The Legacy Martial Arts Business Podcast

Nick Castiglia (00:03.829)
All right, here we are, Legacy Martial Arts Business Podcast. Guys, you're just tuning in and this is your first time listening, make sure to go check out martialartsgymownersunited .com. That's a link to our free group where we give tons of free stuff, free trainings, because we're just trying to raise the level of martial arts business in the industry. I'm here with my good friend and super amazing person, Brent Fria.

How are you doing, Brent?

Brent (00:35.986)
I'm good, how are you?

Nick Castiglia (00:37.643)
doing great. Brent Freya owns Steel City MMA, accomplished fighter, jiu -jitsu practitioner, wrestler. Brent, as you know, like when we usually start the podcast, we talk about the origin story and I love your story, not just because I'm your friend, but it's just a really great story and I'm going to let you take it from

Brent (01:04.978)
Yeah, my origin story, never imagined, never planned on being a gym owner or anything like that. The way it happened was kind of crazy. I wrestled obviously all through elementary school, high school, university. At the end of my university career, I was one of the top ranked guys in the country and I thought I was gonna kind of make a run at being on the national team was my plan. And this is going way back. But what happened was I got a teaching job in my hometown and

At the time, teaching jobs were really hard to come by. And so I moved back home and there was no like senior level wrestling in Sioux, St. Marie, Ontario, Northern Ontario, where I'm from.

Nick Castiglia (01:43.521)
What year is this? What year is this?

Brent (01:46.194)
2005, that was when I started teaching. So I was just coaching wrestling and then I saw an ad for like, it was like a karate school was running and like, hey, we want to get into MMA because things were booming at that time, right? It was the ultimate fighter and all that stuff. And there was a call out in the newspaper. So that tells you how long ago it was. In the newspaper, there was an ad that said like, hey, wrestlers, judo players, whatever, come try our new MMA class. So I went.

and me and a couple other wrestlers and the guy who owned the karate school basically inherited a bunch of like super high level wrestlers and we became an MMA team and we had no idea what we were doing at the time. And we just kind of fumbled along and figured it out. I, at one point I needed to, I figured I had fought a bunch of amateur fights, had turned pro, had some pro fights and was having a tough time. So I moved to Asia.

to, because at the time the UFC didn't have a bantamweight or featherweight, and I was a bantamweight, so all the best guys in the world were basically in Asia. So was like, I'm going to move there. So I moved there, trained and competed, and then had an amazing time. And I didn't know that while I was away, basically what happened was all the other fighters who were in Sault Ste. Marie kind of, they had a big falling out with the gym owner.

There was multiple issues and I moved back and I didn't really know any of this was going on and things blew up and we basically got kicked out of the gym and he changed the locks on the door as if we were going to break in and steal stuff or something. So we were all these MMA fighters with no place to train and I was like, I mean, I was young. So I was like, I guess one of us needs to open a gym. So we did and it

At that time, like what our gym was then compared to now is unbelievably different in like what a path and journey it's been. We started with basically four or five active MMA fighters and like anybody who wanted to come train with us. And there was no like learning. We had no fundamentals courses. There was no crash course for boxing, jiu -jitsu, kickboxing. was just

Brent (04:12.69)
Hey, we need some sparring partners come and survive. And if you can survive, then you're probably going to get pretty. Yeah. You made the team. That's exactly. And we, and over the years we like expanded and we're like, maybe we should have like a more recreational class. And now, you know, we have MMA fighters. saw the pretty strong crew of competitors, but 95 % of our members are like youth and adult recreational members for boxing, kickboxing and Jiu -Jitsu.

Nick Castiglia (04:19.669)
You made the team.

Brent (04:43.302)
So it's kind of, yeah.

Nick Castiglia (04:43.361)
I have some questions here because I know you, so I have the unfair advantage of knowing your history, but I know a lot of the people listening, there's a lot of key parts here. So it's 2005, you see that in the newspaper, you go to the karate school and you had said that you

had already done some amateur fights here prior to going to Asia. what, you know, I'm trying to like even think back that far. like what was that like? What were the rules? Was it basically pro, but they called it amateur and you're fighting under pro rules. Like, what, like, what was it like in, in that time and where were you fighting? Were you driving over the States?

Brent (05:32.358)
Yeah,

Nick Castiglia (05:40.117)
and fighting over there because we're talking a long time

Brent (05:43.622)
Yeah, it was, you you've probably heard lots of fighters who've been around for, I'll talk about the wild, wild west days. And it was exactly that. There was no athletic commissions. We're on the border of Michigan, Northern Michigan. So we would usually fight in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota in the Midwest. Yeah, there was no athletic commissions. The things that went on in those days were just absolutely insane. Like the first organization I fought in, the cage.

was framed with two by fours. And the chain link fence was like galvanized steel, not rubber coated. And like, I remember being like leaning against it in a warmup and being like, I'm gonna make sure I do not have my back to this cage, because it will get shredded. And I actually, in that fight, I actually picked a guy up in a double leg, turned him upside down and slammed him kind of like on his shoulders. And we broke, we didn't know the floor of the cage.

was literally just like plywood sheets with the blue and red puzzle mats over top. And like, they weren't like good puzzle mats. They were like Walmart puzzle mats. So we broke it. I submitted them right there. So luckily we didn't have to like pause the fight, but after that they had to pause the event, pull the puzzle mats up, take a sheet of plywood. Somebody went to a hardware store, got a new sheet of plywood, put it down, put the puzzle mats down and they continued the show.

Nick Castiglia (07:09.889)
That's wild. I wanted to touch on that because like I just, know the history of MMA in Canada, I've been a part of the history in MMA and knowing that like, you know, I just had figured in my mind because of where the border is near the Sioux that you guys are making that drive over the United States. And everybody who's in Ontario knows like Michigan.

has been the Wild West for long time. think that it's only changed as of recently. And I think that was due to like a death or something like that, unfortunately, in the last like half a decade or decade or something to that

Brent (07:51.154)
Yeah, we still compete in Michigan a lot now There's actually an athletic commission like a government sanctioned athletic commission and that's probably been yeah, I don't know Six or seven years and it's it's one of those like I could do a whole podcast probably just on hilarious stories from the Wild West days and like things that you saw and then it but It was just as much as as a coach now. I'm glad my fighters don't have to go through that

The stories are just unbelievable.

Nick Castiglia (08:23.297)
So, okay, so we're there you go to Asia you kind of like skip over that but like it's not a big deal Where in Asia did you

Brent (08:35.9)
So I lived in Korea, I competed in Korea and Japan and trained a little bit in the Philippines too. That was just kind of not really. But yeah, competed in Korea and Japan. I was only able to get one MMA fight while I was over there, but it was in a big organization, which was awesome. I kept having things fall through, but I did compete a lot, competed in Jiu Jitsu. I actually won the East Asian Sambo Championships, the Combat Sambo Championships.

and finished second in the sports Sombot championship. So that was really cool. Yeah. So yeah. So lived in Korea, traveled around Korea a lot, was lucky that I hooked up with an awesome team there. My brother had been there ahead of me and had worked hard to like earn his place on that team. They were a little maybe skeptical of foreigners at the time. So Mitch kind of was the first foreigner to kind of break in. And then that made it easy for me,

kind of bothered him a little bit, because he to, he earned his place and I just took the place that he earned basically.

Nick Castiglia (09:45.962)
That's that's awesome. So you go to Korea. How long were you in Korea for like a

Brent (09:51.846)
Yeah, a year.

Nick Castiglia (09:53.473)
Year. Okay. You come back. Shit hit the fan with the other MMA guys, you know, at the karate school and they're like, we need a place to train. So like, how did that all unfold? Are you like, were you just the one that said like, okay, you know, let's, I'm going to go rent a space. Like, how, like, like take us through that, like take us through like how that started and what year are we in right now? Are we in like 2007?

Like, because teeth.

Brent (10:24.435)
would have been no we can so we can I competed out of that martial arts school for a couple years as an amateur and my first two or three pro fights maybe and then I went overseas so we're probably yeah by the time I got back it was actually I probably didn't start training at that gym till 2006 by the time I fought out of there a couple times came went to Korea for a year came back it was 2010 so I had

At that time I had like five, I think maybe five pro fights. Yeah, so I moved back and that basically there was me and a few amateurs and maybe one other pro at the time. I think maybe my brother had already turned pro. I can't remember. But I was the main, I was like, I had a fight coming up basically is what happened. And I was like, I need a place to train.

because I had signed a fight against a pretty good guy actually. It was probably my best win ever over that guy. I had been doing, what happened was I'd been doing my strength and conditioning at Catalyst Fitness, which was a CrossFit gym just because they had bumper plates and stuff. So I was working out there and I knew the owner, Chris Cooper, who you know, I knew him pretty well. And I was kind of telling him like, yeah, I think I might look to open my own place. I'm not really sure what's happening. Like I need to train and compete.

At the time, I think it was like four and one. So I was like, in the, in that was in the era where like, you know, being six or seven and one could maybe get you into the UFC. So I was like thinking I was knocking on the door a little bit. and so I just needed a place to train. when I mentioned it to, to Chris Cooper, he was like, I want to expand my gym into the next building, like next door, but I don't really have.

I can't use all of the space next door. So why don't I lease that you can sublease it from me you can put it there. So we that's what we did. I moved in inside of a CrossFit gym. He charged me like next to zero rent basically to get us started. And we just put one full size wrestling mat down, which I, what happened was the old high school where I went to school closed down and they were getting rid of a bunch of stuff. And I just basically scooped the wrestling mat from

Brent (12:46.77)
because it was their school colors and stuff. So we just grabbed that wrestling, old used wrestling mat from the high school, put it inside of a CrossFit gym and that's where we trained. That's all we had. We had a wrestling mat. I think we put two heavy bags on the wall with super terrible brackets that broke like on the first week. And then that was it. We were off and running.

Nick Castiglia (13:06.785)
That's that's crazy. I didn't I didn't know. Like I'm sure you mentioned in me before, but I didn't know your your first gym was in a space sublease by Coops. And you're saying that's around that's around the 2010 time,

Brent (13:21.01)
Yeah, summer of 2011, I actually was just looking at some documents. Summer of 2011 is when we incorporated Steel City MMA, so it would have been right around

Nick Castiglia (13:33.249)
That's wild. That's wild. had no idea it's been, it's like now we're talking about like, you have essentially been open for like 14 years, like a properly incorporated, you know, 13, but you've been open for 14 years. And so you, so you opened the gym, like, what were your initial thoughts? Are you like, Hey, I'm just doing this for a place to train and maybe other people are going to come train

Are you like, I want to do this as a job. Like, what, like, what were you, what were you thinking at that

Brent (14:10.684)
Yeah, I had been already been coaching a lot, like high school wrestling and other high school sports. And I knew that I was a decent coach. So at first I was like, you know, I was doing fairly well on the pro circuit, other than I was having a tough time getting fights. Nobody likes fighting wrestlers for the most part. That was an issue, which was one of the reasons I went to Asia. But yeah, at the time,

Like MMA was, that was like the real boom of MMA. So I was fighting, I was getting paid. There was still sponsorship money for people fighting at that time, decent. And I was like, you know, every couple of months I would take it a fight and getting some money. And I was like, yeah, maybe I can do this and coach this. I never really thought it would become a full -time job, like it basically has. I always thought, you know, I'm a high school teacher, actually an English teacher by training and trade and have taught high school for a lot of years.

I just always at first saw it as kind of a side gig. I was like, why not turn the thing that I really like doing in my spare time into something that could generate a little income or could at least pay for me to go and compete and stuff like that and maybe develop. And I also knew that my, my, you know, shelf life as a pro MMA fighter, especially in the lighter weight classes is pretty short. I was kind of thinking ahead like,

I would still like to be involved in this when I'm not competing anymore. So was kind of thinking ahead that, but in my head at the time, I was like, yeah, I'm going to have a big MMA team and all these MMA fighters and like, we all know MMA fighters do not pay the bills and they usually cost you more money than they make you, outside of maybe being good promotion. But, but yeah, so see, so it just, it has evolved through so many different phases into what it is now that

If you came, if somebody came to my gym even five or six years ago and then came now, it's like a totally different beast altogether.

Nick Castiglia (16:16.609)
Okay, so.

Nick Castiglia (16:21.213)
I think you're being like too modest about your wrestling accolades because you're a very, very high level wrestler. And before I started asking you, you know, like questions about like, where, where the, you know, business shift come in and all that stuff. Like I do want to talk a little bit about your wrestling background, your wrestling pedigree. like, like, can you, can you tell us about that?

You know, how did you get started in wrestling? you know, some of your accolades in wrestling, and I'm going to have some more questions, know, like as, as we go

Brent (16:58.514)
Yeah, I actually didn't start wrestling as young as some kids do. Like in early elementary school, I didn't really start competing until like the eighth grade or even really start practicing seriously at all. But I had been around the sport my whole life because my dad was kind of a fixture on the wrestling scene in Ontario. He had produced tons of really good wrestlers. So I was always around it. I would go to practices with him, tagging along as a little guy.

you know, go to tournaments with them when they were competing. And then in grade eight, I decided to, I just started practicing with the team and went and started competing. So wrestled in elementary school a little bit, all through high school did well, had the option to go wrestle at a few universities. I decided to go to Lakehead University, which at the time was one of the top teams in the country in university. were, every year we were, the goal was to win a national championships.

We had, our team was just like loaded with studs. You know, I was able to medal at nationals a few times. I was an Ontario university champion. You know, wrestled at a bunch of, wrestled at some like smaller international tournaments and stuff like that, mostly in Canada. I did get named to the, I can't remember what year it was, but the Commonwealth wrestling championships were in London, Ontario.

One year and I got actually named to that Canadian team to go and then I didn't go because I actually broke my neck earlier that season. So it wasn't medically cleared to go compete at the Commonwealth Championships. That would have been the only like major international tournament that I was a part of. yeah, so like it took up a big part of my life. I still love wrestling and love coaching, wrestling.

have kind of gotten back into it coaching at the university level again in the last couple years which has been super fun just as an assistant coach so yeah wrestling is has definitely kind of formed who i am without a doubt but as a as fighter and just as a human for

Nick Castiglia (19:11.275)
Do you feel, you know, because I actually have seen this more from your example, again, because we're friends, know, pretty close friends and we share a lot of memories and stuff like that when we talk. you know, something I love hearing you talk about is the culture of wrestling. Okay. And just like,

It just seems like such a tight knit community group. There's a ton of respect. know, ton of, know, if you want to say love for each other, good vibes. What like, what is it about wrestling that you feel has made that culture that that way? Like in your opinion?

Brent (20:03.922)
The main thing is that there's no such thing as recreational wrestling, right? You can go to a recreational kickboxing class and hit pads and you can, Jiu -Jitsu is very recreational. Even people who compete are mostly recreational, but even in high school, there's no such thing as recreational wrestling. You're there to win. The coaches want you to win. You have to compete. If you're not going to compete, the coaches probably don't even want you on the team for the most part. Like why waste time if it's not going to help our program?

Whether you agree with that or not, but it's it's a competition results driven sport without a recreational component. And now that's a negative when you get older, because once you're done competing, it's usually the end unless you coach a referee. But the thing is by the time you get to the university level or a good uni, at a, at a good, in a good university program, you're taking like, it's a room full

monsters who are willing to put themselves through like such an intense like you know how every jujitsu room has like those two or three super high level guys for the most part like real studs and you're like when you're when you're when you're picking who your next partner is you're like well i'll go with this person i'll have an easy role and then i'll go with this next person and have one hard role in like if you have a team of 30 every single

is that guy, is that tough rule. Like every guy has gone through the ring or through high school just to get to university, like competing at a super high level. Like somebody can steal your spot on the team, because there's only 10 weight classes. And for the big tournaments, like if you have three or four guys in your weight class on your team, you can only send one guy to the big tournament. So there's like this competitive edge. the

So it builds this crazy intensity and like you're expected to run on your own. You probably have team lifts and workouts and then you're training on the mat sometimes twice a day, morning and afternoon. You know, we had 6 .30 AM practices. So when you've gone through that with people and you've literally just like, I actually just got back this weekend from my friend Alex Jeffries cottage. were teammates and competitors and there was a bunch of old lakehead guys there and

Brent (22:25.998)
We have gone through that together, like beating each other up so bad. Every day of the week, we were roommates, we traveled together, we competed together. Like we were, for a couple of years, we were basically never out of each other's sight unless we were in the bathroom, more or less, or sleeping. So like when you've gone through that for multiple years with somebody, it definitely like breeds or develops like a tight, this tight knit sense of community

Tough to match. And then when you meet another wrestler, even from another team, and you know they've been through that same thing that you've been through, there's like an automatic respect there for sure. So yeah, the wrestling community is tight. And I think it's like, I've heard somebody call it like brotherhood through shared pain basically. And I was like, yeah, that's a good way to put

Nick Castiglia (23:20.639)
Yeah, I think, I think MMA, I think MMA could stand to take a lot from the wrestling community. you know, as, as we've seen throughout the years, there's been the different quote unquote, like bad guys, know, Tito Ortiz, Chael Sonnen, Conor McGregor, and people, you know, kind of embellishing this type of

Behavior when there should be you know, I feel like ironically Randy Couture wrestler And like Randy Couture was like the most wholesome dude like his nickname was Captain America, you know and and You know, it's not a surprise that he is also a wrestler, you know Daniel Cormier also a wrestler also very respectful in the

Brent (24:05.404)
Yeah, exactly.

Nick Castiglia (24:19.093)
yeah, I just, I had that as a question just for like my personal, because I've heard you, you know, and I actually funny enough that you bring up that you were with them, on the weekend, because I saw that picture of you and Alex and, know, whoever was the other guy, I don't know, but all you guys hanging out, I just kind of smiled. like, there's, you know, Brent hanging out with Alex and they wrestled together. Now they're in their forties, hanging out. Okay. So next question for me

Brent (24:42.194)
Yeah.

Nick Castiglia (24:49.141)
You open up your gym as we, as we all know, like, opening up a gym and knowing how to run a gym are like very different things. There's a lot of like learning curves, that come with that. There's a lot of growing pains. So at what point, like, did you figure out you're like, okay, I need to figure out the formula or I need to start to get

head around this to make this like work better. or else it's not sustainable. Like, like what were like some of the, memories that you have where you're like, man, I've really got to, I got to fix this or I got to make

Brent (25:30.578)
Yeah, when I started like, man, you would laugh. I had like a sheet of paper and a binder that had everybody's name and it had like a hand drawn columns of the month and I would just check off if they paid for the month. And I would just like go around that during class and then like one, it was so ridiculous. Once we started adding some other classes, like a kickboxing class that was a little more accessible, it wasn't just a couple of meatheads.

kicking each other in the head. Once we added those classes, I hired somebody who took one of those classes to be like our admin person. And then we started using, I think at the time it was Mindbody, but we invested in some software and started, and that's when I was like, okay, I need to start delegating a little bit more. And as the gym got busier and busier, it became more of that for sure. And then also like I was teaching full -time.

I was trying to run the gym, had a kid and had another kid come in, stuff like that. I was like, I got to start taking this a little more seriously. A, so that I can grow, cause I knew there was room for growth. B, so that I don't get divorced. And yeah, and just like for my own sanity, basically, I knew that I couldn't do everything on my own. So starting to delegate and

It's hard to do to give up things that you have developed and turn it over to somebody else, but I knew I had to do that if it was gonna survive.

Nick Castiglia (27:06.049)
So like how many years into that did you have that revelation? Because we're talking like, know, 2011 you incorporate, we're in 2024 right now. Like when did it really start to hit you to make that change?

Brent (27:28.164)
It wasn't all at once, it was slow. I was really hesitant, and you've probably heard this from clients lots of times. I was hesitant to turn something, to hire an admin or front desk manager because I was like, I don't know if pay them, is it gonna like, am I gonna recoup my money? I didn't know if I could afford it. And once I did it, and in the first month, she basically more than double paid for herself. I was

Okay. And then it's been like a slow, I was like, that's, that's an investment that was worth making because she has helped grow the gym and she's taken so much off my plate. And now she does, well, it's a different person now, but who we have now, Lisa's takes so much off my plate and does it way better than I could do it anyways. knows our systems well. So now I'm able to focus on more on the stuff that I like doing, and growing the gym

different programs and stuff like that. So it was a process, when I hired the first person, who was awesome, but she just moved, like we didn't have a bad parting of ways or anything. When I hired her, was probably five or six years in, and then it was like slowly adding all these other pieces and becoming more professional as we went.

Nick Castiglia (28:49.949)
Yeah, you know, I find at least why when I'm coaching, gym owners, we, you know, we call them the one man show, one man show when they first start, because they're a one man show. They're the person that's doing everything.

Like what, like, what do you think? Like, what do think it is? Do you think it's like, I think it's one of the fears that you said that they're afraid like, man, I'm to be paying this person. And it's like, I barely have enough money to pay this person, you know, and they're thinking of the whatever thousand $1 ,500 a month that they're going to have to pay this person that is coming out of, you know, the money that they're making every month.

Like, do you think that's the initial thought that's like keeping people from it, especially when you're just starting, right? There's not a lot of money, you know? Like when you don't know how to make your martial arts school successful, like you might not, you may only have $3 ,000 a month. Now you're telling me to give half of it away? You know, like, do you think that's the biggest thoughts at like those points that keep people from doing

Brent (30:04.786)
think there's two things that for sure the money that was a big thing for me. can I afford to pay this person? Like you said, it's half of what we make whatever, but if it's the right person or it's going to pay for itself more than pay for itself. So there's that part, but there's also the idea that as the owner, you care more than everybody else, which obviously you're like, nobody cares as much as I do. So nobody's going to do as good of a job as I do. So you like, you feel like you can't turn it over to like, is, it's just

a job for them so they don't really care as much as you do, which maybe is true, but if you're spread so thin you can't do a good job at everything anyways, who cares? So that's where I was. I was like, nobody's gonna care as much as I do and do as good a job, but I was spread so thin I wasn't doing a good job anyways, so turning it over was one of the best things.

Nick Castiglia (30:59.177)
Yeah, and I think it's important for people to know too, because like I was running through the timeline here and I've been lucky enough to be friends with you for several years now. I don't even know how many years now, for several years now. like, I remember when you were working full time. So you're working full time. had your first son, Wes.

and you're running the gym, you're running like a two. Yeah. And competing and you're still competing and you're running like a, you know, pretty successful gym, like 200 person gym. think at around that time you're like over the 300 and whatever Mark now, but I remember all that and I know how hard it is. And I'm, saying this specifically because I know there's a lot of people that listen.

Brent (31:33.114)
and compete.

Nick Castiglia (31:58.369)
to this podcast, because they reach out to me and they're like, man, you know, it's so great to hear different people's stories, especially when they were doing all of the things all at once. So why don't you share like, you know, because it was pretty recent. It was like within the last two years. Why don't you share like, what got you to the point to say, you know what, I'm going in full time on running the gym.

Like, how did that happen? Take us

Brent (32:30.524)
Yeah, there's two main drivers for that to happen. Number one was the gym was growing and I knew it had tons of potential to grow more, but it needed my attention to do that. It didn't need necessarily more coaches on the floor and stuff like that needed programming stuff and needed me to do, you know, work on the business instead of in the business a little bit more to grow. And I could see that that was there. And then the other part was

working as an English teacher, I didn't love the direction of education for the most part. And was getting a little bit sour on some things that were happening in education. And so those two things combined, the gym was doing well, it was growing, it needed a little more attention and not liking it. So what I did first was I applied and luckily it was granted. I applied to teach only on a 50 % schedule. So I was basically teaching half time. I would teach half the classes that a regular teacher would teach instead of full time.

So I did that for a few years and then, I mean, both things kept happening. The direction of education kind of kept going in to a place that I didn't love

And also the gym kept growing. was like, it needs me more. yeah, this last year was the first year that I didn't teach at all, at all. I just worked in the gym and paid myself from the gym. Yeah.

Nick Castiglia (33:56.191)
Yeah. And I think, I think it's pretty important for people to hear too. Okay. And I re I remember this and I'd have to go back through my notes, like my coaching notes with you, but, like the gym has exploded since you have, dedicated yourself full time and that like, you know, there's a saying, I forget what it is, but it's like, you know, it's almost like the, you burn the boats.

Like failure is not an option. Like I am only going this way. You know what I mean? You know, it's like find the way or make the way, you know, and like, correct me if I wrong, like you're over 300 students now, aren't

Brent (34:27.75)
Yeah.

Brent (34:41.842)
We, summer of actual students, not summer camp. We're right now we're a little bit below, but in September we'll be over. We always have just where we live. Everybody vacations in the summer. But right now, if you count like our campers and members, yeah, we are over 300 and we will definitely, yeah.

Nick Castiglia (34:58.081)
Yeah. And that's, and that's amazing. Like the Sue is not a million person place. think like the Sue has like 78 ,000 people. Like it's not, it's not a, it's not a huge place. And I think it's really important for people to hear it's because there's always that fear, right? That's that fear of like, you know, what if I fail? What if I, you know, don't make it, you know, and, I think, I think it's important for other people to hear

Brent (35:06.406)
Yeah, exactly.

Nick Castiglia (35:27.741)
You had a great job with a great pension, you know, like you were a teacher and you made that transition. You successfully made that transition and, it's, going amazing. You just moved recently into there's two, two other things. And then I have some other questions for you that we ask every podcast, but, and you just moved recently to your, you know, newest most amazing, beautiful location.

downtown. don't you tell us a bit

Brent (35:58.652)
Yeah, we haven't moved yet. Our summer camps and summer classes are still going at the old location where we've been for several years. But yeah, we do have a new location. We are renovating it. It's coming along. It's definitely getting there. We will be opening when we go to our regular schedule in September. We will be opening in that new location. Downtown, great location right across from our

hockey arena right on the like kind of main business drag, great neighbors, business neighbors, super good visibility. It was a spot that I couldn't pass up kinda. We had one year left on our lease. So I started looking, cause I know sometimes it can take more than a year to get those things sorted out, but I found this place and I had to snatch it up. couldn't kind of let it slip through my finger. So yeah, we're in the process of moving

That's going well and I'm super excited. Cause to me, like we have great coaches. I'm super lucky with how many amazing coaches we have. a lot of them are kind of homegrown. We've got great front desk staff. Our classes are good stuff like that, but our, our physical location definitely can be a turnoff for some people. So I'm excited to move into like a nice new, beautiful place. And normally I feel like if we get people in the door and into a class, they usually sign up, but it's

It's the location was it was an issue for a lot of

Nick Castiglia (37:30.379)
Yeah. Now I think where you're moving and we talk about this a lot in legacy, like how drive by traffic makes a massive, massive difference. Now you're downtown. There's a big arena across the street. Like I think just by the nature of your location, it's gonna, it's gonna explode again. You're going to hit another, another threshold of being packed again. the next thing I want to, I wanted to ask you about, because you did something

Brent (37:53.5)
Yeah, I think.

Nick Castiglia (37:59.103)
that is pretty like groundbreaking for any martial arts school. You develop the partnership with the school board, basically creating an in school mixed martial arts program that you get compensated for that was approved by the school board, which is absolutely amazing. I believe programs like this.

You know, in Canada will help be the future for MMA fighters and the development of young MMA fighters. And, to be honest, I think from a business perspective too, like if other mixed martial arts schools are smart, they would get on this because it can be done in your living proof. can be done. Tell us how you came up with the program, what the program is and how it got approved.

Brent (38:58.726)
Yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. thought I was probably done with formal education as a teacher, as an English teacher or geography teacher or what teaching. I've taught all kinds of subjects in high school, but I got pulled in. got, how it happened was kind of weird, but when I left teaching, some other students from the school board that I teach at or taught at were coming to my gym and there

Anyway, I ended up connecting with the assistant director of education. And she kind of asked about how we could incorporate some things that I do maybe into the into the school board. And I put together a proposal. And now I have the advantage of being a high school teacher employed by the school board for over 15 years. They know me. That's a huge advantage. You know, they know my reputation, stuff like that.

That's a huge like up, but basically the proposal that I put forward and got approved is that I'm gonna be back as a high school teacher, but I'm not gonna be at a school. I'm gonna be teaching out of my gym. kids, high school kids, and it might be kids who are considered at risk or don't do well in a traditional educational background. They are going to come to me in the morning, to my gym all morning. So two periods.

and they're gonna get a phys ed credit for boxing, kickboxing, jujitsu, basically for MMA. And we're gonna obviously incorporate some health stuff in there. So they'll get a phys ed credit. And they're also going to get an English credit. All the English skills that they learn, like sentence structure, paragraphing, reading, all these different things, All those, they're gonna learn the same skills that they would in a regular English class.

except that all of the content that we're reading and writing and consuming is all going to be geared towards related to martial arts or self -improvement or health or even maybe like the different cultures connected to whatever because as an English teacher, the skills you teach are important, but you can use any content to teach those. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare. It doesn't have to be this. You can literally use whatever content is out there that might appeal to kids. So yeah, I'm going to be teaching

Brent (41:19.674)
Phys Ed and English out of my gym in the mornings. So kids will come there all morning. They'll get their two credits. And then they're going to go back to whatever their high school is. This is going to be open to kids from any high school in our city that are in our school board, in the public school board. So they're going to come in and do that. So I'm pretty excited about that. Have lots of work to do developing the program for sure. But it got approved. was, to be honest, I was kind of surprised.

Sometimes our school board isn't super progressive in terms of trying new things like that, but in this case they jumped on it, so I'm running with

Nick Castiglia (42:00.427)
So, so what do you think Brent like another MMA school is listening to the podcast and they're like, Hey, I want to do that. What's their best best approach? Like should they reach out to you for some advice, you know, to get an idea on how to approach that. Are you okay with that? Like, like I'm, I'm interested in it. I think it's, I think it's an absolutely amazing thing that has the ability to change communities. Me, I was like a

I have gravitated to something like this, like, fighting? I get credits for fighting? Perfect. Sign me up, you know?

Brent (42:41.862)
Well, and I mean, even just me, like I wasn't a terrible kid in high school by any stretch, but I know that having wrestling and football as an outlet, was just a super physical kid and like fighting. I wasn't getting in fights in high school necessarily, but like fighting didn't bother me. And I feel like if I

you know, allowed and maybe encouraged to pound people in football or on the mats that would probably come out in another place. And a lot of kids don't get that. So I think it might appeal to those kids for sure. In terms of developing a program, I think it definitely could work with people who aren't teachers. And you could have, you could develop a partnership with a school board.

where you teach the martial arts as part of it for a phys ed credit, and then another teacher is maybe with you to teach, it could be English, it could be history, it could be a civics careers, it could be whatever, right? For me, I'm an English teacher, so that is, that's why we went with English. But yeah, I think it's definitely doable, and there are a few programs out there in different communities.

There's one in London, there's one in like the Ajax Pickering area. There's one or two more that aren't exactly like I'm running, but I'm gonna go in the first semester and check these programs out and see how they do it and get a little more information. So I'd be happy to talk to anybody who is interested in it. And then it definitely could be something that people could reach out to their local school boards

Nick Castiglia (44:19.371)
Yeah, that's awesome. just find it so, I find it so interesting. And I think it, I think it will be huge for the development of MMA in Canada. As, as you and I both know, there's a lot of exciting news coming down the pipe as far as the structure of Canadian amateur MMA. And I feel like, I feel like this is just one of those additional things that can be added to further strengthen.

the development of Canadian fighters, you know, which is super exciting. Okay. So I always ask, man, I could, I could talk to you about so many things. Like I'm like watching the time here. I'm like, man, I got to get to my, my, my main questions. ask, you know, what are three things

that three pieces of advice, three things you wish you knew, or, you know, for the gym owner who, you know, is the you that was in 2011 and opened up the gym, didn't really know what was going on. Like what are your three big pieces of advice that you would give them if you're like, you know what, if I could tell them three things that would help guide them, these would be them.

What would those three things be?

Brent (45:47.344)
Number one, invest in your coaches for sure. Invest in people you think could eventually be coaches. not just hire somebody and then invest in them, but a lot of our, when you have a coach who's come through your program and knows your systems and your style and everything, when you invest in that person, they feel more ownership over the gym because it's their place, it's their home.

And then when you invest in them, you know, we pay to send coaches to get accreditation and to take courses. And while we cover most of that, usually we try to really invest in our coaches that way. We have some coaches that we identified like when they were really young teenagers, even like pre -teens that they had some leadership potential and some skills. And we've kind of been grooming them to become coaches over time and it's starting to pay

And it's a long -term project, like some of these kids, took them five or six years, but man, it's paying off now, because I have a stable of awesome coaches where, and we've been lucky to inherit some awesome, really good coaches too. We had a Jiu -Jitsu black belt from Brazil just randomly moved to Sault Ste. Marie and turned out he fit in really well. But you can't count on that, right? So investing in your coaches for sure.

Two would be make sure there's a place for everybody. You know, at first we were a very MMA fight team oriented gym and the other stuff was kind of like add -ons. But that's not the way to do it. The way to do it is to make sure there's a place for everybody. People who are recreational, that just want to get fit, people. But you don't want to be just that. You want people...

because you will have people who start that way. Most of our good fighters have started as recreational members with no desire to fight or compete, but they wanted to learn self -defense or get fit. And then they started getting good at kickboxing and then maybe they added jiu -jitsu and then they started sparring. And then they're like, well, I've been sparring, I've been doing this, I'm going to take an amateur fight. And it's those, if you don't have those programs to make people feel very welcome and comfortable at the beginning when they don't know anything.

Brent (48:08.05)
They'll never climb those steps of the ladder and get where some of them end up. And I'll say this, the people who come in, and you know this as well as anybody, the people who come in, they're like, coach, I'm going to be a fighter. Already I set my watch for one month. I'm like, I will see you for the next month. And then never again. You know that they're not going to make it because they already think they can fight. And you can't teach them because they already know everything. So having a place, making it welcome for everybody.

is super important because you never know where that soccer mom with two kids who comes in because she wants a cardio kickboxing class, you never know where she's going to end up. having a place for her to be welcome is good. And that kind of leads me to the next one.

like having a place where people feel welcome, it's like culture first. Like we have successful competitors, but I think we have successful competitors because we have a strong gym culture. Like I know for a fact, when we've had some gym members going through some tough times, we've had, you know, other gym members helping them out with all kinds of stuff, like from little things to really big, serious things. And I think that's a testament to the culture.

And culture doesn't happen by accident. You have to be explicit about it. You have to tell people sometimes like, hey, we don't do that here. And if you're going to do that here, you're going to have to maybe our gym is not the best gym for you. So we've fired some members who are talented athletes just to preserve the culture. And if you have a good culture, you're going to have more people who want to be

and more people who want to be there means more people training with each other and leveling each other up. yeah, culture, culture first.

Nick Castiglia (50:03.605)
Yeah, and I think you nailed it with intention. There needs to be intention. And I'm sing your praises here. You do a lot of community work for First Nations. You have your First Nations programming where you're helping some of the surrounding First Nations community with your involvement in going and offering martial arts to those communities.

I think your gym has a culture it has because of the example you set. And a lot of people need to understand that, that like your place is you, you know, and it's the example that you set. And I think you giving as much as you do to the community also sings that praise as well. you've also, sponsored several athletes and you just recently donated a bunch of money to a wrestling

scholarship, just like, literally last weekend, you raised money for a wrestling scholarship for wrestling athletes in your area, you know, and, you know, you, you definitely walk the talk, you know, that's me. That's me giving the Brent Fria like hype here. another question I asked Brent on

on every podcast is, you know, we talk about, you know, what are the three pieces of advice, you know, or the three things you would, you know, you could tell your younger self or whatever, you know, however you want to say it. Now, what do you think are the three biggest mistakes? Sometimes people cite their own mistakes or it's just been something they have learned. What are the three biggest mistakes or cautions?

you would like to put out to other gym owners.

Brent (52:02.098)
This one could be for yourself or it could be when you're looking at hiring staff is like not respecting the art of coaching enough because we all know some incredible athletes are terrible coaches and some people who were maybe mediocre or average are tremendous coaches and there's real there's real science behind it and there's a lot there's a lot to learn about coaching and and like I'm lucky that you know I'm a teacher so I

the educational side of things, which kind of leans too much that way sometimes. But you can't just hire somebody because they're a good jujitsu competitor to coach your jujitsu class. might turn, they might, like, you know, we've all seen it, they're like, I'm gonna turn this class into a bunch of champions, and then half of the people quit, because they're like, this is not what I signed up for. So, you

Number one, invest, it goes kind of back to investing in your coaches, like giving them the education, giving them and helping them along. Like I, with some coaches more than others, I'm not necessarily coaching people on the mat, but I'm coaching the coaches how to coach. That's a, that's a big one for sure. Mistakes to avoid.

Brent (53:22.962)
making it, definitely making it too much about the competition team. We have a strong competition team and our recreational members support them and they go watch them fight and stuff and it's awesome, but that can't be what it's about necessarily. So for us, it's really about having... Exactly. Yeah. So don't, you know, I, and I see people that, and maybe if you're in a, in a giant center, you can, you can be a competition gym.

Nick Castiglia (53:39.019)
gotta it's gotta be about the community. It's gotta be about the community.

Brent (53:52.304)
because next door is a recreational gym or down the block, but where I am, that's not the case. So we have to kind of do it all. So I can't, that kind of depends on your situation, but I think being too competition focused is, is not good. Let's see, another big mistake, just not being professional. And I'm working on this definitely like even just the upgrade of the gym is an example of that. But for a long time, our gym was

We were all just buddies hanging out, which is great. It's still my buddies who go to the gym. Lots of my friends go to the gym, which is awesome, but professionalizing it, I would say. Not treating it as a professional endeavor, like a real business. If you just treat it as a side hobby, it's never gonna grow out of that. So not treating it like a professional endeavor, that's a big thing for

Nick Castiglia (54:46.303)
Yeah, I find, I find a lot, you know, a lot of people struggle with that. I find even myself, all my experience and everything, you know, making sure that everything is held to the highest level of professionalism, man, it, it takes time. It's hard. It's not easy. It doesn't happen overnight. And furthermore, like you generally cannot do it by yourself. Like you need help or you need a company to help you or you need coaching to.

to help achieve those things.

Brent (55:16.85)
Absolutely. And I say that knowing that's an area that I am still working on and need

Brent (56:22.834)
two things. Number one, I've always been a, instead of like ready, set, jump, I've been like jump, ready, set, figure out on the way down. I think that, you know, drives some people crazy, but that kind of like just go for it and then, you know, put the pieces in play. But then the other part is it's not the opposite, but it's like the flip side of it. Like, yeah, just go for it. Jump in, do it.

I wish I would have done it sooner, but find the people to help you do it. Like don't try to do it all on your own. You need, you know, a business mentor. You need an awesome business manager. You need all these people, coaches for sure. So don't, I tried to do it on my own for too long and I wish I would have moved away from that earlier, but I'm glad I have

Brent (58:04.39)
Next.