Inside 10th Planet Long Beach: Rebuilding a BJJ Gym

Lightly edited for readability. Speaker labels are omitted because the source recording is not diarised; quotes attributed elsewhere on this page were verified against context.

We're back here at 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu in Long Beach. Behind every gym, there's a story, a mission, a spark of passion that started it all. This is Gymdesk Originals. Real owners, real struggles, and the communities they've built from the ground up. What's up, everybody? We're back here at 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu in Long Beach. And both myself and... Hello, Jay Wilson, VP of Customer Success with Gymdesk, and excited to roll. First class ever in Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, first timer. And Itai Gabai, VP of Sales and BizDev at Gymdesk.

All the way from the other side of the world to try Jiu-Jitsu here. First time, huh? First time. All right, well, we're all excited. Can't wait to show you the footage. Let's go. I am sitting here at 10th Planet Long Beach with Chai Sirsuit. Thank you very much for having us. We're grateful for the time. I'm super excited about learning more about your journey, 10th Planet Long Beach, and some of the history here that you've had. I had the privilege of being out here, gosh, I think it was about two months ago, and was able to roll.

And I had a great time, so I'm looking forward to tonight. So I can't wait for that. Everybody's getting ready for a comp. Bring your A game. My Nogi is not that great, but I'm going to show up. That's good. Oh, yeah. So maybe we can start from the beginning, if you can tell me the story about 10th Planet Long Beach. So just what inspired you to open up a martial arts studio? Tell me a little bit about that. Okay. Roughly around 2015, my buddy had an automotive shop right down the street, and there was a bunch of us competing at the time.

And Eddie taught Monday through Thursday evening and Tuesday and Thursday morning. So Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I would teach at my buddy Felix's shop. We'd matted up one of the rooms in there, and there was a bunch of us. Ray from 10th Planet, the owner of 10th Planet of New York, was there. Alex Magala, he's one of the owners of 10th Planet of Russia. Jeremiah Vance, he's the owner of 10th Planet of Santa Barbara. We would all get together, and I would coach basically Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning class, just because we were all competing.

The shop ended up getting closed down for whatever reason, and then I figured, why not just open a gym? So 2016, I believe it was, I opened up 10th Planet of Long Beach. It was on 7th and Pine, about two miles from here. It was doing, it was pretty slow at the beginning, because we were just mainly competitors, and everybody that was training there was real experienced. So anybody that would come in to try to learn jiu-jitsu would basically get a crash course in professional training.

So we didn't, our student retention wasn't very good at the time. So for about maybe two years, we dabbled from anywhere from like 20 students to six students. Besides the staff that was training and working there at the time, one of the people that helped me get everything started is a guy named Casey Halstead, who actually owns 10th Planet Las Vegas. And I called him up after about two years of just, it seemed to me like working for free and just paying into the gym with getting no money back.

He was like, why don't you start a beginner's class? And so we started a beginner's class. I had one of the instructors teaching a beginner class. And then the numbers grew quite a bit, pretty fast. We got up from, I think it was year two, where the lowest were at the beginning of year two was six. And we went up, I would say maybe 35, 40 in year two. And in year three, we went from 40 to 90. Members, you mean? Yes. And then in 2000 and beginning of, or end of 2019, maybe it was 2020, they had the BLM riots and then the gym got burnt down.

So that happened. And then once the gym got burnt down, I just kind of lost track of what I was doing and just got a couple odd jobs. I was bartending. Luckily, I had a friend that ran a bar and he brought me in as a bar back and taught me the trade. So I ended up moving up to being a bartender and did that for about a year. Then did some other remodeling stuff for another year. And then someone asked me to do a seminar.

And so I went and did a seminar and then basically was like, what am I doing? I should open up the gym. So I subleased an area from a church a couple miles from here. And then when I opened up, I probably got maybe like 40 students right off the bat, didn't have any type of processing company in place. So we were just taking cash at the time, which in the long run hurt me because I didn't lock anybody in any kind of contracts or none of that stuff or direct deposits.

Which I feel like this business thrives off people and direct deposits and the numbers that you have with direct deposits. At least from a person like myself that was more focused on teaching and less on management. So then I got up to about 40 students, started looking for a place, found this place, built it out. Took about nine months because, not because of the build out, but because of just red tape with the city permits and various different things we're trying to do. And then eventually you got everything done and opened this place up and transitioned from the church to here.

And we've been here almost two years now, I'd say. And yeah, it's been quite the journey, to say the least. And since then, I've opened another gym in Inland Empire as well. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for the background. I definitely want to unpack that a little bit more in terms of what happened during the riot and all that. But I'd love to know more before we get to that, more about your background. You just came back from Thailand. I think you're a little jet lagged. And the understanding is you have various experiences in different martial arts.

Is that right? I do, yes. So can you tell us a little bit about your background? So yeah, my dad moved here in 68, was the person that is credited to bringing Muay Thai to America. He owns and runs the World Thai Boxing Association, which I don't even know how many students he has, but he has students all over the world. So that was one of the things I was brought up doing Muay Thai. I told myself I never wanted to get into this business because I saw how he was just married to it.

And for me, I was a little bit more free-spirited and didn't want to be tied down to anything too much. But then, like I said, in 2016, it just was one of those decisions I made, which was good because before that, I wasn't really, my life wasn't really legitimized. I was just hustling, basically, is the best way to say it. Yeah. And yeah, so I had done Muay Thai since I could walk. Matter of fact, I was showing someone a picture the other day because my dad had a, actually my aunt had a magazine at the hospital.

And that's me and my dad, I think 81 or 80. That's cute. So yeah, that was the beginning of my martial arts. And that was here? That was here, yeah. Yeah. I was born in California. Okay. That's my mom. Wow. Very beautiful woman. Yeah. So that's them. So yeah, I grew up doing Muay Thai. My dad's best friend and vice president of his association is a guy named Danny Asano, who's a pretty famous martial artist himself. I grew up around them and always watched high-level martial artists teach and train.

So I grew up around that. I started fighting Muay Thai when I was maybe 18 years old. And at this point, you don't have any jiu-jitsu? It's pure Muay Thai? Pure Muay Thai, yeah. Okay. I didn't start doing jiu-jitsu until I was like maybe 19 or 20. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't. So I would be around the Inasano Academy mostly every weekend because my dad would be traveling. And some of my dad's students, a guy named Mike and Joel, would come pick me up on the weekends because me and my stepmom didn't have the best relationship.

My mom really wasn't in the picture at that time. And so they would pick me up and bring me to the Inasano Academy, and I would just go there and hang out. I would hang out with guys like Eric Paulson and Danny Inasano and Yuri Nakamura and Chad, who's actually the blew up directing John Wick, which is crazy. See how he went from stunt doubling for Keanu Reeves to one of the biggest action directors nowadays. That's wild. It's crazy, yeah. That's how I grew up, was in the martial arts scene and never really wanted to make a career of it.

I did fight. That was my career choice when I was younger. But then I got injured real bad snowboarding, blew out my knee, and just that changed the whole trajectory of my life. And, yeah, here I am now. Yeah. And as your jiu-jitsu journey started, did you start with Eddie Bravo and these other guys? No. How did you meet them? When I was probably 19 or 20, growing up doing Muay Thai or growing up doing any type of martial art, if you just do whatever martial art you do and you're good at it, you have these false expectations.

So I just thought I could knock everybody out. I didn't need to learn jiu-jitsu or wrestling or none of that. I thought it was gay. I was like, yeah, fuck that shit. I don't need to do all that. But I had gotten in a fight with this purple belt MMA fighter in a street fight, and he took me down. And for about five minutes, I was getting my ass whipped on the ground and eventually just thought to myself, like, either this guy's going to kill me or I got to get up.

Yeah. So I just sprung up like I was on a surfboard and ended up getting out of that situation. After that, I would say within a week, I went and signed up at the first jiu-jitsu academy that was near me. It was an affiliate under Joe Moreira. He was a guy named Martin. He was a black belt under Joe Moreira. Trained with him for about maybe six months. Then was introduced to Higan Machado from Danny Asano. And then went to the Higan Machado's gym, and the training I was getting there was completely different than the training I was getting at Joe Moreira's gym.

And the reason being was the initial instructor that I had would teach a lot of chain movements. He'd probably teach about 16 submissions in one class, and maybe I'd pick up one thing. When I went to Higan's, we would just drill, drill, and he would teach maybe one or two techniques based off of how someone would react from that position. And I found myself using that at the end of class. Everything I would learn that day, I would generally use at the end of class. So at that point, I made the jump.

Started training with Higan. And then at that time, I was fully into Muay Thai. I was training with a guy named Colin Oyama and fighting under him. And I ended up getting signed to a promotion called Low Kick. Blew out my knee and then stopped training altogether. I got my blue belt under Higan. Stopped training altogether for about maybe two years, I'd say. And then my buddy Adam, who actually owns AG Jiu-Jitsu in a town called Trillith in Georgia, right outside of Peach Tree City, had gotten his brown belt under Eddie.

We had gotten our blue belts together at Higan. But he had since gone to Eddie because Higan had moved from Hawthorne to Brentwood. So the drive went from like 20 minutes to an hour and a half. My buddy Adam was the one that finally convinced me to go to Eddie's because to me it was like, I like training in the gi. I like training no gi as well. The main thing was, do I want to get my black belt under someone who got their black belt under a Machado?

Or do I want to get my black belt under the Machados themselves? So that was the conundrum I was under. I was in actually. And then when I finally, when I, when my buddy Adam finally convinced me to go to 10th Planet, at the time I was a big fan of Marcelo Garcia. And saw a lot of his X-Guard stuff, single Ashi to X, and didn't really know much about it, but had watched it. And when I had gone to 10th Planet for the first time, that's what Eddie was working on.

And I thought, man, that's cool that he's, because I, before I went, I had toured a bunch of the traditional Jiu-Jitsu gyms in the South Bay area. And this was like, none of the training I was getting was similar to what I had been used to. Yeah. And when I went to Eddie's, like I said, he was doing something a little bit more new age. And I just, I liked that. And then after class, Eddie stopped me and was like, hey, where do you train? And I told him I got my blue belt from Hegan.

And he was like, he complimented my Jiu-Jitsu and was like, it'd be nice to have someone like you here. And then that's what attracted me, because his online persona is different than how he is in person. Yeah. He's a real down-to-earth guy. He can go off on his tangents with things, but I just had a completely different perception of how I thought he would be. Yeah. As opposed to how he is. And that's all it took. And then I was driving to Hollywood. Then the gym in Hollywood got shut down and he moved to, he moved to Burbank.

So that was a far trek for me. But at that time I was already like, fuck it. I was dedicated. So I was driving up to Burbank, I was a blue belt, got my purple belt in Burbank, got my brown and black under him. And then he had moved to downtown LA where he's at now. Actually, he moved to the tap out center, which was across the street from where he's at now. And then eventually got his own place and moved across the street. Yeah, that was how I got introduced to Eddie.

Really appreciated the fact that he was willing to train the up-and-coming techniques. Not like most traditional Brazilians are stuck in their own ways. Unless you're a high-level competitor, you're not really progressing that much. And I think that was one of the big things that attracted me to him. Yeah. Yeah, and I think the name 10th Planet has some symbolism around that, like breaking away from traditions and embracing new age. Yeah, yeah. The 10th Planet is, he was going to call it Nibiru, which is the 10th planet that they found outside of Pluto in the solar system.

And I think Joe Rogan talked him into 10th Planet because no one's going to be, Nibiru is just a fucked up name. That's from what I know. So 10th Planet, it does have like an outer space vibe to it. Yeah, for sure. And that kind of goes into his philosophy or outlook on things too. If you want to get into that, yeah, he's on some shit, flat earth and all that. I don't know if he still believes in the flat earth. Yeah. So earlier you mentioned something that I think is, I don't know, heartbreaking.

As a former business owner myself, small business owner, I used to own the chain of stores. That were near and dear to me, put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into them, building the business up. 20 comes around. Can you walk me through what happened? Like what was going on? And where were you? Floyd and OD'd on fentanyl. Don't get me wrong. I grew up in the hood. I didn't really like police growing up because they would come around and harass a lot of us a lot of the times.

But I was up to no good anyway, so maybe it was justified. Once I opened my own business, though, it was different. I had grown since then and I had a couple kids and matured quite a bit and became part of the working class of America and also had trained with a bunch of cops. And when you train with cops, as opposed to running into cops in the street, it's two completely different experiences. At that point, I had a lot of respect for law enforcement and what they did.

So George Floyd dies. There's a lot of civil unrest, basically. They start the riots. And I believe Minnesota was the first place they started rioting. And Minnesota gets ransacked. Portland gets ransacked. And Los Angeles gets ransacked. And on Facebook, they were talking about coming to do peaceful protests in Long Beach. So a buddy of mine, Adriel, he actually owns the pizza spot on Fourth and Pine. It's called Milano's Pizza. Really good pizza. If you guys like pizza, you guys should go over there after this. He calls me up.

He's like, hey, Chai, I got some extra plywood if you want to board your gym up. And I was like, no, I think I'm just going to go down there. And he goes, didn't you see what happened to that guy in Minnesota? I guess there was a guy in Minnesota with a sword trying to fend off people from his store. And they ended up attacking him and killing him, basically. Oh, wow. He's like, oh, didn't you see what happened to that guy in Minnesota? I'm like, yeah, I'm not too worried about that.

They had posted that they were going to do protests in Long Beach. So I already knew that it was basically going to be riots because people, a lot of people that were protesting were opportunists and were protesting for all the wrong reasons. And it's one of those things. Around a clock, I come down to my gym. And I had already started looting and rioting down at the Pike. I believe Hot Topic was the first place that got ransacked. So now how far is this from your place where you're like, oh.

I was on 7th and the Pike is down below Ocean. So it's Ocean, 1st, Broadway, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th. So I'm about a mile up, I'd say. Yeah. Maybe. So it's, ooh, I'm getting nervous, but it's not here yet. Yeah. They looted the first place around 3 o'clock, I'd say. So around 5, I go down to the gym and they've already made their way up to 7th. My building that I was in had five businesses in it. There was a men's warehouse on the corner, which is on Pine and 7th.

There was a black barber, which was next to the men's warehouse. And then there was me. And then there was a Labor Ready, which is like a temp agency for construction workers. And then on the end, there was a, I believe it was a yoga, karate, something like that. And it's 5 o'clock, rolls around. I'm already going down to the gym with a couple of my friends that were willing to come and stand guard with me. So as I get there, the barbershop had already been broken into and they were starting to loot the barbershop.

As I come up, the barber comes up at around the same time and he's an ex-crip, still got a bunch of crip homies. So they all roll up and we just created a barrier around the barbershop and my gym. That was around 5 o'clock, I'd say. Things started getting really hairy around 5.36. Lasted probably until maybe 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, I'd say. 9 o'clock, it started dying down. Around 10, it was completely, pretty much dead. And then I remember, we're all joking, oh shit, we did it.

So this whole time between 5 and 10, are you outside or are you outside? Yeah, we're outside. You're outside. You're like standing guard. Yeah, it's crazy. It's a war zone. I've never experienced anything like that in my life. And are you being taunted by people? Oh yeah. A lot of people. Yeah, yeah. There was people just breaking windows and doing dumb shit just because. They had started looting the men's warehouse probably around 6.30. They finally got into it. I don't know who, but someone in our group started letting off shots to try to scare them away, which it did for about maybe 5, 10 minutes.

And then it was just like fucking ants, man. Those things, everybody came back. Twice as many people came back. And maybe the cops got reports that there were shots being fired. So then they roll up in like SWAT and they, I don't know if they're shooting rubber bullets or what they're shooting at everybody, but they're shooting at us. You too? Yeah. Because we were standing in front of the businesses. So we run into the barbershop because I didn't open my gym because my gym, those buildings were all glass basically.

So it was like, the reason we stood out front was because if we were inside, I felt like people were going to break the windows and they were just big, huge glass panels and windows aren't cheap. So I was thinking, let's just stand out front. We were in the mix of things. I had a couple people that were really down for the cause. I had another student who was also, I want to say he was a U.S. marshal or maybe he was a treasury, some kind of government agent that was trained.

So he was out there with us. And yeah, we stood in front of the gym through the mix for about four hours, really with a lot of people with ill intent trying to just do dumb shit, in my opinion. Opportunists, there was a lot of the rioting was very organized. There was people that were just there to loot. So someone would pull up on the phone and be like in a car, we'll pull up and they would just get as much shit as they could and then dip out.

And then there was other people just causing havoc, breaking shit and running around crazy, trying to attack people. It was just chaos. Yeah. Like I said, we made it up until 10 o'clock. 10 o'clock. We're all like, oh shit, we did it. We're all like patting each other on the back. And then I don't know what it was, but on the corner of Pine and 7th on the other side of the street, I seen these two guys walking across the street and I seen someone filming them.

And I'm like, I told one of my buddies that was with me, I was like, hey, you see that? He's like, I'll go check it out. So he goes and walks over there. And as he gets over to the corner, he runs back. He's like, hey, shit's on fire. Grab your fire extinguisher. So I'm opening the door to grab my fire extinguisher. I open the door and then I have like metal gates on the inside of the deadbolt or not the deadbolt, but the padlock. And as I'm doing that, there's an Ace Hardware, maybe two buildings down caddy corner of the men's warehouse.

So the owner of that comes running over with a cop with fire extinguishers and they go inside and start spraying the fire. At this time, I grabbed my fire extinguisher and I'm running over there. And as I'm running over there, the cop runs out of the building. It's like, everybody get back. So within two minutes, I would say, there was five businesses in that building. The building was pretty much blazing at that point. The fire department got there about eight minutes later, which at that point, the whole building was engulfed.

Wow, it spread that fast. Oh, man, that's shit. I don't know if you've ever seen a fire like that before, but it goes a lot quicker than you would think. Yeah. Yeah. So the first business that was caught on fire was at the men's warehouse? Men's warehouse, yeah. So that thing lights up, catches the next one on fire. And within minutes, the whole, all of them are in flames. Yeah. And then the fire department got there, like I said, eight minutes later. And it was already too late.

I remember me and the owner of the barbershop were standing across the street watching everything as the fire department rolled up. And I was like, man, can you believe that shit? And he was like, nah, this was my way of legitimizing my life. He was like, yeah, me too. And we looked at each other and we just said bye. And then we both went our separate ways. I honestly went into my house and probably didn't come out for a month. People were coming by trying to bring me groceries and shit.

I just didn't want to talk to nobody. I grew up on the streets and finally did something legitimate. And then to have that happen was just, man, it was tough, to say the least. But yeah, that happened. And then, like I said, two years went by. I didn't do anything. And then we did a seminar and got the urge back to want to start teaching again. Because one of the things that kept me going for the first two years in the first location was that I really felt like I was helping people.

There was a guy named Chris Arate who was the first student that signed up at that location. And when I first met him, he wouldn't make eye contact. He would just answer looking down all the time, would just give me one-word answers. And to see how he had progressed from the day that he started until the day that the gym burned down, I felt like I was really helping people. I wasn't making money the first two years, but that's what kept me doing it. And then once I started making money, it was when I hit that stride is when the gym got burned down.

So it was like bittersweet, I'd say. It is what it is. And life goes on. And I'm here now. The location is much better. The location before was probably, I would say, a third of this map. And that was just the building. There was not any much space in the front. It probably went to the beginning of these bleachers, to that wall. That's how big the gym was. Now I have a full bag rack, workout area. We got showers here. It's quite a bit better than it was.

So, yeah. There's a silver lining to it. Yeah. Yeah, like the phoenix rising out of the ashes. And this is a very nice looking gym. I rolled here one time. But still, it's like, man, wow, what a blow you took. And then... That was rough. Yeah, but I just think about, you put all this energy and effort to maybe go away from some of the bad stuff you may have experienced in life. And you're like, oh, this is a legit business. I'm helping people. And then it gets snatched away.

And then you had some community support. At least people were trying to help you bring you in, right? What was that like? That was great. I probably wouldn't have reopened had I not had the support. Rose Gracie, who was a good friend of mine at the time. All her kids were training at the gym. And she came and made a video of the aftermath. I came to Long Beach. Like most residents, we came out today to do a little cleanup on the streets. And I came by 7th and Pine, where the 10th Planet Long Beach is.

And this is what I encounter right now. This is what's left of 10th Planet Long Beach. This is one of the most shocking and horrifying things I've seen in many, many, many years. I didn't even go. Like I said, I went home that night and didn't come out of my house for about a month, literally. And then she got the community together. And they started GoFundMe for me and got a huge amount of support from the jiu-jitsu community. And then that's basically what I lived off for the next two years and what I was able to open this gym with.

So that was something that was really inspiring for me, to open the gym back. And it was one of those things that like, when are you going to open the gym? And I just, for two years, it was a struggle. Because like you said, I legitimized my life and felt like I was helping people. And then something like that happened. It was in some, still, I still don't think I fully healed from that. Yeah. And it's pretty amazing to think that you were like literally trying to do other things.

Like bartending is so different than. Oh, yeah, for sure. And it's, man, you are, you've mastered this crap. You have so much knowledge to share. But it's tough. It's tough to recover from something like that. It was. And even now, still talking about it brings up those memories. It was tough. Because you think that you're doing something good. And then just the fucking shit end of the stick comes knocking at your door. It was just, but it is what it is. Putting that behind me and trying to move on has been a challenge in itself.

But I'm here now. Yeah. And it's a great spot. This is location one of two for you now, right? Yeah. It's never a, it's never a good thing to encounter such a challenge in life. But from the outside, not knowing anything, if I didn't know the backstory, I'd be like, oh man, this guy's doing great. Certainly something there to appreciate. So you had mentioned earlier that originally you were working a lot with competition type folks and you're a little smaller. Then you opened it up to beginners.

I trained in here. I thought the energy was great. I'm going to, I'm looking forward to training here again tonight. But how would you describe the energy here today? The community. We have a really strong community with the members that we have. We're all friends. Even though there's a lot of different personality types, I think everybody, everybody has their own thing to bring to the table. I think we all want to be better. I think that's one thing that jujitsu brings people that share that commonality in terms of they just want to be better people.

Most people that can't handle the reality of the mats, they don't really last long. Everybody, I think in here wants to be a better person as well as what we focus on is our jujitsu and whatever we're doing at the time. We offer Muay Thai here as well. And one of the trainers here, Matt Soto is his name. We call him Matt Fit. He's a nutritionist that has a lot of knowledge when it comes to nutrition and health and exercise. I ask, I pick his brain all the time.

It's great having a guy like that around and so do all the other students. In terms of how the community is, I think we're heavier on the competition side of things, but there is, we just started a fundamental class, I want to say two weeks ago, and it seems to be picking up traction. We probably should have started it before, which I've been getting a lot of feedback from people like, yeah, I just started a beginner class, which was actually one of the keys of my success at the other gym, but I just, for me, I like to play my position and do what I feel I'm best at.

And I feel like I'm best at making people good. We have someone that's teaching the fundamentals now. And so, yeah, that's what's at. So, are you doing anything in particular that consciously around culture and whether it's students, team members, if you have a new person on board, or even with parents for folks that come out here? Yes, yes, I would say we host parties for a competition sometimes and try to support the students and whatever businesses they have. Definitely one of those things. We all used to go to this bar, Iguana Kelly's, who was a friend of mine, and we watched the UFC's there, but he ended up getting shut down.

So we haven't done that in a while, but we've been hanging out here because it's a lot more space than the other place. Yeah. Before, it wasn't really like that. So we've had a couple of parties here. I was planning on having another party a little while back, but then my dad got sick and I've been out to Thailand twice now since March, just trying to juggle all my parties. Yeah. And your dad, is he staying there? Has he been there? Yeah, he went out there in December.

Before he left, because he lives in Carson, before he left, he was telling me he was forgetting things. So I was just like, oh, he must be getting dementia. And then my brother called me and I want to say it was late February. It was like, hey, dad's in the hospital, but he wasn't really giving me any solid answers. I'm like, what's he in the hospital for? I don't know. I don't know. So then my aunt calls me a couple of days later and was like, hey, you need to come to Thailand now.

And so that's when I knew it was serious. And then I went out there and seen what was really going on. And that was a very emotional trip for me because I didn't expect the prognosis to be what it was. This last time I went out knowing what's going on and more trying to support with what I needed to do while I was out there. Yeah. That's how that went. But yeah. Sometimes life just throws shit at you and we got to pivot with it. Yeah.

Sorry, man. He lived a full life. And I'm hoping to go back after he's done with his fourth chemo treatment and bring him back to America because I know he wants to be here with him. Some of the only times I really see him happy is when he's teaching or when he's around his grandkids. He doesn't really get any of that in Thailand. Hopefully he could get strong enough, come back soon and beat what he's dealing with, hopefully. But yeah. When I left, he had major brain surgery.

He had two huge tumors in his brain. One, both on the right side of his brain. One was the size of a baseball towards the back of his brain. And then he had a tumor in the front, which was like the size of a golf ball, which the doctors were able to remove the big tumor completely. And the smaller tumor, they didn't get all of it. So then he went through radiation and then he went through his first round of chemo when I was there. So yeah, he's got three more rounds of chemo until they do another CAT scan to see if the tumors are shrinking because he also has tumors in his chest and both in his lungs and one in his pancreas and one in his liver.

So it's not looking good. I'm just trying to remain hopeful. But yeah, what's up with that? Terrible disease, man. I guess I'll share going back to the business. I had my first business I had in Miami and it was a grind for me. It was organic plant-based food, which was like non-existent in Miami. So I put that spot there. The number of hours I put into it was unbelievable. We would do 16-hour days, wake up, open it up, close it up, go to sleep at 10 o'clock, do it again, do that for a while.

And like you mentioned in the beginning, I wasn't making any money in the beginning. I'm paying to do this very difficult thing. And it wasn't until the third year we finally like, man, we got lines out the door, great success. Landlord sells a building, new landlord kicks me up. There wasn't a fire, but there was... Definitely some adversity. Oh yeah, I lost my location. So I basically started from scratch. I know that's terrible. Yeah. But then I remember having this one moment where I picked back up and opened up a second location.

It was a completely different part of town. So I had to start all over. I would have some loyal folks that would come to the new location, but it was like, ah. And then it, and I had this like underlying depression when I was going through that. But when I, there was this one moment as part of three months into the new place where it's like packed. And I'm like, hey, things are okay. We're still in business. People are here. They're eating. They're happy. It's full.

And it took a lot, not as long as it took for me to build the first one to get to that place. But it was like a moment of like reflection and appreciation for like still going. Have you had that here? Have you had a feeling like that? Not quite. No. I'd say we're teetering around 30 and 40 students right now. I think a big thing is the location. We're not in the best part of town. And I know that some of the people that have come from the old gym have come and been like, oh, I'm not used to this kind of area.

But for me, I grew up in the hood. So it's nothing to me. Yeah. But in terms of the facility, it's, I love the facility. And I don't mind. The only thing that I do mind about this location is the fact that people are scared to come sometimes. Yeah. Other than that, I think we're starting to hit our stride. But I think Jim Desk has really helped in terms of help bring new students in. Retention is not the, retention is pretty good. The people that do sign up stay unless they move.

That's been the only reason people have left is if they've moved, which is good. But it's just getting people in the door. And so we went from Zen Planner to Jim Desk. And since we went to Jim Desk, I think the numbers have grown a bit. But still waiting to hit that stride. And I think when we get up to 80, 90, that'll be when I can sit back and find out, okay, we're back where I was. Yeah. And hopefully we can help you get there and get there faster.

I have some ideas of some stuff we can do. So Jay and I will discuss that. What about, how did you guys even pick Jim Desk? How did that even happen? Nola and Chris are out there, the people that helped me on the back end of things. And Nola was doing a lot of research and found that there was a marketing tool that you guys had that was extra for Zen Planner. And she's like, why don't we just give it a try? And so I was reluctant because I knew that switching processing companies would have the potential of losing students.

Yeah. Which, it did happen. We went from like 35 students back down to 19. And then now we're built back up to about that number again. But it was, I knew it was going to happen. The fact that I feel like Jim Desk is bringing more students in because of the marketing tools. And as well as the prompt text and emails, I think that helps quite a bit. That's why Nola was talking about give it a try, give it a try. I was real reluctant, like I said, because I knew that we would probably lose some students.

And it's those students that never come. It's like the people that sign up for a year that come two or three times. Yeah. I had that a lot at the other gym. Guys that come in their last month one time, I knew your name, where the fuck were you? And the excuses people give. I would say the hardest part of training most of the time is just walking out of your door and walking into the facility. Once you get in, it just becomes routine. You find your niche, you start becoming friends with people.

And we have a real layback vibe here. We're not really strict on things. The only strict things that I'm about is keeping this place clean. Making sure you have shoes on when you get off the mat. Making sure you don't have shoes on when you get on the mat. And if you notice, we put that shit in six different languages. Oh, yeah, yeah. So you don't have an excuse to be stepping on the mat with shoes. Yeah. It's every language you could imagine. There's a lot of them on there.

So you mentioned a couple of things that stood out with Gymdesk. You like the marketing. Anything else that have the members commented? I think it's user-friendly. I think it's a lot more user-friendly. We're checking people in right now. But eventually, I put up a mounting thing so people could just check in. That's the reason I built this gym the way I built it was I wanted them to come into basically a fight shop. And I didn't want to give them access until they punched in to the iPad.

So we haven't quite implemented that yet because we're still doing it ourselves. I think the reason why is because everybody wants to learn all the students' names. I'm pretty bad with names myself unless you tell me your name like four or five times and generally I'll forget it. Yeah. I meet a lot of people. They say there's a number, like 164 names. There's some odd number that you remember and prioritize names. And as you learn more names, some of those people that are less on your priority list, you start forgetting their names.

Yeah. There's definitely a limit to how much you got in here. Yeah. If someone you knew, a buddy of yours, wanted to open up a gym, whatever kind of gym, Taekwondo, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, what advice would you give them? I would tell them, hit your marketing really tough in the beginning. Offer a real competitive price just to get numbers in. And once you get your set number that you're aiming for, start raising your prices. That's what I did at the other gym and we already have 100 and some students.

Oh, wow. Your other gym has. Yeah. Wait, did you open that one first or second? Second. You opened your second one and you're already at 100 plus? 100 plus, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Because we started, like I said, like I just gave the advice. Yeah. I took that advice and implemented it over there. It was a little bit different here because I started at a church with no processing company and was just taking cash with no contracts. So it was just like all we had was waivers that you would sign and give me the cash and I'll pay the bills with that.

So I fucked up in that sense with that. But I'm making up for it now. Our prices aren't low. They're competitive with the rest of the prices here. But what I did at the other gym was offered 80 bucks. Your contract, if you sign up at the $80, $79.99 rate, then you could keep that rate until you don't train anymore. And then so we got that, we stopped that here at about 50 students because that was the goal that we were aiming for. Yeah. And then we bumped the prices up to 80 to 100.

Then we got another, we got another 20, 30 students. So we're at 80 at that point and we bumped the price up to 140 or no, 120. And then we got to 100 students. We bumped the price up to 140. So we're at 140 at that gym. Oh, nice. We're at 180 at this gym. Okay. So I would say that would be my advice, hit your marketing really hard in the beginning, offer a really good deal to people and try to get the numbers in here.

Because what I've noticed is packed rooms attract more people than empty rooms. Now there's an upside and a downside because some people don't like being packed rooms because you don't get the one-on-one time with people as much face time with the instructor as you would in a. Real crowded room as you would in a room that's got maybe 10 to 15 people in it. When you got a class of 30, 40 people, there's only so many people you get to as opposed to a class of 15 or 20.

Yeah. There's an upside to that and a downside to that. Yeah. In terms of business, I would say there's no downside to having 100 and some students. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so what's the, is that your target here to try to get to that like 150 range? I would like to, yeah. I think we could facilitate more than that. That would be nice. Yeah. Yeah. And are you teaching kids at both locations? No, we don't teach kids here. Okay. We tried to, we did a summer program at the old location, had about 30 kids as soon as we, something about this area, particularly downtown Long Beach.

If it's a family, it's not a single family home. A lot of families have multiple family homes here. Paying a price like that for their kid is generally something that's not something out of the picture. So if we have a free summer program here, we'll get a lot of kids. But as soon as we go to start charging, it's like, that's one thing. And the second thing is, I just, I don't like teaching kids. I was teaching kids at the second location. So we got a kids instructor, but man, was I glad to walk away from that.

Yeah. It's not your thing. You're not really teaching the kids. You're just giving them, keeping them occupied while teaching them a couple things. And my dad was very strict on me and demanded my attention, my utmost attention. So if I was like doing some of the shit that some of these kids are doing, my dad would whoop my ass. It's hard for me. Yeah. When you see that. Yeah. It's hard for me to not be that way. And so it's like when I'm teaching kids and they're fucking running off and doing this and the parents ain't doing shit, I'm just like, why the fuck am I doing this?

Yeah. But now we got a kids instructor over there. So it's, yeah, I'm cool, man. All right. Anyone in the area that's in this immediate area of Long Beach, what would you say to them if they were interested? Come on down. Come and try it out and see if this is the right fit for you. One of the things that I tell people, which is probably not the best thing for business, is I give people advice I give myself. So when people come in, I say, you know what, before you sign up, I say, why don't you go check out all the other gyms around here and see if you like their teaching style and see if you like the vibe of the gym better.

Because that's, I'm giving people genuine advice. I don't, I'm not trying to sell them, which I should be in a sense, but the people that are here are really true to this gym and that's the culture that I want. I don't want a lot of bullshit drama that I see going on at other gyms because they have a couple of bad seeds. I've had that at the old gym and had to kick people out because of it and just would rather just not have that. So I'm really up front with people from the beginning and it's a good thing that I'd tell people.

And that's advice that I would give myself too, because my teaching style may not necessarily be the best that translates to whoever comes in the door. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, we're looking forward to, I got two executives here from the Gymdesk family. Over here, our VP of Biz Dev and Sales, all the way from Israel. We have our VP of Customer Success, all the way from the Boston area. And their first time doing jiu-jitsu and we're excited. I'm excited. Oh yeah. Yeah. We're looking forward to getting on the mat.

You guys never done jiu-jitsu before? Oh man. All the disagreements are all going to be hashed out tonight. We got Jay, the legend, who had his first BJJ class today. How are you feeling, buddy? Tell us what you thought about it. I'm feeling tired, but that was a good workout. A lot of fun. Great teacher in chai. Great group of jiu-jitsu friends here that were really helpful for my first time. So, all in all, great night. I just got a count. The last one. That was amazing, man.

That was eight-minute rounds we did, right? Eight-minute rounds, yeah. I got caught. Maybe like three times, I'd say. No, I'm like... Maybe two. Who's counting? So, I got caught in the same move like three times in a row almost. Yeah. So, the carny, right? I thought it was... It felt like a... Like a camora, yeah. Right. But you trapped my leg somehow, right? So, can you break that down real quick for me? Just show me what happened there. So, we're in the position we call New York.

Bam. I hear like this. Okay. So, I'm holding, controlling your posture. Yep. You're trying to pass this leg. Yep. Right? So, as soon as you get here, I'm in a position called New York. So, I'm going to run. Control this is immediately. Try to posture up. Oh, wow. Yeah. Then, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to hear your face with the kong fu and then attack the... Oh! Check out 10th Planet, Long Beach. You want to improve your no-gi game and have a great time with a great group of people.

Come check it out. My name is Yuna Park. I've been training here. It'll be a year next month. Train at 10th Planet, Long Beach. It's the best. It's a small community, but it's great if you're first starting out. You can ask so many questions and we definitely need more women. So, yeah. Come check it out. My name is Nick. I train here at 10th Planet, Long Beach. We are in the middle of getting ready for Worlds coming up at Long Beach Arena. We're all out here looking to go gold, running in at a try and doing the damn thing. So, come check it out.