Ep. 343: Living Your Values, feat. Giles Garcia

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in jiu-jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in jiu-jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJMentalModels.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 343. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. Back with the returning champion again from Scotland, I got Giles Garcia on the line. Giles, sir, how are you doing? Speaker 1: I'm all right, Steve. It's uh lovely to be back on again. Thank you very much for inviting me on. I'm looking forward to talking about today's topic. Speaker 2: Let's do it, man. Maybe a quick recap for people who missed the first chat that we had with you. We can give you a quick intro. You could let me give the intro. I could talk about how you're wearing like purple kilts and stuff and showing up at random jiu-jitsu tournaments around the world, but if you want to give a better intro for yourself, maybe you should go ahead and do that. Speaker 1: Well, I will take the pressure off you, Steve. So, I'm a jiu-jitsu black belt. I've been doing jiu-jitsu for 18 years now, and I've been teaching for the majority of that time. I run a wee club called Ronin Grappling in Glasgow, in Scotland. I've competed a lot over the years. I've been competing again recently. And I run a gym that has a set of values at its core, which uh we're very keen to stick with and stick to, which I suppose is highly relevant to today's discussion. I'm very lucky to have not just myself coaching, but my partner, who's also an owner of the gym. And we've got a great coaching team and wonderful students. So, uh, aye, all's well. I'm not dead yet either, so that helps too. Speaker 2: It definitely does help. This recording would have been a lot more challenging if you were dead, so I'm glad that you're not. If people aren't familiar with you, you are the guy who rocks purple kilts and fanny packs. You've got an amazing outfit, by the way. It's very unique. I'm not aware of anyone else who has your style in this sport. Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. They do say that uh eye is the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. And as I've gotten older and more stressed, I've started dressing the way I want, because frankly, I couldn't give a fuck. So, if I want to wear the bright fanny pack with uh a purple kilt and some tintin socks, then fucking come ahead and come at me if you have a problem with it. Speaker 2: Hey, I'm not judging, man. I wear rash guards and crocs in public, and I put socks into my crocs. I dress like a total moron, so I agree with you. As you get older, the little things in life seem a lot less important, which probably is a great transition into the topic here today. We wanted to talk about living your values in jiu-jitsu, both as a coach, so enforcing cultural values in your gym where appropriate, but also from a student's perspective as well. How to know when you're at a gym where you just don't line up from a value standpoint and you have to leave. I love this topic. I think it's increasingly relevant, and I think it touches directly on some of the most common questions people bring up in jiu-jitsu around, hey, is it time for me to leave my gym? We've talked about this before, but maybe I'll use this opportunity to give you the floor and explain what this means. Values is a big word. It's a very broad, general word. It can mean many things. When you talk about your values, what are we talking about here? I'm presumably you're not talking about like your political beliefs necessarily, but you're talking about things from a more morally acceptable level, correct? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think since the beginning of time, people have generally found out that, you know, when they get on and they work together, they can do great things. There's examples of bone setting been done tens of thousands of years ago, which shows that someone has taken the time to heal another human being and bring them food and whatnot whilst they recover. I think it's smart for people to work together, but in order for people to work together or to be together, there has to be some sort of element of trust. And if you cannot trust people, if you cannot trust who you're working with or trust the people around you, that's bad in my opinion. So, when I talk about values, I talk about people saying, hey, we are roughly on the same wavelength for about things. No, I I like you, I like me. Yeah, I like these people here. I think when you start having the kind of values which excludes large swaves of the population for something that is completely out with their control or, you know, something that's really when you boil it down, nonsense, that's not good for humanity. I'm being really broad here, Steve, because I am trying to avoid politics. Obviously, there's a strong argument to be made that pretty much everything's political, but I know you said you don't want to dig deep into it. And besides, I know that uh things in the world are a little bit polarized at the minute. So, generally speaking, values to me is when you have a sort of core things that you think are right and proper. So, basic things like, I don't like the idea of killing people. Or, you know, I don't like the idea of ostracizing someone simply because they love another human being even though they're of the same gender. Or stuff like that, or, you know, someone's got a different skin color, I'm not going to ostracize them or say shitty things about them or be mean to them because that's ridiculous. It is merely a skin color. There's no reason to get upset about that. So, I think generally speaking, that's what I think values are, where you decide, okay, I these are the these are my red lines, these are what I think's acceptable, this is what I think is unacceptable. And you do it through a lens of wanting good things to happen for people or, you know, good things to happen for humanity. That's my take on values. I hope that makes sense, Steve. Speaker 2: 100%. I mean, when we talk about values, we tend to be talking about very high-level, general, lofty statements about what we believe to be right and wrong. And hopefully, most of us can agree on a core set of values. I think it's getting increasingly hard for that to happen in today's climate, but there are some things that I think just as broad strokes, I would hope most people agree to be true. One of them being, like you mentioned, we shouldn't be hostile or threaten violence toward other people for no reason. Especially in the culture of jiu-jitsu, where so much of what we do is about trust and putting our body in a vulnerable position where another person could seriously harm us, we need to make sure that we're in an environment where from a values perspective, we're aligned on things like safety. And so you definitely don't want to bring anyone into the room who carries in hostile beliefs that could be harmful to the other people in the room, right? I think right out of the gate, that that is an obvious one. If someone is bringing in a hate-based ideology into the gym and there's other people in your gym who train there especially that could be targeted by that, I think that is a hard red line. Additionally, a lot of other value discussions come up around control and freedom. And I bring this up because in jiu-jitsu, it's so common even today for coaches to try to unfairly restrict and control what their students are doing. The classic example is stuff like banning cross-training. To me, I would consider that to be a pretty strong value argument. I would not want to personally train at a gym where they told me I can't train anywhere else. Just from a a values perspective, that would not align with me. Maybe other people don't agree to the same level that I do. Other people might be more all right with that. And that's okay. I mean, everyone's going to have a line, but in general, I would hope that we agree at a certain level that we don't want to be unfairly restricting our students' freedoms. We also don't want to be bringing elements into the gym that could be actively harmful or dangerous to the other members of our community and our team. That to me should be something that we can all generally agree on and maybe we can get more picky about the specifics. But from a vision statement, hopefully we're all on the same page about that at least. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the thing. We have to have the look at the end of the day, if you're looking to get agreement from a broad church of people, and jiu-jitsu is a pretty broad church, then we do ultimately have to start off with the generals. The very general sort of high-level abstracts you say saying, killing people is probably bad. Um, having students get into fights and hurt each other is probably bad. Um, assaulting, sexually assaulting students in the gym is bad. Having a literal convicted rapist teaching kids at your gym is probably bad. These are things that you'd hope that most people would say, yeah, you know what, actually, I think we can all agree, having a rapist at the gym, probably not a good idea. Stuff like that. Speaker 2: Well, now you would think that, but apparently a lot of gyms struggle with this because it seems like a really common problem. And this is where the challenge with values comes into play, right? Anyone can write up a value statement and print it on the wall. Anyone can proclaim on social media what they believe to be true and what their values are. But what I've found is that many people struggle to apply those values when it's waved in front of their faces. I mean, you brought up a great example. There are many well-known coaches out there who will post messages affirming the importance of, you know, protecting the vulnerable and standing up for women, but then they might hire or bring an element into their gym that is known for committing the exact infractions that they're criticizing. So, how do you square that away? Because I see many coaches do this, right? They will on one hand say that they believe in X and Y, but they won't enforce those beliefs when it's right in front of their face. Why do you think that is? Speaker 1: It's because simple, Steve, it's because it's fucking hard. Look, this is the thing. I think uh someone once said, what is I think it was Martin Luther King that said, what is right is not always popular, what is popular is not always right. If you are upholding a set of values in a gym, you are going to suffer financially. You you talked about this on your previous podcasts, I think, where you said, you're going to lose revenue if if you kick out someone who goes way against the values of your club. Like, I've been in clubs before where there's been people who are heavily racist, who are injuring students willfully, but the instructors kept them on because he needs the money. So, you have to sacrifice financial opportunity. You have to sacrifice gym revenue. You have to sacrifice potential opportunities and connections. This is it's very easy to put up an Instagram post, you know, put a bit of shine on it and say, ah, we're all together, we're all one. And that's a a kind of old trope that's been put out by the jiu-jitsu community at large saying, oh, it's a community, we're all together. Where else can you have a criminal and a, you know, a drug dealer and a police officer in same mats, oh, we're all together, we're all one. It's not the utopia that people make out to be. Actually, just give you some data on this. Um, there was a non-profit called Roll the Same. I think it was a UK-based non-profit. Back in about 2020, they did a sample of 579 people in the UK who practice jiu-jitsu, and they said that about 22% of the respondents had knowledge of a sexually charged incident in their local BJJ community or gym that made them uncomfortable. One out of every five, uh then another independent report in 2020, we found that one out of every five reported incidents of sexual harassment or assault within the jiu-jitsu community were perpetrated by black belts. And then, uh Shut Up and Train, they did another great survey, and I think they had closer to about a thousand respondents. Uh this is in 2021, and out of all the female or all the women who kind of um basically replied, 25% of the women said that they had been sexually harassed by a member of the BJJ community. And that's people who have actually been willing to take the survey. So, you have to assume that the number or percentage I say could be a fair amount larger. So, with that in mind, and given how pervasive it is, but given how many people hold these views, you are essentially swimming against the tide here if you have values and you uphold them. That I think is our sport is not the the all-inclusive utopia some people make out to be. That is why I think it's fucking difficult to uphold values because it is hard. There involves work, sacrifice, and pain. That's why. Speaker 2: And it's also worth pointing out that it gets harder when your view that you're trying to promote may not be shared by everyone in the room. Like you talked about, some of these problems are extremely prevalent. So, when you stand up for your values, there's a good chance you're standing up against the people in your room who are paying you money. And that puts the coach in a challenging situation. You brought this up earlier, a great quote from Elliot Marshall from Easton BJJ in Colorado. He said on the podcast, you need to have core values. What are you willing to lose friends and money over? And I think that's a great definition for what values really means. When people talk about values, they are so often talking about the things they preach, and it's easy to preach your values, but really having values actually means sacrifice. If you truly have these values, you should be willing to draw a hard line even to your detriment sometimes. And that might mean there's friends that you lose because you can't align on values, and might means there's customers that you have to fire because their values aren't appropriate for your gym. And if you're not willing to actually draw that line, then you don't have values. Having values means that you would remove those elements regardless of the personal cost to yourself. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's something that a lot of coaches, because let's face it, jiu-jitsu is still a very niche sport, despite what some people might say. As we are doing something pretty weird, we are essentially all a bunch of touch-starved miscreants dressing up in weird clothing and hugging each other really aggressively. When you think about it at night, it is kind of weird what we're doing, and it is so niche, it's so fucking niche that you don't you can't really see the wood for the trees. And I think because it's such a niche sport and it's still in its infancy, and there's zero regulation, that's another big problem that we've got. No one's like making a lot of money unless it's uh someone who's a particularly good businessman or someone who's unscrupulous or doesn't have a lot of scruples about how they treat people. We're not making a lot of money relatively speaking. As a result, we're more likely to try and cling on to folk or we're willing to kind of let some things slide. The problem with that is that if you let certain things slide, you let certain behaviors slide, it could be as simple as a little bit of locker room talk. It could be something like one of your coaches making a comment that you might choose to ignore. It might be as simple as a student saying, making a dumb joke, for example, and you could just let it slide. The fortunately, if you let these things slide, over time, the ethos of the gym changes. The atmosphere in the gym changes as people start to push the boundaries of what's acceptable into the unacceptable. Before you know it, you've got problems. This is why I think if we're going to be going on to the topic of coaches, I think it's important for coaches and the head coach to say, nah, nah, nah, nah. Like, some things are acceptable, all right for a wee joke and a laugh, but there's got to be certain red lines, but also how you deal with it. You can't jump down someone's throat for making a shit joke. You can't, you know, kick them out the gym. You can have to say, quietly say to them, go and you know make that joke, that was pretty shit. You know, that was having a go one of the female members, for example, or, you know, having a go at the women at the gym. You can have to say to them, go and know say that. And you might have to take more steps. But it's that creep that you have to walk out, you have to watch out for. That slow erosion, that lurch from the acceptable to unacceptable. I think that's one of the other big issues. Speaker 2: That's a great point, this problem of cultural erosion. You're absolutely right. When you allow little tiny transgressions or things that push the envelope or push the boundaries, those little transgressions might not seem that serious in the moment, but every time you allow one, you allow the window of acceptable behavior to shift just a little bit into that direction that you're trying to avoid. Often, when something terrible happens in a gym, it's not an event that just happened in isolation. It probably was something that was crept towards because other things were enabled. There were little signals that were given out and no one stepped up. I've noticed that when you're dealing with people who carry really horrifying beliefs, a lot of the time they'll test the waters first. You know, they won't just come out and say something horrendous, but they'll test the waters. They'll make a little, you know, they'll make a joke that's inappropriate here or there and they'll keep escalating to see where the boundary is. And at some point, in a values-based organization, you're going to say, hey, buddy, shut up about that. Like, this is not okay. You can't say this kind of stuff here. That's just straight up like hateful towards other people in our gym, for instance. If you don't make that stand, you're tacitly giving them permission to keep moving in that direction one step at a time. And the longer you wait to take action, the harder it is to take action. So, it's more important to cut those things off at the beginning when they're more innocuous. And that can also make it harder to do because sometimes someone will say something which in itself doesn't seem like a problem, or they might do something which in itself isn't immediately concerning, but you know as the coach that this could be the first step down a road that you want to avoid. And that's not even just a top we're not just talking about things like sexual harassment in the gym. I mean, this comes down to things like gym safety as well or gym hygiene. If you let little transgressions go, it makes it easier for those to snowball into bigger transgressions down the road. So, always better to catch them up front. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, you don't want to be that annoying prick who like absolutely lambasts everyone for the smallest of things. A lot of time, a bit of discretion and a quiet conversation with someone to say, here, don't be a cunt. Or, for example, if someone uses a slur in the mats, like someone called uses um the F word or uses homophobic language, I would say to him, ah, come here, and I'll gently smack their hand like I'm an English school teacher, like an old school English school teacher, like a governess, uh reprimanding a small child. But I'll do that and I'll let people see me doing it. It's not to humiliate the person, it's just to say, ah, I said coach, we don't tolerate this. I'm not like screaming at them, tell them to get off the mats. I say, ah, none of that, thank you very much. I won't shout at them or scream at them. I'll just say, no, thank you. We're not doing that. We're better than that. Little and a little a little moment and it's gone and they they typically go, oh, sorry about that, my bad. And that's it. And then it's over. So, it's not just that person goes, no, that was unacceptable. I shouldn't have done that. And generally speaking, if they're a good person or someone who's at least not shitting, they'll go, yeah, I should probably not, you know, not let shit like that slip. And then people in the room go, oh, that is not acceptable. I have just been shown like very clearly that maybe using slurs is not a good idea. And the majority of people would say, no, of course it's not acceptable. You wouldn't use the F word or use homophobic slurs or transphobic slurs because, you know, that's your that's yeah, potentially your teammates. And someone who's a a shit bag would go, oh, well, I want to be homophobic or transphobic. Guess I'm not welcome here. And then the trash takes itself out. And that's also a kind of theme in how we actually onboard people into the gym. Oh, God. I've used that term, Steve, onboard. Speaker 2: Look at corporate Giles over here, the director of human resources with his onboarding processes and his employee surveys. Speaker 1: Steve, can I swear in this podcast? Speaker 2: Of course. Speaker 1: Oh, fuck. It's Jesus. Steve, I I was in IT for over a decade and it was fucking soul destroying. The bunch of the absolute oh, I'm not even going to start. But destroyed me. Destroyed me, Steve. It's taken me years to recover. It's why I quit and went to jiu-jitsu in the first place. Now, you might think, Giles, you're doing you're running the gym for, you know, you're doing a job that you get a lot less money, a lot more stress. What's wrong with you? No, no, no, no, no. Nothing compares to being in IT for a fucking cunts who have meetings every five minutes because they want to feel like they're important. People who have no joy in their life, their kids have left them, the divorce has gone really badly, and this one small nugget of consolation they have is that they can schedule in for a two-hour meeting and make your life a fucking misery. That's the kind of people I dealt with in the corporate world. I apologize for using jargon and for trauma dumping, Steve. Um, you might you might want to cut this bit out. Or maybe leave it in. Maybe my suffering is is Speaker 2: Oh, I'm I'm leaving it in. I have very strongly held opinions on the state of the IT and software industry, but that, you know what, maybe maybe we should do a bonus episode about that at some other point because I have had so many people come onto this podcast who are recovering corporate, often IT or software, but sometimes also from like finance or from law. And there's a reason why people are attracted to jiu-jitsu. I've met many people who have given up incredible careers to go and focus on jiu-jitsu instead, knowing that it will probably be a significant financial setback to them. And a big part of that is values. It's hard to operate in an environment that is contrary to your values. If anyone out there has ever worked a really terrible job, you know what I'm talking about. And it sounds like the same thing that you're going at here. And that's one of the cool things about jiu-jitsu is this is a place where it's still okay to live your values and we all have a degree of control over whether that happens. Even students who have a lot more power when it comes to value enforcement than maybe we think. And we can get into that in a second here. I think that jiu-jitsu is a tremendously powerful vehicle for this because it is a place where we can live our values. We can create a room where our rules still get enforced. And it's a lot harder to do that in a corporate environment where you've got five layers of managers who are setting those rules for you. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think what you said about setting an environment and setting things is um directly relevant. Uh I mean, that's the role of a head coach and to an extent the coaches as well in terms of setting environment, defining what values are, how you administer them, how you deal with people coming in, all the aspects of running the club and, you know, dealing with people because at the end of the day, you are essentially in a customer-facing industry. You are dealing with people on a day-to-day. If you're not a people person in jiu-jitsu, then you're in the wrong fucking job. But as well as that, that as you correctly said, students have more power than they realize. And it's something that because of the kind of cult mentality some gyms have or the kind of old tropes that are still, you know, put about and place like Reddit and all that, you know, you must give coach a pineapple if it's your first class. You know, you can't ask a black belt to roll. All these things which make people feel small and feel like they have zero fucking input. That also flies in the face of diversity and inclusion. Diversity and inclusion are absolutely crucial in jiu-jitsu, especially if we want to get more people into the sport. If we want to look after our teammates, have our teammates feel respected, if we want to have better jiu-jitsu in our clubs, and if just generally want everyone to have a better time. Having people from different backgrounds, different lived experiences, everyone from like different injuries to people of different genders, people who are trans, who have different lived experiences to us. People who are part of different minorities, who have different experiences. Listening to people who have different lived experiences to us is enriching, makes us smarter, you know, helps us with the whole empathy thing, put yourself in another person's shoes, and will ultimately trigger thoughts, ideas that will make us better at what we're trying to do, but also make us better-rounded people. And that in turn means that more people say, hey, people actually listen to me, people actually give a fuck about my background, the things that have happened to me, my life story. I feel included. I feel like there's a broad range of different people here from different backgrounds, different minorities, different demographics. I feel welcome here. I feel included, I feel safe. I am willing to commit my time, my effort, and my money to the gym. That's my very brief reason as to why diversity and inclusivity are so important. Speaker 2: Well, something there that is worth expanding on. Again, the idea of diversity has kind of become, unfortunately, a politically charged talking point now, but to me, all this really means is you're trying to create an environment where people are not being excluded for no good reason. That's ultimately all that diversity means. If you are creating an environment where a broad demographic of people can't or won't come train with you for some artificial reason, that's a barrier both to the culture of your business, but also it's a barrier to your own revenue. You're losing customers if there's something about your culture that is excluding a whole swath of the general population. And that does not necessarily even mean a political statement. It can be other little subtle things just in terms of how the gym presents itself or carries itself. I've talked about this on the podcast before with many guests who have brought up great points about how things like flashing lights, if you've got really crappy lighting in the gym, that can exclude a certain percentage of the population who maybe have epilepsy or maybe they're on the spectrum and they find things like that challenging. Right out of the gate now, you've cut out a pretty significant part of your population. You've reduced your customer base without even really trying. It's not like you were making a political statement, you just didn't get the light bulbs changed. Those little things, or having a dedicated women's changing room. Many gyms don't, and then they wonder why they don't have a large population of women training at their gym. Well, if you don't have a women's changing room, if you don't have pictures of women on your social media and on your website, out of the gate you are signaling, whether you realize it or not, the type of audience that you want to attract. So, to me, that's what diversity and inclusion really means. It's not about some giant political statement. It is about not shooting yourself in the foot as a business owner and accidentally excluding a large portion of the population. So, when we talk about diversity, it's not always and it really shouldn't be this politically charged thing. It's just about our policies. Are we losing good candidates, right? From a hiring perspective, that's what we're looking for. We never want to be accidentally losing a good candidate because we did we put something in the application that turned a lot of people off. Same with a jiu-jitsu gym. I really encourage more jiu-jitsu gym owners to think about how their gym is presenting to people who walk in the door or find them on social media. Is there anything you're saying or doing that could be giving off the vibe that, hey, this isn't the place for you? Because if that's the case, you might need to rethink that depending on who you're excluding there. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it could even be little things. For example, having uh sanitary products in the toilets. That's such a small thing. And this is the benefit of having my partner who for the years, all the time we've been together, she's kind of said, hey, Giles, you might not be aware of this, but she's able to draw upon her own lived experience and and say, this has been what I have found not great about being in certain jiu-jitsu gyms. Here's things we could do differently to try and make women, for example, feel safer, to make them feel included, like, oh, hey, they thought of that thing. That's such a small thing, such a small example, and yet it is quite a few people have commented, oh, that's really nice. I saw that, that was great. That's also a signal to other folks saying, even if it's like not a woman or someone who uses sanitary products, that's still a cue to other people saying, oh, here, they thought of that. That's really nice. They're trying to include people. I like this place. Uh little things like that, make sure you get pronouns right, for example. Or uh we have a park Q form, it's like a kind of uh fitness questionnaire. I think it's a UK-based thing. Kind of like a disclaimer saying, you know, are you medically fit to do jiu-jitsu? What's your emergency contact details? So on and so forth. And one of the first questions in that is, what are your pronouns? And to me, it's just like, uh it's a pretty simple question. Everyone has pronouns. I, we, they, he, she, etc. So, that again is another small thing which makes people go, oh, here, they thought of that. I I okay, I'm included. And then on the flip side, if someone's like transphobic or like some rabid frothing at the mouth, hateful, spiteful cunt, they'll go, oh, that's woke. I'm not going to that gym. And again, as I said, that's fantastic. Fine. We don't need you to be there. There are plenty of other gyms you can go to which will not ask you that. But because we've got values at the gym, and because these are the one things that we think will help people feel included, then we're going to fucking ask it. The same that when people first inquire about joining the gym, the first thing we always ask is, please read our values and let us know you agree to them. And our values are very clear. They say no homophobia, no transphobia, no sexism, no racism, no bigotry. And they also say, you know, don't be a dick to your training partners, keep it your safe. You know, all the kind of big stuff that generally speaking, you think would be fine. You know, don't be a shitty person, don't cripple each other, don't be shit to each other, and don't judge people based on what is essentially protected characteristics or stuff that doesn't fucking affect you anyway. So, these are all the little things you can do just for starters to set the tone, set out your stall, so to speak, and say, this is who we are, this is what we do, this is what we stick to, and here's what in a way you're telling people what's acceptable and what's not acceptable. And then obviously, you've got to uphold those values, which is as I said earlier, fucking difficult. Speaker 2: Yeah, and the thing about values as well is that they need to be held in the opposite direction as well. And this is why I think values are best explained in a general sense and not tied to a particular political statement. I mean, the examples that we've given so far, of course, if you've got someone who's part of a vulnerable population and you want to include that population in your gym, there's certain things that you need to do to signal to them and to show them that this is a place that's safe for them. But a true value statement gets held across the board in all directions. It's not just about protecting women or non-binary people. It can it should be a standard that can be applied in all directions. Many of the times when I've seen value statements applied, it's not because it's a minority that needs to be protected. Sometimes it is, you know, a young white male, but maybe they're on the receiving end of bad conduct from another person in the gym. Maybe they're getting, you know, they're getting bullied on the mats or someone is insulting them or being unsafe. The value system needs to protect those people as well. And so a good value system should be something that you can generally apply across the board. It shouldn't be something that only applies in one particular slant. I would always encourage people to back up and look at their values from a first principle perspective. Because if it's something that you truly believe is a value, you should be able to apply that to people of all persuasions somewhat fairly. And that I think is the best way to look at this kind of thing because again, in God, it's so tiring, but in this day and age, everything is a political statement. And a good value system should transcend that. You should be able to sit down and talk to someone with pretty significant, now there's a line, of course, but you should be able to talk to someone with pretty divergent beliefs from you and still get on the same page about values. Our political beliefs in theory should just be different interpretations of those values. We should at least have a shared system of values. If people can't even get on the same page about that, like if someone comes into the gym and they don't agree with you that we should be welcoming to people of, you know, all races and persuasions, right out of the gate, we've got a value mismatch and maybe we can't overcome that. And that's fine. Part of screening for values and enforcing values is when you find someone who isn't on the same page as you, they just can't train there. They got to go somewhere else. But that doesn't mean that we want to be gatekeeping and policing every little nitpicky thing like you said, right? Values should be one level above the specific tactics of what you do in the gym. Speaker 1: Yeah. Although, I would still say, Steve, that unfortunately, we don't live in a utopia and things are inherently political if we say them or if we don't say them. Sometimes by our mission. Another great example is people from low-income backgrounds. So, I've got students who have at times struggled financially. And I have waved their fees to them. Now, that's something you think, well, that's that should be a universal thing. If someone's fallen upon hard times, you don't want to make it worse, you want to help them. Unfortunately, that can still very much be construed as a political thing. Obviously, I don't think about it in those terms. I just think there's a student who is a great student, they're suffering because they've lost their job or something bad has happened to them. I want to support them. That is tied to the values of the gym where I want people to be safe, included, not be dicks to each other, and be able to train together. If someone is struggling because they're counting the pennies, they can't pay the bills, I will try and look after them and wave their membership fee, you know, for a few months or, you know, until they're back on their feet. And I've done that before because again, that's part of including people. So, inclusivity doesn't just include people from different, you know, different race, different sex, gender, different protected characteristics, but also their financial status. Remember, a lot of memberships these days are pretty expensive. And to try and keep it accessible to folk, trying to get these people in the door who ordinarily wouldn't be able to train or who wouldn't be able to afford it. Obviously, you can argue it's a political statement because it ultimately is, but it is still part of core values. You want people to be able to participate, be part of a group, be part of a collective, be included. So, that's another extension of values which some people might argue over, but I think it's really important. Speaker 2: Which tricky because what is political and what is not is a matter of opinion. Everything is political, but simultaneously nothing is political. I like to think of values in the sense that if you are clear on what your values really are, you should be able to explain them without making reference to any specific group of people. If you truly believe in something as a core value, it shouldn't be tied specifically to people of one gender persuasion or political persuasion. It should be a statement that you can make without those labels. That's how you know it's a a universal value that you believe in. And you brought up an excellent point, this whole idea of how do we cater to people who can't afford to train here? This is a fantastic example of where gyms fail to live their values sometimes. How many gyms have you seen that say repeatedly, hey, we're a family here. I've seen gyms that put that on the wall. This is a family. We're not just a team. Look, if you're going to take that argument that this is a family and not just a business, then you should live that as a value. If someone can't afford to pay the bills, are you willing to comp them free membership and help them during those times? Because if you kick them out when they can't afford to pay the bills, then you're definitely not their family because you wouldn't do that to your family. You would support your family. And this is a value mismatch. If you are stating that your gym is a family, but you're not acting like a family, then you're not living your values. So, values can be a very amorphous statement and often what is said on the wall, what's printed off there is not what gets applied tactically. So, this is where you get into things like value-based thinking. Whenever you have to make a critical decision, can you map that back to your stated core values? Because if you can't, then why are you doing it? Everything that you do should be mapped back to the core values that you claim that you believe in. You should always be able to use those for as a justification for the actions that you're taking. And sometimes that might mean that, yeah, you wind up comping people free memberships. I'm not saying every gym needs to do that, but if that's one of your core values, if you really believe that your gym is a family, then you should treat them like a family. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think when you're saying that values at the end of the day should be applied to any situation, that makes absolute sense. Because as you say, when you go to the high-level abstract, you won't, I mean, I say it to students all the time, look, I just want folk to train, be decent to each other, don't be dickheads. That's the general overriding ethos of the gym. Is that, let's get in, let's be cool to each other, let's not be dicks to anyone. That's the way I see it. And I'm really lucky to have a gym full of people, different backgrounds, all the rest of it, who are not just good to the members in the club, but also decent to others in their life, to the best of my knowledge. Look, I'm not the police. I can't go investigating people. I'm all I've deleted the social media apps, so I'm not in everyone's fucking business 24/7. But generally speaking, I'd like to think I've got a group of folk who are decent to those around them. And I think that's what ultimately when I talked about my first understanding of what values are, it's people being good to other people, not letting really ultimately irrelevant things like what race you are, color, gender preference, sexual preferences, all the rest of it, or your expression. Not letting any of that get in the way because all that shouldn't be a block to you being decent to another human being. Like, uh we can argue about things like, I don't know, do you cross your ankles or not when you do an arm bar? We can have a go at folk, um, who say that wrist locks don't work. Obviously, we can have heated discussions about that. But when it comes to being around other people, generally speaking, I think Bill and Ted had it right when they said, be excellent to each other. And if everyone did that, that'd be great. That's the utopia that I'd love to live in. Alas, we're in the real world and um, that's not possible. So, we have to try and, as you say, Steve, apply the values as best we can and just encourage our students and, you know, and try ourselves to not be cunts to anyone and not be dicks to folk. Speaker 2: Yeah. When setting up our community, I had to figure out what are the policies and the rules that we want to apply here in terms of how we conduct ourselves. Because the thing about the BJJ Mental Models community, it's geographically distributed, you know, there's thousands of people part of this. So, it's going to be different from the way that you apply policies and procedures in a gym. And the one thing that I kept coming back to as our core value statement in terms of how I want people to conduct themselves is pretty simple. It's just, don't be an asshole. That's pretty much the only thing that I require if people want to participate. And what I've found is that pretty much every type of misconduct that I can think of can be described in terms of, hey, this person's being an asshole. And simply saying, don't be an asshole, that's a very intuitive thing that many people seem to understand. And I've had to apply that in multiple directions. I mean, sometimes there are situations like you've described where I feel like someone is, you know, maybe saying or doing something that could be taken as a slant against a minority. Sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes people come in with really feisty opinions that specifically target the majority. So, it's not always a situation of, you know, being progressive and trying to protect the vulnerable. Sometimes a person just comes in and they're just an asshole to the broad population at large, and I've got to apply the rule in both directions. I can't have someone coming in and being an asshole because that's the one thing that I've stated is this is not along the lines of my core values. And I really think like you said, I mean, a lot of it comes down to just being good to other people. And we can get into the specific tactics of how you do that, but I would hope that most of us would agree with that principle. If someone comes in and they don't agree with that and they don't think they should have to treat the other people in the gym as they would want to be treated, then we just don't have a values alignment and it's easy to remove them. Or at least it's easier because I have a clear justification for why I'm doing it and I can clearly explain to the person why it's happening. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think you made a point there about how um some people might come in and they might hold views that might be seen as quite progressive and perhaps they're being a bit of an arsehole about it. There are some people who get a bee in their bonnet about things and who perhaps go about it in an unreasonable way or, you know, who are a bit loud about it. But ultimately, they still have their heart's in the right place. Or you have people who make a comment or say, for example, someone uh a week or so ago accidentally misgendered someone. But their intent was not to harm or to be a dick. So, that was a simple, a quiet, maybe just be careful next time. And they said, oh, sorry about that. Or if someone's wildly mouth and off about stuff, you just say, look, your heart's in the right place. God bless you. But there are other ways to express it or, you know, if you've got concerns, I want to hear them because maybe you're on to something here or maybe there's something that's happening that's not right. Maybe you're angry about something and you're justifiably angry. I think it's a case of, can you see the intent behind it? For example, you can tell when people are being sexist straight away, when they're being racist right away, because they're going to say something that's fucked up. At that point, it's like, all right, okay. Your intent is to be a dick. Simple as. Like, you're either heavily racist or you're trolling or you're both. It's usually both. So, I think one of the kind of things we have to do as gym owners, business owners, is not just obey the kind of letter of the law, so to speak, or the letter of the values, but think about what those values actually mean and apply the spirit of them. So, if I've got someone who's saying, hey, I'm having a go, you know, someone who's having a go at someone because they've said something offensive or they've been a prick to someone else or a dick to someone else, maybe they said something inadvertently racist, for example. I can go, okay, hold on a second. Maybe don't have a slanging match in the middle of the mats. Maybe let's take it down a notch. Uh let's quietly hear out what's going on here. Say, you know, don't turn it into a scrap right here, right now. Let's not do that. But also, tell me what's happened and then I can speak to the person who's maybe said something out of pocket and then I can speak to him as well and say, go and know do that. What was your intent here? You know, where's your fucking head at? I think we're getting into, as you say, how you apply the values. But we have to be careful to think about not just say, oh, they've done something, I consider them a dickhead. That's it, you know, the gavel's dropped. We have to think about why they're saying it, why they're doing it, apply not just the letter, but the spirit of the the kind of laws and values we have. I don't know if that makes sense, Steve. Speaker 2: It definitely does. And I think you wisely point out that values are best applied, at least in my opinion, when you look at them as general first principles, rather than when you look at them as a series of policies and procedures and boxes that you have to check. Because the intent is so important. Sometimes people might say or do things that could be construed as a major violation of values, but they just had no idea that it was a problem. Very often that is the case. And if you then take what was an accidental, innocent transgression and you blow it up into a big thing, then maybe you're the one being the asshole. Maybe you're not living your values by over-enforcing things that weren't intended to be malicious. So, considering the intent is always important. That's often more important than whatever was actually said or done. Speaker 1: And that, Steve, this all ties back to what I said earlier. This is fucking hard because as a coach or as, you know, the gym owner, you're already worrying about fucking the bills, taxes, paperwork, planning your classes, dealing with people. You've got a myriad of things to worry about. Like, keeping the toilets clean, making sure your students don't claw each other's eyes out due to having long. On a smaller side, Steve, I purchased 164 fucking sets of nail clippers because I was sick and tired of students getting uh getting nail marks. And I've basically just said, right, fuck it. No excuses. Every single member of this club is getting nail clippers. Nail clippers for everyone. Oh, you've got nail clippers at home, but they're not in your bag. Fuck it. Have one in your bag. Oh, you want a There you go. So, sorry, that was a small that was a small uh pet peeve of mine. But all these things to worry about. And then to allocate brain capacity because it's hard and it's difficult and it hurts your head, especially if you're dumb like me and you chose to do jiu-jitsu as a full-time career. It's hard to allocate that space, that time to sit and think about, well, hold on a second, what were they doing here? To then speak to these people and it's time and energy that you generally don't have. So, again, it's tied back to what I said at the start, it's fucking hard to have values and to actually uphold them because it involves the dirty, messy work of saying, well, hold on a minute. What happened here? Who said what? Why did you say that? Where's your fucking head at? Can we talk about it? You know, and then piecing it all together and putting it all together and saying, well, actually, it's, you know, how do I administer the values here? Who's right? Who's wrong? Is anyone right? Is anyone wrong? Is this a misunderstanding? These are all things which are messy and no one wants to deal with. People love absolutes because they're simple. People love people who say, don't worry, the answer is super simple. You don't have to think because everyone is tired, stressed, and can't be fucked. So, to actually uphold values and administer them in a meaningful way in your gym or business, actually takes effort and brain power. So, to actually sit and do that, that's like a level above, but it's got to be done. You have to sit and consider these things and actually think it through. At that point, you can say to folk, look, here's what's happened, here's what we're going to do going forward. I have thought about it at length. I've talked about people with it and I've done this in the past with other incidents where I've kind of sought advice from outside and really chewed it over. And I always feel better saying, look, here's what's happened, here's the facts of the matter, here's what everyone said, here's what we're here's what we're going to do. I have actually given this some thought and here's my justifications. And here's where it fits in with the club's values. That I think is a crucial part of the puzzle that puts off a lot of people when it comes to administering their values. Speaker 2: Values can also be tricky because sometimes there's a gray area where the interpretation of a situation is not completely clear, or maybe two of your values contradict each other in a certain situation, and it can be hard to figure out what to do. Sometimes it's obvious. If you've got someone who is walking into your gym and they are, I don't know, yelling at people who have different political beliefs than them, in many cases, you might just say, hey, that's not in our values. We're going to stop that right now. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes someone's doing something abusive to the other people in the gym. Again, an easy cut-and-dry situation to understand. Sometimes it's trickier though. And an example that many gyms will struggle with is social media. I would like to get your perspective on this. Whether you're a student or a teacher, you've probably had an experience where someone in your room has said or done some dumb shit on social media that you don't agree with. And this is a difficult one to enforce because now you might have competing values. On one hand, someone could say or do something that you find just repugnant. But on the other hand, we've said before, look, I'm not a big fan of enforcing people's behavior outside of the gym. I don't want to tell people, for instance, where they can or can't train. So, would it be fair for me as someone maybe running a community to also police what they can and can't say on social media? That doesn't seem fair either. I bring this up because this is a very common point of contention that I hear on both sides of the fence. I hear instructors struggling with this where it will come to their attention that a student of theirs has posted something inflammatory on social media. Often, also, I will hear students who are distressed because their instructor has posted something publicly that they very much disagree with from a moral perspective. How do you navigate this particular situation? Because it's really challenging when it comes to policing what our team posts on social media. That so often feels like something that is outside of the scope of what we should be allowed to do, but sometimes people post really horrific shit on social media and action needs to be taken. How do you handle that situation where these two principles are maybe conflicting with each other? Speaker 1: It's simple, you have a conversation. No one, and this is a problem within jiu-jitsu and within martial arts in general. A lot of people, especially coaches, are not willing to have difficult conversations. And sometimes it just has to be difficult. So, for example, I had a situation a good few months ago where someone was posting shit that was pretty offensive towards women, saying, oh, you know, when things go horribly wrong, you don't want a feminist, you want a man, you want a real man. And I said to him, um, you posted this online. I hope you realize, you know, one of the owners of the gym, who's a woman, she's an ex-sexually difficult job where she struggles with violence all day. She deals with shit hitting the fan on a regular basis. We've got firefighters, women who are firefighters, gym police officers, people who are social workers in high-stress roles, who are dealing with really difficult shit and dealing with, and I quote, shit hitting the fan. So, I started by saying, you know, you're not having a go at them, are you? He said, no, but, you know, freedom of speech and, you know, I think this, I think that. I said, okay, but do you not see how that's offensive to them? He said, no, I don't think that's offensive at all. I think it's true. I had it. And he he kind of went on. I was like, okay, right, this is disrespectful to all the people in the gym here who are in these roles. And then the argument went on and essentially said, no, no, I'm holding to my beliefs. I said, but this goes against the values of the club. And he's like, well, you know, I've got my freedom of speech is very important. I said, you know what, man, freedom of speech, absolutely. You can have your freedom of speech, but you agreed to the values when you signed up. This is a clear contravention of the values. So, I want to see where his head was at first. I've had someone else make a bad joke and I said, that was a pretty shitty joke. Like, where's your head at, man? And he said, ah, man, sorry, it's just a shit joke. Didn't mean anything by it. I'll delete it or something like that. Or, you know, I didn't mean to say that shit. I didn't mean to be offensive. Sorry, it wasn't. So, it starts with a conversation. I had another situation where someone was basically posting wildly, horrifically transphobic shit. And I said to him, hey, um, I just noticed this, you're calling all trans people pedophiles. You don't actually think this, do you? And then the person said, yes, I think this. And they started going on and on and other hateful shit. I said, that goes directly against the values of the club. And I said, okay, cancel your membership. I've sent you your money back. I think we'll just part ways here. Other clubs might be into that or might not care, but if you're posting shit, I've asked you where your head's at. I've asked you what you meant by it. Maybe it's just a little shit joke. Everyone posts spicy memes once in a while. Or, you know, post a bit of controversial statements. Sometimes say, I didn't mean anything by that. Sorry, I should have clarified. This is what I actually meant. You know, it's a misunderstanding. But I have the conversation first. And then usually, it gets confirmed pretty quickly what they're thinking and how they're thinking. And sometimes the person doubles down and says, no, fuck this. Freedom of speech. I'm going to say what I want. And then other people say, ah, shit, sorry about that. You might have misinterpreted. I didn't actually mean it this way. This is what I meant. And then I go, oh, cool, we had the conversation. So, all good. Does that make sense, Steve? Speaker 2: Yeah, it absolutely does. And I think that's well said. People often use freedom of speech as a defense for saying pretty horrendous stuff. And they have to remember, at a jiu-jitsu gym, the coach's job as a jiu-jitsu coach is not to help you enforce your government-granted freedom of speech rights to criticize the government. Your goal as a jiu-jitsu coach is to create a safe training environment so that people in the room don't get hurt. And if someone's stated belief system involves dehumanizing or hating another group of people, regardless of the political persuasion of that, and I don't want to make that statement and have it tied to a particular political belief because my experience has been that there's a lot of shitty people across the spectrum here. But if someone comes in with a belief system that is dehumanizing or hateful towards other people who might be in the room, then you can't really say that you've fulfilled your job as a coach to create that safe training environment. I mean, if you say, for example, that you hate a certain demographic of people, how can I trust that you will roll with those people safely? How do I know you won't hurt them? Do I believe you won't? I certainly wouldn't as a coach want to have someone in the room who espouses hateful beliefs because I would never trust them to roll with those people that they hate. I just wouldn't think it could be done safely and I wouldn't want to put the recipients in that awkward situation where they have to roll with someone who espouses very awful beliefs against them directly. So, I think that again, it might on its surface feel like this is a place where our core values can misalign, but when you actually look at it, your job as a coach at the end of the day is to create a safe training environment. And if you can't do that because of someone's conduct outside of the mats, I think it is well within your right as a coach to enforce your values there and remove them. Another common example here is people who come in with a violent past. It's one thing if you believe that a person has truly changed, but if you know that a person is still violent and still unsafe outside of the gym, it would be foolish to allow them to train in the gym when there's that pattern of bad behavior. And I mean, yes, you can argue that, hey, they haven't done anything yet bad here so far, but it would be reasonable as a coach to look at a person and say, hey, look, based on your violent history, we don't think you should be training in this gym. I think it would be negligent to allow that person to train in that case. Speaker 1: I actually have a couple of examples of this. So, there was someone I used to train with about a decade or so ago. He came from a pretty poor background and he got involved with a gang. And he was what you call in Scotland, someone's honor. So, if you're someone's honor, especially in the West of Scotland, when there's a fight, you get called up to do some physical damage to some other folk. And this guy was involved with a gang because he was in a really shitty area. And he assaulted someone and it was a violent crime he committed. That was in his past and he ended up moving away from the area and turned his life around. He got, you know, got a proper job, stuck to martial arts, kept and, you know, basically turned it around. He ended up going to jail for a spell. But he said, I'm going to I got charged, given myself up. I'm going to do the time. I'm away from that life. I don't want anything to do with it. I've moved away from the area. I've made actual practical changes to my life to avoid that again and never be in that situation again because I am not that person anymore. That is an example of someone who's turned it around and someone I would trust training with. And I did train with this person a lot. He actually competed in a tournament with an ankle tag on at one point, which was uh crazy, but he was ultimately a good guy, you know, he turned his life around. Then contrast that with someone who'd never been in prison before to my knowledge, but he'd actually intentionally ripped on heel hooks on several of his training partners at our old gym. And he injured someone uh I I was friends with at the time as well and ended up putting him in crutches. This guy came to my gym without talk, you know, saying anything to anyone, didn't get in touch with us, didn't read the values, anything for that. And I said to him, look, I've spoken to a bunch of people who have trained with you and they've said you're not safe. There are people who are witnesses to this, people who've directly experienced it. This goes against the values of the club. You have shown no real inclination to be different. I just cannot trust you at this point. And he went and his reaction told me everything. He said, oh, who says this? I will sue them. Oh, I'm not like this. So, that's an example of someone who definitely not turned over a new leaf. But again, it's through the lens of the values. I um there's obviously some crimes that if you commit, I would straight up not want you in the club. Like, if you've ever sexually assaulted someone, it's a complete ban. If you've murdered someone, unless it's like uh manslaughter or self-defense, at that point I'd perhaps consider it. But if you if you straight up killed someone, that's a no. That's an absolute fucking no. There are certain crimes I think which leave a black stain on your soul. Like um sexually assaulting, like raping children, for example. That's an obvious like, no, don't come anywhere near us. I hope you fall head first into a wood chipper. There are some crimes I think you just can't come back from. And that again linked to my values. I think there are some things you can come back from, some things you can't. But again, that's the kind of messy bit of applying your values and deciding where or not someone, as you say, has turned things around and whether their intentions are there or not. And you judge people by their not just by their words, but by their actions as well. It's um that's some of the situations I've encountered over the years, Steve. Don't know if that resonates with you in any way. Speaker 2: Absolutely. I agree with you that again, it's very context-dependent. Sometimes there's a path to redemption. Sometimes there is no path to redemption. You could never create a situation where the people in your room would feel safe if they train with this person. And in those cases, again, I think that many of them are probably pretty cut and dry. I think you elaborated on them pretty clearly and I don't think many people would disagree with that assessment. So, the the nice thing is I would presume that that would be non-controversial. I'd also like to flip this around though and talk about the student's perspective. So far we've talked primarily about how the coach enforces values, but students also have a say in this as well. If you're going to train at a gym, then you agree to their value statement, but that also means that you have shared values and that to some extent they are the values that you're championing as well. You as the student should have the right to speak up to value infractions, and you may have to make the difficult decision to walk away if no action is taken based on what you've said or what you've uh complained about. So, what do you do in that situation? If you are a student and you see conduct in the gym that you disagree with. How does a student navigate this journey? Speaker 1: So, I think this this unfortunately depends on the gym because not every gym is good at handling grievances or concerns or worries. So, for example, our gym, we've got people who are sort of touchstones. So, people who aren't necessarily coaches, but maybe senior students who, you know, if someone doesn't go to the head coach, because for as much as I try my best to be accessible, available, non-threatening, I mean, I'm 5'5" and I'm full of short-man Steve. I am hardly an intimidating figure. But with all that said, simply by dint of me being the owner and the head coach, people will not want to talk to me about stuff. They'll feel awkward about it. So, they'll go to a senior student, for example, and that's kind of clearly marked out and people know who they can speak to. And if stuff filters back to me and I go, okay, I should probably do something. I also have an anonymous report form, not just for um stuff that's broken in the gym, but also if someone's got a grievance or something like that. And I make it so I actually put QR codes in our toilets so that because everyone, you know, takes their phone to the toilet these days, and it means that they can report stuff in confidence. Not, you know, because no one will see them scanning the code, because the bathrooms the bathroom itself includes the shower and all the rest of it, that all locks. So, people can report stuff anonymously, no one will know. That's a route to it. If however, your gym doesn't have those, you have to think about, okay, who else do I think might have an issue with this? Perhaps the coach says something out of pocket and you and another student look at each other, you go, hmm, maybe it's someone the senior belts can speak to? Is there another coach we can maybe approach? Is there a path, is there a clearly marked path for us to say, hey, something ain't right here or we're not happy about how this was handled. If there isn't a clearly marked path, you start by speaking to fellow students and then when you go, hey, yeah, a few of us were, you know, think that the coach's 30-minute rant about lions, humility, and the purity of the white race is kind of out of pocket. Maybe we should speak to one of the the higher belts or maybe someone that we know is might be a sympathetic ear. At that point, this is all assuming that the coach is an unreasonable prick, which unfortunately is kind of a case a lot of times. But then you speak to these higher belts and they go, you know what, I'm going to maybe broach it with one of the other coaches or maybe and then bring it up or maybe there's a gym owner who wants to know about stuff. So, I think if there's no clear route, you have to start speaking to those around you and then speak and then when there's a few of you, you're going to go, okay, we should probably speak to a higher belt. Or if you've got a higher belt, you go, oh, if you say, hey, man, what the fuck's going on here? What's this all about? And they go, they're like, man, I'll speak to the coach. I'll speak to one of the other coaches and then we'll address it. If however, the coach digs his heels or the coach isn't willing to reflect on what he says, perhaps the other coach says, hey, man, what you said is fucked up. At that point, you can have to make a decision. Like, is this the gym I want to be in? I mean, I've seen it before in gyms where a coach has has done some fucked up things. You know, they've slept with students, they've cheated on their wife. And if you decide, hmm, that's not the values for me, that's not you have to then decide how important are your values. Because there's also people who say, oh, but I get good training here. So, you know, I'm willing to kind of look past that. You have to make a decision based on your values and how important they are to you. If your values are important to you, you will go, nah, I'm not into this. I'm going somewhere else. Like, I had it before where I was at a gym where I left it because what the coach was doing was out of alignment with my moral compass. And I gave up a fair amount to leave that place, but it was the right thing to do because I could not have lived with that. I could not that went against my values to such an extent. I was like, nah, I am not tolerating that. I'm not here for it. This goes against my values. I'm leaving because no one's doing anything about this. Speaker 2: Yeah, from my experience, values decisions like this are easier to deal with if you've thought about what your values are in advance. My pet theory is that many of the problems we see in jiu-jitsu where something horrendous happens and no action is taken. I always wonder how much of that has happened because the gym has no clear moral compass on what their values are. No one has ever actually sat down and plotted them out and so they got blindsided by an incident and didn't handle it well because they didn't have a game plan. They hadn't kind of made a pre-commitment to themselves about what we actually believe in. This is a relatable problem. When people start a jiu-jitsu gym, their thought is, hey, I'm going to get paid money to do the thing I love and teach people the thing I love. Most jiu-jitsu instructors don't get into this expecting that, you know, some horrendous thing could happen at their gym one day. And so I understand how challenging it can be to deal with those situations if you're not prepared, but the best thing to do is to be prepared and to think about what are my values and what would I do in a situation like this? Because you should be able to go as close to on autopilot as possible when a value infraction happens, since you already are clear on what your values are. That applies to a student as well. I recommend that everyone spend a little bit of time thinking about what jiu-jitsu really means to them and what their values really are and what they expect from a gym and the people in the gym and whether they're actually getting that. Because sometimes, as you mentioned, the line between what's right and what's wrong isn't always completely clear in a few murky situations. Maybe something isn't as cut and dry as, hey, this person committed a crime. Maybe there is a little bit of of gray area and it's a tricky thing. And there can be situations where you may carry deeply held values and discover that your gym actually doesn't share those values. And maybe the only way to get around that is to part ways. If it's an irreconcilable difference in values, then sometimes the smartest thing to do is to just not train there. And the best way to deal with that situation is for both parties to be upfront about what their values are in advance so that you don't get blindsided by this three years into your training. Many jiu-jitsu people, myself included, have had this happen where they just found a gym and they started training there because they liked the jiu-jitsu and they liked their training partners and they didn't realize until years later that there was a value mismatch. It's much better to catch that stuff up front, even if it means, as you mentioned, a difficult conversation that people don't want to have. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think so I'm really bad for being defensive and taking things personally. It's one of my flaws that I will freely admit. I do try my damnedest. Sometimes I do fail at it to take criticism on board or to take slap down, you know, being told that I'm wrong or that I've made a fuck up. Because no one likes to be told they fucked up. No one enjoys it. But it is still crucial. And sometimes I'll be a little I'll be a little arsehole about it. But then I'll generally think on it and I'll go, you know what, actually, they were right. Fuck. I fucked it. And, you know, so it's never easy to say, but then you have to analyze why are you wrong? You have to actually think about your actions or your words and go, oh, I realize that I am wrong. And I also realize why I am wrong. You know, perhaps you made an off-color joke to someone and you've kind of upset someone and you just unnecessarily been a dick. Uh if however, you've uh had a go at someone for being a piece of shit, then and you get told off for it, you'll go, okay, what did I do? Man, I'm not am I wrong here? Maybe I am wrong and then you think, well, actually, no, this person's been a cunt. Maybe I've gone about it the wrong way, but the sentiment is still true. So, again, introspection is required here. And you know, a bit of emotional intelligence as well. I think. Speaker 2: Well said, my friend. Well, let's wrap this up. Any closing thoughts or things you wanted to get into which we didn't cover here, Giles, or did we cover all of the main talking points? Speaker 1: I think we covered all the main talking points. Again, I just want to reiterate that it is hard to run a gym. I get it. To my fellow gym owners, believe me, I know what it's like to be juggling chainsaws. I know what it's like to lay awake at night until 4:00 in the morning worrying about this, that, and the next thing. I know what it's like to have that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you have to have a difficult conversation with someone. I know these emotions. I've run the club for nearly seven years now. I've had our own premises since um since July 2019. I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It's sometimes you think to yourself, why am I doing this? Am I wrong in the head? However, you have to think about why you got into it in the first place. You got into it because you wanted to do a sport that you actively enjoy and you want people to share in that. You want other people to enjoy this passion that you have. You've got a big roaring fire and you want other people to be warmed by it. So, you have to think about your actual the the thing that get makes you get up in the morning. The thing that makes you put that knife back in the drawer instead of putting it across your wrist. The thing that stops you from jumping out of a fifth-story window. You have to think about the thing that drives you, which is usually your passion for the sport, for the art, what have you. The fact that you want people to enjoy it and to partake in it and to be as excited as you are. And you think about, how can I look after those people? How can I get more people in who would I think would enjoy this? How do I make them want to stay? Not need to, but want to stay. I think when you put it like that, it's actually relatively simple. And I know there's all the nitty-gritty, the messy guts of that come with dealing with people. But I think if you remember why you're doing it and you think about your own passion for it and what you can do for others. Uh the Japanese have a term for this. I forget it. I think it's Ikigai or something like that. But I firmly believe in it where you want to find something which you're good at. Something you can get you make a living off of. Something you think the world needs. And something which can do good for others. I think those are the the four things. You keep those in mind and you stick by those. I don't think you can go too far wrong. That's I think all I'd say to that, Steve. Speaker 2: Well said, my friend. Now, if people heard all of this and they want to train with you, you've mentioned your gym a few times. Let's plug it. What's your gym? Where is it? And how can people come train with you? Speaker 1: Yes. So, I I run a gym in Rutherglen in Glasgow called Ronin Grappling. We run seven days a week. We've got morning, lunchtime, evening classes. We've got weekend sessions. We've got a great bunch of folk. We've got a sauna for those who like a little sauna as well. We've got a proper coffee machine, which is very important. And I'm very happy to say we've got a really good community, full of sound folk. And I know everyone says we got a community and all that. But I've got a good group of folk who get on with each other, who help each other inside and outside the gym. Actually enjoy being around each other. And I'm very proud to have them all at the gym. I also run a little um instructional site called BJJ Codex, which has about, I think there's about 44 hours worth of instructional content and technical breakdowns and match analysis and annotations and narrations. So, if anyone wants to hear me curse profusely whilst teaching some pretty effective stuff, then um which is very short and very easy to digest and won't make you fall the fuck asleep, then please feel free to go to BJJCodex.com. Speaker 2: Amazing, my friend. I will put links to those in the show notes to make it easy for people to find. So, just pop open your podcast player, you should be able to hit those links and get in touch with Giles quickly. I'll also put a link to our stuff. Everything we make lives at BJJMentalModels.com. I always tell people at the bare minimum, the the podcast, both the full-length episodes like this, the mini episodes, and our newsletter are all completely free. So, make sure you're you're catching up on those if nothing else. If you really want to work on your skill development and build up your jiu-jitsu career with us, BJJ Mental Models Premium is the way that you do that. We've assembled the world's largest library of jiu-jitsu audio style courses on concepts, strategy, philosophy, mental models, of course, the things that give you big wins without getting too much into the nitty-gritty of the specific technical details, which are covered by everybody else. Definitely recommend people checking that out. There's a lot of other reasons to go premium. We have amazing ongoing premium podcasts. If you like Rob Bernacki or Emily Kwok, their podcasts are exclusive to BJJ Mental Models Premium. And of course, if you go up to our coaching or pro tiers, we can even help you with direct coaching through rolling reviews or even business support on the marketing and sales front. These are rapidly growing areas of the business, especially on the pro side. So, I definitely do suggest if you are a jiu-jitsu gym owner and if there's anything that we can do to help support you so that you're more successful, that's what our pro tier is for. You can always reach out to me to ask for more details about that. Or if any of this sounds good, it's all at BJJMentalModels.com. Again, I will put a link in the show notes. But Giles, my friend, thank you so much for coming by. Always appreciate these chats. Really insightful, man. And I'm hoping that one day I can make it over there to train with you in person. I've always wanted to go to Scotland. Speaker 1: Well, Steve, you'd be more than welcome my gym. And I'll show you around Scotland and all the beautiful sites. And I don't know if you like a wee whiskey or not, Steve. Speaker 2: I am a huge whiskey fan. That's one of my favorite drinks. Speaker 1: Oh, Steve, Steve, you have no idea. I know all the best uh watering holes in Glasgow for proper whiskey. I know the places where they've got the good stuff under lock and key. There's a distillery in Glasgow. I will show you all. But in all seriousness, Steve, thank you very much for having me on, for having these sort of big, important discussions. I've got to say, BJJ Mental Models is an oasis of calm, rational, clear thinking where everyone's really good to each other, really supportive. The amount of great advice I've gotten from it, not just as a practitioner, but also as a business owner and gym owner, has been immensely helpful. For me, it's well worth the fee and honestly, I cannot thank you enough for running such a fantastic resource that everyone benefits from. Uh so, yes, when you come on over, the whiskey's on me. Don't you worry about that. Speaker 2: Sounds good. Thank you for the kind words, by the way. I'm looking forward to it, man. And hey, you'll have to introduce me to Drew McIntyre. I'm a huge fan. Speaker 1: Oh, well, I don't know him myself, but I'm sure I know someone who knows him. There's only ever six degrees of separation. So, don't you worry about that. I'm sure we can arrange something. Speaker 2: As a Canadian, I am used to people asking me, oh, you're you're from Canada. Do you know my friend John? You know, this country of 40 million people. Yes, of course, I know John. Well, anyway, thank you so much, Giles. This is fantastic. And of course, to the listeners as well, again, not lost on me that you got a lot of content out there to consume. And for the people who do choose to spend that time with us, I truly do appreciate it. Thanks as always for hanging out with us here for your time and attention, and I will talk to you in the next one. See you then.