BTG 171 - Character over Talent

Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Garb. We are approaching the new year. This is going to be the last episode of the year and uh not a lot of stuff going on now newswise. There's no UFC's until I think January 24th. no PFLs until February. So, from an MMA's perspective, it's pretty quiet. Uh we did have like one grappling show yesterday where my friend Oliver Taza won the main event by a really nice uh side triangle Kimura. Uh he finished with a triangle, I believe. But it was a I love that setup. whenever you can get a Kimora force the the side triangle, it's a really bad position to be stuck in, but congrats to him. Uh, but outside of that, there's nothing else I see coming up soon other than the real American wrestling or freestyle wrestling federation, which I think has an event January, which I talked to you guys about on Friday. The only other thing I've seen is more like scandalous, which had me thinking a little bit about what we should be doing as far as martial artists and making sure that our gym is uh safe and we're not creating predators. I'm not going to substantiate whatever the rumor is that's going around. I'll just talk about because apparently somebody at a big school was alleged to be doing sex sexually harassing or sex. I'm not too clear if they actually assaulted somebody or if it was harassment. Whatever the case, it's all bad news. It's not new, unfortunately. This is something that's always been happening and I think it's just in all sports in general. When you have men and women hanging out with each other for a long time and you have men who have very little self-control and morality, you're going to end up with some bad situations like this. And it's very unfortunate to see. I thank you as a coach. I've talked about it before. It's important to protect the culture of the gym where every gym you go into has its own vibe, its own personality and it starts from the top. However the coach is presents himself, how his morals, his virtues, his flaws, they all will propagate down the tree um to the students. And I've seen this because I've seen some schools that have a scumbag instructor and all the students are scumbags. When I see a school that has a wonderful person as the head coach, you generally see lots of wonderful people underneath them as well. You need to, at least for me, because my hope when I am teaching somebody, when I'm coaching somebody is to make them a better person, which doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be the best martial artist in the world. but that they're going to be a good person over that because at a certain point in time your athletic prime is going to pass you and now what are you left with? If you're a garbage human being but you were once a phenomenal athlete, you're not really going to be in a good position later in life. And if I'm the one that helped put you there, I won't feel too good about myself either. So to me, creating somebody who has great virtues and great morals is more important than putting out the best athlete that's ever existed. Now, you might think, "Well, you're not in it for the championships and the titles." Maybe I'm not, you know, uh, but I've always been someone that's been principled and I rather do things the right way than just get the result that I was hoping to get. Right? I could have done steroids. I could have cheated. I've could have done all sorts of things to get better results. But to me, those crossed my what I felt comfortable doing. I thought that was cheating. I don't have to feel like that is cheating. It is cheating by the rules. So morally, I couldn't live with myself if I did any of those things. Now, when you're coaching a team and you're owner of a school, I generally, especially if you're a school owner, you it's going to behoove you to make an environment that's doing something which I'm talking about, which you're creating a positive culture that's more aligned towards making happier and healthier people versus making the best athletes possible. Anybody who's been in the coaching space long enough can tell you that coaching athletes doesn't make you a lot of money. It's not that you can't, but it generally doesn't. And it's a huge time investment before you get any returns. And that the amount of time that you put into an athlete to potentially yield a superstar, if you put in any other venture, you will be a lot more successful. So going after just making superst star athletes is not the easiest way to success as a coach and it's usually going to bring a lot of heartache and frustration. I say this because if that's your goal, you might cast a blind eye towards faults that a person may have as a character because like, oh, they're such a tremendous athlete. Who cares if you know he's a drug abuser or a womanizer or, you know, he's a criminal? Like, what matters to me is that can he be a champion? I know from the athletics he can. So, as long as I turn a blind eye to those sins of his, I'll be fine. If you are more aligned towards making better people, you will see those right away and those will be red flags for you. And we've had people in my gym before that were athletic and very gifted, but they had red flags. And ultimately those red flags would end the relationship because it just wouldn't work out. And some of those people actually only think of one maybe two of them that ended up being really successful outside of our gym. Most of them end up washing out. And I think it's just those character traits don't really line up with being a championship level or star level individual long term. So if you have people in your school that are troublesome, it would behoove you to pay a little closer attention to see what's going on. depending on where they are in the hierarchy. If it's a new student that just came in, chances are they may have come from another environment that was more negative or just not what you want in your culture. There's a good chance that you could breed that out just by like them being exposed to everyone else and them essentially assimilating into your culture. But if it's something that's persistent or if it's somebody that's actually climbed up the rank significantly and now they're like if you get a purple belt, brown belt or like a black belt that creates a little click and then they start creating their little copies of themsel that is a bigger problem and that's something that you have to cut out. And like I said, it's usually when somebody's more established, it's not something that's going to change on its own. And if you can give them a talking to that doesn't work, you're going to have to let them go. In my opinion, at least, it's just not going to work out any other way. Like I said, you could turn a blind eye to it and pretend it's not happening, but it's still going to happen. and things will get worse. And just like a a wound that you know you leave hidden somewhere, it's going to fester and boil and it's going to get you really sick. You need to expose it immediately. Cut it out and let it heal. And it's the same with people. You know, when you have a bad person, and I'm not to say I could be a judge like, oh, I'm good, you're bad. I'll just say what's bad for me or what's bad for my gym, right? And maybe what's bad for me might be great for somebody else or for some other gym. And great, maybe it works out better, but you have to think about your gym, your culture, and yourself and what type of values and people that you want to have around you that will promote your brand and your martial arts. So, if you feel there's people in your gym that are not good representatives of what you hope to bring to the people in your community, you have to figure out what you're going to do with them. And like I said, you really only have two options. You can try to approach somebody and see what the divide is between you and them and how you can reconcile and reason with them. But normally this is a difficult thing to do. Like I said, especially not with a new person. A new person that's going to be the thing you're going to have to do most of the time. But somebody who's been around for a while and still is not jelling, that's usually somebody that you might have to let go. And it does happen. You know, in our school, we have let go quite a few people that, you know, and from black belts to brown belts, purple belts, blue belts, white belts from all sorts of ranks. Uh, it's more important to preserve the integrity of your gym than trying to hang on to star athletes or even just like paying members. You know, a lot of times a customer think they're always right because they're paying you, but you can always opt to not have them pay you anymore. [laughter] you don't have to take the business if you don't want it, you know, and if you're in a position where you don't need it, uh definitely makes it a lot easier to do that. So, it's important to be selective and especially if you have a famous brand, it's going to be even more important because if you are a school with an affiliation that's worldwide and you have somebody out there that is making lots of bad headlines for you, people are going to look at it like I was looking at it, which is this is a fruit of a tree. Is this a oneoff or is there a lot more fruits like this that we haven't seen yet that are kind of being hidden? And if you don't do anything about it, you're going to create more problems for yourself and tarnish your name and everything that you've been working towards building. And ultimately, you've been trying to help people and uh one bad fruit can, you know, spoil the whole bunch. So, it is important to take decisive action. And from a business standpoint, one of the idioms I've heard said is fire fast, hire slow. And people usually do the opposite where you hire people really quickly, especially when you have to fire somebody. But normally when you're going to let someone go, it takes a long time to do it because you're trying to bend over backwards to uh compromise or try to get them to get up to speed. And you really don't want to let someone go unless you absolutely have to. And you wait until the very last possible moment. And once you do let someone go, now there's a void that has to be filled. And you're rushing to get it filled. And what happens when you rush? You don't get to debt someone properly. you don't get to hire the most qualified people and you're putting yourself in a losing position. Whereas, if you're able to do the opposite, which is, you know, fire fast, you get rid of a problem very quickly and hire slowly, meaning that you're able to look through lots of résumés and find the best qualified people for the work. This also means that you're generally being proactive, which is that you're always recruiting or you're always at least keep accepting resumes so that you know like, okay, if I ever have to let go of somebody, I got a list of five people that I can call up and there's a good chance at least one of them will still be available for me to pull in into my team. So, yeah. And regarding to character, it's individual. It's based on your values and what you think is important in a person. I think for me, uh, I would value honesty and integrity over most things just because I will know who I'm dealing with. is someone's very honest with me and they have a lot of integrity, they're not going to betray themselves or their values and I'll know exactly where they stand. And if I have that, it's going to be a lot it's going to be very easy to trust you. So, I'll know what you're going to do. If you say you're going to do something, you're going to do it. And then uh that's going to make things easy. It doesn't mean that you'll always work out because if you're very honest, you have a lot of integrity, but we see things completely differently, you're probably not going to get hired in the first place, right? You're just not going to be a good fit. But if we do align, then it's going to be a very easy relationship. So, those would be two on the top because that's going to essentially determine my level of trust that I can have in an individual. If someone is very shifty or, you know, they're easily swayed, you're not going to be very reliable. So, even if you're very talented, I'm going to have to keep an eye out on you because I'm going to have to know like, you know, this guy's good for the moment, but any something happens and he's going to flip and I'll have to be ready for that. So honesty, integrity I think in any relationship are very high value traits, virtues to have as an individual. Outside of those two, which to me are like the non-starters, it would be work ethic. Somebody's ability to put in the effort needed to get the job done. Not just somebody cuz you can get people who are very talented, but without the work ethic, the talent is only going to take you so far. But if you have a very good work ethic, pretty much we can get over any lack of talent that you have. Of course, if you're totally untalented, it might be very difficult and might not be worth it to you. But like I said, in dealing in averages, someone with a really high work ethic, average talent, we can take you, you can solve a lot of problems. You you you can be a very useful individual. Someone with extremely high talent and no work ethic is pretty useless. It's more just like it's like a trophy wife, right? Somebody that looks nice but can't really do anything. Um, so work ethic would definitely be an important thing. And then obviously next up you would definitely consider talent, right? How good is somebody? What are the credentials? What are their what is their their history as far as things that they've done? What and their ability their work experience. That's what I'm looking for. And I'm I'm talking about this more from like an employment standpoint, but the metaphor applies equally towards an athlete, right? And you might think, well, you care if an athlete's honest and has integrity. Yeah, for me I do for the reasons I just said. So it applies the same, you know, uh, and the work ethic extremely important. And talent, I'll move it even more aside because the next thing after work ethic would be coachability, right? which would I would describe as somebody who is going to put their faith in their coach and follow instructions as dictated. To have a good coaching relationship or a mentorship, and this could be in martial arts, in business, you know, in a trade, you have to be willing to do as your mentor says. If I'm trying to coach you on how to make a recipe, let's say I'm going to teach you how to make a chocolate cake, and you start skipping the steps I'm giving you, or you start swapping ingredients, you're not going to make a good cake. At least you're not going to make the cake I'm trying to make. So, it's going to be a problem. And it doesn't matter how good of a work ethic you are, how honest or how much integrity you have, how talented you are. we're just not going to end up in the same place because you're wanting to do different things that I am telling you. And that's gonna tell me there is a lack of trust or faith in the coach. The athlete thinks they know better and is going to do something different. And there's a divide between the athlete and the coach, which is going to make it hard to make progress in a meaningful way. when you have an athlete that feels they can do whatever they want and disregards whatever the coaching advice is. And mind you, I'm not saying like, oh, like the coach says, I I I want you to do a jab this way and then the athlete has a slightly different way of doing it on one thing. Yeah, of course there's individual variance and differences. And even as a coach, when I give you advice in certain occasions, especially out in a fight, it's not always you have to do what I'm telling you, right? I'm just telling you what I'm seeing. Now, you might be seeing something different from the inside, but from the outside, I could see this move I'm calling out for you should be what you're doing. But you're the one that gets to choose at the end. But if you always disregard every piece of advice I ever give you, I'm worthless. I'm not doing anything of of use to you. Right? I might be there as a body and I might be trying to support you emotionally, but as a coach, I'm giving you zero. And chances are you would be better off with another coach, somebody that will at least say the things that you will actually do. So coachability is a big factor in recruiting somebody. Whether it's for a job or like I said as an athlete, somebody has to be willing to learn things from you and do things the way you want them done. As a coach, you know, you have to be flexible and understand like every athlete has different needs and different demands and you have to adjust accordingly. But ultimately, you're going to pick a trajectory and the athlete needs to be able to go in that trajectory. If it if they don't, it's going to create problems. You're not going to get the best results, right? Like as a as an athlete, the best results you can get through your coach is by doing what the coach is telling you. You might not agree with it, but if you have faith in their coaching, their experience, and the results they've attained, you owe it to them to give them their try. Let them do what they're saying. If it doesn't work, you're going to find out. And then you can make a decision afterwards. Maybe this guy is not for me. And the coach might even, if he has a humility, might say, "Hey, I led this guy astray. we need to change the approach, right? But if you never even give someone the chance and follow through on the vision they laid out for you and it's a well reasoned one, you're matched up with the wrong people. And this is relates to the conversation of a student that doesn't gel with your gym because if they have a different vision of what they think success is and of what being a good student is, you're going to have a hard time communicating with that person and getting through with them because you're not on the same wavelength. You're at different frequencies. So, it's important to catch that early and you want to make sure everybody's on the same wavelength. When you have people all on the same page, it's a very smooth sailing experience. Like, it's it's a fun place to be when you're in a training room and everybody's it's just vibing, right? Everybody's got the same ideas, everybody's got the same visions, the same goals. We're all trying to get there in the same way. and we all understand our role in the the training room. So that's something that you need to strive for as a gym owner or as a coach. And on the other side, as an athlete, it's good to understand why the coach might ask you to do certain things or why they might reprimand you for certain behavior. It's because of what I'm telling you. They're trying to protect the the gym culture. And when you're doing things, and I'll just say in general, whenever you're doing anything that's a sexual advance on somebody who's in the fellow student or gym member or coach, it's bad, right? It's not a good way to go. Uh, are there gym romances that end up working out? Sure. >> [sighs] >> I'm thinking in my gym. I can only think of again I'm not super in tune with everybody. I can only think of two at the moment. And they weren't student teachers, that's for sure. Of those, I can't think of any. the few student to student ones. Uh but and again that's something that's highly in my opinion highly discouraged. You know you're just putting yourself in a very precarious position by doing that. Don't use your gym as a dating space. Don't use your gym as just like people who go a weight room and they start trying to hit on every woman in there. It's just a mess. And it goes both ways, mind you. There's women going after men also. So, it's not just a one-way street, but I find it particularly a bit more abusive men going towards a woman just because you have a physical advantage. Especially if you're an instructor or some type of senior student, you have now positional hierarchy above them. It's just abusing a position of privilege and that you shouldn't be taken advantage of. A trust was given to you to not abuse it in such a way, especially if you're going even a level beyond that which was to sexually assault somebody. Now you're asking to get hurt um and justifiably so in my opinion. It's one thing to come on to somebody. is another thing to assault them. That's unforgivable in my eyes. So, if you had any suspicions of somebody being a little skezy, that's something that you don't want to take lightly. Uh cuz that's the last thing you want to see happen in your in your gym. So, I feel like a big part of, you know, And I know some people like, "Oh, martial arts is about, you know, fighting." And yes, it is. But why do we fight? To protect. And if you can't even protect your own people that you're supposed to be learning with, your brothers and sisters in arms, why are we teaching you to fight? We're creating a poison pill. So yes, martial arts is about fighting. And I know some people like, oh, they don't like the idea of being a philosopher or being some type of advisor, you know, or a therapist or whatever it is that you want to label it as. But when you're in a position of leadership and you are teaching people how to fight, there is a responsibility in my mind that you do so cautiously. When you're teaching someone how to use a firearm, I don't want to teach a felon or somebody who has a lot of bad experiences that I know is going to use this for harm. I'm not going to teach you how to do any more harm than you already can. Okay. So, yes, martial arts is about fighting, is about beating people up, but again, the reason is for protection. You're protecting yourself. You're protecting your family. You're protecting someone that's in danger. We're not fighting just to fight, right? We're fighting to protect. So, it's important that we understand what's worth protecting. Protecting your ego doesn't really count in my book. you know, uh, you're trying to see who's the toughest guy in the block. That's not why I'm trying to train you. And that's why you came in, we're in the wrong place. You're trying to learn how to practice self-defense so that you can protect yourself or a loved one or, like I said, some innocent civilian out on the street. That's why I would want to help you. And that's why understanding the character of the people that come to your gym is important. That's my take on it. Anyways, I hope everybody had a great year, had a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, all the other holidays, and uh going to the new year. I hope that's a wonderful celebration for you, and I'll catch you on the next podcast.