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[Music]
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This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
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Brian Kramer and Isaac, Tua Efe. How are y'all doing? I feel like I have to say it like that every time.
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Tua Efe. How did I say it?
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Tua Efe. Way more accurate than most people do, so I appreciate everyone.
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I feel like I'm doing the Haka every time I say your name, which is not like an actual thing.
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I like to greet him with it, like, "Hey, let me just get to see you."
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There we go. People look at us really funny at church when we do things like that to each other.
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You should make a Jesus and jiu-jitsu shirt that has the pronunciation of your name on it.
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Yeah. Just for no reason.
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I thought you were going to say, like, a Paulinee Simoan tribal or something, which, but I like that.
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That's fine.
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Tribal? We, I know that those are for armbands for red nicks, like that.
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Those are armband tattoos, but no, we got the crew from Jesus and jiu-jitsu up in the studio.
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Yeah, man.
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Hey, I've been telling you guys, every time I travel now, I wear my Jesus and jiu-jitsu shirt.
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I wear the black one with the white on it, and I've gotten more comments in the airport.
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Like, I had a pilot. I know it wasn't a pilot.
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I made him in a pilot. He just goes, "Oh, nice shirt."
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And then he asked me something about jiu-jitsu.
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He didn't really know what it was, but he's like, "Hey, I know the Lord as well."
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And it's just like he gives someone a, it may as well say, "Ask me about Jesus on the front."
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Yeah, right, right.
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But you get people that talk about it all the time, so that was that kind of like the point
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behind the subtle marketing and the very, very straightforward marketing?
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Yeah, no subtlety there.
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No, so, so, along with the founders of the ministry, so JP, Danal, Stephen Little, Josh Schausberg,
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a bunch of other guys to help me out.
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Right, we all work together in the very beginning to get this thing going.
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And it was some of their idea to have Jesus be really big on the top jiu-jitsu,
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be really small, and it be kind of an emphasis on what's important in the whole thing.
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But man, from the beginning, it's been a massive, like, it just draws eyes.
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And like you said, in the airport or Costco or at the gas station or whatever.
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I mean, I get people all the time to come up and say the same thing like,
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"Dude, that's cool. What's that about?"
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My favorite question is how do those two things go together?
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That's my favorite one.
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Hey, I forget who said it because I would love to give them credit.
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But they were, and this should be a tagline for you guys, but it was like,
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choke them out and then pray for you.
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I was just like, yeah.
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That's how you can explain it, how those two things weave in together.
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That's right.
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That's how we approach getting people closer to Jesus is like pure humility first.
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Yeah.
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And then as we, as we wake them up, yeah, like, "Oh, here, let me tell you about the gospel."
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Bring it, bring your death, near-death experience always brings people closer to the Lord.
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Yeah, they kind of like come back to and they're just like, "Oh, wow, okay."
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Yeah, Jesus, let's talk about what Jesus felt.
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But just to back up even a little bit, like for you guys,
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how long ago did y'all start Jesus and Jiu-Jitsu?
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How long ago was this the thing?
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It was about three years ago.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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And so what was kind of the impetus behind starting something like that,
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and then we should probably talk about your Jiu-Jitsu journeys as well.
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But it's like, because again, there's plenty of guys that are Christians that do Jiu-Jitsu,
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but there's nothing formal.
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Right.
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So like, you know, we'll work our way to today to kind of like what you guys are doing,
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but like what was even the reason behind getting launched?
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Yeah.
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So we went, I started training with Rafael for Amiga Barbosa at Double Five Jiu-Jitsu,
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and he's phenomenal, 13-time world champion, Masters World Champion,
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and became really good friends with guys that were training at the gym.
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Kramer was there at the gym.
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We became friends a little bit later, but you know, those guys that I mentioned earlier,
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we all went to a men's ministry, like a retreat together called Pursuit,
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run by a ministry called Walking in Truth,
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and had an amazing experience where we felt close.
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Like really, we really felt bonded through that weekend.
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It was a weekend of just like no technology leaning into the Lord,
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doing hard spiritual work.
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And I would encourage people to go check them out.
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But we ended up at the end of that.
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We were like, how do we bring this same Christian fellowship into the Jiu-Jitsu community?
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Because it's lacking that depth of Christian fellowship.
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People are close in Jiu-Jitsu, and you know that.
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People are close in Jiu-Jitsu, but they're lacking that depth of Christian fellowship.
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And so we're like, how do we bring this 4 million?
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So we're like, we need to start.
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So we actually went through the process of making an actual 501(c)(3) and incorporation
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and all that so that we could be legit and be serious about getting it going.
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And so that's what started it.
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And then Kramer joined later on as there was a lot of day-to-day responsibility stuff.
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And but he had gotten saved really at one of these events at walking in truth pursuit,
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pursuit for truth.
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And then really, I mean, you know, he's a black belt and we trained together.
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And so he really started, we started leaning in together.
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And yeah, and in the broader group, you know, the board members really supported Kramer
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coming along with Lucas as well.
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You met Lucas on our podcast.
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But yeah, man.
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So that's kind of how it got started and got off the ground.
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But the intention was to bring this fellowship in.
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And then as we dug in deeper, it was like there's a huge opportunity for evangelism
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and discipleship in Jesus and jiu-jitsu.
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And so, I mean, what attracted you to this whole thing?
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Because you know, again, you have jiu-jitsu as a hobby.
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And then you're a Christian now and you're trying to figure out how those things work together.
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But then like formalizing that is still a unique thing.
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Yeah.
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I mean, so I've trained jiu-jitsu now for 16 and a half years.
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Got my black belt about three years ago from Formiga.
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And I got made himself so undeniably known through friends in the jiu-jitsu space, right?
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Like they didn't know what I was going through in my life.
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But it was the three other founders of jiu-jitsu that reached out to me on October 4th of 2022
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inviting me to a men's freedom ministry event.
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I'm like, they didn't know that my life was falling apart.
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Because everything on the outside was like, oh, yeah, he's got it all put together.
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He's in shape.
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He's a black belt, you know, married kids, all these things.
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I didn't know that I was on the verge of divorce and, you know, dealing with porn addiction
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and all these other things.
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But God put me on their heart.
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I didn't know him from Adam.
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It was so informal like of a friendship at the time that they didn't have my cell phone number.
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I got an Instagram message from these three guys inviting me to this event.
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I was like, I got to do it.
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And God made himself just so known to me on that event.
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I got saved on November the 19th of 2022.
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Isaac was there for that.
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And, you know, so I saw how there was folks in the Jewish community that kind of brought
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me back to Jesus.
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We'll get more into testimonies and stuff later, I'm sure, but I just I just wanted to be a
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part of it.
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I was like, what can I do to help, you know?
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And so for several months, just kind of played like an advisor role to Isaac, and he was
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like, that was the guy that he would call just to talk to and talk about new initiatives
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from the ministry and stuff and then kind of stepped in a more formal role this year.
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Because I just felt called to do it.
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Like, I love Jiu Jitsu and now I also love Jesus far more than I do Jiu Jitsu.
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And if I can help be the bridge between the Jiu Jitsu community and getting those people
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to God's kingdom, like send me, let's go.
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That's one of the things about this table.
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I feel like when people get into studio, you know, we like, I don't come prepared like
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these are my notes guys.
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Yeah.
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You can see that right there on the camera.
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There's nothing on there.
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But I'm just curious for you because I made the statement before Ryan that there are some
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guys I know that are just monsters.
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They're black belts in Jiu Jitsu, but they're white belt husbands.
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They're white belt fathers.
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They're white belt, you know, business owners, that type of thing, and you can't crush it
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in all areas.
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You just can't.
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Not for real.
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You can do it on Instagram, but you can't like do it for real.
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But like for you, what was it?
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Because there's plenty of people that have, you know, are on the road to divorce or have
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been divorced or have a pornography addiction, all those types of things.
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And it's just like, man, just the hand I was dealt, especially if you don't have a Christian
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worldview, especially if you don't even believe in God, we're just highly evolved chimps that
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figured out language, pants, and fire.
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And so why does it matter if, you know, one champ does something bad to another champ?
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But I'm just wondering for you, like at that event in November of 2022, and we don't have
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to get into the theological logistics of, okay, did you make a decision or did the Holy
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Spirit hold you down and get your will and make you become a Christian?
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But like what was it about where you got to and the road to get there to make you say,
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to make you surrender in all, you know, senses of the word?
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I think to that point, like I had just done everything else to try to fix my own broken
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ness unsuccessfully, and it was coping mechanism after coping mechanism, and then realized
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that there's no other way for me to deal with the things that I'm dealing with than to give
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my life to Christ.
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I dealt with perfectionism most of my life.
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And so, you know, did you grow up around church?
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I did.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, you know, grew up there was worship music played in our home.
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You know, dad read us Bible stories from like an encyclopedia type set.
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Um, you know, you did all the vacation, Bible school stuff and, you know, to take words
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from, from Matt Chandler, um, I was a nominal Christian at best, you know, if someone asked
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if I was Christian, I was that.
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But you know, I also thought that if I couldn't be the perfect Christian, then I wasn't going
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to be one at all.
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I think that the gospel, as it was presented to me as a kid, kind of growing up in Southwest
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Texas, um, you know, Southern Baptist Bible belt, like Helen damnation, you know, it was
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just a bunch of rules and I just had a rebellious spirit and so didn't want that at all.
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Like, I didn't know that, you know, being a Christian was more so about my own individual
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relationship with the Lord, I just thought it was a bunch of rules and I wasn't much
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of a rule follower.
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And so for, you know, 30 plus years I ran from the Lord until there was nowhere to run.
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Um, except to, except to him.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And so, I mean, that was it for me.
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And it was a drastic shift in just my mindset and being proud of who I am and who God made
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me to be instead of faking my fruits, like actually trying to live them out, um, in a
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true genuine way, because I knew enough about, you know, growing up in the church, you know
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what the fruits are, like, you know what a Christian should be right and like, what are
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the godly attributes and especially in a public setting, I was really good at doing
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that.
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I think my fruits my whole life, um, but there's also certain giftings that I think God had
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given me that I was ashamed of, um, oh, you talk to much or, you know, you shouldn't care
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so much about what people think and to an extent, I don't anymore.
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Like I really just want to live my life through him, um, and glorify him and everything that
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I do.
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And it's the really, the group of friends that I've associated myself with now and that
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I'm brothers with since, you know, for the last three years that now when you have friendships
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forged in your relationship with Christ together, they're so different than the previous friendships
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I had in my life.
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Oh, and just think about the testimony that you're going to have of all the pain and
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all the bad decisions and all the stuff that happened when you were a non believer, but
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also you became a black belt.
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Your entire Jiu Jitsu journey was as a non believer.
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Whereas for me, I started my Jiu Jitsu journey at 30 as a believer.
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And so I'm seeing all the core laries for me as I'm going through the process now, you
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know, eight years in or something like that.
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So like Isaac, for you, I don't, I've never really heard your testimony as well.
11:03
Like kind of how, like what brought you to Christ and, you know, much less in the ministry.
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Yeah.
11:08
So I grew up, um, you know, the power team.
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Oh, yeah.
11:13
So my dad was on the original power team.
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So my dad was the big Samoan, uh, like bend and frying hands and breaking handcuffs,
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bending, you know, uh, phone books, slamming his head through concrete.
11:27
So, uh, when I was a little kid, my dad was, uh, my dad was like not a good dude, um, in,
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in, like in the strongest sense where he was, uh, he was a gangster, like he was in, he
11:39
was in a gang, he was incarcerated for assault and, you know, felony, granddad, my dad,
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my dad was born in American Samoa and then moved to Hawaii when he was young.
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And so kind of grew up, like in poverty there, um, Hawaii is like paradise, but there are
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parts of it that are really bad.
11:56
People really don't understand how like the further you get away from the coast, it gets
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dark.
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Yeah.
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And there are, there's like massive disparity between people that are wealthy and people
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that are struggling.
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And my dad was in that struggling group group in government housing, one of 12 siblings.
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Um, and they just, yeah, they didn't have money.
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And so it was like way easier to kind of dive into that life of crime.
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And so that was my dad's testimony.
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And so I was probably two years old when my dad who was a construction worker and doing
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drugs and, you know, uh, living a life of crime, um, had actually encountered, encountered
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Jesus for real, um, the short version there is my mom had prayed for him to come to Bible
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study for a long time.
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Every Wednesday she'd invite him to go and he would say no.
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And then, uh, he'd go play basketball at the rec center with, you know, there'd be like
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a hundred dudes that they're running games all night and he went up one night.
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She invited him.
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He said, no, he went up to play basketball.
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There was no one there except for the, um, the janitor and he's like, Hey, so where is
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everybody?
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You know, no one's here.
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Is it a holiday or something?
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No, no one showed up.
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So my dad leaves and he's like at this intersection, he could go right to go home or go left to
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the bank building where they had the Bible study upstairs.
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And he just said he sat at that light for a long time and felt for some reason that he
13:08
needed to go to the Bible study, which is like counter to everything in him.
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Yeah.
13:13
And he goes and he walks in the back door and the version that I've heard from people who
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were there at the time is that they were like weeping, praying for my dad to come to know
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Christ and he walks through the back door while they're praying for him.
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So it's like kind of an undeniable thing.
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So my dad gets radically saved.
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He turns away from that life, but he's still immersed in that, like all his, everybody
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else, all his brothers and cousins, everybody's there shortly after that, someone from the
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power team comes out to do a crusade in Hawaii.
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They call up, they always do this.
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I call the biggest guy in the room to come try the baseball bat to prove that it's real.
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They can't break it ever.
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And then they give it back to the guy, guy snaps it.
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Well, I call my dad up.
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My dad snaps it like right away and they're like, okay, well, thanks buddy.
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You know, well, come see me after the program, so he starts asking him about his faith and
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he's like, yeah, no, I'm a new believer and the guy's like, man, well, you should come
14:02
out to Texas.
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We're based in Texas.
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Come check us out.
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We'd love to get to know your story and you know, your walk.
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And so because my dad's like a massive dude, you know, and he was starting the power lift
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and like my dad bench over 600 pounds.
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He's a freak.
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Well, so he comes out to, comes out to Texas and ends up, uh, they're like, we would really
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love to, to like, you know, walk with you, disciple you and get you in the ministry.
14:24
Like you'd be great to evangelize.
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And so we moved from Hawaii.
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I was probably five or six years old to Texas to Irving is where they were based.
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And so I grew up around that.
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And so I knew the Bible and I grew up in a house with my, like, with a dad that was
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radically saved, but, um, like obviously, just like many people that grew up in church,
14:43
I just didn't make it their own until for me, it was like until college, like I was 12 years
14:49
old when I, when I recognized the weight of my sin, I felt it for the first time.
14:53
And I was on the bus, had a shirt that said the wages of sin is death, Roman 623 and on
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the back said, uh, but the gift of God is salvation is, uh, the gift of God is salvation
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in Jesus Christ.
15:05
And so, um, this kid is asking me about my shirt and I'm like, explain, I'm like preaching
15:10
the gospel to him.
15:11
And like, man, as I'm saying it out of my own mouth, I'm like, I'm hearing it for the first
15:17
time with like spiritual ears, like my soul is hearing the truth that I'm saying.
15:21
And I understand it and just like start crying while I'm talking to this kid on the bus.
15:25
Get off, go talk to my dad, say, I don't know what I need to do, but I want to be saved,
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you know.
15:30
So I say, I pray in my own words that, that, uh, that I was a sinner, I needed him as my
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savior.
15:37
I asked him to be my savior and my Lord and I surrendered my life to Jesus that day, but
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I didn't recognize, I didn't understand like the full weight of that until I was a lot
15:46
older.
15:47
So college was when I really messed up storms came, played division one football broke my
15:50
leg during a football game.
15:53
Medical red shirted my junior year, tried to come back my senior season, totally destroyed
15:57
me, started like falling into all of the comforts of the world that I kind of fill that void.
16:04
Cause I never had a real test until that time.
16:07
And so, um, yeah, God just like showed me my sin, showed me that the foundation of my
16:13
faith up to that point was kind of just shifting sand was just a basis of sand and the storm
16:19
came, the storm of this career ending injury, um, I had nothing, no basis of faith that
16:25
remained after that.
16:26
And so, uh, had a really awesome mentor, a pastor, this little old dude, little old
16:32
pastor Mike Woods in a El Paso, Texas, probably close to 70 years old, probably 140 pounds.
16:38
So can what, but he, when he talked to me, he talked to me like he was 10 feet tall and
16:42
he just looked right into my soul and would ask me questions that like, would it make
16:45
anybody cringe, you know, about your sin, about like living as a testimony, amen.
16:49
So that's what kind of started bringing me back to the path.
16:51
And so, yeah, it was a long journey, um, said, get my life to Christ at 12 years old, but
16:57
didn't really understand it until it was probably 24, you know, hey guys, real quick.
17:01
So you're there.
17:02
You're in a small town.
17:03
You've been invited over to someone's house for a dinner.
17:05
You walk through the kitchen and you get that smell, the smell of home cooking.
17:09
You go to the back porch where they're grilling or smoking meat and you get that smell.
17:13
And then you get the taste and you know exactly what I'm talking about, guys, it tastes incredible.
17:18
The flavors are big and bold.
17:21
It feels like home and it feels like happiness, right?
17:23
Well, you try to pull that same thing off at your house, but all you have in your cabinet
17:27
are some random seasonings from the store, right?
17:30
And many of these big companies just make bland blends and we all know this by now.
17:35
Bland blends lead to bland food and bland food leads to a bad food experience.
17:41
And I don't want you guys to have any bad food experiences.
17:44
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17:48
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17:52
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17:53
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17:57
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17:59
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18:03
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18:04
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18:08
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18:09
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18:10
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18:12
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18:17
So it's a classic seasoning duo, right?
18:19
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18:27
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18:32
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18:37
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18:41
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18:46
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18:48
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18:53
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18:55
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18:58
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19:00
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19:02
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19:07
So it's an interesting dynamic between the two of you because you come to Christ as a
19:11
youngin, but you kind of go through what I've called delayed sanctification to where you
19:16
just kind of lived on the largesse of the decision and then didn't really hit the skids
19:22
until you hit some resistance or turbulence in your life.
19:25
And for you, there was really kind of no regard for it.
19:28
You probably were living where did you grow up?
19:30
I grew up in Sonora out in Southwest Texas.
19:33
Okay.
19:34
And so like what I've deemed country music theology, which is basically like believe in
19:37
God.
19:38
I was baptized when I was a kid.
19:39
You know, I listened to 90s country music and when I bought a boat, Republican.
19:42
So you know, God's pro all that stuff.
19:44
So I get to go to heaven, right?
19:46
And so you come into Christ much later in life, right?
19:50
Your brain's fully developed like you are, you're an expert, well, a few too many shots
19:57
to the head.
19:58
So you're, your brain's fully developed and you are fully aware of yourself, like at
20:03
your age, right?
20:04
You're aware of where you're lacking, the things that you are good at, the things that
20:08
are going to be areas of struggle, like there's no question, right?
20:11
Whereas for you, you're developing as a Christian at the same time as you're developing as
20:15
a man and then you get hit in the face by reality in your early 20s, right?
20:19
And so I mean, it's just kind of one of those things like when God brings, you know, people
20:23
together and brings different men together of disparate things, like there's a lot people
20:28
can learn just from having like different testimonies.
20:30
Bro, 100% he and like he was talking about, you know, I'd call him asking for his perspective
20:35
on stuff.
20:36
He's a couple of years older than me, but he has so much experience in areas that I don't.
20:39
And man, we were like, you know, he's become one of my best friends in the world, but
20:42
I've always leaned on him and he's just like the perfect compliment to that.
20:46
And we've been able to help each other in that way.
20:48
And he was way far ahead of me in Jiu Jitsu too when we first met.
20:51
And so now we're like, he would always help me with that too.
20:53
So we're just really, you know, built on each other.
20:55
So it's discipleship, Jiu Jitsu back and forth.
20:58
Yeah.
20:59
And Isaac, somebody, I remember meeting him for the first time just thinking like, I want
21:02
to be friends with this guy, you know, I mean, did the way he carried himself, he was obviously
21:06
a gentle giant, which he love.
21:08
I haven't experienced a gentle part yet, but keep going.
21:11
You'll get there.
21:12
And so gentle, so gentle and athletic and not fair at the same time.
21:17
Isaac was just somebody like, I mean, I want to be friends with this guy, but I was so afraid
21:22
of like hanging out with Christian men, right.
21:26
I didn't want to get exposed.
21:28
So I strategically planned my friendships or my meetups around the type of men people
21:34
were, right?
21:35
And it was like, I was normally in, in a, the, the more comfortable setting was for me to
21:39
be with a group of guys that were like dealing with the same stuff that I was dealing with,
21:42
right?
21:43
And like we just get together and talk crap about our wives and, and get drunk and smoke
21:46
weed and do all these things that, you know, that's what we did together.
21:50
And as I started immersing myself more in this culture of things, I think, you know,
21:55
kind of piggybacking on, on your podcast with us, you talked about when you were 15, right?
22:01
This fork in the road of I can either be godly or, or I can be tough.
22:06
And I didn't know a lot of like godly tough men growing up, right?
22:10
Similar to you.
22:11
And we've, we've talked about that before.
22:13
And so it was just like so baffling and eye opening to me that you have these men like
22:19
Isaac, like JP Denil, like Steven Little, like Josh Shaw's burger, Anthony crons, all
22:24
these guys that had gone to pursue and I just saw like the love, like the true, like easy
22:27
to love nature that they had, but then they were also tough as hell.
22:34
I hadn't been around that before.
22:36
And so I kind of got the tough part out of the way, but I didn't understand the godly
22:41
part.
22:42
And I didn't know that you could be both.
22:43
Right.
22:44
So Isaac was kind of like, I don't know, the first example of that to me of like, guys,
22:49
he's easy.
22:50
He's hard to kill, but he's so easy to love.
22:53
And he's definitely equipped to lead like, I want to be around this guy, I want to learn
22:56
more from this guy.
22:57
And so he's been as much of a mentor and disciple to me as anybody over the last three years.
23:05
And it's helped me along, you know, along the way, and you're right.
23:06
Our stories are so different.
23:07
Like, I think where, you know, the value that I can bring to a lot of people is, is more
23:12
so in my struggle, more so in, in my testimony, in the dark things and the times and the stupid
23:18
stuff that I've done to create that relatability while also now trying to learn God's word.
23:23
Right.
23:24
This guy studied it for most of his life.
23:27
He's kind of who I go to to like, Hey, break this down for me, you know, like help me understand
23:31
this a little bit more.
23:33
But you know, ultimately, I think we're a fun team, yeah, can offer different perspectives
23:40
on, on life and then, you know, Jiu Jitsu is really just the catalyst, right?
23:44
And it's like, we all enjoy doing it.
23:46
And it's so nice to see what God is doing in the Jiu Jitsu community and that we have
23:50
been humbled enough to put in, you know, where he's put us in positions to help bring people
23:55
to his kingdom through the sport of Jiu Jitsu.
23:58
It's baffling.
23:59
If you told me 16 and a half years ago that I'd ever be involved in a ministry around
24:03
the sport of Jiu Jitsu, I'd tell you you're crazy.
24:05
Like there's no chance.
24:06
Yeah, I'll still be training Jiu Jitsu, but and I'm going to be a Christian, like, no.
24:10
I didn't see that.
24:12
The cool thing about what you guys have done with, even with your divergent stories is it's
24:18
trying to live out the lion for them, lamb with them aspect, right?
24:22
And I think Jiu Jitsu is one of those things that help guys deal with that.
24:25
Cause what would I tell people all the time and like, I'm a walking billboard for gospel
24:29
of Jesus Christ, Christian metal, red meat, Jiu Jitsu, like though, those are the things
24:32
where, you know, every single conversation is going to come back to one of those four
24:35
things, if not all of them.
24:37
And ultimately most people don't really reckon with it, how a hobby could affect their life
24:45
spiritually, mentally and physically, right?
24:47
And so, cause I've heard all the excuses to why someone can't train and why they shouldn't
24:51
train and all those different things.
24:53
But then when somebody does start training and whatever the switch is gets flipped.
24:59
So for some people, it's like, Oh, they got an ego problem.
25:01
And all of a sudden that gets exposed.
25:03
And then they have to reckon with that.
25:04
It's like, okay, I'm either going to have to walk back in cause we've had some guys that
25:07
played in the NFL come to our gym, get smashed by a small Jiu Jitsu fighter that's not in
25:14
particularly good shape.
25:15
And then that moment's like, okay, I'm either going to walk out of here and pretend like
25:18
that never happened and not tell anyone about it or I'm going to figure out what's going
25:22
on here.
25:24
Or they get in and they get, you know, overpowered and they realize I'm a little weak or, you
25:29
know, they, you know, aren't as flexible as they, they used to be or what they thought
25:33
they were.
25:34
I got some to work on here or their cardio is not really where it should be.
25:37
You know, their cardio tap in, which is not ever an acceptable form of tapping for the
25:41
record.
25:42
But like it exposes so many things about you that is applicable everywhere else.
25:47
And cause, you know, I give people crap that golf and, you know, do all these other different
25:50
hobbies.
25:51
And it's like, I have so little time, like in my schedule with the business and the two
25:56
podcasts and the five year old and the three year old, and like all the things, I have
25:59
to have things that are transferable skills that I'm developing have to be transferable.
26:03
So like the time I take to be in shape and to lift and all that, that's transferable
26:06
to the rest of my life.
26:08
I can't transfer the skill set of chipping a ball into the green from 150 yards away.
26:12
Like I, that's like, okay, like that's only transferable to another golf course, right?
26:16
Whereas, you know, being confident in your physicality and your ability to protect yourself,
26:21
protect others.
26:22
It's just something that gets exposed and there are people that can just walk out and, you
26:28
know, make a basket or, you know, throw a football and like, yes, you can get better
26:32
at it.
26:33
But nobody just walks out on a Jiu Jitsu mat and just does it well the first time.
26:37
Nobody accidentally triangles somebody after double legging them, like it just doesn't
26:40
ever happen.
26:41
And so it's just like, it's a, well, I guess for you guys, like what, what got y'all into
26:44
Jiu Jitsu?
26:45
Cause you obviously had a football background.
26:46
Like what was your athletic background?
26:48
Oh my gosh.
26:49
Golf golf golf.
26:50
Golf golf.
26:51
I said it.
26:52
That's why I said it.
26:53
I wanted to bring it in.
26:54
Straight.
26:55
I hate.
26:56
I said athletic.
26:57
Yeah.
26:58
Right.
26:59
That's a cute little game.
27:00
No, I didn't have, I mean, look, I grew up playing all the sports.
27:02
You know, baseball, football golf is a sport.
27:07
Ran cross country.
27:08
So I've always been very physically active.
27:12
But I was the small guy too.
27:14
I was the run to the litter, man.
27:15
I mean, my, my nickname in high school was slick because I was the last one of all my
27:19
friends that he puberty.
27:20
You know what I mean?
27:21
Like I was the little guy, graduated high school, like five, six, 115 pounds.
27:25
So we actually, we talked about this recently that like Jiu Jitsu for you was humbling.
27:31
Like your first experience at Machado is like getting rolled up by a guy that was half
27:34
your size and you're like, I'm going to dominate this dude.
27:37
And then he smoked you.
27:38
Yeah.
27:39
You needed that.
27:40
I mean, for me, Jiu Jitsu, like I was used to kind of getting my butt whooped.
27:42
Yeah.
27:43
Right.
27:44
So Jiu Jitsu was more empowering because then you learn how to like get out of things.
27:47
Like if anybody was to come sit on my chest and like bang on my shirt, I'm going to give
27:50
me into a get couldn't do anything about it.
27:52
And so for the first time in my life, I found something that was somewhat empowering for
27:56
me physically.
27:57
Like I could go bang golf balls all day and hit the dry hit in my drive a long way.
28:02
And that that was like a sense of like, I don't know, macho in at least the group of
28:08
people that I had at that world.
28:10
Yeah.
28:11
Yeah.
28:12
And that was like a massive event.
28:13
Yeah.
28:14
Yeah.
28:15
Yeah.
28:16
Yeah.
28:17
But Jiu Jitsu is empowering for me.
28:18
And so when I started training, it's like it opened up this new sense of confidence about
28:21
myself that I didn't have.
28:23
And I got a whole lot more self-aware and self-confident through this board of Jiu Jitsu.
28:27
I turned to confidence.
28:28
Oh, absolutely.
28:29
Yeah.
28:30
There's no, there's no faking that.
28:31
Like I mentioned before faking my fruits, you can't fake anything in Jiu Jitsu.
28:33
Like it's exposed right away.
28:35
So in addition to it being empowering to me, there was this cute girl working at the front
28:40
desk of Octagon MMA when I joined a manager.
28:46
So that was part of the reason for me joining the gym too is because I like the girl that
28:49
was working the front desk.
28:50
My wife was in her, you know, last semester nursing school, you know, hanging out with
28:54
a bunch of MMA people and, and, and I met her and really dove into that relationship
29:00
and also into the sport of Jiu Jitsu.
29:01
And I haven't really looked back since on either of those.
29:05
So yeah.
29:06
Jiu Jitsu was weird.
29:07
So what age did you start?
29:08
Twenty six.
29:09
Twenty six.
29:10
Okay.
29:11
And then when did you get it?
29:12
Well, dude, I started at 30.
29:13
I remember like before I got started, I was probably 28 or 29 and like I was kind of circling
29:18
the wagons on starting with Jiu Jitsu and I just didn't really know.
29:21
Like, where do I go?
29:22
What do I do?
29:23
Well, Jocko was on Twitter and he was like sitting at the airport or something.
29:26
He's like, all right.
29:27
I got some, some time of year, let's do Q and A. And I tweeted out and I said, what age
29:30
is too late to start doing Jiu Jitsu?
29:33
If black belt is your goal?
29:35
Again, a silly question for a lot of different reasons.
29:37
But again, I don't really know.
29:39
And his response was one word, death.
29:42
I was like, Oh, okay, because I'm like on 30 and I'm, you know, you know, you kind of
29:47
already feel old because you're 30 and like, you know, 30 year olds when I was a kid, like
29:51
they were basically elderly.
29:52
And so like, you know, starting at 30, I was like, Oh my gosh, but I mean, after a few
29:56
years of training, I'm like, what if I'd started when I was 18, like, can you imagine
30:00
like what I would be like?
30:01
I just turned 39, like if I had been training for the, you know, basically half my life
30:05
or whatever.
30:06
But so what, what age or I guess what, what got you into Jiu Jitsu, you said your first
30:10
experience was at Machado.
30:11
No, no.
30:12
So my first, well, it was actually in Hawaii, I was leading worship at a church in Hawaii
30:15
in 2015.
30:16
And you can sing too.
30:17
Yeah.
30:18
Is there anything this dude can't do, what do you mean, not anymore?
30:21
Well, I have soft tissue damage from like asthma medicine over years and stuff is strongly
30:27
a little words.
30:28
Oh my God, just a little bit, we need your little guitar.
30:32
You could probably play the little.
30:33
Yeah.
30:34
Okay.
30:35
Yeah.
30:36
But, uh, so I was in Hawaii at the time and, and I was leading worship at this church and
30:39
my supervisor at the church was like, uh, he was a brown belt.
30:42
He'd been training for 11, 10 years, something like that.
30:45
And he was about, you know, I was like 25.
30:49
He was 42.
30:51
I was 280, he was 180 pounds and like, he, he would always invite me to come train.
30:57
Like I think he'd be great.
30:58
I think he would love it.
30:59
Like you'd find fulfillment and he was just all, you know, he was right about everything.
31:02
But he's like, I teach these guys at my house on a Wednesday nights come hang out.
31:07
So I finally went to go hang out and I wasn't being, I'm telling you this was not coming
31:10
from, I mean, now I can see there's probably pride in it, but I had this idea of myself
31:15
as like, I was a division one football player.
31:18
I, you know, I know like a detackle.
31:21
Yeah.
31:22
Nose guard.
31:23
You know, I said the bench record of my Utep, it's still there.
31:25
I was like, I, I think this guy will be at least be impressed.
31:28
Like I could back flip over this guy if I want to.
31:31
And he, he like just calmly pulled me into his clothes guard and I was like pushing on
31:36
him and he comordered me and I was like, what the, and then he triangleed me and then he
31:40
on barbed me and he comordered me again and this time I thought, Oh, I'm not going to
31:45
let him put it behind my back.
31:46
I'm going to like, I'm going to muscle it forward.
31:48
And so I started muscling forward and I felt this like hot, searing pain in my forearm
31:52
ended up tearing something there.
31:54
Yeah.
31:55
And so I tapped for the fourth time in three minutes and I was like, I couldn't breathe.
32:00
He wasn't even sweating and he wasn't even out of breath at all.
32:03
And I was like, how are you?
32:05
How did you do that?
32:06
Like you completely destroyed me.
32:08
I felt helpless, I weigh a hundred pounds more than you.
32:11
I could throw you through the ceiling if I wanted to, but I couldn't do anything to you.
32:15
Yeah.
32:16
And so just like you said, you, you get this fork in the road where you're like, okay,
32:21
that was embarrassing.
32:22
I never want that to happen again.
32:23
I'm out of here or that was embarrassing and everyone to happen again.
32:26
I want to learn what you know.
32:27
That was awesome.
32:28
And so I took that route and I was like, I'm really interested in this now plus I destroyed
32:33
my knee and I couldn't run anymore.
32:34
And I wanted to do something competitive, parallel thing was kind of off the table because
32:40
of my knee, because there's no, you know, totally bone on bone, destroyed the cartilage femur.
32:46
And so Jiu Jitsu was like, oh, you can get great cardio, but you're not running all over
32:49
the place.
32:50
Like, okay, this is awesome.
32:51
So that's what got me into it.
32:53
Then he told me why move to Texas shortly after that move back to Texas.
32:58
And he's like, bro, if you're going to move back to the Dallas area, you should go train
33:00
at Carlos Machados, so I would drive like 50 minutes down to Carlos is on Midway.
33:06
And man, it was amazing.
33:07
So I trained there for a year.
33:09
And yeah, I mean, of course, first day got rolled up and again by small guys.
33:14
I got was it all ghee?
33:16
It was all ghee.
33:17
Yeah, I got smothered by a dude, this big purple belt, which is probably six, five, like 270.
33:22
And he just like moved to North South and just like put his chest right on my face.
33:25
And I was like, I'm dying.
33:27
I'm dying.
33:28
It was my second day.
33:29
And he's kind of like giggling.
33:30
I'm like, what?
33:31
He's like, you don't do that.
33:32
That's not a move.
33:33
I'm like, what?
33:34
Like, bro, but I was going to die.
33:35
He was like, no, you're not going to die a couple of months later.
33:38
I remember like kind of having that moment of realization that like I'm making progress
33:42
because you don't feel like it at all.
33:43
I'm just hammered every day.
33:45
And same guy, same position.
33:48
And I remember being in the same position and not thinking I'm dying, thinking about
33:53
a way to get out of this and frame and make it turn my head a little bit and breathe.
33:57
And I caught myself in the moment, like, bro, it's working, like there is, there is progress
34:01
in this, like three months ago, you were in the same spot and you thought you were going
34:04
to die.
34:05
And so it was cool.
34:06
Dude, my favorite, you all know Tyler Murrow.
34:08
So shout out Tyler Murrow, Scott City, Jiu Jitsu, Midwest City.
34:10
He's trained a lot in Texas, Marcus Edelante, and I think he's come over for Megas and so.
34:17
So for the first, when I started, Tyler was a purple belt when I started and we're about
34:21
the same size.
34:22
So he's, you know, maybe an inch taller than me, maybe 10 or 15 pounds bigger than me, but
34:25
we were essentially the same size.
34:27
And so he kind of gravitated towards me and this other guy, cause we were, he kind of,
34:30
I guess he looked at us as like, well, there's a body that I could do things on that's going
34:33
to be roughly the size of the people I'll be competing with.
34:35
And so, you know, I drilled and trained with him a bunch in this first few years.
34:39
And I, and it was either right before I got my blue belt or right after I got my blue
34:42
belt.
34:43
I just have a bad practice.
34:44
I don't know if I talked about this on Yale show or not, but it's one of my favorite
34:46
Tyler Murrow stories, aside from him, very, very rudely taking a water break while we
34:51
were still rolling and reaching off and getting into the drink of water and setting it down
34:55
the whole time.
34:56
I'm trying to escape.
34:57
But I'm, I had a horrible practice, right?
34:59
I just got smashed by everybody.
35:01
Nothing I tried worked.
35:02
And it was one of those practices where the black belt shows you how to do the move.
35:05
You try the move once you go, well, that doesn't work.
35:07
You know, like that's, you know, the state of mind I was in, right?
35:10
And so I'm brooding in the locker room as I'm changing and I'm just, I'm just brooding
35:14
or whatever.
35:15
And Tyler who's very quiet and somewhat unassuming, he kind of walks in and he goes, Hey, Kyle,
35:21
what's going on?
35:22
And I'm like, Oh, that bad practice and nothing I was doing was working and just, gosh, don't
35:26
know if I'm getting better and blah, blah.
35:28
And he goes, Hey, what would you do to the Kyle from six months ago if you rolled with
35:34
him?
35:35
I'm like, what?
35:36
He's like, no, seriously, like, what would you do to you from six months ago?
35:39
I was like, I'd kill that guy.
35:40
Yeah.
35:41
He goes and shut up.
35:42
Yeah.
35:43
He goes, we're all getting better.
35:44
Yeah.
35:45
He's like, you've gotten a lot better over the last six months, but you're going against a
35:47
bunch of dudes that have also gotten a lot better over the last six months.
35:50
True.
35:51
Yeah.
35:52
Like, you know, buck up, butter cup, like life's tough.
35:54
Get a helmet.
35:55
It was good.
35:56
Just kind of one of those moments to where it's just like, okay, that kind of put things
35:57
in her perspective.
35:58
And y'all know this being a double five, but being at the forge, you feel like you suck
36:02
until you roll with someone from another academy.
36:05
100%.
36:06
Oh, no.
36:07
Yeah.
36:08
Cause like I've, I've walked into places in Texas and Utah and Louisiana and I'll roll
36:11
with people that are supposed to be on my level according to belts and, you know, the whole,
36:16
you know, system that they have set in place and all that and you're just like, Oh, no,
36:20
like at this person were at my school, they would be the person at that bell where everyone
36:24
was just kind of like, yeah, he's not really at that bell.
36:27
And like, at the forwards, they don't really do lifetime achievement belts, right?
36:30
Oh, you've been trained here for about eight years.
36:32
That's probably about time we give you your purple belt.
36:33
I guess it's not really something that happens.
36:35
But yeah, it's just like all those life lessons that you get just from getting into something.
36:40
But I mean, here's the thing for you guys, athletes, you know, working, you know, well
36:48
at a job, married kids and all that, why didn't you quit during the blue belt blues?
36:53
Cause I've seen people get their blue belt and then they don't train anymore.
36:56
Cause they're like, okay, I got my blue belt, which is the gap between blue and purples,
37:00
probably the longest, but white to blue should probably be the second longest I would think.
37:04
But then you also have people, I know a lot of friends, I got their purple belts and basically
37:07
stop training.
37:08
Yeah.
37:09
Cause they're like, ah, you know, I'm good enough.
37:10
Ain't nobody who put me in a street fight kind of a thing.
37:12
I'm over the blue belt blues.
37:13
Right.
37:14
Someone's going to accuse me that.
37:15
Yeah.
37:16
So you got your brown belt.
37:17
You've been a black belt for three years and so you've got, or you're technically second
37:20
degree, right?
37:21
I'll be first degree this year.
37:22
Okay.
37:23
First degree and like a month or two.
37:24
Yeah.
37:25
So first degree black belt.
37:26
So why, why not just stop?
37:27
Cause I've heard all the reasons why people trained for a year or two or five.
37:31
Yep.
37:32
And then we're just like, yeah, good enough.
37:33
Yeah.
37:34
What's a, what's a.
37:37
Why not stop?
37:38
Have you ever even thought about it?
37:40
Why you didn't stop?
37:41
Was it just like?
37:42
No, it's funny.
37:43
I've stopped a couple of times, man.
37:44
And almost religiously, for the first couple of years, so 2009 through 2011, kind of had
37:50
a falling out on my coach, stepped off the mats for a couple of years, stepped back on
37:54
the mats, was on the mats for like another six months, got my purple belt, was upset
37:59
and like my ego got in the way of that and didn't think I deserved it.
38:02
So I quit training Jiu Jitsu because I thought it was just like a gift of a belt just because
38:06
I beat up the other blue belt, said, I mean, I should be a purple belt.
38:09
So I stepped away from it again.
38:11
And it's when I moved to Tokyo for a job in January of 2018, I hadn't trained in a
38:17
couple of years.
38:19
But I knew that Jiu Jitsu was a place that I could probably make friends because if you
38:22
know anything about the Japanese business culture, there's no like 30 something-year-old
38:25
execs in Japan, right?
38:27
Yeah.
38:28
But I'm over there working in this position and had no like common ground with any of
38:34
the guys that I was working with at all.
38:35
It's like I need Jiu Jitsu to make me kill, make some friends.
38:38
And so I did.
38:39
And Jiu Jitsu was like very much about the community that I needed.
38:42
And then once I got a brown belt, I was like, I can't quit now.
38:45
Like I just have to keep going.
38:47
For me, it was always just like I needed that community, you know, and Jiu Jitsu provided
38:51
that to me and provided the doing hard things.
38:54
I've had a chip on my shoulder athletically for probably most of my life, like being the
38:58
small guy, you know, like I was going to out hustle everybody and everything.
39:01
And so in Jiu Jitsu, I kind of got good fast because of just like that attitude about it.
39:08
Like I will out try most of the people that I train with.
39:14
Not as much now.
39:15
I think I kind of chill out sometimes.
39:17
Well, no, like you're bringing up something interesting because I know some guys, I remember
39:22
I was a white belt rolling with a purple belt that was about my size.
39:25
And we were in a round where we were, I think we were doing five minute rounds and he had
39:30
about four and a half minutes worth of cardio and I had five plus.
39:35
And so I just wore him out, not knowing anything, but I just wore out certain positions to where
39:40
I got the better of them toward the end of the round.
39:43
So I think scoring wise, I still would have lost the round or whatever.
39:46
But I remember because he was a really quiet guy, like veteran, and he posted on Facebook
39:52
layer that day, he's like, it is so awesome to go into a class and to get out worked by
39:58
a white belt and he tagged me in it and he was like basically giving me my flowers a
40:02
little bit.
40:03
It's my boy Aldo.
40:04
It was like, yeah, man, I got out worked.
40:06
And so I kind of got exposed a little bit.
40:08
I thought I could kind of rest in my purple belchness, right?
40:12
But I just kind of got exposed a little bit.
40:14
But I mean, that's the thing about Jiu Jitsu, like belts are not magical.
40:17
They are dying pieces of fabric, right?
40:19
That are woven together that you put around a, you know, pair of danger pajamas, like they
40:23
didn't mean anything.
40:25
And if you go in there with an ego, like I remember we have a guy or Jim, his name is
40:29
Ethan.
40:30
I think he's going to be a world champion someday.
40:32
He just kind of has, he just has that, that attitude and work ethic and the personality
40:36
for it.
40:38
And I'm in purple belt.
40:40
He's a white belt.
40:41
I take his back and I get lazy because I was a white belt, so I just cross my ankles.
40:45
While I've got his back, he immediately throws a leg up and like, you know, he starts cranking
40:50
on the ankle.
40:51
And I've got a decision to make, okay?
40:54
I can tap and, you know, tap to a white belt as a purple belt, which should not happen,
40:58
especially when I got like 30 pounds on him and all that type of thing.
41:01
Or I can limp out of here.
41:02
Right?
41:03
Cause he had it.
41:04
I was, I was dead to rights, right?
41:05
I could have not tapped.
41:06
And I eventually, you know, get something snapped, something, whatever.
41:08
So I tap immediately.
41:09
I smile and I go, damn, you got me.
41:11
I got lazy.
41:12
Didn't I?
41:13
And he didn't know what to say.
41:14
Really?
41:15
Cause he was good.
41:16
Even as a white belt.
41:17
Yeah.
41:18
But that's just, those are the lessons you learn.
41:19
Cause if that had happened at white belt, I'm probably limping out of there.
41:21
Oh, dude.
41:22
Cause the ego would not have let me tap.
41:23
You know what I mean?
41:24
Yeah.
41:25
And so you just kind of get to learn that by anybody.
41:26
And for you, like, why not stop at some point because you can be like, you can always say
41:31
I was a D one football player.
41:32
Hey, I used to bench a whole lot or hey, you know, I'm still athletic or whatever.
41:35
But you can get to a certain position to where you're like, Oh, I'm good, you know, whatever
41:39
else I can learn.
41:40
I can make up with with size and tan, I guess.
41:43
Yes.
41:44
Yeah.
41:45
And great looks.
41:46
Oh, I didn't say that.
41:47
I just said size and tan.
41:48
I'm saying that.
41:49
Oh, you're adding that.
41:50
I'm not.
41:51
It's my table.
41:52
Too high.
41:53
I make the list about your views.
41:54
Well, yeah.
41:55
Everybody was that I think, well, I think maybe, I don't know, it's just being honest,
41:59
but also football.
42:00
I think just being in a locker room with a bunch of other dudes that you're always competing
42:03
to try to be the best person.
42:05
You like get to where you're brutally honest with yourself because you're constantly like
42:10
that dude could take my spot that dude could take my spot, you know.
42:13
And so being being like brutally honest about your own capability and ability makes you like
42:20
that's one of the reasons why I didn't stop at bluebell because I just knew I wasn't the
42:23
best and I knew that if I kind of like rested in my laurels and I'm going to be, I'm going
42:28
to be in a position in a couple months where everybody that I train with right now is way
42:32
better than me because I, I chilled.
42:35
The other thing was David, he's sitting off camera and he was my coach for eight years.
42:38
I'm one of my best friends, but he would he would like he was good about hitting me
42:43
up.
42:44
Hey, bro, I'm going to pick you up.
42:46
Let's go to let's go to open man at star in Carrollton, like a bunch of crazy black
42:51
wrestlers and let's go over here.
42:54
We're going to drop in at this school and like we would just go like dojo storm places
42:58
and you know, just test ourselves against a bunch of people when we did competitions
43:01
and we would go to comp training all the time.
43:03
That's how we met Tyler Murrow.
43:04
Yeah.
43:05
We go to comp training at Marcus until on today's every Tuesday and then all those guys and
43:08
Mark says we'll come over to four megas on Thursday and we just gotten the habit of that.
43:12
And once I just got in the groove of it, I started to become like I, I didn't feel right
43:18
unless I was kind of in that environment.
43:20
You know, just felt like these are my people.
43:22
This is what I do.
43:23
I'm a jiu-jitsu guy.
43:25
And I guess that just felt it just felt weird to like leaving on the on the back burner.
43:30
I didn't ever have I took breaks.
43:32
It was only because I was forced to through injury or my son was born six weeks early
43:37
when I was a white belt.
43:38
I had to take nine months off like and when I got back to it, it was like I don't have
43:43
unless I'm forced to take a break.
43:44
I don't want to take one.
43:45
Well, we were literally before y'all got here.
43:46
I was talking to Ryan because because of travel and sickness, I've been off the mats
43:49
for like two weeks.
43:50
Yeah.
43:51
Yeah.
43:52
And I'm sitting here.
43:53
We're supposed to be going in tomorrow and enrolling people on.
43:55
I'm sitting here like, do I remember how to jiu-jitsu because I just don't, which you
43:59
once you get in there, you warm up and you're like, all right, I have to do all these things.
44:01
But the thing about the jiu-jitsu journey as well that I've noticed, because again, looking
44:05
back, you know, looking at Brown Belt and kind of looking back and when I started and
44:08
when I thought I was good at at the time and kind of what I've seen myself develop,
44:13
I remember feeling entitled to my blue belt when I got it.
44:16
Yeah.
44:17
Right.
44:18
Like, oh, I was probably this, you know, I've probably been this for a while.
44:20
Yeah.
44:21
And then I remember a couple of weeks before Purple Belt, someone asked me, hey, Kyle, do
44:25
you think you'll be getting your, because some schools don't do stripes and in my school
44:28
at the time, the stripe system was kind of random, right?
44:31
So like I had four stripes on my white when I got my blue, but I had one stripe on my blue
44:35
when I tested for Purple, right?
44:37
So I literally told someone, I was like, dude, I'm closer to white belt than I am to Purple
44:41
Belt.
44:42
And then we get to promotion night and everyone's supposed to show up for promotion night because
44:44
even if you're not getting promoted, you need to help with the, you know, the gauntlet.
44:49
And they call my name for promotion.
44:50
I was like, oh, no, no, I was tear.
44:54
I was like, no, I'm not that like I can't.
44:56
There's no way, but there's no time to really think about it.
44:59
And a couple of weeks before that, I had, you pop my rib.
45:02
Yep.
45:03
And so like I basically could only sit in bottom half guard and like protect my, my midsection.
45:08
I couldn't shoot.
45:09
I couldn't throw like, I couldn't really sweep anybody.
45:12
So it was basically survival for a couple of hours.
45:14
Yep.
45:15
And I'll remember this, you know, Tyler Murrow is getting all this flowers on this particular
45:18
thing.
45:19
Typically, you know, they'll line all the people up that have gone through promo night and
45:22
then they'll start with the blues and work all the way up to the black belts and whatever.
45:26
And so, you know, they call your name.
45:29
You go up and everyone's clapping while the main professor is, you know, putting on your
45:32
belt or whatever.
45:33
And then they, and then they send you back and they give you another clap or whatever.
45:37
Why come up there?
45:38
You know, I get my clap and, you know, as I'm getting my belt tied around me, Tyler does
45:41
a little speech and he goes, you know, some of the long lines, I'll show you the video.
45:45
I stuck out on my phone, but it's like, you know, I just, I love training with Kyle.
45:47
He always gets in here.
45:49
He always gets after it.
45:50
He's always super, super competitive and has a good attitude and all that.
45:53
And because I didn't tell him when my ribs were messed up, right?
45:55
The black belts knew, but I didn't tell him when my ribs were all completely jacked and
45:58
he goes, and he got in here tonight and he's scrapped and his ribs are all mushed up and
46:01
all that type of thing.
46:02
And he still got in here and like earned his belt.
46:04
And I just, man, I love this guy.
46:06
I'm proud of him.
46:07
And I was just kind of like, he loves me, like, you know, I just kind of like had that feeling,
46:11
but you learn so much about yourself because now you get your purple belt and you know
46:16
what you thought about purple belts when you started.
46:18
Yep.
46:19
That's like purple belt was a billion miles away.
46:21
Yeah.
46:22
You know what I mean?
46:23
And then now you are one.
46:24
And then I know a lot of friends that stopped at purple belt.
46:27
Then when I got my brown belt, I was like, Oh, no, this is a disaster, right?
46:31
Because the imposter syndrome seemingly only grows, right?
46:36
Because now with every belt, there's the reverence you get from other people on the
46:39
map, but also the expectation.
46:42
And then you got that collegiate wrestler white belt, right?
46:45
That sees that piece of bread dyed fabric on your waist and is like, I'm going to get
46:49
this one, right?
46:51
You know, or that, you know, overzealous blue belt competitive guy and all that.
46:54
He's like, okay, this guy's got a couple stripes on his brown belt.
46:56
He's about to get my IBJJF finals competition round or something like that.
47:01
But it's just, that's the thing about Jiu Jitsu is it's constantly a check.
47:05
Yeah.
47:06
And you never arrive.
47:07
Like one of our guys, Steve Jones, who's kind of my main professor now, I trained with
47:10
him more than just about anybody, he got his black belt and then started learning leg
47:15
lock stuff.
47:16
Yeah.
47:17
So he was a black belt.
47:18
I've been training for over a decade.
47:20
And then Austin Morris came to our academy during 2020 COVID as a brown belt, but a leg
47:25
lock specialist.
47:26
And now all of a sudden, all of our black belts are going backwards.
47:30
And you know, Steve was like, look, when I got my black belt, I felt like I was a white
47:34
belt again, which doesn't make sense to somebody outside.
47:36
Imagine a CEO that just gets the job of CEO and he's like, I feel like an intern again,
47:40
like that wouldn't make any sense, right?
47:42
But that's just one of the things that you don't really understand unless you get into
47:46
the Jiu Jitsu journey, because at every step of the way, you can kind of see those milestones
47:51
behind you.
47:52
Yeah.
47:53
I mean, yeah, there's, and there's such a parallel to like, there's such a parallel to
47:58
to fade to I'm seeing like this is, this is new to me that I'm seeing like the how and
48:03
Matt talks about all the time.
48:04
Matt Chandler, our good friend or pastor, he's always, he does talk about how many parallels
48:10
there are and how it's, it's something that's unique in it's in how many ties there are
48:15
to Jiu Jitsu, I mean, to faith.
48:18
But I'm seeing it in like, as I start to lead more stuff, like I'm discipling more people.
48:23
I mean, how, you know, like dominion, many like you are, you're one on one with people.
48:28
That's a different.
48:30
I also teach Jiu Jitsu now, like I've been teach, I taught Jiu Jitsu for years with David and
48:34
then I started teaching for four megah recently, once a week on Wednesdays and it like you
48:39
get leveled up to something new and you all of a sudden you feel like brand new again.
48:43
Yeah.
48:44
Same thing with discipleship.
48:45
Someone's looking to you for like, hey, you know, how do you, how do you interpret this
48:48
or what do you do when you come up against this or what does the Bible say about this?
48:51
It's like you're putting a new position and it does kind of feel like imposter, imposter
48:56
syndrome a little bit.
48:57
But I think the way to alleviate that over time is like you get more comfortable in the belt
49:03
that you're in.
49:04
I feel, you know, you've been, how long have you been in Brown Belt now, but a year and
49:09
a half?
49:10
Yeah.
49:11
Okay.
49:12
So it's, I think, I think we're probably the same.
49:13
Yeah.
49:14
And I'm, I feel okay here, I'm starting to feel okay here.
49:18
I don't like that we're this close to black belt.
49:20
No, I do feel comfortable as a brown belt like I'm cool.
49:23
Right.
49:24
It's terrifying.
49:25
Yeah.
49:26
I'm like, well, I'm just like really comfortable in my brown belt, but like I didn't feel that
49:29
day one and it's cool to see like, but just as I've grown in my knowledge of that and
49:33
started to be like, no, I am, I am this and I can, I can show that I have this amount
49:37
of skill and, and then I've settled into that.
49:40
But I think that, man, just, just the parallel again, as you ratchet up, there's just always
49:45
this starting over thing.
49:46
Well, let's look at the Christian life.
49:48
So I, you know, I, I picked this up from somebody else, but it's like, it's not how many years
49:52
you've been a Christian.
49:53
It's how many hours.
49:54
And so the more hours you've been a Christian, the more depraved you realize you are and
49:59
the more sweet the gospel is, right?
50:01
He's just like, holy cow, God sent his son to this planet to die for me.
50:07
This wretched, black-hearted, horrible, selfish center, like, and so you understand it more,
50:13
but like with Jiu Jitsu, people get more humble at each belt, which seems, yeah, and you have
50:20
your outlier guys that get their black belts and they love to talk about it.
50:23
Yeah.
50:24
Like, but most guys, like the baddest dudes at our gym are the least assuming, right?
50:28
Yep.
50:29
So here's the thing, it helps that a tiger has stripes, right?
50:33
Because that's like nature signal of like, hey, I could kill you.
50:37
That's what cauliflower is, right?
50:38
That is like our way of saying like, hey, you don't get this from doing your taxes.
50:41
You had to go through some stuff to get these cauliflower ears, but the baddest dudes are
50:45
a gym.
50:46
Don't have cauliflower.
50:47
They don't have crooked noses.
50:48
Like they don't have neck tattoos.
50:49
They don't like, they're not the ones at the bars poking people in the chest.
50:52
Like saying, hey, do you want to test yourself?
50:54
You're like, it's none of that.
50:55
These are the guys that would be the least likely to fight.
50:58
Yep.
50:59
If you do, they're going to finish it, right?
51:01
And also they would be the guys that even in the fight, they would be the guy that would
51:05
be calm enough to choke someone out and to lay their head down softly on the concrete.
51:10
Yeah.
51:11
I suppose you just dump on them on the ground.
51:12
Yep.
51:13
And people don't really understand that.
51:14
No.
51:15
That, hey, how can you get more and more experience and exposure?
51:19
How can you get better and better at this thing and not grow in your ego?
51:23
I think it's because you constantly get your butt whipped.
51:26
Yep.
51:27
My name's not Gordon Ryan or Andre Galvalle.
51:29
It's like, okay, because those guys could go years without getting tapped, right?
51:33
When's the last time John Jones got tapped, right?
51:35
I mean, you know, realistically, right.
51:38
But for everybody else, for all of us mere mortals, we're going to walk into a room one
51:42
day at whatever level we're at and we're just going to be the nail, right?
51:45
I have classes where I walk out being like, yeah, I am God's gift to this sport.
51:49
Man, aren't they so lucky that I started doing this and there's other nights where I'm like,
51:53
I want to pretend like the last two hours of my life was not real because people saw
51:57
me.
51:58
I was definitely there.
51:59
But nothing jujitsu related happened.
52:01
It didn't happen from me.
52:02
It happened to me the entire time, you know, you know, I've been mad.
52:05
It's crazy.
52:06
I think you can do something this long and still get your butt whooped like, well, you must
52:09
not be very good.
52:10
No, you understand the quality of the training partners we have.
52:13
It's like, yeah, I mean, for me, it can make me look like a white belt some days.
52:16
Yeah.
52:17
It's just awful.
52:18
Like what am I doing?
52:19
But the levels are so preposterous.
52:21
Oh, yeah.
52:22
And that's the deal.
52:23
Like once you get a black belt, like my first black belt competition was just a handful
52:26
of months after I got my black belt.
52:27
I signed up for, I think it was IBJJF, Waco.
52:33
First guy in, right, like hadn't been a black belt before.
52:36
So I was the lowest ranked black belt competitor in my division.
52:38
This was like master's two, master's three heavyweight.
52:43
And I pulled the number one seed, first match, well, he used to train with the guy.
52:48
So I knew a little bit about his game, big, tall, like long, like six, five, like huge
52:53
heavyweight.
52:54
But I took him down, I passed his guard, and I won on points.
52:58
Okay, cool.
52:59
So then now there's a little bit of swagger going into the next couple matches, right?
53:02
So when the next match and then in the finals, loss be a ref decision, no points, no advantages.
53:08
We literally just sat there, like jerk on each other's ghee for five minutes, whatever.
53:14
And after that match, guys, you know, comes up, shakes my hand and say, Hey, man, great
53:18
match.
53:19
So how long have you been a black belt?
53:20
It's like, I'll just like a couple of months.
53:21
He's like, dude.
53:22
It's awesome.
53:23
What about you?
53:24
It's like 14 years.
53:25
Oh, okay.
53:26
Yeah.
53:27
But you know, like, that's where like you feel like you're starting over a black belt
53:32
because you are.
53:33
Now you're in a pool of black belts that have done this for ever and especially in getting
53:39
into it later in life, like, you know, at 43 years old, I've been a black belt three
53:43
years, you know, there's guys that I was compete against that have been a black belt
53:46
for 20 years.
53:49
And there are levels to this game and it is humbling when you get to roll with one of
53:53
those guys.
53:54
Right.
53:55
But it just makes you keep showing up.
53:56
Like how is that not motivating to you?
53:57
If you've gotten this far and know that like you can also help bring up the next generation
54:01
of people too.
54:02
That's where jujitsu change so much for me, especially like later brown belt, black belt
54:05
days.
54:06
It's like, I enjoy, I enjoy the training.
54:08
I enjoy going hard with my buddies.
54:09
You know, there's guys that, you know, you can slap hands like that we're going to war
54:13
to Nick, Isaac, you know, Anthony Crohn's for me.
54:16
Yeah.
54:17
Like there's guys that I know, okay, like I'm going to bring it.
54:19
I got to be in shape.
54:20
They're in shape.
54:21
We're going to go hard with each other.
54:22
Other than that, it's like, it's really just nurturing the other guys in the gym.
54:26
And so like my purpose for jujitsu is change so much.
54:28
It's not about me.
54:29
And I don't know if it, I think it was for a good period of time.
54:32
It was more about me and like, you know, I would probably like, maybe keep tally marks
54:36
in the car of who you beat, who I tapped out and how many times I tapped versus tapping
54:41
people out and stuff.
54:42
And then that, that changed.
54:43
And especially as like you're leaning into these young guys in the, in the, in our gym
54:48
now, like I'm really just more about helping people.
54:51
Like it's, it's not uncommon to see both of us sitting on the mat after training in the
54:54
morning, like helping guys for a long time.
54:56
Yeah.
54:57
Like just like we're there for another hour or something.
54:58
Yeah.
54:59
Just like here, let me help you.
55:00
Let me help you.
55:01
Yep.
55:02
So when you want to share that, that knowledge, like so the, the half car pass I showed you
55:06
on the floor, I, before we got in here, there, there's a few things like there's a half guard
55:09
pass.
55:10
I have a mount escape.
55:11
I have, I have some, uh, some open guard passes.
55:14
I have some things that like are just my bread and butter and I'll see someone struggling
55:18
in a particular position and then I'll be like, let me give you this gift.
55:22
Yeah.
55:23
Like let me give you at your white belt, something I wish someone had given me a white belt because
55:27
there were certain positions.
55:28
So like full guard, right?
55:29
So you know, you're in a guy's full guard.
55:31
Most people are like, okay, they're grabbing the pants.
55:33
They're scooching out this way.
55:35
They're trying to push the hip into the triangle as they push away and all their, their legs
55:39
are just supposed to come apart unless they're a freak beast or a, you know, a strong person
55:43
or, you know, just a very experienced person.
55:45
And then they just like recenter and then, okay, I'm just going to do it again.
55:48
Then recenter and then you start trying to dig your elbows into their thighs as a jerk
55:51
and all that.
55:52
And it just doesn't work.
55:53
And like I'm five years into training.
55:54
I got my purple belt and someone, one of my coaches goes, Hey, how about you just stand
55:58
up?
55:59
Hey, stand up.
56:01
So now I'm standing up and I'm letting gravity help help them kind of shake down and okay.
56:05
Now I'm splitting my legs out in an athletics and so now I'm pushing out.
56:08
Now the guard's done and to be able to, oh my gosh, why didn't y'all show us that when
56:13
I had been training for five months as opposed to five years and the gift that you can give
56:18
to somebody?
56:19
Like I remember there was a guy, oh, it was during our last promo thing.
56:23
He was getting his blue belt.
56:25
And I remember a couple months before I had showed him my open guard pass, right?
56:28
Cause it's a quick thing that awesome more showed me, you know, where you're kind of pivoting
56:31
on the leg and going around and he did it during like during promo night or so.
56:36
I think it was promo night.
56:37
It may have been just regular price.
56:38
It doesn't really matter.
56:39
And I'm watching from the sideline and I felt like a proud father.
56:42
I'm like, cause I watched him do it and he did it perfectly.
56:45
The timing was perfect and all that and he hadn't been training for very long.
56:48
And it's just like, man, you, you can just give these gifts of knowledge to people that
56:53
are like, and again, at the end of the day, it's just jujitsu.
56:58
But for, for these people, if this is like kind of your main hobby, it's just like, man,
57:01
you are practicing, like you're practicing going to actual battle with people that want
57:05
what's best for you.
57:06
Like you're, you're not trying to get one over on anybody like, you know, there's another
57:10
brown belt.
57:11
He wrestled it.
57:12
And then as he's, you know, Edmund PD, SWAT, like he's, he's a great dude.
57:17
Every time because we're in, we're in Steve's class.
57:18
He calls out the matches.
57:20
We don't make eye contact and be like, yeah, you want to go?
57:22
Like he calls out the matches.
57:23
Okay.
57:24
You go with him.
57:25
I like when we will do that for me.
57:26
It does it every day.
57:27
And this is Dylan and I's reaction whenever a professor says, all right, Dylan and Kyle,
57:31
we both go.
57:32
Yeah.
57:33
And yet because the majority of the time, six minutes goes by, it is zero to zero and we're
57:38
both completely exhausted because I spams take downs on him, didn't work.
57:42
He spam take downs on me, didn't work.
57:45
We both got into a scramble where no points, no points, no points, scramble, scramble.
57:49
We both end up on our feet still zero, zero, but that's the thing is like, you need those
57:55
rounds, right?
57:56
Cause it's good to get that white belt that you can just kind of like play with and like,
57:59
I want to see if I can do this.
58:00
And, you know, I want to see if I can like tap them to pressure, let's mother's milk this
58:04
person so we can get out of here like, but you know, you kind of get exposure to those
58:07
different, different things.
58:09
And I mean, again, the lessons are just all over the place.
58:11
It's amazing.
58:12
And like you mentioned this earlier, but like the opportunity to like that guy that got
58:16
you with the cross legs, you know, and the, the ego, it's there, there's an opportunity
58:20
for the ego.
58:21
You're like, I'm, I'm going to like keep a straight base.
58:23
I'm going to let him hurt my ankle and then I'm going to not let him know that he almost
58:26
got it.
58:27
And I'm going to leave.
58:28
I've done it before.
58:29
It's a bad idea.
58:30
Yeah.
58:31
Don't do that.
58:32
Now the other day I had a similar experience.
58:33
It's really tall, kind of crazy blue belt, sometimes it's super competitive, strong.
58:36
He just goes like super hard right off the bat, six 30 in the morning, you know, like
58:41
barely waking up and he like pulls to single leg X, like, you know, and he's tall and it's
58:47
good.
58:48
And I could feel like I've stepped back and I could feel like, Oh man, all right.
58:51
And so I peel it and I could just like bump straight to mount.
58:54
But I'm like, Oh no, he's pretty good at this and I'm going to see if I can kind of stay
58:58
here.
58:59
So I'm playing a little game by myself.
59:00
He doesn't know.
59:01
He just thinks I'm not passing you a single leg and I keep peeling the heel off.
59:05
And then eventually he gets a hold of my other leg and I'm like, Oh, now I'm actually in
59:07
trouble because he's about to sweep me and he swept me and then I held both of his pant
59:11
legs so he couldn't move.
59:13
But I was tempted to just be like kind of irritated that he swept me and then and just
59:17
like keep that, you know, keep it to the grave, put it on.
59:20
Yeah.
59:21
But afterward I was like, it was cool because I was like, Hey, dude, your, your single leg
59:25
X is awesome.
59:26
Like you're super good at that.
59:28
You're a blue belt.
59:29
That's something that's formative and that's going to be something that sticks with you the
59:31
rest of your journey.
59:32
You're going to be really like when you're a black belt and you're doing this, people
59:36
are going to be asking you to show to teach you that portion of your game because I can
59:40
already tell that that's them.
59:42
And I didn't.
59:43
It felt really good after I was done saying that to him at first.
59:45
I was just like, I don't want this guy to know I even like I even struggled with this
59:48
single like X and the sweep was like whatever.
59:51
But the other side of that is terrible because you will have upper belts that are about to
59:56
get something done to him by lower belt and they'll be like, Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait.
59:59
If you'll just your grip a little bit up this way, blah, blah, blah, it's like, no, bro,
1:00:03
you take it.
1:00:04
Like they got you just acknowledge it.
1:00:06
Yeah.
1:00:07
And because, you know, I had, there was recently there's some blue belt that did some sort
1:00:11
of weird, if something weird where I didn't really recognize what was happening with my
1:00:15
shoulder.
1:00:16
So I just tapped and I got mad like, and it was like, it was a quick like, I can't believe
1:00:21
that just happened.
1:00:22
It was frustrating.
1:00:23
It was shocking.
1:00:24
But then like within 10 seconds, I'm like, Hey man, that was really slick.
1:00:27
Yeah.
1:00:28
Yeah.
1:00:29
You can either ask, what is that?
1:00:30
You're getting an opportunity to learn.
1:00:31
But it's like, dude, that was so slick.
1:00:32
And do you know what that probably been to that, that guy, you know, to learn from, you
1:00:36
know, to have someone with that, you know, do you even just a higher belt?
1:00:39
Yeah.
1:00:40
Say, Hey, that was really good.
1:00:41
Cause then when I roll with white belts, like at some point during the round, I need
1:00:45
to let them know.
1:00:46
Yeah.
1:00:47
So I either let them know from the beginning and then I will let them work the rest of the
1:00:49
time or I'll let them work and then I'll just let them know in the last minute or so.
1:00:53
Right.
1:00:54
Like if they actually legit get something, I will typically laugh and be like, dude,
1:00:58
you legit got that.
1:00:59
Like I did, cause they don't know if they're, you're letting them work or doing it because
1:01:03
I was always the thing.
1:01:04
Like I would roll with someone and I could tell they were going like 60% and it was just
1:01:07
so infuriating.
1:01:08
Um, but like I would tell some, dude, no, I was defending that.
1:01:10
I have no idea.
1:01:11
You're about to throw that up.
1:01:12
Yeah.
1:01:13
Like nice job.
1:01:14
You know, and I don't know if this, this is probably on the nose, but man, I, again,
1:01:17
just a parallel that I'm seeing personally as I disciple people, I see the opportunity
1:01:21
for like there, maybe off on some, like, like they're expressing their understanding of
1:01:27
something theologically.
1:01:28
And I think that they're off, uh, but there's a Pete, there's an element of it that I think
1:01:32
is like, Hey, that's actually really good reasoning.
1:01:35
Like you, you, you cited the right verse, but that, but the way that you were interpreting
1:01:39
and actually can lead to a kind of a dangerous thing.
1:01:41
So here's where we go.
1:01:42
But like acknowledging that there was a, there was good in it.
1:01:45
And I think that is really encouraging for anybody, whether it's their fake turning or
1:01:49
it's due to just to know, man, at least I was on the right track or at least I'm headed
1:01:52
in the right direction.
1:01:53
I'm doing a couple of things right.
1:01:55
And that's so encouraging.
1:01:56
And I think that's important for everybody to remember that, like, dude, you, you have
1:01:58
such an opportunity to encourage a person with five seconds worth of effort, five seconds
1:02:03
worth of talking to them.
1:02:04
And don't withhold.
1:02:05
No, don't withhold.
1:02:06
There's no, yeah, there's no benefit to that.
1:02:09
In fact, it's amazing.
1:02:10
You feel amazing.
1:02:11
I mean, even if you did it to be selfish, which of course not, but you're going to feel great
1:02:15
encouraging somebody, watching them walk away, being built up and feeling like, you know,
1:02:20
and maybe that puts them wind in their sails for the next couple of days, you know, or
1:02:23
or gave them the motivation they need.
1:02:25
They were having that day you were having when you were like in the locker room.
1:02:28
And then Tyler Murrow says something to you and if, you know what, man, that makes me
1:02:31
feel good.
1:02:32
And I'm going to come back again and I'm going to get after it.
1:02:34
Yeah.
1:02:35
Part of it's just expectation management for people.
1:02:38
So every now and then I'll get into around with, you know, I'll get paired up with a white
1:02:41
belt and this is a white belt that wants to be chatty, like they want to ask what I'm
1:02:46
doing the entire time.
1:02:47
Yeah.
1:02:48
And I just have to be like, not why we're rolling.
1:02:50
Yeah.
1:02:51
Like, so if I sell them all that, they'll be like, Hey, can you show me I got there?
1:02:54
It's like time is going.
1:02:55
Let's keep going.
1:02:56
And so it's just like, you're kind of setting the tone for them and it's not because you're
1:02:59
being a jerk.
1:03:00
It's because like, this is how you learn, like, because that's the other thing about
1:03:05
Jiu Jitsu.
1:03:06
You don't realize you're getting better.
1:03:07
Yeah.
1:03:08
If people could lift and knock it stronger, nobody would lift.
1:03:12
Yeah.
1:03:13
Nobody lifts for fun.
1:03:14
Right.
1:03:15
No.
1:03:16
I don't, I don't lift for fun.
1:03:17
I live because I either get to maintain or grow in my strength.
1:03:18
Right.
1:03:19
That's why everyone lives.
1:03:20
But Jiu Jitsu is something where you may go years without really realizing am I better?
1:03:26
Right.
1:03:27
And so because I'm looking at my game right now and I'm comparing it to my blue bell game,
1:03:31
because my, you know, my all the way through purple bell, everything I did was predicated
1:03:34
on the takedown.
1:03:36
But, you know, just turned 39 this year, have had some neck issues and things like that.
1:03:41
And so it's like, I feel like I can always, excuse me, I feel like an, I can always dust
1:03:46
off the double leg if I needed it, but now it's like, what if I'm not going to be shooting
1:03:50
a double leg?
1:03:51
What are my other options?
1:03:52
Okay.
1:03:53
What are some other singles?
1:03:54
What are some other throws?
1:03:55
What are some other things that I can do?
1:03:56
What are some things I can do to stymie the other person so much that they're going to
1:03:59
pull?
1:04:00
Yeah.
1:04:01
Because there's very few people that once they pull that the advantages to them.
1:04:04
Yeah.
1:04:05
So, you know, you start moving around and kind of giving like a little bit of a, a little
1:04:09
bit of deference to the game and all that.
1:04:11
But you know, again, it's still good to, to be able to learn from different people and
1:04:15
get into those, those different positions.
1:04:16
Yeah.
1:04:17
But for you guys, like, I'm so, like, with Jesus and Jiu Jitsu.
1:04:21
So I've been to a couple of y'all's events.
1:04:24
And so the way they're, they're structured, well, I'm actually just curious about how it
1:04:28
even got to what it is now, because I only know like what it is now, because I forgot
1:04:31
how we, we got connected, but I think, I think it was Matt was speaking at for Migas for
1:04:37
something.
1:04:38
And so Matt and I had become friends, Matt Chandler.
1:04:39
So he's like, Hey, you should come down here for this event.
1:04:41
I'm speaking at.
1:04:42
And so I go down there and I meet, I meet you guys and I meet some of the other guys.
1:04:47
And it's like, okay, you got a whole bunch of people there, they're there for Fermiga,
1:04:51
but then, you know, Matt or some pastor, somebody will get up, get their testimony, give some
1:04:55
sort of a little bit of a speech or whatever.
1:04:58
And then, you know, it's just kind of open mat rolling, was that kind of the idea from
1:05:02
the beginning about what, what this was going to be or did it just kind of, and other where
1:05:06
the, the mission of the ministry is to build community and fellowship around Jesus and
1:05:10
world-class Jiu Jitsu.
1:05:12
And so it started with, you know, live events, um, three years ago.
1:05:16
Yeah.
1:05:17
Right.
1:05:18
And then it was your idea that say, no, we need a podcast to, to disciple the people,
1:05:21
but I don't know, like talk the process of how we do the events.
1:05:26
Yes.
1:05:27
So the events are really, I mean, that's our evangelism portion.
1:05:30
We're like trying to reach as many people as possible.
1:05:32
So we are purposeful about bringing in the biggest people that we can get ahold of, uh,
1:05:38
to draw an audience.
1:05:39
And then when they're there, I mean, they know what they're getting.
1:05:41
Like it's not like you're showing up for this thing and then you're getting a timeshare
1:05:44
pitch, you know, it's like, you're going to a Jesus and Jiu Jitsu event, get the Jiu Jitsu
1:05:49
upfront.
1:05:50
You got to learn from Bouchecha for free.
1:05:53
There's a 15 or 20 minute sermon on the backside, which the last one was that you came to was
1:05:57
Matt Chandler.
1:05:58
Again, when he was then and we touch him and we touch you and amazing 400, 500 people
1:06:02
in the building, like just amazing group of people.
1:06:04
But that's, that's the, that's a piece of what we do.
1:06:08
That's like the forward facing like, Hey, let's go to the community.
1:06:12
Let's pull these guys in and people who are far from God, people who are not willing to
1:06:15
go to church all the way, Matt, Matt says that they are, they will never darken the door
1:06:19
of a church, but they'll step foot on a mat.
1:06:22
And so we use Jiu Jitsu as a bridge, as a tool for the gospel and we just get in proximity.
1:06:28
So come for the amazing Jiu Jitsu, be an earshot of the message, we share the gospel, maybe
1:06:33
it will land on their heart, maybe it will find fertile soil and it will grow.
1:06:38
And then we train after, and that way they always know like there's an element of that.
1:06:41
Most people love that part of getting to like go to an open mat or, or a seminars, they look
1:06:46
forward to the roles afterward.
1:06:48
And in this case, there's always world class, uh, Jiu Jitsu players there after, um, whether
1:06:54
it was the guy that taught her just all his friends that showed up that are black belts
1:06:57
and they get to train with all these different people.
1:06:59
So that's, that's the big draw of what we do with the podcast started shortly after as
1:07:03
specifically as a discipleship tool, because there's a lot of people that weren't, I realized
1:07:08
early on like, cool, we're reaching people, but there's the real work starts when it's
1:07:13
like walking with them.
1:07:15
When I saw this in my dad's ministry, like my dad was with the power team and then power
1:07:19
team had some moral failings in their leadership.
1:07:22
A couple of those guys left and started team impact.
1:07:24
My dad was one of those founders and they were very, they knew we're going to come in
1:07:29
town.
1:07:30
People are going to come see us.
1:07:31
We're going to get to share the gospel with them and then we leave town.
1:07:34
Like that's not a good model for people to do the long term work.
1:07:38
So we need to make sure that we, we don't leave them just like their hearts open, leave
1:07:43
their hearts raw, so that what they do is they're very purposeful about getting connected
1:07:47
with a local church so that they can continue that fellowship, that discipleship.
1:07:51
So that was kind of the podcast part of what we do.
1:07:55
And then now we have like content, you know, I mean, devotional book, discipleship curriculums
1:07:59
coming out.
1:08:00
So yeah, that's, that's kind of how we're set up and why we wear a heart is evangelism
1:08:04
discipleship.
1:08:05
Hey guys, real quick.
1:08:06
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1:08:10
but they were training and using these supplements that they were buying online and a lot of
1:08:14
them had crazy side effects.
1:08:16
These were not good things.
1:08:17
There's no telling what all was in these supplements.
1:08:19
And so I've always kind of been scared about what supplements I'm going to put in my body.
1:08:23
And I decided when I do start taking supplements, I want to make sure I'm using products that
1:08:28
are certifiably clean and also using only high quality ingredients.
1:08:33
And that's why I want to remind you guys that I have started taking and that we are partnered
1:08:37
with Jocko Fuel.
1:08:39
So Jocko Fuel is Jocko Willing's American based supplement company.
1:08:43
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1:08:44
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1:08:46
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1:08:47
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1:08:51
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1:08:54
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1:08:57
Also, they make the cleanest energy drinks that I've ever found.
1:09:00
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1:09:04
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1:09:05
They also have Jocko hydrate drinks that are awesome because they are electrolyte drinks
1:09:09
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1:09:13
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1:09:17
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1:09:21
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1:09:26
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1:09:33
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1:09:51
But similar to whenever I go and speak places, I always tell the staff or the elders or whoever
1:09:56
I'm like, Hey, y'all need to be ready.
1:09:58
And they're like, they're thinking like for me to come in and town.
1:10:01
I'm like, no, for the moment I leave because again, my style is burning down and walk away.
1:10:07
And the thing is, is because I don't live here, like I don't live in this town.
1:10:10
I don't, I don't live in Wherever's,ville, Ohio, like it's just, you know, I'm going
1:10:13
to come in.
1:10:14
I'm going to do my thing.
1:10:15
And then I get to leave.
1:10:16
So discipleship is not my process.
1:10:18
Yeah.
1:10:19
Like, and if somebody is saved by the Holy Spirit that night or something like that, like discipleship
1:10:25
should start immediately.
1:10:26
Y'all need to have a plan in place for that, right?
1:10:28
Because whenever I got saved, I didn't have anyone to cycle me, but I'm highly conscientious.
1:10:31
So I go to the salt seller, Christian bookstore and Edmund, or I'm a lot in Oklahoma right
1:10:36
next to Hastings.
1:10:37
And I go by the most extreme teen looking Bible possible and I just start reading, right?
1:10:40
And so, which can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, right?
1:10:44
And so I think that that's a helpful thing to kind of have that in your mindset.
1:10:47
Because it'd be one thing, because we talked about this when we were hanging out down in
1:10:50
Dallas last time with Matt, it's like, okay, you're not going to maybe have a bigger seminar
1:10:54
than Butchestra and Matt Chandler, right?
1:10:56
The combo there, that's probably the high watermark.
1:10:59
Yeah.
1:11:00
That doesn't mean you shouldn't shoot for something bigger than that, but it's like, is the point
1:11:03
to have events?
1:11:05
Is it to go on tour and do some Jesus and Jesus events like, okay, go to Atos and San Diego
1:11:11
and then pop in somewhere in Austin and then head up to origin up in Maine and okay, maybe
1:11:16
that's a point.
1:11:17
But if the goal is discipleship, everything has to look and feel different.
1:11:21
Yeah.
1:11:22
But you still have to have the event that kind of drives people to the content, right?
1:11:26
Which will help them on their sanctification journeys as well.
1:11:28
That's right.
1:11:29
So, but I mean, again, was that the plan from the beginning to do it this way or has it
1:11:32
just kind of emerged as y'all have continued to work through it.
1:11:36
Yeah.
1:11:37
So in the beginning, it was really like, I think trying to figure out what it was going
1:11:39
to be.
1:11:40
And it was like, well, we want to reach as many people as possible with the gospel.
1:11:43
So let's put together these events.
1:11:45
We did the events then quickly after we realized the need for discipleship, people are like,
1:11:49
this is cool.
1:11:50
But I want more.
1:11:51
I want to walk with some of these guys.
1:11:52
I've met a bunch of people in the community.
1:11:54
Now there's kind of a place you've carved out, you like, we, we, we stake the claim.
1:11:59
We like stuck our flag in the ground as like, this is a place where believers can be, can
1:12:03
like be bold about their faith in Jiu-Jitsu wasn't really like that before, especially
1:12:07
in our area.
1:12:08
I mean, it's a lot of people who personally have a belief, some Bible studies here and
1:12:11
there, but it wasn't really like a, and he's been doing Jiu-Jitsu a lot longer than me,
1:12:15
but you know, it's kind of been traditionally a dark place.
1:12:17
Yeah.
1:12:18
Jiu-Jitsu gyms are not that conducive to it unless you're purposeful.
1:12:21
So we're like, let's be bold in these places.
1:12:24
But again, they wanted to walk in community with people and we realized, I realized the
1:12:27
need right, right early on.
1:12:29
And so all, I mean, especially all the founding guys, we're like disciples, it needs to happen
1:12:33
next, but it was just kind of figuring out how to do it that was difficult and we're still
1:12:37
working on it.
1:12:38
Yeah.
1:12:39
We've gotten a few things wrong and we'll probably continue to, right?
1:12:41
I mean, this is, yes, it's a 50123 nonprofit, but it's a, you know, you know, I like talking
1:12:46
about things that go wrong.
1:12:47
Yeah.
1:12:48
Are you open to talking about some of the mistakes or missteps?
1:12:50
Yeah.
1:12:51
Yeah.
1:12:52
Of course.
1:12:53
I'll stay again.
1:12:54
Hmm.
1:12:55
What do we start?
1:12:56
And then at this point, three years as an organization, three years in.
1:12:59
So what are some of the things to where it's like looking back, like, oh, that one, that
1:13:04
one, wasn't it?
1:13:05
Let's let's name names too.
1:13:07
Let's throw people under the bus like, you know, I like making people uncomfortable.
1:13:10
So actually people will learn from our mistakes.
1:13:14
Yeah.
1:13:15
Yeah.
1:13:16
So I think something that we're trying to overcome present day is that the Jesus and
1:13:19
Jiu Jitsu is not just a double five thing.
1:13:21
Yeah.
1:13:22
Right.
1:13:23
Because most of us train at double five or have some sort of affiliation to double five.
1:13:29
Many of our instructors early on, where we were getting them from that pool because they
1:13:33
were supportive.
1:13:34
Yeah.
1:13:35
Yeah.
1:13:36
So I think a mistake was like almost making Jesus and Jiu Jitsu somewhat exclusive, even
1:13:40
though it wasn't, right?
1:13:41
Like it wasn't exclusive and that wasn't the intent, but just a byproduct of who we were
1:13:45
picking to do seminars and who had, you know, was, was able to donate their time.
1:13:49
It turned into like, Oh, man, this is just double five.
1:13:53
Yeah.
1:13:54
Right?
1:13:55
Yeah.
1:13:56
And so did the, which it could be worse.
1:13:57
Yeah.
1:13:58
For sure.
1:13:59
Yeah.
1:14:00
Yeah.
1:14:01
But I think that, you know, that was something that we're trying to pivot from now.
1:14:02
And we had some opportunities when we were at Jiu Jitsu, calling it Vegas, just what a
1:14:05
month ago now, to where people realize that, Oh, Jesus and Jiu Jitsu isn't just a double
1:14:11
five thing.
1:14:12
Like this is more of a kingdom initiative not, and that goes beyond any affiliation, like
1:14:17
our affiliation is to Christ.
1:14:19
And so it was cool to see folks like Josh Hinger and Fermiga, who are rivals and, you
1:14:26
know, competing against each other to be the best master's athletes in the world, spending
1:14:32
time together at the Jesus and Jiu Jitsu booth.
1:14:34
And I think that was the Jiu Jitsu community was able to see that in that, Oh, this isn't
1:14:39
just, this isn't just a Fermiga thing.
1:14:41
These aren't just Fermiga's guys like, no, absolutely not.
1:14:43
Like we are for everyone, like it is, it is inclusive.
1:14:46
And so I think we're on the verge of like overcoming that, especially as we're bringing
1:14:51
in and getting building stronger relationships with folks that kind of run those other affiliations,
1:14:56
right?
1:14:57
Your Atos, your, you know, Gracie Baja, we did a great on the mat with Anasio Nato recently,
1:15:03
which is kind of a new initiative we're, we're pushing out there to kind of gives us a more
1:15:07
raw setting to go, we'll pop in with the film crew, like us, we'll go train with them.
1:15:12
And then we just interview them on the mat.
1:15:13
We're kind of like on the mat style podcast, just getting really raw with books, like you're
1:15:17
in your face, laying on the mat, you're, you know, drenched in sweat.
1:15:21
And that opportunity that we had with Anasio Nato who owns Gracie Baja McKinney, he's looking
1:15:26
to open up a new location soon, very well known in the space.
1:15:30
Great believer, just great man of God, about to be a father with twins.
1:15:34
So congratulations to him, shout out to him.
1:15:36
But you know how Gracie Baja is in there, like they're a little closed.
1:15:41
Yeah.
1:15:42
Right.
1:15:43
And so something that I thought was a big deal that we kind of brushed off that day was
1:15:50
that we were the first people to step on his mats that weren't wearing Gracie Baja Geez.
1:15:54
Okay.
1:15:55
Right.
1:15:56
And if you've been around the sport long enough to know, you know that Gracie Baja is the
1:15:59
big deal that you, you were a uniform.
1:16:00
That's right.
1:16:01
It's a uniform.
1:16:02
And that doesn't happen.
1:16:03
And I dropped into a Gracie and I don't own a white ghee, much less Gracie Baja.
1:16:07
So yeah, that's right.
1:16:08
Yeah.
1:16:09
So, but Anasio made it a point to bring that up to say, Oh brother, you're the first guy,
1:16:15
not in, you know, Dave, Dave was with us.
1:16:18
Dave got to train as well.
1:16:19
And he's a killer, by the way, not, yeah, not only Dave, but not technically exists because
1:16:23
he's not on camera.
1:16:24
Yeah.
1:16:25
So, yeah.
1:16:26
He's a Rodriguez.
1:16:27
So it, but it was, it was really cool just to see that like in that moment, we were there
1:16:32
to just talk about Jesus.
1:16:34
It wasn't as much about jujitsu, but it's talk about like the, the common ground between
1:16:38
us was obviously our love for jujitsu, but ultimately our love for Jesus.
1:16:42
And then when I'm beyond any affiliation, beyond any school, beyond anything, no, we're
1:16:47
going to talk about our love for Jesus period.
1:16:50
And the more that the ministry is getting out there now and like really getting legs
1:16:53
in the, in the jujitsu space, I think people were starting to realize that it's not just
1:16:56
a thing.
1:16:57
You mentioned wearing your shirts, you know, at the airport and, you know, they're conversation
1:17:02
starters.
1:17:03
We call that in the wild.
1:17:04
Yeah.
1:17:05
Like seeing the jujitsu.
1:17:06
Oh, there's someone in the airport like I didn't know the guy.
1:17:08
And so for, for a good period of time, like if we saw somebody out in public wearing something
1:17:14
of our above the ministry, he's like, we knew that person.
1:17:17
Yeah.
1:17:18
Right.
1:17:19
But after Vegas, it's like, you know, we're there with three, we were there three days,
1:17:23
I guess.
1:17:24
Yeah.
1:17:25
Yeah.
1:17:26
By day three, there was Jesus and jujitsu stuff in the stand everywhere in the stand.
1:17:29
It's like flags.
1:17:30
It's like, okay, this, this is, this is where it's at.
1:17:33
And so really just a short answer to your question.
1:17:36
Uh, no, I mean, that's, no, that's helpful because you, you kind of gives me a sense
1:17:41
of like what, what it took to kind of get to where you go, cause you don't, you can't
1:17:44
know that it was a mistake or a misstep or, and you look back and I'm like, Oh, why did
1:17:48
I believe that's?
1:17:49
Cause that's what the info you had at the time.
1:17:50
Yeah.
1:17:51
You made the call.
1:17:52
You thought it was right.
1:17:53
Yeah.
1:17:54
And then, you know, looking back on it, you would have, you know, stepped a little different.
1:17:55
Yeah.
1:17:56
Who cares?
1:17:57
Yeah.
1:17:58
Um, I'll share another shortcoming, uh, with you, which was, uh, that we, so early on, there
1:18:02
was a ton of people that were reaching out like, this is cool.
1:18:05
I want to, how do we be a part of this thing?
1:18:07
I want to be a part of this.
1:18:09
Um, I, I run a Bible study at my school, can I call it Jesus in Jiu Jitsu?
1:18:14
And in the beginning, it was kind of like, I, I felt like it was a selfish thing.
1:18:17
I'm not trying to be, um, exclusive with the, the ministry part of this at all.
1:18:21
Um, and so it was kind of like loose in the beginning, but then quickly I made a mistake.
1:18:26
I realized there was a guy that, you know, I talked to that was like, I'm going to lead
1:18:29
this Bible study.
1:18:30
I'm going to kind of recall at this.
1:18:31
And I was meeting with him and I thought that that kind of having a personal relationship
1:18:34
with him would be enough to kind of justify setting him loose, but then talking to him
1:18:39
a couple of times in after he had already been leading a Bible state was like, oh, oh,
1:18:43
his theology is crazy.
1:18:45
Like this is not healthy and if he's leading the whole group of people, we definitely can't
1:18:50
have our name on this because it's not even in alignment with our statement of faith that
1:18:53
we put out that I wrote and put on the website.
1:18:56
And so, um, in wisdom, like, so the Bible says that in a multitude of counselors, they're
1:19:01
safety and man, I've taken that to heart with Jesus in Jiu Jitsu.
1:19:03
I have a wide variety of wise counselors who are never afraid to tell me the truth, like
1:19:10
they will hurt my feelings to tell me the truth.
1:19:13
Um, and I've surrounded myself with all the Matt Chandler's, one of them, um, and a bunch
1:19:18
of other really awesome dudes to kind of just say his name, he's sitting in Kyle Thompson.
1:19:23
He has been invited to us.
1:19:25
We learned a lot.
1:19:26
Actually, we made some changes after our last time we spent together just kind of like in
1:19:29
how we're thinking about certain things, but, uh, but that's the whole thing.
1:19:33
I'm surrounding myself continuing with wise people and, and varying opinion, like different
1:19:37
opinions and perspectives.
1:19:38
And it's helped inform us.
1:19:39
But wise counsel said, Hey, if they're going to be representing the ministry, we really,
1:19:43
like we have to, it's not that we're trying to control every little piece of this, but
1:19:47
you have to be guarded and who is able to represent your name.
1:19:50
Yeah.
1:19:51
Like there's not people out there teaching wacky stuff that say they're with the undaunted
1:19:55
life ministry and podcast, um, and you have to control that.
1:19:59
And so the way that we figured we the best way to do that was to give people something
1:20:04
that was in alignment with our statement of faith, theologically very sound well written,
1:20:08
professionally written.
1:20:09
And so that's why we're working hard on our discipleship curriculum.
1:20:12
It's going to come out.
1:20:13
So we have a, our first semester of discipleship curriculum will come out.
1:20:16
I think we're aiming for like maybe six weeks from now, um, but we're, we're going to have,
1:20:20
we hit, we're recording the video portion of it.
1:20:22
So it's going to be a video that accompanies it.
1:20:24
And then there's going to be host, the host will have a leader guide for discussions.
1:20:29
And it's an eight week course, go through these different, eight different topics.
1:20:33
And then, um, there'll be a four week break and there's another eight weeks.
1:20:36
So it's four eight week semesters, uh, and again, the first semesters coming out pretty
1:20:41
soon.
1:20:42
Um, and that's the best way we knew to like, now we're equipping these people with stuff
1:20:47
that we trust.
1:20:49
And those leader guides are going to be leading discussions, those leaders are going to be
1:20:52
leading discussions that we are there in alignment with what we believe, um, to be
1:20:58
the gospel.
1:20:59
What we, what we mean when we say the gospel and, um, and it is in alignment with our
1:21:04
statement of faith.
1:21:05
So.
1:21:06
Yeah.
1:21:07
I wanted to, um, I, were you bringing up some of the guides or something in there?
1:21:09
Yeah.
1:21:10
I was going to bring up the, the eight topics that we got, because I, I was going to ask
1:21:13
kind of what's the next iteration.
1:21:14
So let's, let's hear them out.
1:21:15
Yeah.
1:21:16
Let me just a moment.
1:21:17
Yeah.
1:21:18
As you're bringing that up, Ryan, like I think that the one of the things that's important
1:21:20
is I could ask all the time, like, Hey, Kyle, what's the next big thing for on a life?
1:21:26
Like what's, what's the three to five year plan?
1:21:28
What's the big goal?
1:21:29
I don't know if we talked about this when we were chilling on the back porch at Matt's
1:21:32
house or not, but I was literally like, guys, I'm trying to make the next right move.
1:21:36
Yeah.
1:21:37
The next right move, because I am a content creator.
1:21:40
And so that's on Don life man's podcast and that's a daily blade.
1:21:43
And so inherent in that is not like a massive plan because a year and a half ago dominion
1:21:48
didn't exist.
1:21:49
Right.
1:21:50
The, the idea that I would be coaching, you know, men and kind of a small group setting
1:21:53
or a one on one setting, like that didn't exist.
1:21:56
And so it's like, let's let the marketplace continue to float us in terms of people agreeing
1:22:01
with the message and wanting more of it.
1:22:03
Right.
1:22:04
And then how do we tangibly deliver that in a way that's conducive to people having an
1:22:08
overall difference and change?
1:22:10
And so you got them up, Ryan?
1:22:12
Yeah, I do.
1:22:13
I do.
1:22:14
So the first session is going to be on personal holiness and sanctification.
1:22:19
You put a little jujitsu flavor terminology one of these right so that is a guard retention.
1:22:23
Okay.
1:22:24
Which lesson is Baron Bolo?
1:22:25
Who's that?
1:22:26
Whenever things go horribly wrong?
1:22:27
That's less than nine.
1:22:28
Okay.
1:22:29
Yeah.
1:22:30
Less than nine.
1:22:31
TV doing that.
1:22:32
Yeah.
1:22:33
Let's see.
1:22:34
Session two is character and discipline or technique growing in the foundations of faith.
1:22:39
We've got three three marriage is the flow rolling is what we call that.
1:22:46
Yeah.
1:22:47
We take, right?
1:22:49
I caught a submission.
1:22:50
I'm going to knock.
1:22:51
I could envy right now on our argument.
1:22:53
I'm not.
1:22:54
That's right.
1:22:55
Yeah.
1:22:56
I'm going to let that go.
1:22:57
Session four is a fatherhood and parenthood.
1:22:58
Professor and coach.
1:22:59
Type deal five work in finance or pressure passing grinded like that.
1:23:06
Right.
1:23:07
Yeah.
1:23:08
Six theology as doxology that submission seven evangelism and apologetics grip fighting.
1:23:16
Right.
1:23:17
Mentorship and building community.
1:23:18
That's mat culture.
1:23:20
We've got, I mean, full on script.
1:23:22
It's very Texas you get to because there's no takedowns.
1:23:25
Like none whatsoever.
1:23:26
Well, you can put that in with apologetics and just with the grip players over there.
1:23:30
Yeah.
1:23:31
Yeah.
1:23:32
Great fighting man.
1:23:33
Okay.
1:23:34
Whatever.
1:23:35
I like that.
1:23:36
No, I love that y'all are breaking it down that way.
1:23:37
But like, so where did the idea come from to do to do that?
1:23:40
Because again, you do events events are sexy and they're cool and you get to take a lot
1:23:43
of videos and stuff like that.
1:23:45
And like, that's the thing is like church camp is, it's big and the revival, the tent
1:23:49
revivals, like it's big and you know, you got all the production and the smoking bomb
1:23:52
and all that stuff.
1:23:53
Sanctification and discipleship is super boring.
1:23:55
Oh, man.
1:23:56
Way less sexy for sure.
1:23:57
Right.
1:23:58
Right.
1:23:59
That's the, that's, but that's where you get good.
1:24:00
It's not competing and getting a medal.
1:24:01
It's all those, you know, six AM jiu-jitsu classes.
1:24:04
Thousand percent.
1:24:05
So that it came.
1:24:06
It was born out of that.
1:24:07
We want to give people something that is that that's long lasting.
1:24:10
That's like evergreen that helps them grow in their faith that grow deep roots in the
1:24:15
jiu-jitsu community.
1:24:16
Because again, our target audience are people who, the people we are, we are after, that
1:24:21
God has tasked us with reaching are the men that will not step foot in a church.
1:24:26
Yeah.
1:24:27
But will go to a jiu-jitsu event.
1:24:29
They will plug into maybe a group of men that says, dude, hey, you know, on this day,
1:24:34
like we meet together, we hang out.
1:24:35
We've seen the fruit of that just we started a Bible study on Tuesday after our Tuesday
1:24:39
morning class.
1:24:40
Yeah, it's wild.
1:24:41
Yeah.
1:24:42
Like, and that's grown.
1:24:43
The gamer and I and Will and then two other guys that own this, this, like health clinic,
1:24:49
and we would meet in their lobby, just have coffee and talk about the Bible.
1:24:52
And then those two guys gave their life to the Lord, got baptized and matched church.
1:24:56
Yeah.
1:24:57
Yeah.
1:24:58
Yeah.
1:24:59
And then that group is grown.
1:25:00
Actually, a bunch of them were hanging out with us when we went to Matt's house.
1:25:01
Yeah.
1:25:02
Because the next day that one of them got baptized.
1:25:03
That was right.
1:25:04
Yeah.
1:25:05
Yeah.
1:25:06
And it's just like grown.
1:25:07
That group is grown because it's like, it's attracted.
1:25:08
They're doing, you know, the village says deep work in community over time.
1:25:14
That's discipleship.
1:25:15
And so that's what we're doing in that group.
1:25:17
And it's so attracted because people are like, it's so easy to invite people to that.
1:25:20
Hey, man, there's a bunch of us that get together right after this.
1:25:23
We go have coffee, talk about life where we're working through a book right now.
1:25:26
Like we would love to have you come through and no pressure.
1:25:28
And they're always like, yeah, I'll go check that out.
1:25:30
And then we get into like another guy and we got 25 dudes.
1:25:32
We don't even have enough room in the lobby, man.
1:25:34
But that's a tiny little, that's a tiny little example of what we're trying to do with the
1:25:40
discipleship curriculum.
1:25:41
It was born out of a need to or a desire to like equip these people.
1:25:45
So Jesus and Juditsu can't be in every city, like we can't have events in every city, in
1:25:51
every state all the time.
1:25:52
But a lot of people think that that's what the ministry is.
1:25:55
And I'm like, dude, Juditsu is like, Juditsu is cool.
1:25:58
Jesus is way cooler, way more important than all of that.
1:26:01
Let's give you that piece of it.
1:26:02
So we're now we're making curriculum to equip people, those people in those communities,
1:26:07
like you at the forge, you know, those men and women that you train with way better than
1:26:13
we could ever when we came in for one day and spoke, like you said, you go and you burn
1:26:16
it down, you leave.
1:26:17
Yeah.
1:26:18
Those people are going to do the work there because they walked in community with those
1:26:21
people for years.
1:26:22
They know their, they know their spouse's names.
1:26:24
They know the sickness or the illness that they recently got over or their parent that
1:26:29
passed away.
1:26:30
They know all of those things.
1:26:31
We're not trying to be that for those people.
1:26:34
We want to equip the people who are already in their life with content that they're not
1:26:37
having to like write a sermon every single week to minister to the people in their community.
1:26:41
Hey, let's give you some really solid, well written stuff.
1:26:45
That's theologically rich to minister to the people in your life.
1:26:49
So how much control do you have or influenced you have on the people that are leading these
1:26:54
groups after you get the content in their hands?
1:26:57
Well, because we haven't launched it yet, well, my plan is to be able to do a quarterly
1:27:04
zoom call with the hosts of those things that we have a touch point with them.
1:27:08
They also will have.
1:27:09
I mean, there won't be, I mean, there might be dozens and dozens because it's open to
1:27:12
the whole world.
1:27:13
There's people in Brazil and Canada and, um, and Japan, Philippines, Japan that want to
1:27:18
do it, um, but they'll have my contact.
1:27:21
I would love to have touch points once a quarter with these people face to face car, you know,
1:27:25
zoom call.
1:27:26
I'm a close eye on those Canadians.
1:27:27
All right.
1:27:28
So we don't know what they're saying.
1:27:29
Yeah.
1:27:30
I know like there are times.
1:27:31
Yeah.
1:27:32
They're all rolling around and they're maple syrup and all that kind of stuff up there.
1:27:35
But no, like, cause that's the other thing about it is, you know, there's always this
1:27:39
concept of what have you done for me lately.
1:27:40
So it's like you, you'll watch a show.
1:27:42
You'll binge watch season one of a show that took two years to make, right, to, to ride
1:27:48
and to film and to edit and do all that kind of stuff.
1:27:50
And then you're like, who wouldn't season two coming out to you to have a stupid, like
1:27:54
so we, so we get entitled to it.
1:27:56
But you guys, I have already, you know, had to start thinking about this, I would assume
1:28:00
we don't even have the curriculum launch launch yet.
1:28:03
Well, what's after that?
1:28:04
Right?
1:28:05
Because, you know, as soon as I wrote the first devotional, which the first thing I ever
1:28:08
did for Don of Life, man's podcast, or just on Don of Life in general, was a 21 day devotional
1:28:13
on the U version Bible app.
1:28:14
And then people would get done with that and they're like, you version two was like, Hey,
1:28:18
when are we getting another one?
1:28:19
Yep.
1:28:20
And then, you know, the podcast, obviously it's like, okay, well, just wait a couple of days
1:28:22
and we'll have something else out for you or Daily Blade is every day, but like.
1:28:25
So what's, I guess that that next thing, like, let's, let's say, yeah, let's say, okay,
1:28:30
you really, let's say you approve concept, right?
1:28:32
Because you said there's going to be four semesters total of this all eight week chunks.
1:28:36
Yeah.
1:28:37
So it technically, you know, gets you a year, if you think about it, depending on the breaks
1:28:40
that guy.
1:28:41
32 weeks plus breaks in between, yeah.
1:28:44
So you give someone a year and then what, because you all know the question's coming,
1:28:48
right?
1:28:49
And so we haven't even launched that first one yet.
1:28:50
Yeah.
1:28:51
So this is the thought for how this is iterated into the future because a podcast, like what
1:28:58
I do, like it's a new, it's the same voice giving you new information every few days,
1:29:03
right?
1:29:04
And so with what y'all are doing, like, you don't want to say, well, y'all can start
1:29:07
back over with, with week one.
1:29:09
Now some people will do that and they'll get a lot of value out of it.
1:29:12
So the small group goes through out of heart and then they did such a good job and loved
1:29:16
it so much.
1:29:17
They're going to take a couple of weeks off and then they're going to start back over in
1:29:18
the intro chapter.
1:29:19
Right.
1:29:20
So they're going to look like even after that.
1:29:21
Yeah.
1:29:22
I think, I mean, so we just came out with, we also came out with volume one of a devotional's
1:29:26
book, right?
1:29:27
Weekly devotional.
1:29:28
He actually grabbed that devotional look.
1:29:30
It's over there in that, in that box.
1:29:32
I want to show it on screen.
1:29:33
It's on, it's on one of those boxes right there.
1:29:35
I think I tossed in that one that's open right there.
1:29:37
I just wanted an excuse to get you on screen.
1:29:39
So you're going to have to come all the way around here and hand it to me.
1:29:41
It's funny because David's actually on the cover of the devotional team.
1:29:45
Come all the way around.
1:29:46
Smile.
1:29:47
You have to smile.
1:29:48
All three cameras.
1:29:49
Guys, this is Ryan Rodriguez.
1:29:50
Hey, it's Roger.
1:29:51
Blackfish.
1:29:52
Blackfish.
1:29:53
All right.
1:29:54
Get off camera.
1:29:55
Get out of here.
1:29:56
We don't anybody get all offended or whatever.
1:29:57
So this is it.
1:29:58
This is what you're talking about.
1:29:59
The weekly devotional's here.
1:30:00
So boom, guys, check that out.
1:30:01
Bam.
1:30:02
Isn't that awesome?
1:30:03
And so if somebody wanted to get this, by the way, how can they get their hands on this?
1:30:04
Yeah.
1:30:05
Our website.
1:30:06
Okay.
1:30:07
So that you have it on Amazon.
1:30:08
Don't buy it on Amazon.
1:30:09
Buy it on our website.
1:30:10
Jesus and jiujitsu.
1:30:11
USA.com.
1:30:12
And it's jujitsu.
1:30:13
J-I-U.
1:30:14
J-I-T-S-U.
1:30:15
Not jujiw.
1:30:16
Not j-U.
1:30:17
J-I-U-Jitsu, USA.com.
1:30:21
And you can find this.
1:30:22
So this is a weekly devotional.
1:30:24
It's got six months of devotional's if you're doing weekly.
1:30:26
You can burn through them too.
1:30:27
Yeah.
1:30:28
Has lines in here.
1:30:29
But these are really, again, really well written.
1:30:31
This is not some chat GPT thing that was thrown together.
1:30:34
These are written by Sterling Archer, who's a really seasoned, he's written a lot of discipleship
1:30:39
curriculums for different organizations.
1:30:41
He's written books for pastors.
1:30:44
Solid dude.
1:30:45
Can you tell me which pastors?
1:30:46
Yeah.
1:30:47
And the NDA's.
1:30:48
Go ahead.
1:30:49
But he met with us for months.
1:30:52
And Lucas, before he dove into how we wanted to do our curriculum.
1:30:57
And this, he listened to our podcast and he pulled a bunch of ideas from the podcast.
1:31:01
And then at the very back, there's actually a podcast guide that shows, like it's a reference
1:31:05
for the episode guide.
1:31:07
So if you're like, oh, this is cool.
1:31:09
How do I hear more about this topic?
1:31:11
We'll go to this episode of our podcast, Jesus and jiujitsu podcast and listen to it.
1:31:15
So we'll continue to expand upon both the devotional curriculum as well as the weekly
1:31:23
devotional is volume two, three, four, so on and so forth.
1:31:25
But you know, like, this is maybe a pipe dream for me, but jiujitsu is only getting more
1:31:32
and more popular.
1:31:33
Yeah.
1:31:34
I mean, we know that with CGI and UFC, BJJ, we are going to start tailoring a few more
1:31:39
of our events toward the no-give community, which you probably like to hear, you know,
1:31:42
more wrestling stuff.
1:31:43
Cause they're different, like they are, I think, you know, 16 years ago, a bunch of dang autistic
1:31:48
leg lockers.
1:31:49
Yeah.
1:31:50
Yeah.
1:31:51
Yeah.
1:31:52
Well, there's plenty of them out there.
1:31:53
Yeah.
1:31:54
So 16 years ago, I mean, people trained no-ghee.
1:31:55
Yes.
1:31:56
But it was also just like a seasonal thing, or you just took your ghee top off and that
1:31:59
was no-ghee.
1:32:00
But now they're two completely different in some places, the two completely different
1:32:05
communities.
1:32:06
Yeah.
1:32:07
Really.
1:32:08
Different communities, different sports.
1:32:09
More weed in the no-ghee culture.
1:32:10
Yeah.
1:32:11
Yeah.
1:32:12
Sure.
1:32:13
Yeah.
1:32:14
Shut up.
1:32:15
Tip plan.
1:32:16
Yeah.
1:32:17
Yeah.
1:32:18
But we see that as just, as an opportunity for another community, like there, cause it's
1:32:22
not just jujitsu.
1:32:23
Like no-ghee and ghee are different now.
1:32:24
And so for us to- One off of a barrier to entry, all jokes aside, the barrier to entry
1:32:27
for no-ghee is incredibly low low.
1:32:29
So like tomorrow when we're taking the Dominion guys through a little seminar, only one of
1:32:33
those guys has ever done jujitsu before.
1:32:34
It's purple bell.
1:32:35
Yeah.
1:32:36
But for some of these other guys, if it's like, hey, come to jujitsu and it's like, hey,
1:32:38
bring a ghee.
1:32:39
Yeah.
1:32:40
Like who's got that?
1:32:41
I don't know why.
1:32:42
Yeah.
1:32:43
No, no academy has enough like trial geez for trial class guys, if a couple of dozen
1:32:47
people show up.
1:32:48
Yeah.
1:32:49
But I think any community needs jujitsu, but the no-ghee community, especially if I could
1:32:52
call them out, is probably more in need of Jesus than the ghee, not to compare the two.
1:32:59
But that's just what I'm doing now.
1:33:01
Yeah.
1:33:02
Because they're the ones that would probably become Pentecostals anyway.
1:33:03
So we gotta be careful.
1:33:04
Yeah.
1:33:05
Well, I mean, by and large, it's like, it's kind of a younger crowd.
1:33:07
Yeah.
1:33:08
They're a little more rowdy and like, man, they like, dude, that's fun and exciting and
1:33:12
weird.
1:33:13
We made a purposeful, like we're making an effort to reach those dudes, but really it's
1:33:16
going to take people who are attractive in that space, like, which actually is amazing.
1:33:20
And he's, you know, super decorated in the ghee.
1:33:24
He's also prolific in no-ghee as well, ADCC, you know, but he's not current right now.
1:33:29
He's he's in the UFC, which is correct in MMA.
1:33:32
But like, you know, that whole crowd that like, CJI guys, so we were working on that
1:33:37
right now.
1:33:38
Like, November 1st, in the DFW area that we're bringing, Carlos Henryk, who just won
1:33:43
UFC BJJ.
1:33:44
He's the lightweight champ.
1:33:46
Yeah.
1:33:47
Yeah.
1:33:48
I mean, he's really well known and there's a lot of excitement and momentum behind him.
1:33:53
And so he's agreed to come out and teach a seminar for us.
1:33:56
Yeah.
1:33:57
So Taylor and some of our content and events to reach different communities within Jujitsu.
1:34:02
But also, I mean, again, pipe dream for me, like, I'm thinking Jesus and Jujitsu retreats
1:34:06
and the competitions and stuff that are really, and like, just imagine several hundred competitors
1:34:11
on a mat.
1:34:12
And like, before you kick off the whole competition, there's this huge worship session, you know,
1:34:16
and like everybody just praising the Lord together and then going to go scrap.
1:34:19
And like, I envision that one day.
1:34:21
I think we're, you know, still pretty far from it, but I mean, Lord willing, that's where
1:34:25
we'll take this thing.
1:34:27
So do we have it totally written out on paper?
1:34:28
I mean, if we had a vision board, we'd probably be pretty similar in what's on that board.
1:34:32
But right now, it's just kind of getting through these short-term initiatives.
1:34:35
And then like when we'll start talking about like, what's what's next?
1:34:37
What's next?
1:34:38
Yeah.
1:34:39
When you got to say sensitive to the Holy Spirit, because like, even like at the Daily Blade,
1:34:42
like that, I didn't have the whiteboard over there full of ideas.
1:34:45
And one of them was like, Hey, you know, a daily devotional for like normal dudes, not,
1:34:50
you know, a feminine dudes, like that was just like, I was looking for something for me.
1:34:54
Couldn't find it.
1:34:56
Called Joby.
1:34:57
And was like, Hey, Joby Martin, pastor guy, do you want to do this daily devotional thing?
1:35:00
That's, you know, five minutes, like locker room style, like, Hey, we're on our way to
1:35:05
safety meeting.
1:35:06
You're on the way to the gym.
1:35:07
And the guy doesn't have time for an hour long sermon.
1:35:09
He's got time for five minutes.
1:35:10
And he's like, yeah, that's easiest.
1:35:11
Yes.
1:35:12
You could have given like, you know, absolutely.
1:35:13
I'll do a week, you do a week and then we'll get guests here and there.
1:35:16
It was just out of a need.
1:35:18
And so that's one thing that if you all plan out the next 10 years, you're going to have
1:35:21
to say no to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, you're going to say no to the community in
1:35:25
certain ways that they need to be moved as, as opposed to just like, let's make sure we
1:35:30
do the next right thing as conscientiously and as high quality as possible.
1:35:33
Cause that's the, here's the other thing, inside the Christian world, right?
1:35:37
So there are people that will go watch a Christian movie that's garbage, but they'll be like,
1:35:40
but we need to support them because they're making, uh, they're making Jesus, making
1:35:44
yourself like that.
1:35:45
Same thing with the music or, or anything like that.
1:35:48
It's like, no, like we need to make the highest.
1:35:51
We should be the best employees.
1:35:52
We should be the most creative individuals.
1:35:54
We should have the most high quality writing because let's say people love Jiu Jitsu and
1:35:57
they love Jesus and they like you guys, they decide, I'm going to buy this thing and it's
1:36:01
garbage.
1:36:02
Okay.
1:36:03
They're going to do a couple of weeks of this and they're going to be like, okay, that
1:36:05
was a complete waste of my time.
1:36:06
They're going to toss it on the shelf or in the garbage.
1:36:09
So you don't want that.
1:36:10
You want to make sure you're constantly putting out high quality stuff.
1:36:13
Same thing with your events.
1:36:15
If your events are hard to find where they are, hard to get signed up for, hard to RSVP.
1:36:19
Like when you get there, it's like chickens with their heads cut off and like, Oh, you
1:36:22
know, we got merged, but it's only an extra small and triple extra large.
1:36:26
And like, and, and you come to a thing and you leave going.
1:36:29
That probably wasn't worth my time as opposed to leaving going like, man, they, they thought
1:36:33
out of everything.
1:36:34
Yeah.
1:36:35
Like we had, we had Jocko goes to drink on the way out the door.
1:36:37
Like we, we had our merchant own like parking square it away.
1:36:40
So it's just a different ball game.
1:36:41
Yeah.
1:36:42
And that's, I think now that we're, we've been kind of catapulted into somewhat of a
1:36:46
limelight amongst, you know, the, the jujitsu community that like, yeah, the quality of
1:36:50
everything that we do matters so much.
1:36:52
Yeah.
1:36:53
And that's where we're just trying to raise the bar on, on what we do.
1:36:55
I mean, it's been time here in your podcast to you.
1:36:57
You look around like this is, yeah, incredible.
1:36:59
This is incredible.
1:37:00
Right.
1:37:01
So how can we produce things at the same level of quality that people come to expect from
1:37:06
something that they're going to listen to or watch on YouTube?
1:37:08
Like our content, everything that we produce, our content, our apparel that is the biggest
1:37:13
money maker for our, for our ministry, right?
1:37:15
The biggest revenue generator is, is our apparel.
1:37:17
Yeah.
1:37:18
And you can buy all that on, on the website at the USA.com go to shop.
1:37:24
And we're going to continue to like evolve the apparel as well.
1:37:27
More of a lifestyle, you know, type brand.
1:37:30
But it'll all be like, yeah, it'll all be super quality.
1:37:33
We want quality and everything that we produce because it's not just bootstrapped anymore.
1:37:38
Like we are legitimate.
1:37:40
Which people are cool with that at the beginning.
1:37:42
Yeah.
1:37:43
But eventually it's like, so it's kind of like origin.
1:37:44
Like you guys have a, some affiliation with the origin, you know, we're just on immersion
1:37:47
campus, stuff like that.
1:37:48
And so very early on, if you ordered one of the first origin gees and you had to wait
1:37:52
a few months and all that, you didn't care.
1:37:53
Yeah.
1:37:54
Because you believed in the story.
1:37:55
Right.
1:37:56
You believed in the mission.
1:37:57
Which was made in America, put together by American hands and like all the things right.
1:38:02
But now if it takes you six months to get a pair of jeans or, you know, four months for
1:38:06
a pair of boots or, you know, five months or a gear or something like that, that's just
1:38:10
not going to work.
1:38:11
Yeah.
1:38:12
So eventually it's like, Hey, I love you.
1:38:13
But damn, dude, if I'm going to pay a premium for this, like it's got to be aces.
1:38:17
I'm the same.
1:38:18
So that's what it was in the beginning.
1:38:19
I was like, I knew that merch was going to be the way.
1:38:22
So the ministry, I wanted to be sustainable, meaning like we were, we had something, we
1:38:26
had a product that we could give out that was earning us money.
1:38:29
So we weren't dependent on our donations.
1:38:31
Donations can be icing on the cake, but I want the cake to be taken care of and what
1:38:35
we were doing was merchandise.
1:38:36
But in the beginning, it was me putting an order in with a shop 40 minutes away, driving
1:38:41
picking up the things, folding shirts, putting them in, sitting at my desk, printing it out
1:38:45
and then waiting in line at USPS to give it to, to put them in.
1:38:48
I was doing like 50 orders a week by myself, my boxes stacked to the ceiling of my house.
1:38:53
I knew that it sucked and it took a long time, it was exciting because I knew that people
1:38:57
were like catching on, this is cool, but it was, it was a, it was tough.
1:39:03
But I knew that it was temporary, but I also knew that the money was going to be, we could,
1:39:07
we could, with more money, we could start, okay, now we can start doing content, we can start
1:39:10
paying videographers, we can start buying more, whatever, you know?
1:39:14
And so that's what we did.
1:39:15
And now we have a full on operation, Dave and Robin, Michael, incredible at what they do.
1:39:21
They're our merch managers of shipping and fulfillment, inventory management, everything
1:39:28
in professionals, like top notch professionals, husband and wife, they run our shop out of
1:39:32
their house.
1:39:33
They have a room, like a big, you know, big room upstairs, they use as a media room and
1:39:37
it's like a racks and racks of stuff and they're pros.
1:39:40
I mean, Robin came from that background, a professional background in logistics management
1:39:44
for shipping, pharmaceutical stuff.
1:39:47
And so now we have that, but God has just brought the right people around and every,
1:39:51
we're just kind of like climbing up in quality in every area of what we do and I'm really
1:39:54
excited about that.
1:39:55
Yeah, he continues to show his favor on the ministry just by the people that he puts in
1:39:59
front of us.
1:40:00
It's like undeniable, like Sterling Archer is another, I mean, just in the great example
1:40:03
of incredible.
1:40:04
Yeah.
1:40:05
Hey, we got, he got connected, started listening to our podcast was like, Hey, guys, how can
1:40:08
I help?
1:40:09
Yeah.
1:40:10
Here's what, here's what my skill sets are.
1:40:11
Oh, great.
1:40:12
We have a need for that.
1:40:13
And then, yeah, yeah.
1:40:14
I mean, it's been great to even just watch from the first time I met, met you guys to
1:40:19
seeing kind of what you're doing now because, I mean, curriculum is like a real, like this
1:40:23
is, this is a kind of an I mean it thing.
1:40:25
Right.
1:40:26
Exactly.
1:40:27
Doing a course, doing a book for somebody because I've been asked to do this.
1:40:30
Yes.
1:40:31
I, because when people ask me like, cause they, they see all the stuff we put out, they're
1:40:34
like, Oh my, you just, you might have a bunch of people, but how many of my staff members
1:40:37
did y'all meet on the way up here today?
1:40:38
Yeah.
1:40:39
Yeah.
1:40:40
None.
1:40:41
Me.
1:40:42
You're looking at them, right?
1:40:43
So I turned all this stuff on.
1:40:44
Like I got this and shout out to land in my editor around Jacksonville.
1:40:45
But like that's it.
1:40:46
It's like my focus is on content.
1:40:48
And so, cause I, you know, I talked to these business people and they're like, God, do
1:40:51
you realize how much money you're leaving on the table by not doing this or not focusing
1:40:55
on a merch?
1:40:56
Because every time we do merch, people buy a ton of it, but I'm basically the one taking
1:41:01
us with the one time we had a different group do our fulfillment for us.
1:41:04
We sold a butt ton of hoodies, like, and we lost almost a grant, like on these hoodies.
1:41:09
And I was like, look, marketing, you know, if you are in the black at all, that's a good
1:41:14
thing.
1:41:15
Yes.
1:41:16
Because you, you want people walking around wearing your stuff, but you can't be losing money.
1:41:18
You can't over fist, like every time you sell something, you're in the red.
1:41:22
And so, but part of it is just because my focus is content because I was put on this
1:41:26
planet to equipment, to push back darkness, not to put t-shirts on their backs, but it
1:41:30
putting t-shirts on someone's back, causing them to ask a question.
1:41:33
Like, you know, my hats, my hats don't have any words on it.
1:41:35
It's just my logo.
1:41:36
People be like, Oh, that's a cool logo.
1:41:38
What's that?
1:41:39
And if someone's wearing my hat, they don't, they know who it is.
1:41:41
Like they, they, it's not an accident.
1:41:44
And you know, my, my marketing is fairly subtle.
1:41:46
It's undaunted.
1:41:47
I mean, I don't even know what that means.
1:41:49
And I'm the one that came up with it.
1:41:50
But like Jesus and Jiu-Jitsu, it's like straight on, like this is, this is kind of what it
1:41:54
is.
1:41:55
It's my favorite text from you.
1:41:56
Like, Hey, good job on the subtle, the subtlety hits us up in the group message with that.
1:42:03
It's such a joke.
1:42:04
So subtle.
1:42:05
I'm not jokes.
1:42:06
I'm serious all the time.
1:42:07
But like the thing about it is, is like imagine if y'all had tried to come up with something
1:42:10
like more creative, right?
1:42:12
It's not creative.
1:42:13
Jesus and Jiu-Jitsu.
1:42:14
No.
1:42:15
It's just perfect, right?
1:42:16
Yeah.
1:42:17
I was listening, undaunted.
1:42:18
But guess what?
1:42:19
Undaunted.com is taken by some Polaroid photographer that hasn't updated his, you know, website
1:42:23
in about 20 years.
1:42:24
And so I looked at, you know, go daddy and like undaunted dot life was available.
1:42:28
I was like, ah, no one's ever going to go this website anyway.
1:42:31
Buy that one.
1:42:32
And now I'm dealing with, you know, sending out stuff via MailChimp and it doesn't go
1:42:35
to someone's inbox because it's a dot life and not a dot com.
1:42:37
So you know, you have your issues.
1:42:38
Joby's church is called the church of 11 22, the dumbest church name in the history of
1:42:42
church names.
1:42:43
But at the time, they didn't think it was going to be a thing and now it's like an actual
1:42:45
thing.
1:42:46
You know, for you guys, I just want to, you know, let the audience know, how could they
1:42:49
support you guys like if people want to get involved, if they want their academy or something
1:42:55
like that to, to, I don't know, host you guys or start one of the groups.
1:42:59
I just kind of let people know how they can get involved.
1:43:02
So so we have an aggressive goal.
1:43:04
Next year, I don't know if we're going to get there, but man, our team is working to
1:43:08
make sure it happens.
1:43:09
And I'm team, I'm just giving them a shout out because I so appreciate them.
1:43:12
Norma Engel, she was the director of operations for Jiu-Jitsu World League.
1:43:16
Now she's helping us on operations with, with Jesus in Jiu-Jitsu, Robin and Dave.
1:43:20
I just shared about them, Lucas Pinkard, one of, one of our VPs, he's a senior pastor
1:43:25
of a church and just great, amazing friend and friend in the ministry, Kramer.
1:43:31
And so these guys, we're trying to make and Tyler Smith are creative director and David
1:43:35
Rodriguez who's sitting over there, our videographer.
1:43:38
And so anyway, we're, we're working together on aggressive goal for next year.
1:43:42
We want to do 12 events.
1:43:43
We want to do one event a month, six in, in state and six out of state.
1:43:48
And so we're trying to make that happen.
1:43:51
That's going to be as Texas, by the way, guys, yeah, Texas, six in Texas.
1:43:55
You can include Oklahoma and Louisiana and that's close enough.
1:43:58
You can drive to a BMW, you know, but we want to do six out of state.
1:44:02
So it's going to take a lot of organizing and planning.
1:44:05
We have a few of these schools, big schools lined up, you know, we're really pushing to
1:44:09
try to get with Atos, um, Josh Hanger was like, have you ever met?
1:44:12
Gavao was like, no, he goes, you want to?
1:44:14
I'm like, yeah.
1:44:15
So he FaceTime's in and he's like, Hey, Professor, this is Isaac.
1:44:18
It's Kramer.
1:44:19
This is Jesus.
1:44:19
And you did to like, check it out.
1:44:21
And he's like, dude, I love this.
1:44:22
This is awesome.
1:44:23
And then, you know, he gave me my jujitsu nickname.
1:44:24
Did he?
1:44:25
Which did I ever tell you?
1:44:26
That's no, no, no, no loser.
1:44:27
I thought he was brought to the forge.
1:44:30
Uh, but I'd been training like six months.
1:44:32
Yeah.
1:44:32
It was a white belt and he was brought in.
1:44:34
And I don't know, but I'm like, I need to, I need to just go to all the different seminars
1:44:39
or whatever.
1:44:39
So they bring him in.
1:44:39
And then at the end of the seminar, he just starts calling people out to come
1:44:43
roll with him, right?
1:44:44
And so he, you know, calls out this person calls out that person.
1:44:46
And then he points to me, he goes big, white belt, come here.
1:44:49
And so I come out there and like for whatever reason, my hair was a little longer
1:44:52
at the time out of the haircut in a while.
1:44:54
My beard was a little unkempt.
1:44:55
And, you know, I'm after two hour seminar and he goes, Oh, Viking.
1:44:58
Like you look like a Viking.
1:44:59
Yes.
1:45:00
And so the name just stuck and he will just call me Viking forever.
1:45:03
But it's like that's, that's actually pretty cool for like, I don't know how
1:45:06
many time at all champion that guy is to get my jujitsu.
1:45:09
One of you said it, it, it sticks.
1:45:11
So yeah, guys, I am a Viking.
1:45:12
It is official.
1:45:13
Gao Bao told me, but it's the space time it with him.
1:45:16
And yeah, yeah, without toes.
1:45:17
Yeah.
1:45:17
So that's one of the places we're aiming to get in, you know, in the new year,
1:45:21
the Wagner roaches out and he's a huge supporter of our ministry.
1:45:24
Um, he walked out at ADCC.
1:45:27
No, yeah.
1:45:28
Yeah.
1:45:28
ADCC last year holding our flag.
1:45:30
Yeah.
1:45:30
Yeah.
1:45:30
And then on his tooth recently.
1:45:32
Yeah, he was too with rest of us.
1:45:33
Yeah.
1:45:33
And as he was leaving CJI in the airport, where Rock and Jesus
1:45:37
introduced you shirts and the airport, him and his wife.
1:45:39
Um, and so yeah, anyway, so we're looking ahead to next year.
1:45:42
So, you know, we're getting, we're getting those schools lined up.
1:45:45
One of the ways that people can help, if they want to get us there, obviously,
1:45:49
we need, we need big space and we need, um, support.
1:45:52
So people, people that brought us to other states in the past have helped us
1:45:56
with fundraising.
1:45:57
They talked to different businesses, they talked to churches and said, this, we
1:46:01
want to bring this ministry here.
1:46:02
And so they helped get some, uh, some of our travel for our crew, uh, logistics
1:46:08
covered ahead of time before we got there.
1:46:09
Uh, so that's one of the ways people can help.
1:46:11
But really, I mean, low hanging fruit for support is, uh, to check out, uh, I
1:46:16
mean, to become a monthly donor, I mean, we can, you know, five bucks a month.
1:46:20
There's people out there that, you know, a thousand bucks is nothing to them.
1:46:23
That would be a lot to us, you know, we could do a ton with that.
1:46:27
And so sponsoring events, sponsoring podcast episodes, becoming a monthly
1:46:32
contributor, uh, yeah, we also have people that are just like, right, big,
1:46:35
sometimes we'll write a big check.
1:46:37
Hey, I feel like God's calling me to do this.
1:46:39
Here you go.
1:46:39
You know, and so, uh, those are all the ways I think that you could support us,
1:46:43
but really mean buying merch, tell people about our, our, our content's only
1:46:46
going to improve as well, you know, so like share, follow us on our social
1:46:49
media channels at, uh, Jesus and Jiu Jitsu underscore USA is our Instagram handle.
1:46:53
We kind of find everything about us there, um, our podcast, the, the Jesus
1:46:58
and Jiu Jitsu podcasts is on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Apple plate, you know,
1:47:02
Apple podcast and all that too.
1:47:04
So those are just ways to get more exposure for the ministry.
1:47:07
And if like, you know, if you had nothing to give, just like your support
1:47:09
and listening to what we have to say, if you find value in it, great.
1:47:12
Or we could always, we always love prayer too.
1:47:14
Yeah.
1:47:14
And just just pray for us and pray for God's blessing, uh, over this, over this
1:47:19
ministry, um, over us, over our families.
1:47:21
And, you know, pray that we're able to keep doing what we're doing right now.
1:47:25
And that's, you know, try to grow God's kingdom through the sport of Jiu Jitsu.
1:47:28
Awesome.
1:47:28
Well, Ryan, Isaac, I'm so glad y'all are able to come up to the studio and I'm
1:47:32
happy, uh, to know that you guys are going to be well, you got, you got a role,
1:47:35
but that you're going to be with us tomorrow as we, uh, disabuse some people
1:47:39
of their previous notions about how much they're able to fight.
1:47:42
And so it's always fun to watch people get red pill.
1:47:45
So I appreciate y'all, uh, come up here and be a part of it.
1:47:47
Absolutely.
1:47:47
Amen. Our honor man, thank you so much for having us. Thank you for listening to this
1:47:51
podcast. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a
1:47:54
positive five star review.
1:47:55
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an
1:47:58
email to info at undonton.life.
1:48:01
That's I N F O at undonton.life.
1:48:03
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for
1:48:06
everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your
1:48:09
way.
1:48:09
Just go to www dot undonton.life.
1:48:12
And as always, we want to thank the band.
1:48:13
Holy name for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:48:16
The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled
1:48:20
debut album on Face Down Records.
1:48:21
The links are in the description.
1:48:23
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:48:25
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and
1:48:30
physical resilience.
1:48:31
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:48:46
Yeah.