Stephen K. Hayes: Pioneering the Ninja Arts in the West

We’re creating a long-term relationship with him and obviously he’s just a martial arts legend from the 1960s all the way to today and I’m really excited today to share something to have him share some of his experiences with our listeners and with our members and give us some words to grow by. But, Master Hayes, thank you so much for joining us today on the call. I really appreciate it. Oh, it’s my pleasure. My pleasure. It’s so great to talk with you, Toby. And if you could maybe just kind of walk us back. And I think it’s important. There are, unfortunately, I’m not sure if unfortunately is the right term, but there are people of my generation who maybe don’t know your career as in depth as maybe they should. And I think you have a very inspiring story of not only traditional martial artists, but of martial arts entrepreneur.

And maybe you could take us back to the 1960s when you started your martial arts career and sort of walk us slowly through some of your accomplishments, and we can assess that a little bit. Sure. As you mentioned, 1960s, I was going to college, a freshman, and I’d always wanted to do the martial arts, always wanted to study the martial arts, but the 1950s and 60s, there just weren’t any schools around where I was living. And so this was the height of the Vietnam War. And there were a lot of military people on campus. They had officer training programs and so forth. There was a Navy commander who had a martial art program for the Navy cadets, the midshipmen. And he’d been in Korea, and he was teaching this Korean tongue pseudo. And I managed to, even though I wasn’t in the Navy, I managed to finagle my way in and get him to break the rules and let me come in.

[04:01] So that’s where I got my start. I was so happy, just so thrilled that I’d finally found my way in. My parents were scared to death. I was going to flunk out of college because I was training so much. It just captured me so much. Then I was reading the philosophy from Asia in the college library. Eventually, I was able to actually take some courses there so I could get some college credit for all of that work. It just really was my whole life. And, I had never done any sports competition before. I always worked after school when I was a kid, so I had never played on ball teams or done anything like that. And so here was something I could do as myself. so the competition, was the first time I’d ever competed and, I found I did, I did well.

I was never at. Champion or it turned out later on, that’s not really what my motivation was, but it played an important role, I think in my development back in those, back in those sixties days. I remember always being attracted to the philosophical side of it as well and studying reading. Of course we didn’t have movies. Back in those days, like we do now, and there were no, certainly no internet, there’s no way to find out anything. Black Belt Magazine came out and I remember reading about the ninja of Japan in there. And then there was a book that a correspondent over there named Andy Adams wrote. And I read about the ninja in a James Bond novel. And oh, this just… For some reason, the way it was presented just really captured my imagination. Now, some friends of mine today said, God, I don’t understand that.

That sounded horrible. You know, these guys were like assassins and they were sneaky and they weren’t all American. And as well, I don’t know how you got that out of the description, but that’s not the sense that I got. And I was attracted to the idea. You know, the lone warrior, somebody who was a philosopher, a fighter, a warrior and a wizard all in one. This was something that just, I was a little kid, looked good to me. And so very fortunate, able to somehow get to Japan and talk my way in to this. It wasn’t even a school really. It was in this Dr. Hatsumi’s house. And at that time there were 14 Japanese guys and myself, and I managed to talk my way in and be accepted for training there. This was in my middle 20s, and I just loved it.

It was everything. I was in Asia. I loved that. I loved the Japanese culture. The techniques they did were so different from everything I was used to. I’d never done much grappling. Certainly hadn’t done anything with classical weapons. Even their way of dealing with punching and kicking coming in was a whole different kind of body dynamic and a whole different strategy. How would you deal with somebody who could hit harder than you but you still have to beat them?

I’ve never seen stuff like this before so I was just having a ball with this, just eating it up. It was rough training. I mean, very rough, rougher than I was used to in the States to tell the truth. Later I found out that actually they really didn’t expect or maybe even want me to stay. In my generation in Japan, I’m considered a big guy, and so these Japanese fellows thought they could test out their technique on this big dumb foreigner here, and eventually he’ll wise up and go away. I didn’t. I just figured, well, they treat the new guys pretty rough here, but hey, I want to learn this. So I just hung in there and as the years went by, gained more and more knowledge. So that is the miracle of how I got going in my martial art.

[08:20] I was able to support myself very well with the books. Very lucky, very fortunate with that. for a lot of years I didn’t really need a job so to speak I wrote and that gave me a lot of freedom to be in Japan I went to China I went to kit to bet a couple times and the Himalayas I discovered some teachers there eventually ended up meeting the Dalai Lama in the nineteen eighties this was before he was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate ended up traveling with him as a security escort in the 1990s and that was just impossible to plan. I’d always wanted to learn more about the mind and mind sciences meditation so nobody suggested once you get the god king of Tibet to kind of show you how to do that stuff. It’s one of the things where if we had tried to make a plan it would just been so outrageous, I would have been embarrassed to even think about it.

Just the same thing as once you become a personal apprentice to the grandmaster of the ninja. Just miracles, so I always like to remind my friends, you know, save room for magic in your life. Certainly plan ahead, certainly be scientific, but leave a little room for magic. And so by the late 1990s, middle late 1990s, I took the the marshal skills that I had learned from the ninja and these inner work inner understanding of where fights and conflicts and war alienation desperation where that came from having studied the methods of the Dalai Lama and I put them together into a program that is based on very very honest realistic self-defense and at the same time has a very high component of personal discovery, personal development, personal actualization. And that’s really what it is that is my passion today, sharing that and of course continuing to develop new programs and new ways to do that.

It’s still very physical training for me and I enjoy that. And fortunately the type of movement we do is very naturalistic movement. So I don’t have to be the strongest 28 year old there to make it work all the time. And so I’m a little guy who was able to really live his dreams and turn it into a career. And so as much of that that I can share with others and encourage them. I said, well, that’s maybe the real lesson of my life. Sure. And you know, for the listeners, I mean, we’ve had several conversations leading up to this one. And that central thread that you just identified twice, it could be different ways, I think is extremely important for someone who’s listening today who’s a martial arts school operator. And they’re saying, well, how does writing books apply to me operating my martial arts school day to day?

Well, there were a couple things that you said in there I think that are directly applicable if I could reframe them. And number one was you said leave room in your life for magic. And I think with the popularity of the recent, the secret and that whole sort of law of attraction movement is kind of what you said. I mean, it’s really about opening yourself up to possibilities rather than closing yourself to possibilities. And too often in this industry, you have the karate-do stylist who completely closes himself off to anything that the taekwondo stylist or the aikido stylist or the jiu-jitsu stylist has to say because they think, well, my style is different. My school is different. My business is different. My students are different, whatever it may be. And anyone who’s accomplished any level of success and I think that that’s an enormous lesson that you just, you know, very articulately described twice.

[12:44] How do you feel that that’s impacted your life?

I mean, you know, obviously, had you made a plan to go meet the Dalai Lama would have been, you know, would probably have not been a successful venture, but But, you know, how do you think that that’s impacted the path that you’ve chosen?

Well, I think, that, this, what you describe as being very open and looking for these, characteristics, regardless of style, that, that transcend all that. I mean, even beyond the martial arts, how about that?

Anybody who’s a master of what they do, they’re a master flute. player their master apple pie baker their master racing car engine tuner their master real estate investor anybody who’s a real authentic master and I don’t know what is a master I mean how do we define that time thinking in my mind that somebody that all the experts look up to all the experts look up to me as a as a symphony conductor of all the Experts look up to me as a, say, a stock market investor or a heart surgeon, I guess, then I would be called a master. There are going to be those similarities of view, of bigness. And I think this is real important. What you brought up is really important for us when we’re starting the martial arts. You know, we’re so proud of our style.

We do, you know, tic-tac. or I do, you know, whatever our stylists were so proud of that because it’s a part of our identity. And then that’s good. You know, that’s very good up to a point. But advancement means I’m going to be ahead of where I am now. I mean, just grammatically, that’s what the word means. And we’re going to advance. I’m not going to be where I am now. I’m going to be more forward. And sometimes that’s scares us. We think, wow, maybe I’m being disloyal or little children kind of thoughts. We don’t understand that, you know, to advance is to embrace new things, new ideas. We can still be proud of our style, but we’re a little bigger of vision. And so I think that’s so important. And I think it’s one of the keys to failure, key to failure.

Tragically for some folks with martial arts school, they don’t understand what their client is really looking for the student who comes in and, then what a way to run a business. If I don’t know what my client is really looking for, I’m trying to sell them on doing things that are important to me, but I’m an admitted extremist, because I’ve decided to teach this martial art for a living. What a jumbled up approach to marketing. one of the things I think is really important, with some of this inner work that you mentioned, and that’s why I enjoy sharing it with people is that, I think we asked most of our students when they come into the martial arts and then maybe they saw a pay-per-view, you know, cage fight contest, or maybe they saw, a Star Wars movie or maybe they saw a Jackie Chan movie, just something that inspires them and all these different ideas of what martial arts could be.

[16:22] You know, they come in. I don’t think many of them would be shocked if you said, well, you know, there’s some things you’re going to learn to hear about your mind, you know, about how your brain works, how your mind and emotions affect how well you can do in a conflict. I think Most people who go into a martial arts school would say, well, yeah, of course, that makes sense to me. I’m kind of scared right now, or I’m kind of a hothead now, I got myself in trouble, or I really don’t know what a bully is motivated by. Yeah, yeah, I expect to get some of this mind training in here. And yet, honestly, how many schools are really providing that other than maybe a little talk or a lecture at the beginning of the class, but I mean an actual technology for how to advance ourselves in mind and spirit along with our body.

This is something that I’ve got some advantage in, because I’ve gotten to travel and train with some of the best. And so I enjoy sharing those aspects, regardless of martial style. What does a true authentic master, how could a young one learn how to be that?

And so it’s a contribution that I feel I can make. Absolutely. And you know, again, you sort of identify a couple things in there. I think what’s really important is, number one was being extremely in touch with what the customer wants is, you know, probably of paramount importance. And if you’re in a position of influence, no matter what that may be, if you’re you know selling them a car or you’re selling a person a house or you’re selling whatever it may be. Of course you have a preconceived notion of what your inventory looks like, but you have to match that with the desires and the goals of the customer. And I think that’s where sometimes there can be a disconnect in our industry. If I’m the, you know, let’s pick a spectrum, but let’s say if I’m the no holds barred cage fighting guy with you know, 15 earrings, 22 tattoos, and a broken nose.

Now look, there’s nothing wrong with that, right? That’s my hobby, that’s my passion, that’s what I love to do, that’s brilliant. That’s soul food right there, right?

That’s brilliant. But now if I’m a mom of an eight year old, and what I’m looking for is for Johnny to become more confident and have more self-esteem and to be able to walk with his head held high, well, you know, I might need to look in the mirror and analyze whether this is my product or not. And of course I have to have integrity in what I persuade that mother to believe. I think you very articulately described how that works. And it’s one of the things that we struggle with quite often at NAPMA is are you fish or fowl?

And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to pick exactly what your marketing model is going to look like today or anything like that. But what it does mean is you have to decide who your customer is and then go find out where they’re at. I mean, if I’m the again, I like to pick on the mixed martial arts guys right now just because it is, and I really love to do it, I’ve been doing Jiu Jitsu for quite a while and most recently with Carlos Machado and before that with Eric Paulson and the Shamans. Wow, you got quite a, you got an impressive list of mentors there. Oh, I absolutely love it. I absolutely love it. But here’s where it’s very important for a school owner to make their delineation. This is my hobby, and over here is what my business is.

[20:05] And it’s very important that, number one, you’re congruent with what your values are, but if I’m marketing to the mom of a nine-year-old, then certainly the product that I’m marketing to the mom of a nine-year-old should be congruent with her goals. and not necessarily what my specific goals are. So again, like I said, we pick on the MMA crowd right now just because it’s sort of low hanging fruit and it’s very, very popular. But again, if my, like you said, if my message to my market is you’re going to become more confident, have a higher level of self-esteem, and you’re going to walk out of here feeling great about yourself, then certainly you have to be very deliberate to make sure that I’m fulfilling those promises. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think that if we use the MMA fad right now as an example, I think it’s very good.

You can take the benefits of MMA, mixed martial art that everybody’s excited about and so forth, because the kid has to believe in it too. They want to do what’s cool. We can take the benefits of that and make sure that the people, the prospects are seeing that. But 20 years ago, I had to go through the same thing. You know, back then, the whole ninja thing was in all the magazines. And so, of course, that was the one that was fun to pick on back then, because whoever is leading the pack, you know, that’s the one that’s fun to pick on. So right now, it’s the MMA guys. They just have so much attention. Everybody wants to refer to them. But back in the 20 years ago, I knew what real ninjutsu was, and I knew this is not something that very many people in my community are really going to be able to want or even be able to digest and use.

So I’ve adapted it. I use the principles. We use a little bit of the mythos and the allure. It’s kind of cool. [inaudible] Gladier, we can train like that, and if we as school owners are smart enough, I love the way you put it. I’m talking to the mom, because mom writes the check, not the little nine-year-old guy here. So I talk a language, and I can, now this is important, I’ve got to be able to deliver what I’m talking to her. I can’t lie to her. I can’t talk about dignity and discipline and then actually I’m kind of a wild, crazy character who just likes to fump people and, you know, they’re going to find out I’m a liar pretty fast. So I have to be able to deliver that. But, indeed what’s in, what’s in their mind?

What are they really looking for? And how do we very carefully, very scientifically, very precisely present that to them as business people?

Absolutely. And you mentioned, what you just mentioned was congruence. And if your mind is saying one thing but your body says another, then it’s incongruent. Anthony Robbins talks all about internal congruence, external congruence, right?

And he talks all about the fact that, of course, 80% of the message you send is nonverbal. And in any presentation environment, in any teaching environment, in any environment where you’re standing in front of a group of people and exerting any type of influence, what you’re congruent with is what’s going to come through in your message. And it’s what you said is exactly right. I have to be able to deliver on this promise. And in our estimation, in my personal estimation, I have a five to one ratio in my mind. I want to deliver $5 worth of tangible value for every dollar I charge in tuition and I have very high tuition rates. So I really want to be over-delivered. And that I think is extremely important. But anyway, so maybe moving on just a little bit, a tangent on the same topic.

[24:41] You and I had a conversation by email prior to talking on the phone and my question was, and I think this is valuable for a listener. because I think there’s two sides of this coin and you vary, you have an extremely, I believe, you have an extremely deep understanding of how this works. My question by email was, you know, Master Hayes, what title do you prefer?

Do you prefer Master Hayes, Grand Master Hayes, Anshu, what is it?

And you said, well, you know, not much for titles. And I’m a 10-3 black belt in this style, but you know, Mr. Hanks is fine, right?

And for people listening to the call, your explanation of that I think is brilliant. And I’m going to talk a little bit about the other side of the coin too. If I’m a school owner, explain that to me. I mean, you’ve obviously earned a title and a position in the martial arts industry that very few in the past and very few in the future ever will. And so just tell me a little bit about your mindset on that, a little bit about your thinking in that. Well, I personally, you know, Stephen Hayes, the person, I’m Stephen. And that’s really it. But as we have noted, you know, maybe how are you going to have a life Changing experience with Steven and Rumico, you know, it just sounds like, you know, we’re going to go over for a little, a party or something like that.

So I think the client, the student needs to have some sense of where we are in all of this and maybe they can appreciate our lessons more, but isn’t it awkward?

Don’t you, don’t you find it awkward? Cause you know, I may go into a school and here’s a very young American with, Short blonde hair and, you know, he’s being referred to with some kind of a, you know, a Dai Shihan or Sabom Nin Mar. Just some kind of a Asian. It could be a little funny. It could look a little pretentious if we’re not, you know, if we’re not careful. And, you know, if you’re awful young, a master, if you are a master coach builder, or if you are a master, of conducting a symphony in the orchestra, you’d probably look a little older. So what do we do with that in our industry?

I even had a person outside the martial art industry that described to me his discomfort with the word master. He said, well, if you’re not a master, what else are you?

He said, well, I think of the word slave, and it’s an awful, you know. or all these other things. So I think that what could we do?

How do we create some form of title? So I tend to just go by my family name as well, Mr. Hayes. But I do that because I grew up in the 50s in an era when we did business that way. And my own title, Anshu, is It’s funny actually in Japanese. On is like a hermitage. It’s where you would go. It’s a little very humble building where a warrior or maybe some kind of a monk would go to get away from the battle and just think about what you’ve done, all your success, and where you want to go next. So it’s like a retreat hermitage. And Shu is the person who just kind of makes sure that it’s running. So, you know, it’s just like that. Inkeeper or something. It’s a very funny, humble title because I just don’t want to err on the side of pretension.

[28:36] But it works. You know, it works for me. It’s unique. There is nobody else with on shoe. You couldn’t have that title. It was created for me. And, but the real message is, you know, when people come in, Mr. and Mrs. Sensei or, Sabu or whatever the title of person carries, it’d be great if it had some naturalness to it in the setting, you know, had some naturalness to the setting. And, I think to go back to that other message, then, it’s natural if you’re conducting your life in a masterful way, even if you’re 25 and running a school, you look like you’re in charge. You look like you’re at peace. You look like you’re excited with life. You got technologies that people want. There’s a big crowd of people out there excited when you come on the floor to teach them.

You really are a master and it’s transmitted. But I think that that topic is, it could be a little awkward for us here in the West. I have a friend who’s very involved in the Zen practice. in Japan and they have a title called a Roshi. Roshi is like, Roshi means a very old and she is a teacher and I said, well how do you get that title of Roshi?

And he said, oh it’s in Zen. He said, you are a Roshi if you can call yourself that and get other people to call you that too. So I think maybe that’s what a master is or a Shihan or a Sabum. If I call myself that, other people, if I can get other people to call me that, too, I must be one. That’s brilliant. That’s the old, that’s the old, what’s the name for a leader without an army?

It’s just a guy out for a walk, right?

You said two things in there again. pretty good at that apparently. You think that’s extremely important. And again, you have an extremely deep, I believe, understanding of how this works in a martial arts environment and how it works in a school environment. And on my description of that, and I stole this description from Stephen Oliver and from Disney, and one of the projects that I used to, in a former life, I used to run casinos for a living. And one of the, of course, the biggest hospitality industries in the world is Disney. And they have just this massive organization and this unbelievable juggernaut of service ability. And a trip to their casting center down here in Orlando is an amazing opportunity to take if you ever have that opportunity. And one of the things that’s inherent in the Disney culture, and I use the word culture very deliberately, but one of the things that is extremely heavily focused on in the Disney culture is this concept of on stage, off stage.

And if you ever have the opportunity to do the behind the scenes tour at Disney or any of that stuff, you should do it because you see what Disney is known for. When you walk through the park, it’s immaculately clean. That’s what everybody says. They always say, oh my gosh, it’s so clean and the employees are so friendly. You know, they thought that I was lost and they came up to me and pointed me in the right direction. And anyway, if you walk into the cast-only areas, as soon as you cross the line, as soon as you walk behind the gate, as soon as you walk through the doorway to the cast member-only area, the paint is chipped. There’s three or four McDonald’s bags sitting on a picnic table that have been there probably for, you know, four or five, you know, days.

[32:29] Oh, really? Oh, yeah. There’s… you know, paper in the corner over by the floor, their schedules are skewed on the walls, right?

Now, this is very deliberate. Do you think that Disney doesn’t have the revenue or doesn’t have the manpower to be able to paint the staff areas?

Of course they do. But when I’m a cast member and I’m in the goofy costume or whatever I’m in, I have a very, let’s not use them for an example because they’re supposed to be on stage all the time, maybe I’m a handler or I’m a street sweeper, whatever my position in Ed Disney is, when I’m off stage, I’m off stage. But as soon as I walk through that door and I see this immaculately clean environment, now I’m on stage. Now I’ve got the part, I walk the part, I talk the part, I look the part, I have to be the part, right?

So now, what you said is exactly right. If I’m an instructor in a school and my title is a sub-a-min or whatever it may be, right?

Then that’s extremely important for that part of the culture to work. It’s one of the little pieces of the glue that holds the whole thing together. If a student is allowed to call you by your first name, you’ve got big problems. In my humble opinion, if the student’s parents feel like they can come up and shake their hand and say, hey, Stephen, the party at your house last night was fantastic, right?

I mean, if that’s the relationship that you’ve created in your school, there’s a huge part of the culture that doesn’t exist anymore. Now, the reason I thought that was a great question for you, and I think you have such a great understanding of this, is I had the opportunity to watch some of your videos and things like that, and I think I was watching about the examination that you were appreciating. And everybody on the testing board was wearing really elaborate, meticulously manicured uniforms, right?

For lack of a better term, I guess, describe them as esoteric. I don’t really know how to describe them. It’s definitely beautiful, but it’s sort of reminiscent of the traditional Korean and the traditional Japanese silks, right?

Is that how you describe how that presentation looks?

Yeah, yeah, those are actual silk overcoats that would have gone over the armor of the warriors, and we just wear them over our black. training suit geese. So yeah, it’s quite theatrical. Yeah, you got me on that. Well, no, it’s brilliant. And I think that that’s a huge lesson. If, you know, of course, the Disney terminology too is, you know, the essence of being friendly, but not familiar with the customer. Yeah. And you have just such a, you know, from everything I’ve seen in those types of settings, you have such a detailed understanding of that. Maybe. you know, give me 10 or 15 seconds on the tip of that and how you’ve come to that and what you seem to do to the culture and the school and how valuable that is to a martial arts school operator.

Well, I’m really intrigued to hear your story, Toby, about Disney, because I would not have guessed that. That’s very different from what I would have guessed. So that’s a real eye opener for me. The idea of creating a threshold for these people to step over and now I’m enrolled. Now I’m the best. I’m a street sweeper and now I’m the best ticket seller because actually I try to do it completely differently. If I’m out in public and I’m driving kind of recklessly and somebody says, Hey jerk, you know, slow down or whatever. And I say, well, you know, flipping the bird and telling, you know, and whoa. I saw your, I saw your martial art master out. He was actually like, I was off duty. I was off duty, you know, or I’m flirting around with somebody’s, you know, some child’s mom at the, oh, it’s okay.

[36:14] It’s okay. Cause I was off duty. I actually had a person years ago. I had a person who worked for me who was probably would have fit the Disney thing better. He was brilliant on the floor, very entertaining. He was pretty good, you know, physical skill and so forth. But he had that belief that when he was off, he was off and I said, no, no, no, no, we’ve got a list of 14. There’s a code of 14 behaviors and attitudes that we’re teaching that we call a core of being a black belt warrior protector here. And you’re not living up to it. We actually had to let him go because, this is not something you just do when you’re on the clock. so I think that could be, you know, somebody’s as what would we call it?

Hung up on that as I am. Wow. It can make a big difference in your everyday life. How do I, whether I have my battle vest on or whether I just have on casual clothes, cause I’m, you know, I’m out with my friends or family that I radiate who I am. I radiate what I am regardless of that. So. They’re kind of a tall order, but I’m still interested in the different approach. There could be something… No, no, no, Bill. And I think that there’s one part of that that is what you said is exactly right. These people, you know, who are our staff members, our instructors, our black belts, they have to become a product of the product. They are a product of the product, which is kind of what you said. And don’t get me wrong on the other side of the fence.

When they’re offstage, it doesn’t mean that they’re not a black belt anymore. In fact, that’s the story, that’s the whole concept of our black belt ceremony is when there are nine stages of black belt ceremony, and in the very last stage, you take your black belt off and you put it in your bag and you take it home. But just removing it from around your waist doesn’t change anything, right?

So don’t get the offstage part. That’s not to be focused on. What to be focused on is the on-stage part, right?

So if I’m a 21-year-old head instructor in a school and the number two instructor is the 20-year-old part-time instructor, then as soon as you know that we’re on stage, a minute happens when the first student walks through the door, when I walk through the back door, whatever it may be, whatever that line of demarcation is. then it’s master so-and-so, Mr. So-and-so, whatever that may be. Now, when it’s the 21 and the 20-year-old instructors out at the movie theater, it might be John and Steve, maybe, right?

That’s sort of a cultural thing between them, but what’s absolutely the case is they’ve never stopped becoming a black belt. So I think what you said is right, and it’s more of the onstage part of it that makes a bigger difference than the off. And I think your concept of that title being a pretentious thing in some instances that can get in the way of that relationship I think makes a big difference, especially when you’re talking about you’ve got this sort of professional distance, this professional barrier that has to exist there. And you have to deliberately manicure that. I think that’s exactly right. Well, you used the word culture describing Disneyland. I think it’s a very important word. Culture. And what have we all agreed on?

So, a story just flashed in my mind a couple of months ago. I went down to Chapel Hill and a very successful school in our network. We’ve got a network of people who, I’m like the granddaddy figure, you know, they use my image and my curriculum, but they own their own schools and run it. And so here was a pack house and I mean the People were, it’s a very rigorous school. People are down on the floor. One group is doing this freestyle ground fighting and then the kids on the other side are all dressed up and Kendo kind of armored, just flying each other with swords. It’s very, very, got it really pay a lot of attention or somebody could get hurt here. And the guy that’s running the school, Robert Broome, he’s in the middle of teaching this and a little and he’s a two-year-old, runs out onto the floor, and he just scoops this little girl up, and, oh, she just wants to give him a hug, because she just thinks he’s wonderful.

[40:47] He thinks, and I was just so impressed with that. Here’s this family man, giving this little girl a hug and walking around while these others are charging each other with swords. And he said, well, that’s our culture. It’s very, very family-supposed. Or to very, very family, effective and it, and it’s very hard training. Well, that was their choice. And I salute that. I love that. That’s what I would love to see. But there may be some other school that has a different culture where he said, well, that just wouldn’t be appropriate. It wouldn’t be appropriate for a little child to run up in the middle of the lesson and hug the headmaster. And so that’s something we all have to decide. What is our culture?

What is our message? And who knows, there could be a community where that, what I just described, wasn’t appropriate. I thought it was beautiful. I loved it. I thought it was right on. But, you know, maybe not for everybody. The other thing I think, too, is so important to me is that, I loved your term there. You know, we are a product of the product. maybe my dry cleaner is a fabulous, he does a fabulous job. You know, I can take suede in there. I can be, he does a fabulous job, but often duty, he’s a jerk. You know, he’s mean to his dog and he doesn’t tip well, you know, at the restaurant and, but I’m not going to not take my clothes there. He’s just my dry cleaner. but there’s something about the martial art teacher where if maybe we’re more like almost like a religious thing, you know, like a minister or a rabbi, you know, say the minister on the job is this will go when I, when I clock out, I’m not on the clock, you know, I’m behaving in an unspiritual way.

Yeah. People wouldn’t like that. Maybe we’re maybe we as martial art teachers are a little more akin to, just something like that. Then we are just people. applying a trade, so to speak. Absolutely, and I think what you said is exactly right. You have to decide what you want that culture to be, and then be very deliberate about how you implement it. You know, I think that’s maybe one of the things that we maybe lose sight of as martial arts cooperators. We forget what we want the end product to look like as far as our culture goes, and sometimes we just sort of go the way the meandering brook takes us. Oh yeah, yeah, very dangerous way to run a business, huh?

Yeah, or a life. Absolutely. Well, brilliant. Let’s move forward a little bit. And one of the things that you indicated you were so fortunate to have the opportunity to be able to do, and I have as well, is you’ve had the opportunity to be surrounded by giants, for lack of a better term. And one of our goals, obviously, at Batman and with helping to coach martial arts school operators and their ilk is how valuable that is. And creating systems to be able to help facilitate that and bringing resources to there so that a school owner doesn’t have to feel like they’re on an island all by themselves and all the walls closed in and live in a vacuum. obviously you’ve had these tremendous experiences with, you know, you know, not like I said to me, the Dalai Lama and the whiskers on and on and on and on.

[44:18] How do you think that that’s, you know, influenced your life and pointed you in the direction that you’re in now and what’s been the relative value of that, do you believe?

Oh, gosh. Well, I would have to say that, just being able to be around somebody that grand. And again, I say it over and over, I’m so fortunate. How many people get to spend time around an actual king?

I mean a real king. Somebody who gets up in the morning and the first thought that comes to his mind is how do I serve my people even more effective?

And where are my people suffering and where are my people celebrating?

How can I facilitate More of the celebrating and less of the suffering and so I got to just hang around the Dalai Lama on tour You know 24 hours a day seven days a week and just watch all the details and Just a wonderful opportunity to see that in its full greatness. I’m obviously you know an unabashed fan because maybe it wouldn’t work that way. Could you imagine that?

Maybe there’s somebody who has a stage presence, but then when you’re around them all the time, you find out, oh, this guy’s, you know, he’s mean to the household staff, or, you know, he’s got self-destructive habits, or, you know, that’s one of the dangers of being around somebody that you kind of idolize. You know, they have a role model. So I was fortunate that way. With an organization like NAPMA, younger ones come in, they can find something they’re looking for. They could say, well, hey, I’m really a competitor. I like that. I want to hang out, get a couple of moments with Joe Louis or Jeff Smith, somebody who really has done the competitor champion winner thing very, very well. You have that opportunity. What’s it going to look like when you’re in your 60s?

And still carrying around that kind of champion type of thing or you might say well I am more involved in my community building so who are the champions of building an effective powerful school get the access talk to steve oliver look at what he has built on the that the champion of putting together school networks in an ethical way and spend time around the people who have done and are demonstrating what it is that we’d like to have. And I think that’s what I was able to do in my life. Now here’s the magic, here’s the key. This is the danger too. That momentum builds. So if I’m able to be around somebody that’s, you know, I admire, now I feel a little more comfortable. Hey, this is reasonable. Yeah, yeah. great would want to spend time with me.

And so I have a little more confidence. I’m maybe going to be more likely to approach another one of these mentor type people. And I build that momentum of accomplishment. But when we’re first starting out, we can be kind of nervous or we can be kind of scared and we’re afraid we’ll say the wrong thing. So we back off and we never introduce ourselves. We never introduce ourselves to these people. And I’ve seen that happen. at, you know, gatherings and training centers and seminars and conventions. People, oh, look, there’s this legendary person over there. Oh, hey, let’s go up and say hi. Oh, no, no, no. He wouldn’t want to say hi to me, you know. Or, oh, no, no, she’d think I was being forward. And so, again, I think that’s it. The more momentum we create, then the more natural it is for us to attract even greater mentors, or at least that’s the way I’d like to think it worked in my own life that way.