's the legacy of One Community Jiu Jitsu Club in 30, 40 years. We hopefully were the seed that was planted to get jujitsu in school that actionable thing to get not not some Facebook post. Like we actually put people in those spaces and we gave it a a true effort like I dove two feet first into this thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:58

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

No ego here he's trying to he's trying to work himself out of a job man you are an unselfish guy Ray very impressive.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

I don't know you know it's it's it has its flaws but you know I I wouldn't have it any other way man I one thing I I like to mention is that I am a a man who has re-introduced himself into faith over the last year and a half I have a pretty good relationship with God now and I think that that's been really helpful in just spearheading this whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 33:31

You finding a figure of purpose you know and when you have a yeah when you have a purpose and a passion together the two combined is going to make you successful for sure.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Absolutely Jason do you have any other questions because I want to make sure uh we get our tap in time in well let's make this official Frank what time is it Frank? Let me check my watch good God it's your favorite time of the program tap out time where we wrap up some of the major thoughts and ideas of our podcast and just hand it to you gift wrapped with a bow. So let's start out first of all Ray from just a broad perspective I want to say that I know for a fact there are listeners out here who have suffered trauma like you opened up and said you know you're a foster care kid you probably have some rough stories about what you went through. You could have chosen to be a victim you could have chosen and totally justified and you could have just you know melted away and had a crappy life. But instead you didn't take that perspective you built yourself up. Not only did you build yourself up, once you could take care of yourself, then you started taking care of other people. So from a broad perspective that's something that I think every listener here is going to appreciate because a lot of our listeners probably have had things happen to them and this is somebody they can look at like wow okay you did it so why can't I do it? Love that some of the things that you talked about were the jujitsu being a mental therapy I cannot repeat this enough to people if you're struggling in life get on a jujitsu mat. It really does solve your problems. I know it sounds almost cultish, but it's just simple get on there you you make a community these people are your friends you joke around you have fun you laugh you roll when you're rolling whatever's happening at home or at your job it has no room there. It doesn't fit your brain is like no no I've got I got to get that wrist I got to grab that wrist I got to pull on that wrist and if you get it you get it if you don't you laugh about at the end ah I couldn't get your wrist right so I think that's great that you did that I love the that you I love that you use the word I'm I'm a big vocab guy and there's there's a difference between valuable and invaluable. Invaluable is the the the biggest the best the superlative and you said that jujitsu is it was invaluable to you because it changed your life and you don't know where you would be without it and you're not the only one. We've had so many guests on here who have said the same thing. I don't know where I would there was a guy that we had that said I would probably be I I grew up in a drug lord house and I'd probably be my own drug lord by now, you know, with a safe and drugs and so it is invaluable and everybody can tap into it at their own measure. One of the things I love about you is that not only did you not classify yourself as a victim when you were when your business idea was dirt poor no funding. Well you had a go fund me you got some seed money and then you went you went out to the community and said hey this is what we're doing. Let's get involved let's help kids that is resourcefulness and that is a skill that we build in jujitsu and that helps you in life love that another thing and really not about jujitsu but that I don't want to come off as preachy here but you mentioned the word access and I think it's so important because there's a lot of communities that are just underserved not out they don't have access to capital they don't have access to the best education they don't have access to anything and they're all crumpled together like I don't have any connections you don't have any connections he doesn't have any connections and I think it's something for all of our listeners to think of in a broad perspective with the underserved communities how can we give them access to the things they don't have and definitely BJJ is one of them. So you took your piece and you ran with it and that's awesome. I wanted to say also because you do um like you do emit the vibes of stoic philosophy and Marcus Aurelius another thing that he always talked about is if you live your life according to your principles when it's your time to die it's gonna be easy to die. And and he always says what are your principles a you have to take care of your mind your body and B, what can you do for mankind? If you turn to die and the ship comes to port to pick you up to take you away to the pearly gates or whatever you believe you're gonna be like yeah I'm good. Yeah let's go. And since you're a man of God yeah if there is are the pearly gates and Saint Peter is there, you know, he's gonna see what you did. Yeah you're getting in so I'm gonna I'm gonna ride on your coattails because I know you now so I'm gonna do that. Just grab Wants and Ray's belt and just that's right on that new black belt. Yeah well let's let's hope by that time it's a black belt because we hope you live a long time. And you know the last thing and a call to action to our our listeners is let's try to get jujitsu into schools. I love your vision I agree with your vision wrestling's in schools and nobody dies on that. And that wrestling is definitely more dangerous than jujitsu in my opinion. I agree you're getting slammed. Like we don't our takedowns you can do nice little trips and hold on to them as they go down. So by the way total respect I love wrestling I fear wrestlers. Yeah I total respect to them. Yeah but they could do it and so could we so let's do this listeners our listeners get on our podcast get on our TikTok our Facebook and write down what you think we can do to get this done administrators and teachers I'm a teacher. Let's talk about it. Let's get it going. Let's get this for young people it will teach them to be humble, confident, kind, caring. It all comes from that and you gave us two great examples of two kids that are getting that right now in your program. So I'm gonna wrap this long tap out time up with a big thank you for representing jujitsu the philosophy and taking care of the little people the kids those cute little humans who just need some love. What else are we here? We gotta make sure that's it. Amen. And one last thing we are going to put a link at the bottom of this so you know we don't know we have listeners all over a lot in Australia a lot in Europe. Some of our listeners are probably rich. Hey rich listeners why don't you click on the link and maybe do a little donation if you'd like to to Ray to his community jujitsu club and help him out help out a kid and if you do that if you do that Ray will tell us and we'll give you some props we'll give you some unless you want to be anonymous that's fine. If you want props we'll give you props on our on our social media which you deserve help a kid five dollars one dollar now I sound like a telemarketer but any anything helps and Ray would totally appreciate it and so would all of his kids you have like what 30 kids now in your in your dojo oh well we we have about 80 kids right now we're serving between the three different locations yeah and we're doing it all now on a budget of less than$50,000. So anything definitely helps anything helps guys so we're gonna put that link and that's that is our only call to action today you don't have to share us you don't have to drop hearts we always ask you to do that. You don't have to send us to anybody just click on his link give them a little love and appreciate it. That would be great.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Thank you guys it starts with just it starts with just one small community you know like you did and ends up turning into larger communities. You know our podcast is reaching now 70 different countries. So I don't think yeah so I I think this podcast is going to reach a lot more people than you realize Ray. So thank you so much for your time.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Man I appreciate you guys thank you man I and I know we're gonna see each other on the mats at some point. I can't wait for it.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Yes yeah we we want to test out that brown belt definitely all right listen big hug for you we're giving you a big hug right now's gonna be Frank's gonna be like I'm not in Kansas anymore no I'm gonna be in a world of hurt I know that but I'm gonna burn so much clock you're only gonna have like one minute to tap me.

SPEAKER_02 42:12

All right listen I know you have another meeting take care bye 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.