Episode 37 | Host: Trev Warnke | Guest: Michael Kaplan

🔥 Why This Episode Matters

A lot of entrepreneurs spend years building businesses while slowly losing confidence everywhere else. They stop challenging themselves physically, avoid discomfort, and isolate themselves from real community.

That’s part of why this conversation with Michael Kaplan matters.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn’t just about fighting or self-defense. It’s about pressure, humility, discipline, composure, and learning how to stay calm when things get difficult. Those same lessons directly apply to leadership, fatherhood, entrepreneurship, and personal growth.

In a world where many men avoid hard things, this episode is a reminder that challenge builds capacity. Confidence is earned through pressure, not comfort.

🎧 Listen to the Episode

👤 Meet the Host & Guest

• Trev Warnke — Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Profile

  Trev Warnke is an entrepreneur, coach, and co-founder of Brotherhood Beyond Business. Through the Brotherhood community, Trev works with male entrepreneurs who want to build strong businesses without sacrificing their health, faith, or family.

• Dr. Kai Bennett — Profile | LinkedIn

  Michael Kaplan is the owner of North Star BJJ in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training, Michael helps both adults and kids build confidence, resilience, self-defense skills, discipline, and community through structured martial arts training.

• Optimal Health and Performance — Website | Facebook | Instagram

  Optimal Health and Performance is a chiropractic and wellness clinic focused on helping people move beyond temporary pain relief by addressing the root cause of dysfunction. Their approach centers on building long-term strength, mobility, and performance so clients can live and operate at a higher level.

📌 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why pressure builds real confidence

• The connection between martial arts and leadership

• How entrepreneurs benefit from physical challenge

• Why avoiding discomfort weakens resilience over time

• The importance of structure and accountability for men

• How Jiu-Jitsu teaches humility and emotional control

• Why community matters for long-term personal growth

• The role discipline plays in both business and family life

🧩 Episode Summary

In this episode, Trev Warnke sits down with Michael Kaplan to discuss how Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu shapes people far beyond physical fitness or self-defense. The conversation explores how pressure, discomfort, and challenge create confidence and resilience that carry over into entrepreneurship, leadership, and everyday life.

Michael shares how many adults walk into a gym looking to learn self-defense but end up gaining something much deeper — composure, humility, accountability, and community. In a culture that often promotes comfort and avoidance, Jiu-Jitsu creates an environment where people are forced to confront pressure directly and grow through it.

The episode also dives into the importance of challenge for entrepreneurs. Business owners often spend their lives mentally stressed but physically stagnant. Michael and Trev discuss why physical outlets matter, how martial arts creates balance, and why disciplined environments help men become stronger leaders at home and in business.

Throughout the conversation, the Brotherhood values of accountability, sharpening, and growth are reinforced repeatedly. This episode is ultimately about becoming harder to break mentally while building confidence that’s rooted in experience, not ego.

🕒 Episode Timestamps

[00:00] Intro and Michael’s background

[06:42] Why discomfort creates confidence

[14:55] Lessons learned through Jiu-Jitsu training

[24:18] Entrepreneurship and physical challenge

[34:07] Building community inside martial arts

[45:31] Accountability and discipline for men

[56:20] Leadership lessons from the mats

[01:05:44] Final thoughts and encouragement

💡 Quote Highlight

“Confidence isn’t built by avoiding pressure. It’s built by surviving it.”

🚀 Next Steps

👉 Download our Your Circle is Your Ceiling eBook

👉 Learn more about Our Method

📚 Resources & Links

• Follow BBB on: Website | Instagram | YouTube | X | Facebook | Buzzsprout Podcasts

• Watch the full episode on YouTube

• Want to listen to future episodes: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Buzzsprout

🚀Full Transcript

Trev Warnke (00:21)

welcome into another episode of Brotherhood Beyond Business podcast today We're gonna be talking to Michael of North Star Brazilian jiu-jitsu and we're gonna go through his business talk about why he's in Prescott Valley and just get to more about Michael so Michael just go ahead and give me just a

short introduction to what North Star is and then also a little bit about yourself.

Michael Kaplan (00:39)

North Star is the first Jiu-Jitsu academy here in Prescott Valley. We definitely realized, well I definitely realized after moving to the area six or seven years ago that there was a lot of opportunity here. There was multiple academies in Prescott, one in Chino, but in terms of like the bigger metro areas, Prescott Valley didn't have one and a lot of people were commuting from Dewey or from out here 30, 40 minutes to train.

And that's just not ideal for people with families and busy schedules and whatnot. So yeah, that's kind of what inspired us to do North Star. I'm sorry, missed. What was your other question?

Trev Warnke (01:23)

Based on Northstar, what is Northstar? What was the purpose of the name of Northstar?

Michael Kaplan (01:26)

That's a great question. So I can't take credit for it personally. A close friend of mine came up with the name and if I'm being honest, I wasn't crazy about it at first, but then I started asking people like, what do you think of this? And it really resonated with people close to me. And then I started thinking about it and I'm like, well, yeah, that actually does make a lot of sense. And now like I love the name. You know, my business partner Dylan and I both

you know, view this project as like both our North Star and we hope that's the case for the students. Jujitsu is something that has a tremendous impact on a lot of people. And I get all the time people telling me like, I'm going through this and I'm going through that and like I really, really needed this today. know, grappling someone trying to choke me strangely enough is very therapeutic to lots of people and myself included. It brought, you know, so many good things in my life.

Trev Warnke (02:21)

Yeah, so in business we have what we call like a North Star metric, right? So it's the one, what's the one thing if I, if to move the business forward would be your North Star metric. And so like for that, when I kind of think this for BJJ for people is probably like this is the one thing that like creates serenity in my life. Like when I get my session in, like I told you that we own a gym out in Illinois and we have a lot of clients tell us like.

man, when the day is bad, I know I have my GCP workout coming up at the end of the day and I'm gonna be, no matter what just happened, I disappear for 45 minutes and forget about everything before I go home to my family. And so that's an awesome thing. It can be like a true north star in people's lives to get them separated from all the other chaos. mean, I grew up in an athletics gym as well. And the thing I always think about is like, there's very few things in my life that can get my brain to just truly just disappear and shut off from all the outside noise.

And when you're sweating hard, you're grappling with people. For me, I played football, hitting people, like those kind of things. My wife, did Krav Maga for years when we were in Illinois. And so like we always talk about those are the things like those are true moments when we escape because we can't think about anything else than in many ways, survival. Trying to like die on the fitness thing, right? When you're grappling with somebody, I'm just trying to make sure that I don't hurt them or injure them or get in a bad position.

Michael Kaplan (03:32)

I think to the normal person that might sound terrible, like I'm making my problems go away by facing these other problems, but in reality, it is very therapeutic. There's a popular meme that goes around the Jiu Jitsu circles where there's loud noises in the background as the person stepping onto the mat, and then when they step on, everything's silent. It's like that.

Trev Warnke (03:57)

Have you ever done any other martial arts?

Michael Kaplan (03:58)

Very little. We used to dabble in MMA back in the day. I would say probably 14, 15 years ago, about every Friday night, would do kickboxing and then mix the kickboxing stuff with the grappling stuff. I do not like getting punched in the head. It's not my thing. didn't necessarily...

I tried Jiu Jitsu because I was interested in self-defense or martial arts personally. It was more of a fitness endeavor for me.

Trev Warnke (04:26)

Yeah, yeah, that's so I've never done martial arts myself always been interested never done it My wife did Krav Maga for years which is in many ways not really a martial arts It's really just a defense kind of tool because she was doing inner city teaching in Chicago So her dad was like you've got a how to protect yourself, right? And so but when she talks about what that kind of thing with it being like

of the protective mechanism that you do, but like the escapism that comes from it. She said, it's very enjoyable to be able to like go into an escapism that like, I also can utilize outside of this. Like people use escapism as phones and other things like that. I go into my phone and disappear for a while, but disappearing into something that is physically tough is like, it's a superpower because it resonates into all other aspects of your life. If you can do something hard like that, it makes so many other things that you do in life a lot easier. And it's an escapism in the sense that the world disappears, but it's actually like,

personal development in that same.

Michael Kaplan (05:19)

I agree with everything you said there, and I love that you use the word superpower because we call it that all the time. And that's a little bit different from the escapism analogy. They're two separate things. the superpower part, you can, to someone who's untrained, who's never done the thing before, to be so thoroughly controlled and

and maybe even like have the ability to call your shots with just, you know, a small amount of experience over someone really does, it really does feel like that. It's not magic, it's a real skill. It's an escape that makes you a better version of yourself. But once you acquire a little bit of skill and use it on someone who doesn't have it yet, you realize like it's.

It's, it's, it's a super power. It's almost magic, you know?

Trev Warnke (06:09)

So one thing I've noticed probably over last five years is for BJJ specifically there's been a lot of CEOs that go into BJJ for skill building but really just for the idea of like the reason that they like BJJ more than some other things even more than just like fitness classes is the skill development component of it right so the idea is like mastery I think CEOs or entrepreneurs love mastery of something sometimes in fitness you're just like I'm just going to put in some more work for the sake of like work

but like martial arts can be like, we're leveling up, we're moving through those things. What have you noticed for yourself, like the skill development over time, how does that drive you to keep learning more?

Michael Kaplan (06:46)

Well, part of it is that superpower aspect that I was talking to you about. I'm not just gonna acquire the superpower and not wield it. It's frankly like being a smaller, older guy, having the ability to hold someone twice my size down and control them is pretty satisfying and it's not something I wanna lose.

In terms of mastery, you can never fully master it. But the pursuit of that, I think, is what keeps me going too, not just like it feels good to control people. I know that there's a black hole of grappling techniques that I can learn, but I'm still excited to learn new techniques. I'm a fan of the sport, there are athletes at the highest level.

and the innovations that they're bringing to the game. It's still very new in terms of sport and popularity. So it's still very much developing and grappling thousands of years old and there's nothing like brand new, but things go in and out of style and I'm right there trying to try everything. You know what mean?

Trev Warnke (07:53)

Awesome. So I grew up in Iowa and in Iowa, one of the big things besides football is wrestling. And so I wrestled when I was in high school and middle school and stuff. And so it's one of those skill sets though, this is something that like being able to control another, especially male, you're saying, and those are obviously dictate the same weight as somebody, but to be like going, I wrestled at 189. So 189 versus 189, no, I'm the stronger of the 189. Maybe it's not truly the stronger, but I've mastered the skill technique better than you.

is a very empowering thing to be like, man, this is really, really cool to be able to like, because I mean, if you just think of your, out with your buddies, you always want to get in a wrestling match or fighting in a good way with them, because that's just like male on male dominance kind of idea. So it is a cool skill set overall.

Michael Kaplan (08:36)

We have a version of what you're talking about with like the competitions. I always tell my students when they level up to the next belt that it's, that you never really feel like comfortable or confident in that new belt until you beat a man in that competition wearing that belt. Because in the training room, everyone's different ages, everyone's different weights and everyone knows, you know, what you're good at, what you're not good at, but out there on the competition in front of the lights or under the lights in front of...

you know, the family and the coaches, the stakes are a little bit higher and that definitely, you know, you feel a lot more confident once that box is checked, you know, strapping that thing on every time, you know, moving forward.

Trev Warnke (09:17)

So for your business you guys what age groups you all work with? I've been up all the way up till

Michael Kaplan (09:22)

Five and.

Yeah, we have we have someone in our program right now who is over 60. So yeah, anywhere between five and. Well, do you feel like doing it? had a buddy down in Phoenix who started at 55, 56, and that was 16 years ago. He's still doing it. Black Belt now.

Trev Warnke (09:31)

Pretty much whenever they feel like.

So how does that work? So let's say you start at like 55 years old. How does that work with integrating with other belts? Does it, it's not based on age group or how does that work?

Michael Kaplan (09:52)

I love this question. The belt system can be something that's very, that can muddy the waters quite a bit. Just because you're taking the blue belt doesn't mean that you're better than every white belt in the room. And in terms of someone who is a little bit older, the truth is that their ceiling is a lot lower. These kids who are starting at five years old, they can be...

World champions, by the time they're 18, 20 years old. Someone starting at 40 years old just isn't gonna be the world champion. It's just, they're not gonna be the best in the world. gonna, they've lost that youthful absorbent, know, soak everything up like a sponge. They can still improve, they can still build a strong game, but long story short, that's kind of something I have to consider. Like where is the ceiling for this person?

based on their age and their weight or whatever things might be making improvement more challenging.

Trev Warnke (10:49)

So I'm going to come from this from a perspective of 40. I just turned 40, something I've always wanted to get into martial arts. walk me through how you would not convince me. I'm coming in with the idea that I want to start martial arts. Kind of take the nervousness away from me. like, I've never done this. There's a bunch of kids in here. There's a bunch of different age groups, and they're so much better than me. Where do I start, and how do I kind of integrate into what's going on?

Michael Kaplan (11:12)

I mean, as of right now, we're only two years old. So my answer when someone calls and says, do you guys work with beginners, people who are brand new, is always like, yeah, we've only been open for under two years. And we don't have a ton of advanced people yet. As we grow, there's going to be separation. There's going to be a bigger schedule. There's going to be an advanced class. And there's going to be a fundamentals class. And those groups will.

we'll train in the room that's more appropriate for them at the time. Right now everything is mixed because it's just mostly lower ranks and relatively new people. So the technique is not too involved, not too advanced yet. As we grow, we'll grow into separating the advanced from the beginners and making sure everyone's comfortable. We're big on having as welcoming as a program as we can. We want to work.

with everybody. We don't have a gold standard for what a North Star student should look like. We want to be patient with everyone we need to be patient with. And yeah, that's that.

Trev Warnke (12:16)

Yeah, mean, that's, I mean, first of all, for anybody that's listening to the podcast right now, and you've been looking at doing something like this, like, this sounds like it's a good time to start with you guys, because I just look at it like, you know, someday there'll be a separation, and you guys will still be able to create the separation for the people coming new, regardless. But if you're kind of nervous getting into going to a gym that's maybe been around a lot longer, I didn't even think of it, the idea that like, in general, your clients are growing with your two years. And so it's like, this is a better time to get in on the ground floor when the skill set, hey, I can be able to get in with these guys.

Michael Kaplan (12:44)

Furthermore,

I would argue a room full of advanced grapplers is a more welcoming room. When we first started and everyone was brand new, first week, first month, first couple months, it's a lot of legwork for us as coaches catching everybody up all at once on the warmups and things like that. now that, even though we don't have a ton of people who've moved up to the next level yet.

We have people who've been here a year or more. Those people, they take the workload off of me as a coach. They welcome the new person and help them with their warmups. More experience in the room only means more coaching assets for the new people, guess is what I'm trying to say.

Trev Warnke (13:25)

That's to know. Don't worry too much about being in a... Because if it's like most sports or even like for our gym is that more experienced people are in there, they're willing to step in and then help out like, you might be missing this. The coach is busy over here. Yeah. That can maybe help you out. Or if you're grappling with them, be like, hey, they're just going to be more willing to help out because they've seen the journey too.

Michael Kaplan (13:42)

Yeah, martial arts is an intimidating thing to step into regardless of which one you're going to try, but most gyms aren't viper pits. most... You know, no, it's really not like that. yeah, we try to be as welcoming as possible, and most of the other programs I've been involved with or visited are the same. It's a very warm and welcoming community.

Trev Warnke (13:51)

It's not Cobra Kai.

And so you guys have been open here two years. Have you and your business partner been business partners the whole time?

Michael Kaplan (14:10)

Yeah, Dylan is a brown belt in jiu-jitsu. He's got a good amount, well I've got a good amount of experience on him. A lot of what we built was based on like my credentials and whatnot, but this man is like my right-hand man. We could not have done this without him. My skills are his weaknesses and vice versa, you know.

He's the construction guy. I'm the, you know, working the books guy. And then I could go on and on. He acclimated to teaching Jiu-Jitsu so fast and, you know, now kind of doesn't even need my help. And he's the head of our kids program. He makes all the final calls when it comes to those classes and those kids and he ties the belt on them and all that. I could go on about.

about Dylan. I wish he was here, but yeah, the best people.

Trev Warnke (15:00)

Yeah, that's so in Over the years I always go back to YouTube gurus because I think they're all none of them actually ran a business in my opinion when you listen to them but one thing's a lot of them like don't get a business partner and I personally Have had business partners in every single business. I've ever owned and I right now I have four different businesses that I run and I have a different business partner in each one yeah, and it's one of the coolest things in the world for me personally because

Being an entrepreneur is very lonely in general, right? Because you don't have a lot of people to talk to about this. And if you don't have a business partner, have to go to literally to war alone on yourself when things, it all falls back on you. But having somebody like that, they can do other things that you might not be able to do, but also it's just like be able to collaborate on stuff and be like, man, I know that like when shit hits the fan, I'm gonna have somebody go with it with me and keep building this business. So I love having business partners.

Michael Kaplan (15:48)

That's honestly really nice to hear because, you know, in the business planning stages of all of this, I had so many people tell me, don't do it. Don't do it. Like you need to do it yourself. Business partnerships don't work out. It's a bad idea. And I've just kind of considered myself lucky. Like I guess I just, picked the right person to help me with this thing. I see how it could have gone south. It didn't. So.

Trev Warnke (16:14)

I do think, and I get why they say that for sure, because there's a lot of instances that has happened, but I think it's like you used to talk about, you just can talk glowingly about them, right? And I think if you get in business with the right person and you go in with it because this person is the right human, I think that's, for me when I've picked business partners, every single person I've known for a long time, or if I didn't know them long, I know their heart. I can spend enough time to know really what their heart is. And what that allows me to do is like I know when stuff happens,

Like let's say, well, COVID is a perfect example for us. Our businesses went through COVID. And so when we went through COVID, we had to have, had a lot of obstacles that were coming at us. All my business partners stood up and like, we're going to, we can take this together, right? Versus I feel like a bad business partner might bail in that situation. I want to sell right now, sell out of this kind of stuff. But it is, I mean, there, a lot of advice would be exactly as you had been told. And I've always leaned on the opposite side being like,

I've been through the trenches for a lot of years now. I've been in business for 12 years. My dad owns a huge manufacturing corporation. His business partner is my mom and they've gone through hell to build that business over the years. I've always just seen like a partnership has been so valuable because it gets hard. That like if you can find the right person, business is going to be more sustainable for a 30 to 40 year journey than like 10 years by yourself maybe. 30 years by yourself, that's a hard.

Michael Kaplan (17:28)

Yeah, I think you're exactly right too. Like the important thing is like, you know, looking into this person's heart. Are they a good, good spirited, kind human being ready to, you know, do what it takes or, you know, are they, are they in it for themselves? And, and like, you know, cause you're going to be in the trenches with this person. You're going to make hard decisions with this person. So yeah, love all of that. Yeah.

Trev Warnke (17:48)

And I think sometimes people think about, they're in it for the money. And one thing I have to say about entrepreneurship, in my personal opinion, is you should never be in entrepreneurship for the money because realistically, unless you have a software company or something of that nature, the money in the end, over years it will grow. But the first many years are really, really tough and the money take home is very, very small, comparable to what people think you're taking home. And it's like one of those things, whenever somebody's like, this guy got it.

became my business partner for the money. like, well, you shouldn't have gone into small business. That was a wrong idea to go in for the money. It's a long journey and you're two years into the initial stages of it. And the cool part is like, in my opinion, once it hits like that five year thing, it's when it really like solidifies that like the finances really start to grow. You really start to figure out like your sweet spot on the way. Yeah, you gotta be in general for clients.

Michael Kaplan (18:17)

Yeah.

The foundation is solid.

Trev Warnke (18:37)

There's a trust level, the longer you're in business, the more they naturally trust you. Not people that are currently working outside leads coming in the door being like, this business is two years old versus five years old, like our gym is 12 years old. it's like, there's very few gyms in our area that are 12 years old. Most of them are two years old because they don't make it past that five year thing. But like, you're getting closer to that period and that confidence of when that hit for us, that's when like financially things really started changing being like, like.

I can actually tell my wife that we actually made money that the CPA won't be like, well, we gotta write that off as lost. it becomes more enjoyable at that point in time. But it's awesome that you have a good business partner along.

Michael Kaplan (19:10)

Yeah, I mean it's a it's it's still very much an enjoyable pursuit for us We we mopped the mats at the end of the night every night, you know, and and I'm like a broken record What a lovely night of classes, you know We're so fortunate to do what we do. Look at this palace that we built We don't make a ton of money and we knew we weren't gonna make a ton of money Doing this and yeah, it was it was never about that

Trev Warnke (19:16)

for both of us.

Michael Kaplan (19:36)

It was about doing something that makes me happy, doing something that feels good, and that's pretty much it.

Trev Warnke (19:42)

It's

the idea of when you wake up for the day, it's gonna be a hard day. It's gonna be a hard day for everybody, right? But like you're gonna, have those moments throughout the day where it's like, this is the glorious part of the day is I really get to do what I want to do. You get to train, coach people, you get to that ability, like I'm impacting lives. And yes, there's gonna be a part of the day that's business focused and it's not always the most fun part of the day. But the reward of those training classes on the outside, for me, it's like when I, one of the businesses I own right now is a marketing business.

And if I'm being honest, that marketing business, there's not a lot of parts of the day where I'm like, gosh, this was really, really fun. It was business, right? Whereas when I went our gym, I would get done coaching athletes in the evening or something like that. And I'm like, holy smokes, that was the best 45 minutes. Like that 45 minutes was awesome. Like the kids felt great. And that's a reward I don't think people on the outside see from the coaching perspective is that side where the reward of you, I think when people first come in to, I'm using my own personal opinion on this.

is when they come into our settings, gyms and martial arts kind of thing, they come in and see I'm trading off this much money for this training. Until they start to get in an environment with you long enough and see the heart that you're pouring into that person, those people start to realize after a while, I mean, this person, I guarantee they would train me for free. That's how much they love this and I'm willing to keep spending my money with them longer because I know they would literally do this for free for me because they enjoy this so much and there's very few jobs you're go into.

Michael Kaplan (21:05)

Yeah, mean, furthermore, as the consumer, you know, thinking back to when I first started, I got a lot more than just a transaction between, you know, money and learning moves. I met all my favorite people, all my best friends, all of the people I consider role models. It had that big of an impact on my life, and I'm not the only one.

You know, so this is not only a business that makes me happy, but it's something that is like just a net positive for the community. We're not selling milkshakes or alcohol or vapes or anything that's gonna cause anyone any kind of harm or unhealthiness or anything like that. And so that feels really good too, that like.

you know, the product itself comes from a good place in our hearts, you know? Yeah.

Trev Warnke (21:58)

There's not a lot of places left in society where there's true community. And that's what gyms have the ability to do. I mean, you can go to Planet Fitness and there's a lot of people in the same place, but that's not community. There's a lot of people in the same place. In gyms or martial arts studios that are like this, you're actually interacting with other people and having real conversations before, after class, during class. Those are real communities. There's just not a lot left. When my dad talked about in the 70s, they had a lot of things that they would, groups that they could go to.

and go do things together with other men or other women like golf. I mean, they're still golf, like they had social things built around and we don't have that near the same. So it's awesome that we do have these kinds of things.

Michael Kaplan (22:34)

Yeah, I guess that's what I was trying to say in fewer words. Growing up in the big city, which can be a meat grinder, I never really felt that sense of community until I was on the mats with the same people for months and months and years and years.

Trev Warnke (22:46)

It's an amazing thing that until you try it, do people really realize that? I don't think people probably come in from the outdoor usually thinking they're getting a community when they're investing in this, they're investing in themselves, but they're investing in other people that are reinvesting in themselves too. And I think it's just a miscomponent that a lot of people don't take, they take for granted without realizing how valuable it can be. mean, post COVID is very good for mental health to be interacting with other people. mean, it's always been good, but like post COVID is a big thing because people shelter themselves in certain ways.

Not nearly here, obviously I was in Chicago during that time, way different shelter variation than you guys had here, but it still did change a lot of people's mentalities.

Michael Kaplan (23:22)

Yeah, and mean, Phoenix wasn't far. There was very much the the Chicago thing going on down there as well. And yeah, a lot of people had to confront a lot of I mean, even up here, you know, lot of the gyms stayed open and whatnot. But, you know, there was still a lot of the community that took the lockdown stuff seriously. And I still spent a lot of time, you know, at home, isolated, even even with looser restrictions.

So, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it's a real shame what the pandemic did to a lot of gyms down there in the Valley.

Trev Warnke (23:56)

Yeah, yeah, we went through some hard times during that time too, I think for people the average person is like Just because you lost community during that time like a lot of people have left just stayed away community now It's time to start rebuilding that community and finding those things too because if you are struggling with mental health like this can change it real fast I'm amazed that we've talked about that in our fitness facility is people have come in that have been ice relatively isolated for a long period of time

Besides just going to work, they've just been isolated in general, not just because of COVID, just naturally because the world's become more technology so they can be isolated and feel connected when they get into an environment like this. smokes, I haven't felt this since high school, know, like that, college kind of feeling.

Michael Kaplan (24:33)

Yeah, and I've seen incredible transformations in people mentally and physically from getting involved and doing something like this. I personally didn't care for the running on a treadmill, riding a wheel, going to the public gym thing. Personally, I needed something that engaged me a little bit more, something I could do with a group and kind of...

fall into the background if I needed to. And so for me, this was the right fit for fitness where other people would try more conventional means.

Trev Warnke (25:08)

Walk

me through your schedule just so people are listening and getting an idea what your guys' current schedule is. Roughly a Monday through Saturday kind of schedule that you guys have.

Michael Kaplan (25:14)

Yeah, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we have 10 a.m. classes for adults. Tuesday and Thursday, we have 9 a.m. classes for homeschool kids. Those are all of our morning classes. In the evening, we have so many classes. Monday nights is, oh, I'm sorry, Monday through Friday is our bigger kids class. That's roughly ages eight through 13, 14, depending on when they.

hit that growth spurt and start to grow into their adult bodies. Tuesday through Thursday at 4.15 is our littles class. Those are kids ages five through seven, eight-ish, depending on when they hit that growth spurt. then Monday through Friday, adult classes at six o'clock. We have a no-gee adult class at seven o'clock on Monday night, and then an adult open mat Saturday at 10 a.m., I think.

That's every.

Trev Warnke (26:12)

Those are dreams.

So those are the class hours you guys are currently offering. So when we look at, so obviously you guys offer a lot of different things for a lot of different age groups. So kids, you said you can start at kindergarten? Five years old, five years old.

Michael Kaplan (26:24)

Five years old. We classes

for around four and a half and we'll be honest with the parents, they're not ready, they're taking up too much of our attention from the rest of class. But for the most part, five and

Trev Warnke (26:35)

And so when they're coming at that age, this is me just truly just asking because I don't know a lot about this kind of stuff. What are they kind of doing at that very, very young age?

Michael Kaplan (26:43)

Yeah, it's definitely a more stripped down, simpler version of what the bigger kids do. And what the bigger kids do is a more stripped down, simpler version of what the adults do. And also, we've definitely noticed over time that the little kids have certain tendencies that the adults don't and gravitating towards those tendencies so they can be successful.

and gravitating towards the other things that the adults can be successful with. It's, it's, yeah.

Yeah, it's a little bit of trial and error. Throw something at the wall. It's not quite working. Tweak it. It's a shorter class than the bigger kids class or the adult because the attention spans are a lot shorter. And yeah, just for the most part, like removing a lot of those details and steps and things that are going to just get them stuck and confused before they even.

do the thing, if that makes sense.

Trev Warnke (27:40)

Is there any reason a kid shouldn't be doing a martial arts? Is there anything that you could be like, this is usually, like, so, example, what's a good fit for somebody doing, a young kid doing martial arts versus maybe not a good fit?

Michael Kaplan (27:53)

I, man, I hate to give anyone a reason not to try jiu-jitsu. I think that, well, our program in particular, we want to work with everybody that we can. And some kids come in and they're scared to even step on the mat. It's tears, you know, right when they walk through the door and it takes a week of doing that before they have the confidence to step on the mat and...

We wanna work with those kids. We wanna build their confidence up. want them, you know, next time they do something like that to not be afraid when they walk through the door. So no, I don't view anything as like, that's too much of a challenge for us to work with this person. Nothing really comes off the top of my head why someone shouldn't give it a try. I think that you maybe need to be a...

a little crazy to do it for as long as I have, as much as I have, but that's besides it.

Trev Warnke (28:50)

So then let's go into the adult side then. So for adults, there anybody, I'm just trying to like help the people that are listening, like, what is it, is this a good fit for me? And I agree, pretty much could be a good fit for anybody. Is there anything that you like would caution an adult from like, hey, if you have shoulder mobility issues or anything that you're running, like, man, these are things you need to maybe get fixed before you try this.

Michael Kaplan (29:08)

No, not necessarily. I've had a lot of injuries over the years and sure, you have to wait till the healing's there to a certain degree before you train again, but it's very much like things I can work around. What deters a lot of adults is real hungry youngsters. You know what I mean? The high school kids who just...

who just finished the wrestling program, who are ready to get after it and go hard with anyone and everyone. You see a lot of the dads, the career guys, get deterred from that, but nobody has to train with anybody that they don't want to. I think that the young, hungry youngsters should train with the young, hungry youngsters, and the casual dads should train with the casual dads, and the ones who wanna mix it up with everyone are welcome to do that too.

I think that a brand new white belt, training with a brand new white belt is the highest chances for injury and accidents, if that's the case. So if that's something you're worried about, gravitate towards someone with more experience, even if that means you are losing most of that training session. That's healthy too. You have to figure out how to deal with.

pressure and escaping bad positions and a lot of it is just putting yourself in those positions over and over and over again, learning to stay calm and find your space to work.

Trev Warnke (30:29)

I think that's great advice because I don't think that would be your natural instinct. People's natural instinct would be like, I see another white belt. They're like me. I should probably train with them because they're not as, they're at the same advanced level as I am. But the actual thing, especially with martial arts, is probably different than most things, is a more advanced person is probably going to be safer because they're going to put you in better positions. They're not going to like twist you in a way that they don't even know if that's the right position to be putting you in. I think about that back in my wrestling days, that when you're wrestling, like,

they would always have us, like the seniors and stuff, rush with the freshmen. To help them teach them the skill set versus other freshmen who just going at it hard, but they're learning nothing realistic.

Michael Kaplan (31:04)

Yeah, there's a character in Jujitsu, and in any Jujitsu room that you have to watch out for. We call them the spazzy white belt. And it's not necessarily someone who's gonna rip a submission with bad intent, but they're gonna explode and you might get caught with an elbow or a knee, because they're just freaking out, because they don't understand that a lot of it is staying calm and being sneaky.

and setting traps and so just the brute force comes out and it's that brute force that's gonna injure people a lot of times.

Trev Warnke (31:38)

Okay, that's cool. mean, as I kind of dig through my head as me and my wife have been talking about doing different martial arts, she's been doing crop and got for years and wants to get back into it. Me, I've mainly done fitness for many years since football and I'm always like, I want to become more of a protector. And I think men should be, this should be a category. We talk to male entrepreneurs a lot. It's like, think being a protector of your wife means more, it used to mean a physical protector. And then for years it became just a financial.

and now it's the side where we really need to be a combination of both. And I don't know if it's really for anything you specifically need to protect, physically protect your wife from. This area is a very awesome area, a safe area. However, it's like, it's a male skill set that you should have. And I've been talking to lot of men, you, protection should be part of that. Part of it is knowing how to wield a weapon, safe, knowing how to do that kind of stuff, for sure. But you also need to know physically, just, I'm a big guy. I'm 225 pounds, pretty muscular, but if I get...

you and me get into a fight, you're probably going to take me down even though you're smaller physically than me. It's because I know nothing about throwing, maybe throwing a couple punches and that's all I got. And I'm hoping most men will never have to get in a situation, actually have to utilize those things. But I think as a male, that should be just a skill set we have. The ability to other people in our lives physically.

Michael Kaplan (32:47)

Yeah, I mean, if for nothing else, peace of mind and the people you're with, feeling safe, you know? Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Trev Warnke (32:57)

It's

funny because with my wife, I don't worry about her near as much. I mean, I don't worry. I don't think you really worry about yourself very often, but I don't worry about my wife as most people do because she's been, she did Krav Maga for 11 years, right? And so she's very skilled in that side and she's small. She's 120 pounds at five foot two, but she's no, she's very skilled. And I'm like, that's kind of stuff that it's nice to like, to set protection side of things. And for husbands, for your wives too, it's like getting it, get them into something like this that has a level of self-defense to it too, just protection for their safety.

one-on-one body strength is really important too.

Michael Kaplan (33:28)

Yeah,

mean, hopefully, you know, none of us ever get into a violent, you know, self-defense situation. But like I said earlier, peace of mind. I know that if someone were to grab me, that I wouldn't even have to think about it. My body would react properly because it just knows how to react to someone grabbing me. People grab me like all the time, you know. So my brain wouldn't go to like, I need to do self-defense move A, because he took a grip.

A, no, would just move and I feel safer because of that and hopefully the people around me do too.

Trev Warnke (34:03)

Yeah, that's that repetition side that comes from being in something consistently. Taking a weekend self-defense class once, you might have learned some things, but there's no way you've practiced and put that skill in often enough to actually be able to utilize it in that moment that it comes. Correct. But in these situations, when you're in here consistently practicing it all the time, like said, it becomes second nature. You probably wouldn't think twice. It's like when somebody grabs you and you know somebody's not supposed to be grabbing you, you're going to go in those natural instincts.

Michael Kaplan (34:28)

I always tell this story of my friend who tried to grab something out of my hand years ago. And it didn't even occur to me like what was happening when he did it. I just arm dragged him and got behind him and was like, whoa. That just happened. My body reacted. My mind didn't need to.

Trev Warnke (34:49)

Now, I think about that as wanting to be a protector of my wife, as that's something like, I sit in those situations, I mean, I think one entrepreneurial skill is we overthink a lot of things, and it's a good thing, because you're looking for all the risks, right? You're trying to find those risk assessments. Or opportunities, right? And so I'm looking for, with my wife as a protector, I'm always looking at these things like, if we got in this situation, like she would be able to protect herself better than I could protect her. Like physically, maybe if we just got in a one-on-one brawl, I would be fine.

Michael Kaplan (35:02)

opportunities.

Trev Warnke (35:16)

For the most part, haven't wrestled since I was 18 years old, I'm 40 years old. I don't know how much muscle memory I'm gonna have left from those kind of things. Maybe more than the average male would, but still not enough that I feel super confident about. But it is those kind of things I think men should, this should be a skill set that we learn. One of the things I'm trying to do is trying to help men become the best version of themselves, reach their full potential. And that is more than just, I think for the last maybe probably 15 years, it's really been just a financial thing people have thought about. How do I become the most financially successful male I can be? Because our society's gone to,

Michael Kaplan (35:22)

You'd be surprised.

Trev Warnke (35:45)

very white collar thought, right? And I think moving to Prescott area has been really cool for me because that has brought out like men are just more, a little bit more manly around here than where I've lived in Chicago for many years. When I grew up in Iowa, every man around there was pretty manly from what I had considered manly being, right? Growing up as a kid, like everybody knew how to take care of themselves, right? Chicago, not quite the same. We also lived in the suburbs, which is even like a little bit more that way. So when moving out here, I was like, hey man, this is kind of cool that guys know how to protect themselves here.

and it's something I need to step up my game. And I'm just kind of calling to other males out there listening to this podcast being like, this is a skill set that I think shouldn't be ignored. And BJJ, other martial arts, find the thing that really fits what you think might be, or try them all out. I think it's a really good starting point for men to kind of get in that community, but also get into the protective nature.

Michael Kaplan (36:31)

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, you know, I don't know why it is that way. Coming from living in the big city like you did as well, you'd think people would have more interest in self-defense living down there than they would up here. I know, right?

Trev Warnke (36:45)

You

do look at that and you think like you're running into more opportunities for this kind of situation than we might ever run into here. maybe it's just the big city living, you just kind of get really used to things and you just get comfortable and life's busy and you even think about stuff.

Michael Kaplan (36:59)

It's

different. It's definitely different.

Trev Warnke (37:00)

So we've kind of gone through different parts of the business. I really like that you guys cover from kids all the way up to adults. And then you told me why you're in the Prescott Valley area because this is really the area that needed the, had the biggest need for BJJ out of the surrounding area. What do you guys do for, what would be your entry offer to people if somebody was like, like I want to come try that out. Do you guys do any free sessions? What's kind of your?

Michael Kaplan (37:22)

Yeah, yeah, we offer a free trial class. Sometimes we're out in the community giving out coupons for multiple free trial classes, but the standard is just one. And we don't require that anyone schedule that online or call us in advance or anything like that. They just need to do the waiver, bring the sandals and water. We normally have like a loaner uniform they can wear. If it's not a Wednesday, Wednesday's all like what I'm wearing, no geek class. And yeah, typically, you know,

in one class whether or not this is something you want to keep doing or not. I know I certainly did. I went home ecstatic and knew it was not something I was going to quit anytime soon. So, yeah.

Trev Warnke (37:59)

Cool, so that you can come in and just get a trial out. Like you said, they don't have really, the only thing you need to know in advance is filling out the waiver and is that online or?

Michael Kaplan (38:05)

Yep, the waiver's on our website. There's a visitor sign up form. You give your first and last name, your email, and then a little liability waiver, and that's it. We always remind people, bring sandals and water, because we don't want to bring dirty feet onto the mats for sanitary purposes. obviously, hydration is important. Yeah, that's about it. That's all they need to come try out Class 1s.

Trev Warnke (38:26)

I've approached this from the male perspective a lot. want to kind dive in the female perspective a little. Out of like what is in your percentage of BJJ students, like what's kind of the ratio of male to female?

Michael Kaplan (38:37)

In the kids class, relatively high, I would say maybe 60, 40 in the kids. We have lots of girls that mix it up with the boys and the playing field's a little bit more level with the kids and that might be why. In the adults, it's a lot less than that. I would say maybe 10, 15 % of the adults are.

are girls and that's the slowest growing demographic in any gym. I'm highly impressed with any club that has a large women's program because it's just tougher. It's just tougher for a woman to come in and most of the training partners are big sweaty guys and it's intimidating and all that.

So yeah, that's why we have the women's only class once a week and some women are doing that class and mixing it up with the guys in the mixed adult class too. But yeah.

Trev Warnke (39:38)

that women's only class is a nice thing for like a confidence builder, right? To be like, come in, this is kind of what it's about. You can feel it. And if you really enjoy this, then you might feel more confident to be able to like, okay, I can mix in with the men a little bit more.

Michael Kaplan (39:49)

Well, no, not necessarily. Some women simply don't want to mix in with the men. And in terms of why, I don't really know. I've heard all manner of things. Some women only want to train with the men because they feel that if they're ever in a self-defense situation, it's going to be against a man. I just think that females have a lot more trouble getting comfortable in a

in a rough and tumble wrestling room. That's just kind of what young boys do.

Trev Warnke (40:20)

It is something that, so growing up in Iowa, I've heard from my brother who still lives there, that women's wrestling is really growing in Iowa, young women's wrestling, right? So it's one of those things that maybe it's something that is coming up in the thing and it might be more familiar in BJJ and stuff down the road when they train through things at a younger age through it. But I would imagine, like my wife, she did Krav Maga and she had to train mainly with banks and a lot of women in that stuff.

and she's like she would probably get a little injured a little bit more often because the men were just so much stronger than she was for the stuff they were doing.

Michael Kaplan (40:49)

And frankly, like it can be frustrating when you're doing, you know, when you're doing decent techniques, you're doing the move right enough, but like brute strength is still too much to compensate for. I've experienced that. I'm not a bigger man, you know, and yeah, size is definitely an asset. Testosterone is an asset. you're a female,

makes you stronger.

Trev Warnke (41:14)

Yeah, I'm actually, use TRT right now because I have issue with low testosterone. Yeah. I had to get on TRT to help my testosterone get up and it's amazing how much better I feel when my testosterone is at the right capacity.

Michael Kaplan (41:26)

I don't think it's controversial at all to say that women aren't as strong as men. I can feel it physically when I grapple with someone who isn't as strong. And yeah, that definitely makes it twice as hard.

Trev Warnke (41:38)

So young girls, they're pretty involved in it, which is awesome. I love to hear that. then, and I think there's also like as you get older for women in general, is it's just like, that's not the, that's maybe not the environment most women want to be in. They'd rather be in yoga classes or something like that. Maybe not, maybe if they could get a bruise, they don't want a bruise and all that kind of stuff. I definitely can see that. I that when me and my wife talked about martial arts and her getting back into it, she's like, well, you know, I'm teaching now, so I don't want to end up with like, she would sometimes have bruises on her arms and stuff and her.

you know, they'd be like, I don't want that around my kids. So there's, can definitely see their reasonings more than maybe a guy's reasoning is like, if I show up to work with a bruised eye, nobody's going to say too much, too much about that. So.

Michael Kaplan (42:15)

Even Jiu Jitsu is growing and is gaining popularity. think, I don't know for sure, but I think Jiu Jitsu is at this point in time the most popular martial art out there just because it's so discussed in the media and your favorite celebrity's probably doing it. What I see more often than not is gyms growing into

women's programs. We tried having a women's class right off the bat and we just didn't have enough people total to build a women's class at that point in time. And so I thought, why don't we wait until we have 100 members and then try it again. And sure enough, it was a better time. But still, it's just going to be the slowest growing class and always a challenge to make them feel comfortable.

wrestling with each other.

Trev Warnke (43:06)

So from there, competition wise, so what do you guys do for competitions? Do you guys have competitions here in Prescott? Or do you guys usually go down to the Valley? Or what do you guys do for?

Michael Kaplan (43:15)

We'd be interested in hosting a tournament up here at some point in time. That's something that's never happened in this area. And I have some friends out in the White Mountains who are hosting tournaments now. So that's something that we put this much thought into. But competition's always been a big part of Jiu Jitsu for me. Like I said, I got into it more for fitness reasons. so...

gravitated more towards the sport side of things than the self-defense side of things, which with any martial arts, you're going to have that. yeah, we take teams down to Phoenix pretty consistently, just about every month, every month or two, and our competition teams are growing. As they do, we try to do more competition training. Something we do with the kids is mock competition rounds.

where just two people are in the middle and everyone's yelling and making a bunch of noise. The parents are over here making a bunch of noise. So we feel nervous, like, my goodness, everybody's watching me versus the whole room is training and the kids are kind of goofing off with each other in those rounds a little more.

Trev Warnke (44:19)

to get them more prepared for the environment and stuff.

Michael Kaplan (44:21)

It

can be very overwhelming stepping out and competing against someone in front of all your friends and family.

Trev Warnke (44:29)

I remember my first wrestling tournament versus playing football. Football, you can't hear the crowd. It's just like you're on a field, all these other guys with you. The first time you're on a wrestling mat and you're the only person against somebody else and everybody's staring at you and everything around you gets fuzzy, you know, because you're so nervous. It's definitely one of those things that you just, until you're in that environment, do you really feel how like that heart rate really jacks up?

Michael Kaplan (44:52)

And then afterwards you feel like you got hit by a Mack truck and you have this massive adrenaline dump and yeah, yeah, it's a lot.

Trev Warnke (45:00)

So for a competition, I'm going back in my wrestling brain here. Is it a long day when you guys go down there? it like?

Michael Kaplan (45:07)

Yeah, it's a long day. Depending on the tournament, this next one is next month. And that tournament in particular, we're going to be there at 8 a.m. before the kids start to get them ready to weigh in and all that. And we're going to be leaving there probably 8 p.m. And sometimes we compete and that's just 12 hours of coaching plus competing. It's yeah, you're feeling it for a week after.

Trev Warnke (45:32)

Yeah, I bet that's I always remember about wrestling tournaments was my parents didn't even go to them. There was just so long a days like we got too many things to get done. Long, long days. mean,

Michael Kaplan (45:41)

For our competitors, the family can show up an hour before they have their matches and leave right after the podium. For us as coaches, it's quite exhausting. But again, there's worse ways to spend a Saturday. I go down there and I see all my friends who are coaches and run academies down there, all my friends I used to train with down there. It's a...

I go see a bunch of people I like and socialize. It's not all work. I watch my students put it on the line, which is also fun and satisfying in its own way.

Trev Warnke (46:13)

very strong bonding moment to be to be in those. Do you compete at all anymore yourself?

Michael Kaplan (46:15)

Absolutely.

It's been, yes, short answer is yes. I had some knee issues that I'm dealing with at the moment. It's been since last year since I've done it, but I love to compete. It's, yeah, it's taxing, but at the same time, I wouldn't trade it.

Trev Warnke (46:34)

Do you have for yourself, you have any like other people, so do you just, when you're just doing your normal training in here, or do you have like a group of guys that compete at a higher level that you get together with, or just mainly with your crew?

Michael Kaplan (46:45)

When I was down in Phoenix, had that. Here, starting from scratch, opening my own gym, it's me and Dylan and the students. And my business partner, Dylan, is a tough round. And he's about my size and my age too. So thankfully, him and I match up together great. So in terms of high level training partners, I have my business partner and then the students. And the students are getting pretty dang tough.

Trev Warnke (47:08)

When you saying that, was just thinking, sometimes with my business partners, would love to be able to once in while just go out on the mat with them. Some of those moments where we have just a little bit of disagreement in what we're working on, stick it out on the mat for an hour or something.

Michael Kaplan (47:20)

So funny because like that is such a wonderful outlet where we get to talking about this and that. Maybe we have a fun, you know, a lighthearted disagreement or something and then just a wrestle breaks out. And this is a recurring thing that happens quite a bit. So yeah, that is pretty nice.

Trev Warnke (47:39)

One of my favorite podcasters, him and his brother run their business together and he talks about how once in while him and his brother, I don't know if his name's Andy Frisella, he has a podcast called Real AF and him and his brother who runs this big first form energy drinks or first form supplements.

and they get once in a they're just getting fistfights. Literally, just like we're brothers, we do business together, we'll do this in the office, that kind of stuff. And I just look at that being like I could never do that. But when you said this here, it's like in a controlled environment, that would be really, really fun. I couldn't do it in an office setting, but I could do it in this, like hey, once in a while it would be good to go at it.

Michael Kaplan (48:12)

We do that without the head trauma.

Trev Warnke (48:14)

Whereas my business partners, I'm quite a bit bigger than all of them. They're probably more in like that 170 pound range. 225, I used to weigh 285, so I've come down a lot from there, but a little bit different physically, so.

Michael Kaplan (48:25)

Yeah, I'm tall, but I'm only 150. So definitely smaller than most of my students.

Trev Warnke (48:32)

Really? what, I mean, all sizes really fit for something like this. but in terms of athlete wise, is there one that like these athletes perform better? Is there size? Cause like for football, you have a certain size, basketball, you have a certain size that does better. Is there anything for like a really good BJJ person that size wise matters?

Michael Kaplan (48:51)

I think that having a long reach and being tall and lanky is definitely beneficial. But to answer your question, no. I think that ultimately your grappling style will be a little bit your personality and a little bit your body type. You have to sort of use your assets as best you can.

I study a lot of athletes at the highest level who have similar builds to me because I probably need to gravitate towards the type of moves that they're doing just because your body type is going to make certain things easier and certain things harder. That's just kind how it works.

Trev Warnke (49:36)

Yeah, that makes sense. think of when I wrestled the 135 pounders, the moves they use were different than I was using at 189. Yeah. Because the strength ratio was so much different and they could get away with mobility. They just more mobile than I was honestly. Yeah. And I remember seeing them wrestle being like doing these like monkey rolls and I'm like, I'm not not

Michael Kaplan (49:53)

I'm just going to to try that. Yeah, I mean, as someone with reach, I can keep people away really good. But shorter, more compact guys are to be able to change levels and get under and shoot and wrestle better. And that's just the two of us using our assets the best we can.

Trev Warnke (50:10)

Is there anything else that you want people to know about that I haven't really dug into about your guys' business?

Michael Kaplan (50:15)

We have a kids camp coming up next month. That's gonna be June 8th through the 12th. We're celebrating two years of being open. This sat, that's actually tomorrow. I don't know if your podcast is gonna be out in time for that, but Open Mat and Potluck, Kids Open Mat, all are welcome for that.

Trev Warnke (50:32)

kids camp, what age groups would that be?

Michael Kaplan (50:34)

That's going to be ages five through 13. The older ones we're going to put in more leadership roles. But yeah, all the kids are welcome for that one. Probably not any older than 13. Yeah, I think that's all I got at the moment.

Trev Warnke (50:47)

awesome, of just do a quick recap for everybody. I love that you guys found a target, like going to Prescott Valley was a very smart, I'm going to look at this from a business perspective, very smart way to be like, hey, I know these other areas have these, but when you live in this area, people are like, oh, it's just in Prescott, but that's still 20, 25 minute drive, depending on where you're at in this, or I live in Chino, it's a 20, 25 minute drive. So just being like, I'm going to drive over to that, well, that's roughly 50 minutes of your night driving. So putting this strategically in a place that didn't have a big BJJ.

close enough that's within, we found for gyms, most people don't want to drive more than 10 minutes to get to their gym. so that's ideal to be within. So I was very smart, business mood, find the spot that nobody else is.

Michael Kaplan (51:27)

Yeah, and mean, things are things are so much more spread out here than they are down in the valley down in the valley. There's a gym every square mile. You have you have us, you know, way on this side of the Prescott metro area. You have ESJ kind of right in the middle and then you have Mountain Tribe sort of way in in downtown Prescott. So everyone's a good 15, 20 minutes away from each other. And and honestly, like those other schools have been have been really, you know.

nice and supportive to us. The community is is uncombative and everyone's on good terms. So that's something that's not, that you can't say about the big city as well.

Trev Warnke (52:09)

That is awesome because one thing that I've been talking to lot of Prescott business owners is like, you guys are in a unique ability in small town to be big enough that if you guys, if everyone played really nice together, and I'm not just talking about business, I'm talking about all industries, people get very competitive, right? Using landscaping as an example. It's like there's enough jobs for most people, if you guys work together and like really conquered the area better, it would be better served and your businesses would grow better.

Michael Kaplan (52:34)

that purpose. I feel strongly about this. It's just not productive to fight and talk bad about each other. Matter of fact, Dylan and I, we were both teaching over there at Mountain Tribe before we opened up here. And Rob was very supportive of this, you know, since we told him it was in the works and they're going to be here tomorrow supporting our two-year event. Very We try to make it over there to support their belt promotions and all that stuff.

Trev Warnke (52:59)

No, that's awesome. That's the it should be. It should be in all communities, especially when you get to smaller communities or can be more tight knit than Phoenix, which is just so spread out. Smaller communities, you should be able to do that because that just, helps the community overall. And I think that's what we need to do.

Michael Kaplan (53:12)

Also, if you were walking through this door and you were looking to try jiu-jitsu and you asked about the other schools in the area and I said bad things about them, like...

How would you look at me after that? It's not necessarily a selling point, like I'm talking bad about the other businesses. It doesn't make me look like a nice guy.

Trev Warnke (53:31)

I mean just knowing you a little bit doesn't seem like your nature either and you're naturally going to be like supportive and I think people that do do Community based things they want to obviously grow their community But they're just trying to grow the community in general for the BJJ community more people doing it Yeah And so you're not going to talk bad about people because you don't want people to be turned off by what you guys are doing in general

Michael Kaplan (53:49)

Yeah, and the community is small. Eventually one of our students is going to go over there and mention my name or Dylan's name. And I don't want that conversation to be negative. It's out of my control, obviously. But yeah, we have a lot of back and forth between Jim's in Phoenix and Jim's up here in the area.

You know, having a beef is just the worst possible thing that you do.

Trev Warnke (54:11)

Yeah, I mean in many ways business is stressful enough. Honestly, you just don't need to add those other like weird components where I'm upset with another business that's just doing their own thing. I'm doing my own thing. Realistically for most small businesses there's plenty of opportunity out there. It's just my biggest advice to all small businesses is usually you're the best kept secret because you're just not marketing enough. People don't know you enough, right?

And so it's very rarely that people don't have enough lead generation that they need to do is they need to be seen by more people. So doing things like putting on the events that you have coming up, those are awesome opportunities for people to see your business and invest in your business and be part of those things. And people just need to do those things honestly more often because it's not that people don't want to be part of you. They could be literally right across the street and have no idea that your Jujitsu studio is right here.

Michael Kaplan (54:54)

Yeah, that part of the business is definitely a little bit challenging. Finding our avenues for setting up a table in public or whatever is kind of a matter of talking to the right person, making the right contacts and whatnot. so the events, the kids camps, the movie nights, all of that, it's all just trial and error, throwing things at the wall, seeing if it sticks.

very much like to find more ways to get out and interact with the community, but just gonna take time and meet the right people.

Trev Warnke (55:24)

Yeah, and like you kind of said, you're two years into it, very early in the journey, when you have time to go. Scale, most YouTube gurus are going to tell you to scale faster and I actually tell people to scale slower. And the reason I say that is yes, it does hurt your initial financial bottom line, but it keeps the community stronger and you're growing in the right things because when you try to scale too fast,

What you're trying to do is you're bringing in things that don't really fit what you want just for money's sake. And when you're doing those kinds of things, you scale and then all of sudden the attention goes down. You didn't get enough coaches for the amount of people coming in. You don't have a coach that's trained up correctly to even take on more people if you had to do that. So I always tell people actually scale slower, scale correctly because you're in not a five year game, you're in a 30 year game for most people. And that 30 year game, it takes 30 years and it really takes a good 10 years to get that real traction going.

Michael Kaplan (56:10)

that and the growth has been very much that way. Two steps forward, one step back, know, slow and steady as she goes. And I remember starting out, there were a couple of weeks, a couple of months where we just got hammered with a whole bunch of new people and it was like, I mean, whoa, this is a lot all at once. So slow and gradual is definitely gives us a little bit more control. to get things right.

Trev Warnke (56:37)

Cool, I love getting to know you today, Michael. I really appreciate your time. Guys, want to check out another episode of Brotherhood Beyond Business podcast. We have a bunch coming up. All the links to all Michael's stuff is going be at the bottom of the podcast. It's going be in those things. It's going to be on our website. We'll be sending stuff off to Michael as well, so you can find us anywhere. Thanks for joining us