Ep. 342: Developing Coaches, feat. Cody Maltais

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 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 BJJ Mental Models.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 342. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And today, I've got a first-timer, but a well-connected friend of the show. I got Cody Malte on the line from Elevate MMA. Cody, how's it going? Speaker 1: It's going great, Steve. You know, excited to be, excited to be talking to you. Speaker 2: I am also super glad to have you here. Now, we've got a really cool topic to carve out, but as I mentioned, you're quite well connected within the BJJ Mental Models community. A lot of people, especially those on our premium service, probably have heard your name here and there. But why don't you give yourself a quick introduction just so that people can figure out where you come from? Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm currently the owner and head coach at Elevate MMA in Durham, North Carolina. We are a gym that's been around for the last nine years. Before that, kind of trained all over the place. I started out in North Carolina at a Hoist Gracie school, got my blue belt there. When I went into the Marine Corps, I ended up in California, and so I was training both with a Checkmat affiliate under Pancho Feliciano, and then also I was training at Team Quest, the Temecula location, and that was basically when Dan Henderson was fighting for the UFC title. So, we had a lot of big names in the gym, a really professionally run program. And then when I got out of the Marine Corps, I ended up in Las Vegas, Nevada, training primarily out of Robert Drysdale's gym, and then also training out of Extreme Couture, and ended up getting my black belt under Robert Drysdale, probably about six months before the academy opened. So, that's just a little bit of kind of the background. Speaker 2: Amazing, sir. Glad to hear. Well, let's talk a little bit about your gym and how it's structured. And the reason why I want to lead into that is because it informs the topic we're going to get into in a second here. But maybe talk about Elevate MMA and how you guys operate. Speaker 1: Yeah, so when we started out, you know, I hadn't been teaching in the area. I didn't have any students that I was bringing with me into this new venture. So, we were truly starting from scratch. I had, you know, zero students, and then we had the first class, and I had one person in the first class, and then we just kind of built from there. And so, early on, it was myself as a fairly new black belt who had fought professionally and was still actively taking fights at that time. And then I had, you know, a group of 10 to 20 white belts. And then over time, you know, obviously the gym kept growing, but one of the biggest things that I knew I wanted to make a part of the academy very, very early on was having voices besides my own that were very prominent, and finding ways to empower other instructors and to create connections between other instructors and students. So, I didn't want this to be a gym where there was, you know, one coach and everything that that person said was the way it was in this world. I wanted a place where there was a lot of exchange of ideas and a lot of respect for the fact that there can be different approaches that can be successful for different people. And I knew that, you know, if the gym was limited to my ability to connect and reach students, then we were going to have a cap on how far we could go. And I always believed that we would be able to create this ecosystem of multiple individuals that could kind of raise us up overall. So, that was kind of the beginning thought. And then over time, as we started adding coaches, you don't know what you don't know when you start out. And so, for me, it was a big learning experience figuring out how to select which coaches I did want to work with, and then how to empower them and develop them and give them guidance. And I think, you know, just like learning Jiu-Jitsu, where you come in and and you want to be pointed in a direction, I think a lot of times people get to a certain level of technical ability and knowledge, and then they just get thrown into teaching, and someone says, okay, well, now just transfer that to other people. And since it is a very specific skill set of being able to teach well, it was one of those things where it had to be cultivated and curated over time. Speaker 2: Well said. And as I implied earlier, people who are familiar with the BJJ Mental Models community are probably aware of some of the people within that crew. Drew Foster most notably comes to mind. He runs a Jiu-Jitsu meta and competition analysis podcast for us called State of the Meta on BJJ Mental Models Premium. He's also very well known across the community as well, and I think many of your other coaches have been on our podcast before too. But all of this touches on the topic that you proposed here, which is the art of building other coaches. And I love this because we are often so focused on individual performance in Jiu-Jitsu, both from the athlete perspective, but also from the coach's perspective. Most of the coaching dialogue that I hear is about how can you individually be the best coach that you can be. And that's important, but at any scale, your organization will grow to the point where it can no longer depend entirely on you being the one to provide direction. So, then as a leader, you have to decide how do I build out my second in command? How do I create a new tier, a new generation of instructors who can pick up the ball so that it's not dependent on me? And that's really the difference between an organization that is, you know, a cult of personality dependent on one person versus an organization that is self-sustaining. And I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Many friends of mine like Jeff Shaw have talked specifically about your approach here and how you do it. So, I'd love to maybe hear about how you do it. How does this happen, you know, when you go to vet new instructors? How do you find the right people rather than just grabbing the most convenient person to teach that class? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think backing up before we even talk about coaching or selecting coaches or developing coaches, it comes back to, you know, kind of like an overall thesis of how humans work and learn and perform their best. And I'm a firm believer that people will do their best work when they are encouraged and supported in following their own authentic path. And that's a very, you know, easy kind of cop-out thing to say, and it's a little bit harder to live it every single day in practice. Because that means they're going to be making choices outside of what you want to do. You know, they're not going to be a cookie-cutter approach. And I think if you want to talk about, you know, having the best experience possible. So, if I was, you know, hungry and I wanted to get lunch, and I wanted to have the greatest hamburger I'd ever had in my life, it wouldn't be, I wouldn't walk into a McDonald's to get that. Like, you know what you're going to get at McDonald's, and it's such a systemized process that they've figured out over the years, but it's not a unique experience. Nobody's coming to that McDonald's that day trying to, you know, express their art of how food should be prepared and and delivered to somebody. By the same token, by creating those processes and procedures and creating that system, you kind of raise the floor a little bit for like the bad outcomes. So, if you have a good process and procedure, you're not going to have a horrible meal, but you also take away the ability to have the best meal. And so, that flows through every single decision that I make within the academy. So, for example, when I'm coaching fighters, I tell them very specifically that they cannot abdicate their responsibility to me as the head coach. They can't simply say, I'll just trust what you say. So, I I tell them all the time that their voice has to be the loudest voice. And, you know, right before they go out to fight, I remind them of all their training. I remind them of all the time they've spent to get ready for this moment. And I let them know that I'm going to tell them what I'm seeing, but what they're feeling and perceiving within the fight is much more important. So, if they do something counter to my instructions, I give them my blessing before the fight that that's what I want. So, that same thing comes out in how you teach and train and bring along your staff. And so, I'm very intentional about giving coaches structure and guidance and ideas, but not dictating what they teach or how they teach. And so, Drew's a phenomenal example because he and I have known each other a very long time, and most of those earlier interactions were just like both being, we just loved, you know, learning martial arts. So, we would be at a lot of the same seminars. And then we both kind of developed this love of the front headlock game. So, I remember before Drew and I even trained together, he sent me this insane Google Doc that he had built with all these time-stamped clips of all these different moves getting used by high-level practitioners at certain times. And I was just, I was blown away by the amount of like time and effort that he had put into creating something like that. And I think he was a purple belt at the time. He wasn't teaching actively, you know, this is just something that he loved learning. And so, when it came time to look for somebody to teach, I knew beyond any doubt that Drew had this amazing love and appreciation for learning and sharing the art. And I knew that that was the kind of thing that would be really, really, really successful in an instructor role. But the other thing about Drew is he's like one of the nicest people possible, but he has almost no ego. And sometimes for instructing, like ego makes things a little bit easier. If you're going to get up in front of a big group of people and and tell them that they should do something this way, like sometimes ego can help grease the wheels on that. And so, a big part of my job with Drew was just constantly giving him the reminder that he knew the right answer already. And that anything he chose to do was going to be the right thing. And so, it's been really fun and really rewarding to watch him step into more and more responsibility at the academy. And right now, he's teaching like 90% of the grappling classes at the academy. So, he's taken on like a a giant workload and doing it in a very unique style, and I train in his classes, one because they're incredibly fun and great for developing my Jiu-Jitsu, but more importantly, I'm learning a lot about how to run classes by kind of stealing some of his ideas and and his methodology. Speaker 2: Yeah, people who have listened to Drew's work before on our premium feed are probably well aware of what you're talking about. The thing about Drew that has always stood out to me so much is, as you talked about, his incredible analytical ability. He's so good at analyzing and figuring out what is going on and what the trends are within the sport, and I can imagine that that translates quite effectively to his on-the-ground coaching in the gym. There's a few things there that I wanted to specifically dig into and discuss. You talked about how if you try to systemize everything, you can take away the personality of what you're trying to achieve and you can eliminate the uniqueness and the individual expression that makes certain coaches really stand out. It's probably worth pointing out that there is a place for that systemized approach. Yes, if you go to McDonald's, it's a system. You're going to get the same thing no matter what, and it might be a little bit bland, but sometimes you do just want to go to McDonald's. So, you know, I've kind of changed my thinking on this. I'm not as critical of those types of gyms as I used to be, but I think that for most cultures, a more bottom-up approach where you encourage people to grow and be unique and express themselves, I think it's a much more effective way to build a Jiu-Jitsu gym, and I think that it takes a lot of the load off of the main instructor once you have that system in place. It gets a lot easier then to start delegating and letting other people really rise up within your community. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the things that culturally exists within the little Jiu-Jitsu and martial arts bubble is a lot of gatekeeping around who's allowed to teach. And so, there's a lot of, you know, jokes and memes and and we see them all the time about the white belt who's teaching during the class, or the blue belt who thinks they know everything. And we try really hard to go the complete opposite direction. I'm very open and encouraging to people who are very early in their journey teaching. And that can take multiple forms, but, you know, as simple as stepping off to the side during the class or coaching somebody through something during a drill session. I think that's all really positive behavior. And I think part of that is because when you look at how people retain and learn, there's no activity that helps memory retention of a subject better than teaching it. So, the more opportunities you give your students to teach, the more opportunities you're going to make them better just in general. But also, I think, you know, from my own journey, I got really lucky. You know, my coaches, I'll never forget the first Jiu-Jitsu class I ever taught because both of my coaches were brown belts at the time, and Dave Camarillo came to town. Absolutely phenomenal Judo and Jiu-Jitsu black belt, has done basically everything cool you could do in the world of fighting and coaching at one point or another. And everyone was obsessed with Dave. And so, the coaches, it was a lunchtime class, and they broke off, and they were like, look, Cody, we're going to go just like talk about some high-level cool kid Jiu-Jitsu here. You're in charge of teaching the class today. And I think I was 12 months into training, and I basically just taught almost verbatim what one of my coaches had taught me the week prior. And Dave came over and was really nice after the class and and was very complimentary. And, you know, from I took that moment and that opportunity to teach, one, it really opened me up to understanding how much I loved coaching and loved passing on information to people. And then also, it gave me permission to kind of do that a little bit more. So, very quickly, there was a couple other newer students that like I took an interest in and and gave them a lot of time and energy and attention, and then would go out and watch them compete and watch them do stuff and have some success. And that was really exciting. So, that was something that, you know, was an early part of my experience that I really wanted to bring in to the gym. And I think that's one of the things that, you know, how you structure your academy matters a lot. And if you're creating opportunities where you value everyone and value their knowledge and value what they can contribute, it makes it a lot easier for a new coach to step in and realize that that's also an acceptable thing, rather than trying to say that there's one way to do things, and then they've got to live up to that standard, and they've got to be a cookie-cutter that kind of matches up with what's already going on. Speaker 2: If you were to really explain how the world of Jiu-Jitsu coaching has changed in the last few years, to me, I'd say that the biggest change is this realization that we don't want to avoid letting people make mistakes. We want to encourage them to make mistakes because it is through mistakes that they will learn. And that's kind of the foundation of a lot of modern training practices. If you go back in time to a few decades ago, a lot of Jiu-Jitsu coaching using a more traditional method might be more about mistake avoidance. So, the idea was, how can we teach students so that they get it right the first time and they never make mistakes? I remember when I was coming up in Jiu-Jitsu, black belts would sit me down and micromanage every detail of what I was doing, and if I made a mistake, they would stop me and try to correct me. And that stop-and-start way of coaching, that mistake avoidance style is actually not great for learning Jiu-Jitsu. You need to be able to make mistakes, not just because that is how you learn, but also because a culture where mistakes are allowed, that's a culture where exploration is allowed. If you're telling people you can't make mistakes, that means they can't take any risk. They can't deviate from the box at all. And that's really not a great way to do something like coach Jiu-Jitsu. And I'm going to guess that from what you're saying, it sounds like you take the same approach when building coaches as well. You don't want them to just do exactly what you say and nothing else, but rather you want them to express themselves and be willing to step up even at very junior levels. Now, many coaches will push back on that and they'll say, how can you have a white belt coaching Jiu-Jitsu? This seems to be something that comes up very often in just if you look on social media where people will always criticize whether, you know, a person, well, that person's not a black belt. Can they coach? And going down the chain, people get very critical once you get to blue or especially white belt about coaching. That's understandable, but I think there are significant cultural benefits to allowing white and blue belts to coach as long as they do so somewhat effectively. I'd love to turn this over to you though to explain that a bit because, as you mentioned, coaching at such a an early stage in your journey is something people might consider controversial. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think where people get lost is I think we consistently get locked into conversations at the wrong level of the conversation. And by that, I mean that if we're sitting here talking about exactly where your thumb's supposed to go on a grip, we're probably a little bit too far down the rabbit hole detail-wise. And it's super fun and super interesting to me. I love coaching, I love learning, I love seeing how different people do things. So, obviously, there's this huge push right now and a lot of discussion about, you know, ecological dynamics and constraint-led approach. And obviously, Drew's running a lot of his classes that way. And so, that's great. I love it, right? And to your point, it gives you an opportunity to iterate through a lot and try a lot of different things. And so, that's the goal, right? That's what we want to get to. But once again, I think even having the discussion at that level, I think is missing the bigger picture, which is that good coaching to me comes down to intent, immersion, and then passion. And so, if you show up with the intent of just helping this group learn Jiu-Jitsu, fall in love with Jiu-Jitsu, get better at grappling, get better at fighting, and if you immerse yourself in everything that helps you move forward as a coach, and if you show up every single day excited to do that, if there's nothing that puts out that flame within you, then you're going to do great things. And, you know, I had two of my students got offers to coach when they were both blue belts, and they were going to coach at another facility. And obviously, they didn't have to come to me and, you know, run that by me. Like, it's it's a paid opportunity to share stuff that they've invested time and energy to learn. So, they had no requirement to come talk to me, but they both asked me in advance, you know, just my thoughts of where they were at and and what would happen as a result of of doing that. And, you know, I gave them my absolute support for them moving on and and trying that. And they've done phenomenal. So, you take two blue belts, you know, not significant amount of time in the sport and not a significant like competition background or anything else like that. But their names are Dylan McGrath and Christian Nassaro, and they're both now purple belts. And they teach at Hometown Martial Arts over in Raleigh, and they've been doing phenomenal. Like, I look at their program and and what they've brought about, and they show up every single day with the intention of just doing a good job coaching, and they're passionate, and they're learning, and the pressure of having to show up with something to teach means that they're putting a lot of time thinking about what they're going to show up and teach. And I think a lot of times, you know, coaches who have done this for a long time, it's really easy to get on cruise control. It's really easy to just fall back on a lesson plan that you've taught before. It's really easy to just kind of figure it out on the fly because you know you can kind of teach well enough to make it all go together. And I think when you have somebody brand new that isn't as sure of themselves, they're going to put in the extra time and effort and work to put on a phenomenal experience. And that matters. You know what I mean? So, for those newer people, they're going to do a really good job. I think, you know, one thing I've observed in general, and this is not just, you know, combat sports, this is across all coaching, is you've got to find people at the period of time in their lives where they're really ready to invest themselves in that process of coaching. And coaches or staffs can get stale over time. And that process of bringing in new people can really push things forward. And so, I think giving people a shot early on as a chance to to coach, you know, speaking of, you know, BJJ Mental Models alums, Jeff Shaw does a really, really cool thing where he has blue belts prepare lesson plans and then they get to teach just like a one-off class. And that's something we used to do in the past at Elevate as well. But it's just, you know, creating these opportunities for people to step up and test their skills. And what you find is that those individuals will exceed expectations a lot because they care so much. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really brilliant insight. You will always hear people say, well, these people are not qualified to teach. And look, I mean, if we're going to be honest, most Jiu-Jitsu classes, the way that they're run, probably you could learn as much just watching a YouTube video. I mean, I'm not saying that all coaches are like that, but as you mentioned, many Jiu-Jitsu coaches just go on autopilot. And this idea that the belt around your waist is a requirement to be able to convey knowledge is really, I think, a little bit outdated. It's not a great way to think about things. I'm not saying a white belt or a blue belt is going to be the best person to put up at the front of your class, but I am saying that encouraging them to share the knowledge they have is beneficial because first of all, yeah, they might make mistakes, but it is through mistakes that they learn. Second, that is how you encourage that culture of play and exploration. When you as the head coach forbid other people from coaching, which I have heard as a policy at some gyms where people below a certain level are forbidden from coaching, that can be dangerous from a culture standpoint because next thing you know, you create a an environment where only one person is allowed to communicate, and that's not a collaborative environment anymore. And I think the damages of that can be greater than the damages of accidentally miscommunicating a bit of info here and there. So, I just encourage people to be a little bit more open with their coaching. A lot of the greatest coaches, they've shared stories about how they've learned from white and blue belts who have barely any experience because they may stumble onto something, those junior belts that you just never saw, or maybe you're so set in your ways that you're blind to changes in the environment. That is where young and inexperienced people are so valuable is they tend to be so much better at spotting changes and trends than those of us who have been doing this for a long time. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you just have every opportunity to create the culture where people feel comfortable stepping up. And I think that's one of the biggest things that, you know, if we're talking about practical advice for somebody who's owning a gym or running a program and wants to encourage more coaches, you have to give people permission to make those mistakes. And I've had individuals who are brown belts and black belts who didn't want to teach because they were worried they were going to do it wrong. And I was like, man, if if you step up in front of the class and you just show what you know, you just talk to people and and talk about grappling and talk about how you want things to be, it's going to come out okay. Like, you're going to figure it out. And teaching a bad class is not the end of the world. I mean, every single instructor has walked off the mats and realized they set things up in a very bad way on occasion. Like, sometimes you don't have the right group to teach what you want to teach. Sometimes the energy's not right in the room. You know, so it's it's all about realizing that not every class is going to be perfect, but it's the exact same thing that we would tell a brand new white belt. If you're a brand new white belt, it's never going to be perfect to come in and start training. You just got to get in there and and start putting in the work, and you're going to have good days, and you're going to have bad days, and you just keep doing it. If you want to coach, it's going to be the same process. It's just moved up a level and it's a slightly different skill set, and you have to find out if you like it or not. But I think, you know, one of the big things is if you are already an instructor, then you're very comfortable, in most cases, getting up in front of a group, talking, doing those kind of things. I think that's the piece that more people need encouragement with. I think you find people in your gym that are very comfortable like stepping out and talking, and then you find people in the gym that are a little reticent to come out, but just because they don't want to speak loudly in a group doesn't mean they're not going to be a phenomenal coach. And so, it's finding the time and ways to give them those opportunities and encouraging towards those opportunities. And I think that's how you develop a good group of coaches over time. Speaker 2: Anyone who's ever been in a situation like this understands that there's value sometimes in creating silence and in not being the person who's speaking and doing the communication all the time. And that can sometimes feel awkward because when there is silence, when no one is taking on the leadership role, the person who is traditionally the leader often feels like, well, I've got to step up and kill the awkwardness and fall into this role because everyone's expecting me to be the leader and to teach, and so they do that. But if you want to create an environment where other people can teach, as you mentioned, you need to draw that out of people. And that might mean being willing to take a step back and watch the the wheels come off sometimes during a class. And this can be a challenging thing to do. I've had guests on the podcast who have talked about getting anxiety because as the coach, they're trying to step back, and they're watching people make mistakes, and their inclination is to jump in and take the reins. But then they have to think and realize, what kind of culture do I really want to build here? Do I want to build the kind of culture where any mistake means I immediately jump in and intervene? What does that mean? That's going to mean a culture where only I can ultimately teach. And it is difficult sometimes for coaches to take a step back and let things happen, even when they can tell that things aren't necessarily going the way that they would do things themselves. But as you mentioned, we've all been there before. When anyone starts coaching, they make mistakes. And much like how when you start Jiu-Jitsu, you're not going to be great at it from day one, it's the same with coaching. And that means that as the coach who is creating the next generation of coaches, you sometimes need to give them a bit of leeway to do things that are maybe not the optimal way or not the way that you would do them personally. Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's funny, you know, because we have so many voices in the academy, that exact situation plays out a lot. And so, especially, you know, multiple coaches show up for our MMA sparring class. So, Dwan's there, and uh, Coach Neil's there, and and myself. And then one of our fighters will ask a question at the end of class. So, a big part of our academy overall, we spend a lot of time just hanging out after class and kind of talking through stuff. And I know there's, you know, certain academies where it's like, class is over, everybody leaves the mats, it's done. But we just, you know, we build in time in between classes so people can kind of sit there and go over what they learned or ask any lingering questions. So, it's a big part of what we do. And so, early on, when we had multiple coaches on the mat, a fighter would ask a question, and then, you know, one coach would give his take, and then the next coach would give his take, and then the next coach would give his take because we didn't want anything to get left out. And we were like, oh, no, there there's one other thing you should know. And over time, we all kind of learned to balance that out. And one, you know, even if we have something that we think we can add, like, just sometimes, to your point, like, let there be silence. Like, what they've taken on is enough. Let them digest that lesson first. But I think the biggest thing that's been, you know, pushing us forward in that respect is when a student asks a question, kind of reflecting that question back to another student that you know has a background in that area. So, I think, you know, when you watch your students develop over time, you just start seeing where they're good and where they're strong and and their game develops in a certain way. Have an opportunity that when somebody's stuck in that particular situation, to to lift them up as the subject matter expert and let them share their experience. And so, I think that's one of the things that has been extremely helpful. And to your point, the first time I, you know, I passed the mic to somebody, they may not have a beautiful polished answer for why they do what they do. It just may be something that comes natural to them. But over time, if we let them make the mistake, they're going to find their way through that as well. So, yeah, I think, you know, being able to to step back and let a couple car crashes happen and let things not be perfect, definitely, you know, pushes things forward in the long term. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important for everyone to have context that as seriously as we sometimes take Jiu-Jitsu, we got to remember, we're not launching nuclear missiles here. This isn't the end of the world if you make a mistake. It's okay to make a mistake on the mats when you're training and even when you're teaching. That's part of the the process. And I also really love the point that you brought up about giving someone else the podium to let them share their answer, even if you already know the answer. I do this a lot and it sometimes confuses people where I will pick someone and I will ask them to explain something. And it might be something very elementary. And people sometimes when they see me do this, they think, why are you asking that person, Steve? Don't you know how to do this? And yes, I do, but it's not about me. It's about giving that other person the opportunity to share their knowledge and to teach. If people always come to me for the answer, then that creates a dependency that I don't want. So, whenever you're building a Jiu-Jitsu gym, or actually really any form of community, a tip that I have is instead of just answering every question that comes your way, delegate to other people. Call on other people. Give them the opportunity to feature their knowledge. Even if it's something you could have answered really quickly, give other people the opportunity to speak up. Because sometimes there's more value being exchanged than just, hey, what's the answer to my question? Sometimes the value is in giving people the experience to be the person who answers the question. That itself is tremendously valuable when you're trying to build coaches. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And I think when you do something like that in a class environment, it also kind of makes every other student turn on their brain of like how they would answer that question and they probably feel a little more comfortable like questioning the answer, which I think is valuable as well. You know what I mean? I think we all have our set preferences and the things that we fall back on, but it's good for everybody to take time and like explore those questions on their own. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, especially because as you get further into Jiu-Jitsu, there seem to be fewer and fewer right answers, and everything kind of depends on the context and the person. And so, having that flexibility in your culture to accommodate those different answers is really important. Now, I do want to ask you though, how do you identify the people who might have that future coaching potential? Yes, of course, we can and probably should let everyone in the room get experience being the speaker and being the coach. But how do you identify who in the gym is going to become the next person who is one of the coaches on your team? Speaker 1: Yeah, so that, you know, it's been a very evolving process over the years of how I've done that. And I think, you know, the culture that I grew up in was that there's kind of a natural progression where somebody just gets good and has knowledge, and then they just kind of get turned over to be like the kids' coach or the beginners' coach. And I don't think that's really ideal for a bunch of reasons. I look at within our academy, I look a lot more at how people treat other students, but specifically how they treat students that are newer. So, I'm looking for individuals who are good at connecting with people and lifting them up and making them feel involved, and who are good at creating basically that like moment, that inflection point of loving the sport. So, when, you know, like we talked about with Drew with his Google Doc, like it's so clear that he loves what he's doing. And so, it's very easy for him to create that same feeling in somebody else. And so, I think instead of, you know, looking at somebody's accomplishments or how skilled they are on the mat, it comes back so much more to how they treat people and how people feel coming out of those interactions. And then another huge piece for me is having a group of coaches that's kind of representative of the community that we're in. And one of our black belts, Nate Chow, said something, you know, very intelligent the other day, and he said that if he's in a school and the demographics of the school don't generally reflect the demographics of the community, it's kind of a red flag to him. And I thought that was an interesting way to put it. But I want the same thing out of our coaching staff. You know, I want like Durham's a very diverse area. There's a lot of different groups of people here. And so, I want our coaching staff to reflect that because there's going to be different opportunities to connect with people just through shared experience. So, that's something that I have to mindfully curate. So, that is a part of it. And then I would say, the other part of selecting coaches comes down to finding the people that connect with the other coaches and buy into the overall mission of the academy. And so, that's something that I kind of didn't understand as much at first, but as a group, as an organization, we've kind of all got to have our oars in the water and we've all got to be going in the same direction. And so, that's something that I've looked for more and more is that alignment piece with the coaches really, you know, believing in the academy and the mission of the academy, and then also finding coaches that really like and respect their fellow coaches at the academy. That's one of the biggest things that I've noticed has been like a force multiplier is when the coaches believe in each other and are learning from each other, the academy almost always goes in the right direction. And when there's, you know, that internal conflict or when, you know, teachers think that they're what they're doing is more valuable than what another coach is doing, that's where we've had issues in the past. So, you know, in this current iteration of the academy, that's one of the things that I've prioritized the most is creating a group of coaches that really respect one another and that prioritize learning from one another so we can kind of get better all together. Speaker 2: Yeah, super well said. People often forget that when you're building a team, the goal is not just to find the absolute best people. The goal is to create a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. A good team adds value in and of itself beyond just the people on the bench. So, if you are just focused on paper credentials, what you can wind up with is a lot of people who are individually brilliant, but maybe they just don't get along. And that can tank a team completely. When the coaches have friction, everyone in the room feels it, and that really hurts things. So, the most important thing is often how well do these coaches integrate with the culture and with the other people on our team, both the other coaches and the students as well. I bring this up because Jiu-Jitsu tends to be a place where people are very focused on credentials. Who has the more senior belt? Who has the more competition wins? Who has more world championships? Who has the better lineage? These tend to be things that people look for in a Jiu-Jitsu coach, whereas often, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Those factors don't mean that that person is going to be able to convey that knowledge or that greatness onto you. It just means that that's something that they did. Really, when you're building a coaching team, what is more important is how well can they operate within the system that you've built. And that is a hard thing to screen for. When you're, you know, anyone who's ever had to hire or manage or build a team understands this, that it's not just about what's on the resume, it's also about how does that person integrate with the other people who we already have in the group. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, some of the individual challenges when we talk about running an organization and an academy in a way that's not as high that's not as based on hierarchies, you end up with a lot of people, you know, exploring personal freedom through a lot of different ways. And that means that the people who are running the classes, the people who are in charge of the space, have to have a lot of courage to hold the line of what behaviors are acceptable and not acceptable. And I think that's one of the things that when you look at, you know, that more set process model, that's one of the things that's avoided. You know, when you set up a rule that everybody has to wear a certain color gi and they have to bow to a picture and they have to line up a certain way, then you're going to, people are not going to deviate outside of those expectations as much. And I think when you give people more freedom, you're going to have people who test that out in different ways. And so, the staff has to be much more ready to step in and have the courage to kind of hold the line of like what behaviors are acceptable and what are not. And I think that's one of the other things that takes a long time to develop as a coach. That confidence to enforce those standards. And so, when we talk about like what am I looking for with people within the academy, it's people who feel very passionately about their convictions to uphold those standards. Speaker 2: Yeah, well said, well said. I would ask you here, here's something that comes up a lot when you're building up teams. Do you have a philosophy on when to grow from within and when to hire from without? Because these are two different ways that you can bring in coaches. You can either promote and elevate someone from within your existing crew, or you can bring in expertise from outside. Do you have a preference one way or the other or guidance on when one of those options might be preferable? Speaker 1: So, I don't have a set preference when it comes to that because I think when you look across teams, there's so much success that's developed both ways. And I think in martial arts especially, you know, we always hold up as a very high standard that like homegrown mentality. Like, as a coach, you're expected to take somebody from scratch to being world champion. And, you know, same thing. So, your coaches need to all be developed under your system. And there's a lot of benefit there. Like, it's really nice to have that shared experience and for somebody to have grown and developed within a set system. And then the flip side of that is things can get stale and you can develop blind spots. And if somebody's only learned in one place, then they're going to have, you know, kind of a limited experience to draw from in terms of what works and what doesn't and what options they have in terms of, you know, teaching and conveying information. So, for myself personally, because of my military career, I moved around a lot. And as a result, I got to experience a lot of different coaches and a lot of different styles. So, for me, in running an academy, we've had multiple students who have come up directly underneath Elevate and are coaching and doing a phenomenal job, and they've only ever trained at Elevate. And then we have a lot of students, you know, we we've gone outside of Elevate multiple times to bring in other members of the coaching staff. And generally speaking, that's worked out really well. But I think it requires, you know, appreciating those differences and communicating through some of those things, and then mostly having those conversations about what their previous experience is, what their expectations are, and how to bring that into the overall mission of what your academy's doing. Speaker 2: Yeah. Something I would just point out from personal experience, we always have to keep in mind, when we bring someone from outside into a leadership role in our organization, regardless of how good they are at the job, regardless of how good a fit they are, there will likely be people within the organization who wonder, why didn't I get that opportunity? And that doesn't mean that you always need to promote from within. Sometimes there's a very valid reason to promote from without, mostly just that you need the skill set and there's no one who's even close internally. But I always encourage people to remember, whenever you bring inside a person from without, people may ask those questions, why didn't I get the job? And you as the culture leader need to be able to have a good answer as to why that was. There needs to be a real reason that you can explain and enunciate because otherwise you run the risk of kind of burning some of your most loyal students and uh, potential coaches. That doesn't mean that these people are entitled to a coaching opportunity, but at the same time, you want to make sure that there's a justification for why you did things the way that you did. I've even heard people recommend, I might butcher this, but there's a book I believe called Up the Organization, which is about organizational behavior and how to kind of grow businesses. And one of the things that they suggested, and again, going from memory here, was that if there's someone on the team who is 50% qualified to do the job, it may be better to give them the opportunity and let them develop the rest of the way than bringing on someone from outside. Of course, that completely depends on the situation, right? If we're talking about a surgeon, I don't want someone who's 50% qualified doing the job. But in Jiu-Jitsu, again, in a sport where we often obsess over perfection and doing things the right way, this can lead to getting a bit too gatekeepy. And sometimes this can create a culture where you're just not giving people opportunities inside because they're not 100% of the way there yet. And no one ever will be 100% ready for a new job. The way that you get them 100% ready is to give them experience at that job. So, it is something to consider when you are elevating people from within your team. They don't always necessarily need to be completely ready to go. In fact, odds are, if you're growing your culture the right way, they won't be ready for it, and it's a growth opportunity for them to step into that role. So, I just ask if you're interested in that, please do consider joining BJJ Mental Models Premium, and I'll get you a community invite right away. All of that's at BJJ Mental Models.com, link in the show notes. There's a free trial so you can check it out at no risk. But Cody, my friend, thank you so much for this. I was really looking forward to this chat. I think it absolutely delivered. And man, I'm so glad to have a chance to finally feature you. We've kind of been running in the same circles for a long time. So, thank you so much for coming by. Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me. We'll have to we'll have to get a trip scheduled and get you down for some barbecue soon. Speaker 2: Oh, that sounds amazing. Well, thank you, buddy. I appreciate it. And thank you to the listeners as well. We'll talk to you in the next one. See you then.