From Square One: The Truth About Building a Jiu Jitsu Academy

Josh Smith’s odyssey through martial arts was never a straight path. His tale is part personal transformation, part business challenge, and ultimately a testament to resilience and community.

Childhood on the Mat

Josh started his martial arts journey as a young child, training in southern-style kung fu in Alabama. “I started doing southern style. They call it wuzu Kung fu. Wuzu, not wu. Wushu is something different… And I did that from the time that I was like six until, I don’t know, I fell out of it slowly because when I got my black belt, I wanted something more that was like, fighty.”

Though kung fu brought him discipline and rank, he craved practical application. Teenage years in Mobile, Alabama, were colored by real fights and a sense that his training wasn’t enough for what he observed in his own community.

Seeking Real-World Skills

Adolescence was the crucible. As a high schooler facing actual violence (“People were throwing real punches. They’re not like, throwing point spar punches.”), Josh shifted to kickboxing — training under martial arts legends Bill “Superfoot” Wallace and Joe Lewis. He earned belts and even trained competitively: “I got my black belt under Joe Lewis as well. And I started doing kickboxing at 14. And I kickboxed competitively for a little while, just as like a youth, as a teenager.”

But it would be Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) that truly captured him. A humbling and eye-opening encounter with a Brazilian black belt, Adriano Lucio, changed everything: “What impressed me so much is I was a complete dick. Like, I was overweight 200, like 40 pounds, almost. Just not in a good place in my life… Instead of being a dick back, he was like, okay, my friend, how you want. Like, how do you want to show me how you want to punch, because you can put on the gloves if you want… I’ll never forget, he just drops me into an arm bar and he’s like, I’m up in the air and he’s just like, okay, boom. Drops me into an armbar and on my arm. I’m sitting there struggling… And then, like, I tapped out. He got up, he said, hey, man—he said, you did so good.”

This mixture of technical mastery and kindness—rather than power meeting power—left a deep impression. “He did not fight fire with fire, right? He did not add gasoline to the fire by, like meeting aggression with aggression.”

Building a School: The First Attempt

Determined to pursue BJJ, Josh threw himself into training, competing in both MMA and jiu jitsu tournaments, receiving his blue belt in 2011. Yet life’s demands soon pushed him into a new chapter. When family circumstances required a move to rural Alabama, Josh found himself without a local BJJ gym. A conversation with his coach prompted his first step as a school owner: “So I talked to my professor and he’s, you’re a blue belt. Start something up. And I’m just like, I’m a blue belt. Yeah. But you know, more than like the average person around there.”

He launched “Mission Submissions” in Pell City, Alabama, at a community center with a handful of puzzle mats, eventually moving to a downtown building and growing a tight-knit team of competitors and coaches. “And from there we produced a lot of IBJJF champions, like open champions. And we did a lot in that little space, man, we produced some really good amateur MMA fighters.”

Growth, Setback, and Reinvention

Driven to continually improve, Josh sought out elite instruction—even driving two hours each week to train with ATOS representatives two hours away. His school and vision grew: “We weren’t just a jiu jitsu gym. We were like a complete martial arts facility. We had on payroll, we had an instructor, like a. Like a jiu jitsu instructor, a kickboxing instructor. We had a wrestling coach, we had a yoga coach, we had a fitness instructor. It was a 5,000 square foot facility.”

But the post-pandemic world proved difficult. “We really scaled up there. But, man, it was expensive to run like post pandemic, right? And some complications happened after that and we had to close it.” With decades invested in martial arts and little experience outside it, Josh struggled: “I was like, I don’t know what to do now that my school’s closed.”

A friend suggested a fresh start in Kansas City, working in cannabis cultivation. It was a brief detour, but ultimately, his commitment to jiu jitsu drew him back to the mats.

Square One: New Beginnings in the Midwest

In 2023, Josh and his wife Heidi, both black belts by now, opened Square One Jiu Jitsu Academy in Kansas City. The name was apt: “We opened another academy here in the Midwest in Kansas City in 2023 called Square One Jiu Jitsu. Because we’re just starting it from square one again. So it was a good name. Yeah.”

The path wasn’t perfectly straight. There were location changes, new communities, and the ongoing challenge of building from the ground up. Throughout, Josh relied on the wisdom gleaned from his own journey, now shaped to guide others.

Lessons on Building a Martial Arts Business

Looking back, Josh distills his hard-won insight for listeners: “Don’t do it alone. Because you have to wear so many hats and you can only be good at so many things, right?… Having someone that is in your corner, that you trust, that also loves what you’re doing and believes in you… building a supportive Network of people, business owners, friends and family, jiu jitsu people.”

At every phase, connection—to mentors, partners, and students—proved the real foundation for survival and growth. “There’s no self made everybody. There’s millions of people on this planet. You have to work with people, to teach people, to bring people to your business, to help people.” As Josh has discovered, success in martial arts—like mastery of the art itself—is best achieved together.

Conclusion

Josh’s journey is emblematic of the struggle that so many passionate martial artists-turned-entrepreneurs experience: the turning of personal adversity into opportunity, the essential power of community, and the constant evolution required to keep growing—whether on the mats or in business. Persistent, patient, and driven by passion, he continues to build, one student and one lesson at a time.