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Jiu Jitsu Black Belt and Eclipse Grappling Academy Owner Anthony Cronce joins the podcast for a three part series. We talk about the mindset necessary for personal and professional growth, share stories of entrepreneurship and discuss the superpower of a focused intent.
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Jiu Jitsu Black Belt and Eclipse Grappling Academy Owner Anthony Cronce joins the podcast for a three part series. We talk about the mindset necessary for personal and professional growth, share stories of entrepreneurship and discuss the superpower of a focused intent.
Listen to Episode 30 - Entrepreneurship, Growth Mindset, Intent as a Superpower by David Crull MP3 song. Episode 30 - Entrepreneurship, Growth Mindset, Intent as a Superpower song from David Crull is available on Audio.com. The duration of song is 41:26. This high-quality MP3 track has 135.03 kbps bitrate and was uploaded on 1 Jan 2024. Stream and download Episode 30 - Entrepreneurship, Growth Mindset, Intent as a Superpower by David Crull for free on Audio.com – your ultimate destination for MP3 music.
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Welcome to the BJJ executive podcast. I'm your host Dave Kroll. Today's episode is sponsored by Eclipse BJJ and Grappling Academy. Eclipse is located in the small North Texas community of Crum, K-R-U-M, but has quickly grown into a destination gym for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Eclipse offers programs for kids, men, women, and offers skill-specific classes for those focused on traditional Gi training, no-gi jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and conditioning classes. Eclipse Grappling Academy is staffed with three full-time black belts and is owned by jiu-jitsu black belt, former division one wrestler, and my personal friend, Anthony Krontz. Check them out at Facebook or Instagram at EclipseBJJ or online at EclipseBJJ.com. If you enjoyed the podcast and wish to support us, please do so by liking and sharing our content on social media and leave a review on whatever platform you're listening from. The BJJ executive podcast is proudly partnered with The Map Mission. It's a non-profit 501c3 organization charged with spreading jiu-jitsu through communities in need and providing mentorship and leadership to the youth in those communities. If you want to get involved in The Map Mission, follow the Instagram page, contact us on our website, or just message me directly. As always, thank you for listening and for making this a part of your jiu-jitsu journey. And as I always say, welcome to mine. Enjoy the episodes. What would the podcast be? The Anthony Krontz Show? Man. I mean, if I ever had the Dave Kroll Show, I'd feel like I made it. I had to come up with an alter ego. I love it. It's so good. And actually, before we get started, I was thinking about it before driving to training today. Congratulations on about a year and a half into this thing. I think a lot of people have benefited from listening to these podcasts over the last year and a half. It's been awesome. It's been great even just listening to other people's stories, learning about people that are not so different that I thought were maybe a little bit different than me. It's crazy, right? And just picking up little snippets, just like reading a book. The whole book you're not going to download into your brain, but man, if you can get two or three bullet points that help you in a mindset or with your business or with your family, it's worth the cost of admission, right? Man, I appreciate that. It's so true. For me, I'm the beneficiary of all this stuff. I sit here. At first, you were the third guest to come on. That was for me. Then it was Rodrigo. Then you came on and stuff. I knew you guys pretty well, but obviously, you start digging in deeper. You learn a lot more about your friends. But when we started getting into people that I didn't really know, like Sam and I have developed a pretty good relationship over the course of this. I didn't know Sam at all. I had a friend that had turned me on to him. I was like, this dude's making waves, man. You really should get connected with him. Just the relationships that have been built through that. He's a perfect example. Same thing. I've known him pretty much since I moved to the area. He was one of the first people I trained with when I was down here. Even when I was kind of looking at areas, if I was considering Keller, I was probably going to end up training under him there. Listening to his story, aside from just the jiu-jitsu part of it, I always respected him. I'll always give him praise. He's the man. He's one of those guys that always has a very positive mindset regardless of what's going on. Thank you. But to listen to this story and the completeness of it, it's a cool thing. Just to see these people walking around the streets, all of us, we're not special. We just never quit. I've got a couple of good ones in the mix that'll come on soon. I don't have them recorded yet, but here's some of the teasers. Power couples. That's a good one. That'll be good. That'll be good. There's a few of them that are out in the community. There's nothing more powerful than a good husband or wife to your mother. You're teary. Now, there's two. Maybe you have to be the broker of this too, but I would really like to get some of the Eclipse staff on here. I want to talk about power couple. See if you can make that happen, bro. I could send a text right now. I'm sure we'll get a thumbs up. Dude, I don't want it to be mandatory, employment related. As long as it's not during kids class, I need them. Let's talk about that a little bit, man. A lot has changed, dude. Last time you were on, it was a year ago. You had started the school, and I remember talking to you and watching you get really worked up and emotional about the fact that it was just a dream come true, essentially. Still day one. Yeah. Anyway, catch everybody out, dude. A year's gone by. I have smelling cells here if you need it, bro. Nothing's different, but everything has changed. I was actually texting some of the Jiu-Jitsu guys this morning, and it was the best analogy I think I could make of it. I even put in my head as to something the best way to describe it is my parents and students, they're my motor. They're the people that are going to drive whatever happens at the school. I'm the rudder. I've been around this for so long, both wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu, fitness, all these things that I just love being an athlete that I just direct the focus, and I try and make sure that we stay nice and steady. I need to manage that horsepower every once in a while with the motor, but realistically, I'm not driving anything. I'm just steering it. Maybe I'm the turbocharger here and there to shift gears and stuff, but most of the time, I listen to people. I want feedback. I always want feedback. Whether you're a martial artist, a professional, a parent, if you stop learning, what are you doing? I've had a chance. We were talking about this a little while we were getting warmed up because obviously, we just came from training and everything. It must be really rewarding to see folks that have come on just pure out of the bag, white belt, and then actually start seeing some success and some skill development and then also some passion development. This is something that can become really addicting and a part of your life really quickly. To go from zero to something, that's freaking cool, man. Back away from saying his name, I'm going to go with Jeff. I can tell. Dr. Jeff Allen. I could tell. He stepped up. His game has changed. Everything has developed from somebody who is just learning it. Obviously, he's got an elite background, but he's 50-something years old and strapping a white belt on for the first time. That must be really cool to see as an example in your school. There's others as well. I remember a few, man. I remember some morning class guys. I was like, damn, man. This guy's going to cause some problems. That morning class has been so fun. I just wish we could do more of them. I've told the guys this is a perfect example. I sent a message out to the entire group chat and I said, if we can consistently have eight or more people at the Tuesday and Thursday mornings for a month, I'll add another class. If not, we won't. I don't want to water down classes. I don't want two or three people at every morning class, but I love morning class. That's when we break things down. Like you said, those details that Jeff has been picking up, that growth that you felt, he's always been consistent, but there's other guys now that are coming into that morning class with me. All of our training is good, but it's just a different ... You go to morning class for me because it's a different energy. We're really focused on the details of things versus let's get our half hour of trying to kill each other in. It's just a different ... It's getting you kicked off for the day. You're not getting the energy out that you didn't get out the rest of the day. A lot of times it becomes really ... It's a productive class too because people are there because they need to get it in, so therefore they're getting it in. You know what I mean? Other times ... I know over the years, evenings were the traditional time to train, I guess. I don't know if that's always the case or if that's just me, but it just seems like there's a lot of Tuesday, Thursday evening guys. My body just doesn't ... I don't feel good anymore. At night? I hate training at night. I don't train at night much anymore either. I did last night. I wanted to train yesterday. I got a couple rounds in with my guys. Mickey actually stopped in too, so I got to round out with him. That's cool, man. Dude, he gets around everywhere, man. He's always going and saying hi. He's a hammer too. I know, dude. He really is. He really is. You guys get promoted too, which is cool. Yeah. But yeah, we're extremely fortunate. You have a unique situation now as well. First of all, a lot has changed in a year's time, including your location. You guys needed to ... walk me through that. What ended up happening there? You guys just ran out of space or what's the story? Yeah, it got to the point where Joe Al and I started to put our shoes back on and get off the mat, so we had enough room for two lines to do warmups. I could tell just in my heart, this isn't what my students deserve. This isn't what the vision is. It's that growing pain, that part of here we go. I even said to my wife at the end of the summer, once we got back from camp in Maine, I completely miscalculated how much time it was going to take. It was basically starting from square one again. Of course, I had my processes down in terms of making sure people felt ... not a process of making sure people felt welcome, but make sure that it was as smooth as possible so people would understand what step one was, what step two is after the trial, and then just seamlessly, everybody merging in just as a team, just becoming another part of the team. When it came to that build out, it was rough this summer. I wasn't on the mats much. I was playing contractor. Everything's from scratch. That's one of my big things is I'm not going to do anything or tell you to do anything that I haven't done myself. Everything that I ask of my students, I do myself. I think the only way that you actually know your vision and your business in that way is by getting in there. And this isn't ... Jiu-Jitsu academies aren't big business in the way of needing, in my opinion, investors in all these things people talk about. I work, I have a professional life where there's tens and hundreds of millions of dollars exchanged, right? Yes. But even billions. But don't overcomplicate it. Keep it simple, right? Yeah. I agree. I think that's what we do. I always want to stay focused on the students. I think that was one of the hardest things when I was away for those couple months, sweating in the new gym next door, kind of. So watching it all come together, it was hard to be away from the students knowing they're all there learning, and that's where I want to really be. But realistically, the budget and stuff, I don't ... We focus on the students. That's where we put our focus in every way. It's not about having state-of-the-art facility or anything. Of course, we have quality everything, but there's no cold plunges, unfortunately, yet, right? We'll have to go somewhere to find some cold plunges. I know a guy. I know a guy. But no, it's keeping it simple and focusing on the right things. I do feel it's crazy. Over the last probably two weeks, I feel that growing pain happen again. I've got to kind of suppress it. Not growing pain, but just it's kind of time to take that leap again, I think, coming into the new year. Meaning throw some more chips on the table or something? I mean, like ... We got some things coming that have been kind of on my heart for a long time. Really? And I'm really excited about it. We're going to have some- Is it too early? I just want to support our community in a better way. It's kind of overlooked being on the outskirts of the DFW area. It doesn't even almost have anything to do with our students anymore, just our students. It's something that's going to benefit our parents. It's going to be something that benefits the communities that we're in outside of the school. From jujitsu in general, people need a healthy outlet. Even if it's not physical to just be around those people with that mindset, of course it's going to draw some people to jujitsu and be like, these people are like me. This is kind of cool. And I can learn a skill. And I might even be able to do it with my kid. Yeah. Pretty neat. I think that that is one of the coolest things to watch, is that parents and kids get engaged together with it. That's something that's pretty unique. You just don't see it in as many other sports, even traditional sports like baseball and stuff like that. You don't see you have a coach, but there's not the same opportunities there. Whereas jujitsu, man, it's five to 50. That's really limiting it. Five to 70, I don't know. Trying to throw out a... Five to forever. Five to forever. Yeah, five until you die. Five until next Monday, I'll see you on the mats. That's the goal. I always say even competing and all these things, if you're not on the mats on Monday, it doesn't matter if you win or lose. It's a good way to look at it. You win Nogi Pans, you lose the first round, what's going to happen? It's still going to be on Monday. Who cares? What's it been like now that you've operated what has become a successful business and it's grown and it continues to grow? Obviously, that has a resource requirement in terms of the owner. What's it been like to play out of both sides here? You've got to keep a professional relationship going in your other world. That's a career that you've built and you seem committed to maintain. Then obviously, you've got a passion for grappling and helping the community and whatnot. How do you balance those? Carefully. Carefully. Has it been unexpected challenges or anything? You knew you were getting into. Once your foot's in, there's just no turning back. Every day. Every day there's challenges, but I think realistically, it's cliche, but anything worth doing is going to have challenge. I think the biggest thing when it comes to seeing the challenges, some people are so tied to correlating winning and losing to success and failure versus just showing up. It's so cliche, but realistically, any more, whatever you want to be good at, how many resources there are, people get exponentially better so quickly. I forget who I was talking to. I forget if it was today or yesterday, but just the level of blue belts today versus when I started. Night and day difference. There's no capacity for the level two. That can mean so many different things. I'm talking about business, jujitsu. There's so many resources, but you have to have intent. That rings true for me as well. I've been thinking about that in a lot of the things that I've been doing too. You can get so caught up in what would be traditional success attributes in it and everything, but there's all of these learning nodes along the way. I haven't gotten in terms of just traditional checks in the box and wins in the win column and stuff like that. I would use to get these little dopamine hits for my career and whatnot that would just make you feel good, get you back to the next Monday and back into the cube. There's something to that. You've got to go find other ways to go get those. Dude, if it's all about winning and losing, life is going to suck. I think you need to separate just people when you look at whatever your goals are realistically, what's an opportunity and what's a purpose. Back when I was maybe not given or I wasn't in the same position to give back to others and provide a resource to help people improve themselves, I would look at things more as an opportunity. But now, as a whole, it's just become part of my purpose. It's cool to hear people say now, with all these things that I'm balancing on my plate and I have my friends and my wife always checking me, making sure that I'm not slipping on the things that are the priorities to me, that I keep just the right things in front of me. Like I said, keeping it simple and making sure that my purpose and my vision for why I love jujitsu and why I love grappling, it's seen. When people come to me and just say, I can tell you want to be here no matter how tired you are, you jump in. You're going to jump in and you're going to help because that's who you are. And that feels good versus just, you have a really nice car and a really nice house. We were just talking about, of course, I'm blessed. We have some property and it's nice and quiet. We don't have a big house. I don't need much. But yeah, those are things. I can tell you with 100% level of confidence that there's never enough things. There's the big win that you get, the big windfall bonus or whatever. It's just a what. That's not a why and it is not fulfilling enough to get you to the next step. It's not with 100% level of confidence. I would call opportunities more addictive where purpose is kind of just a dull, not dull, but just a consistent being. Right? And when you find your purpose of what you want to do, it becomes exponential. You can chase things. I attach kind of things more towards opportunity where purpose is like immeasurables. Things like helping people. A teenage kid that's afraid to get on a mat three months later wants to go compete because Joelle, Daisy, and I can give them the confidence to be able to think about, I was thinking about this this morning. There's kids today that are afraid to get on a padded mat. How sad is that? Or in a world where people are afraid to go just let loose in a padded area and to take somebody from that to, I want to sign up for a competition. That's the purpose. That's really cool. And there's no real money attached to that. Yeah, there's not. You could attach money to it, but it would just still be a thing element of what ultimately is intangible. You can't value. But that's the stuff. And then their friend sees, holy, how did they, they're a night and day different person. And their friend sees that. And then you have another not project, but you get to help another person get to their goals. Get a relationship with their kid, lose weight, find a sport, find a healthy community of a veteran. I'm sure you are a veteran yourself, but also just a lot of veterans. All of those things, there's no price you can put on things like that. I think that what you're describing right there, if you ever want to see the embodiment of that, go to, and this is an example, go to a kid's jujitsu tournament and watch the owners of the school and the coaches. I've been on both sides of it. I've been down there coaching as an assistant or whatnot. And then I've also been in the stands watching. And I know you guys. I know you. I know James. I know Paul. I know Formiga. And I watch you guys, just the intensity level. And there's a responsibility. I'm here. It's way beyond, I'm here as a representative of my school. I'm here because I need to be here. It's like, man, what that represents for that individual, the jumping off of the ledge. I was afraid to step on the mats before. And now you guys know the personal story here. You know what, for this person over here, this is another day in the office. They love this. They're all about it. They're going to compete. This person over here, they probably didn't sleep last night. They're terrified. And I'm the one that's helping bridge the gap and to breaching those fears. I can see that in you guys' eyes on those days. It's really, really cool to watch. You know, it's really cool too, because maybe this is the part where you pat yourself on the shoulder to see the parents, especially with the kids, right? That the parents almost even question if their kid is capable of dealing with that level of stress. It's funny, we were talking about Joe Becker, right? Earlier today, because I like to listen to podcasts to kind of get myself, just like when I go to church, I'll read the Bible before I go to church, just kind of put myself in that mindset, almost as like a preparation, right? And we were talking about how you guys were talking about, which we've talked about, how you have no idea what competing or just doing jujitsu will empower your kid as they get older to be able to kind of get through things. And I don't think that some parents on their, especially that first competition, the kids usually come off, they'll shed a tear or two, win or lose, they usually shed a tear or two, you know, just to get that emotion, that fear out. And I don't think they're, I think that's the point, that turning point where the parents start to see like, my kid's powerful, you know, he's encouraged, or she's encouraged, you know, those are the things that, to them, you forget about the cost of jujitsu when you see your kid just become like capable humans. Don't even forget about kids, don't talk about kids and adults just a capable human of dealing with stress response in that way. Super important, whether it's a school test, or they get lost in a crowd, or whatever else is going to kind of come at them in life. It's, dude, I remember one of my earlier jujitsu memories was when I was, when I had first started, and my son did it with me. I was 20 something, and he was six, I don't know, seven, something along those lines. And I vividly remember watching him develop the ability to be beat, you know what I mean? And I'm not saying like, that's a, that in a way of like, you know, that sounds bad, but the ability to get up, shake the guy's hand, go sit on the mat and wait for his turn again, as opposed to just have a breakdown, like I just lost, physically was dominated, you know, like, all my life is over, you know, this is a seven year old, right? And then I know, you know, this from, from your grappling days, of course, but also from your wrestling days. I mean, do those long tournaments where you might have not done that well in the earlier brackets, and now you got to like summon the strength to go back out. I remember having those difficult conversations with our child and saying, like, I don't want to go back out there. I'm like, you committed to today, we're going to get through today, and we'll take tomorrow when tomorrow gets here. Those are things that you draw on later in life. Yeah, you know, and I've had those conversations with them, too. I mean, I know that they remember that and build up on that. I mean, you can't tell me with your wrestling career that you don't ever draw back on those difficult, dark moments in the pain cave of dude, you know. So it's funny you mentioned that I was actually talking to kind of just in the local wrestling, not local wrestling circuit. I mean, he ended up wrestling division one as well. We kind of just had a side conversation after we were talking about whatever we needed to like business wise. But so my last my senior year of high school, so I actually never made the state tournament. So I was a division one wrestler, but I'd never made the state tournament. I wasn't even the guy wasn't the greatest. Believe it or not, I don't consider myself a great tournament competitor. It's hard for me to stay in the pocket sometimes. And this is one of the things that for me and I always talked about to stay in the pocket and stay focused, even for like a whole round, I'd always make just some one little stupid mistake that would kind of cost me the match. And my senior year of high school, I didn't win district, so I had to wrestle in. So day one, you just kind of you have a wrestle off with one guy pretty much to make it to regionals. I forget what they call it. So I won that. Then I actually lost my first round of us ranked like in the top 10, I think in the state, pretty close, at least in the top 15. And I lost my first round to another really good dude. He ended up wrestling at Rutgers division one school. And I wrestled all the way back that day, all from the first round, all the way back to third, fourth. Amazing. And I lost him again by a point. Is that right? So like, it's one of those things now. It's like, I picked myself up. I didn't quit. A lot of people at that point would be like, screw it. Why am I here? Wrestling college, that's stupid. Especially a kid, 17, 18 year old kid. What's the point of all this? All that work I just did is gone. I could have definitely thrown it away. Heck yeah, dude. Even easier now. You go back and you get your little coping device, a little rectangle thing you put in your hand. You just freaking go into the avoidance zone. To be able to come back from that stuff. Jiu-Jitsu's got that as well. But wrestling is a whole different animal because those brackets, man, where you do wrestle back. I mean, in Jiu-Jitsu, you get the consolatory bronze medal and you call it good. And you get to make up a story on Instagram about battling for bronze. Or complaining about why you lost. Just take it. It wasn't my day, period. Yeah. That was one of the proudest wrestling moments that I had was watching my son. In States, of course, that was amazing. But there was a big tournament down in, man, I can't believe I can't remember what it's called. But it's down in Houston. And it's sort of a prelim to States. 64-man brackets. And he got bumped into the loser's side right away. It's a big bracket. That's his old blue belt. I know, dude, exactly. And he wrestled back and he made seventh. So he made it to, I mean, that's not like, there's no seventh place. Well, maybe there wasn't that. I don't know if there was, but it's not one that you're like, I made seventh. That's a long day though. It's a battle, dude. Yeah, exactly. Like eight matches and just lost the one and the last one. That dude, that takes grit. It's fun to watch that and fun to see that. I think that the other thing that people don't think about sometimes, and I'm sure you've experienced, actually, I'm kind of curious what your experiences with this have been, and this might be somewhat sensitive, but like, it's hard to be a parent of a grappling kid. It is hard to sit in the stands. To be determined. I don't know. Well, you might not have the experience as a parent yet because Nico's so young. But I mean, you have parents that you've got to, I wouldn't say manage, but I mean, like, look, you do have to manage expectations and you have responsibilities as a coach and as a parent sort of mentor. I don't know what the word would be, relationship builder or whatnot. Just guide. Yeah, guide. That's a good one. That's a good one. I mean, they're trusting you to shepherd their precious child into the world of violent combat sports where something dangerous could happen. I mean, that's a big responsibility. And I know I developed, I was the guy that, I was like, almost like my wife would be like, get to the top. Go put your headset on and just shut up. And I learned over the years how to be better about that and how to chill and just be a spectator as opposed to a little bit more than that. Honestly, how's it going? If any of our, honestly, if any of our, this is a testament, I think, to our parents, we do kind of run a tight ship in that way where we kind of make it clear, even if you're our friend, when they're on the mat, they're like, I would say that's why you pay us. Yeah. Even on the rough days where they don't want to train. We're not going to, like with the younger kids, we're not going to force them to be on the mat because that's just going to push them away, but our parents trust us. And I think that's a huge thing that why you need to have real coaches, real leaders, people that have been in it. I get it. I get it. It's easier to just have some of the other parent coaches go sit in a chair, tell them how to do techniques, but there's something else to developing a trust where Joelle, Daisy, and I, I kind of take pride in the fact, when I explain to people coming in, every class is taught by one of us three, almost every single class, every adult or kids class. Of course, like once in a while, there's like the women's only class, we'll have somebody fill in because I don't, I give respect to the women to like, if it, I would teach it, but I give respect that it's women's only time. No men are allowed on the mat. We keep it quiet just like we would respect a normal class. But when it comes to like the core group of kids, teens, adults, one of us three is on the mat. And if not, I'm going to bring in a brown or a black belt from our team that's going to supplement that for the day. Like Dylan Collins, he's amazing. Like we're getting ready for Nogu Pans. I trained that Saturday before with him, done it, mid cities. And I told Formiga, I told Dylan, honestly, probably one of the best practices I've been in two years. Really? Oh, Dylan's a coach, man. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. And there's something to that, right? And that's what I take pride in on Eclipse is that all of us, forget about the skill level, just the ability to coach and like really pour into the kids and the adults, just the students in general. Yeah. It's super important because then the parents see that when it comes to competition day, they've been there before. You know what I mean? They're on the front line too. We actually had a conversation, Joao and both of us had separate conversations with some of our competitors after a competition, was it two weeks ago? And so Joao had pulled them aside kind of in a closed meeting. A player's called it the player's meeting, you know, like football, the player's meeting, which he pulled all the kids into the hallway and kind of had a little talk with him. And the middle of this week, it was kind of cool, especially the opportunity that Nogu Pans presented that Joao, Daisy, and I all competed on the highest level locally, the highest level, like kind of of the sport in our relative divisions, right? But locally, so our kids could come watch us. Oh, that is cool. I didn't even think about that. So they got to come see us do it, not just like watch an Instagram, like to your point, not see the cool Instagram video, right? And I explained to them, sometimes they take those, kind of like we were talking about in class today, right? Kind of what I said, that practices made the sharpen. The day of the competition, you should be in the zone. You shouldn't be like kind of not focused, but that's the fun part. That's the celebration. If you're not having fun there, you didn't prepare yourself during training and you can have the choice. You can laugh during training and cry at the competition, or you can cry during training and celebrate on the competition. I prefer to celebrate on the competition. Of course, not boy shirts and stuff, but like walk on that mat and I'm like, it's on. Yeah, man. 100% it's my day. And I explained to them, I was like, did you see all of us celebrating? That's why we celebrate, because when we go to train at noon, you've seen me and Joao go after it. We're not trying to hurt each other, but we're trying to win when we're getting ready for competition. And that's extremely important for them to see that, like with their own eyes. It was pretty cool. And then all of a sudden, that was pretty cool. That provides a nice segue in as well. I mean, just resetting the stage a little bit. Novy Pans was in Dallas. I guess it usually is. Has it always been in Dallas, by the way? No, Novy Worlds was two years ago. Was it Garland? I'm not good. I think it was up north. In the Metroplex, but I mean, dude, that could mean a lot of different things. You could have an hour and a half difference. I think it was Garland or something like that, up north central, call it. Well, luckily enough, like you said, I mean, this is an international level tournament. I mean, this is one of the big ones. It's a major and it was local, right? So people could come and watch you guys. This would have been, I mean, you'd been out of it for a while, hadn't you? I mean, this was one of your first competitions in probably several months at least, I mean. Yeah, I did the Dallas Open in the Gee, in like March. I remember that one, yeah. You won? I won that one. But it was the first- Was this the first major since you got your black belt? No, I didn't. No, my first year of black belt, I was on it. Were you? Oh, I was. I did- I remember Austin Open and stuff like that. I just didn't remember some of the other ones. The last major I actually did, well, the last two majors I did was July of what would have been 2021. It was No-Gee Worlds. That was the last one that they had like a No-Gee major, No-Gee in, I think it was July 2021 was the last time they had a No-Gee major, I think, in the Fort Worth area. Gotcha. And then I did No-Gee. And then I did, so it's funny, it's coming up, like two years ago, I lost my job and then I almost didn't go to compete. I didn't feel I was in the mental spot to compete. But I told myself I signed the contract, so- Time to get back in. And, oh no, when I went to Master Worlds, that was, I don't know, October or November of 2021. That was the last major I had done. And I won my first match and then got toe-holded by Ronaldo Jr.'s brother. And I was actually like, it was tied, but I was winning the match, not the last major. So this time I was like- It's on. Yeah, I was ready for it. I could tell, man. I mean, the way you were training and then also a lot of the post-mortem and whatnot, I could tell how much it meant. But probably what was touching the most to me, especially somebody that's friends with all you guys and sees maybe the bigger picture of it, was the fact that basically the Eclipse staff kind of cleaned house. In all of your respective divisions, all of you guys came away with gold medals. And I guess I didn't get a chance to really think through the fact that it would have been local enough for you to put it on in front of your students as well. What was that day like? Honestly, it felt like- Do you remember that day? Dude, I trained so hard that month. It was another day at the office. I trained so hard. And I'm going to do it again. This past weekend, we're a month in from Nokia Worlds, and I decided I was going to sign up. And I knew it was coming again. So you're going out to California? Oh, Vegas. I hate Vegas. But it is what it is. Last time we left Vegas was Master Worlds. And me and Formiga were in a cab leaving the venue. And I was like, dude, I hate this place. I'll never compete here again. And here we are going back again. Yeah, it's kind of hard to avoid it. But it's time. Yeah. It's cool, man. Like you said, it was supposed to be a gym in Krum. You know what I mean? And now you've got- It is, but you guys have kind of proven the concept there. Three gold medal champions at a major tournament, Pantano-Gi, and you got to do it in front of your students. I mean, that's freaking super cool. It kind of stinks. I wish I had a better- I wish I was better at like, I don't know, that's not the right word. But sometimes I don't realize how fortunate I am to be blessed with these gifts. But I also have the ability to pull my head out of the water for just enough time to kind of see how cool it was. And I'm back in it doing something else. I wish I had a little bit better ability to pull my head up maybe for an extra breath or two to go back into it sometimes. But it is what it is. Well, like you said, I mean, Monday's coming. Are you back or you're not back? And I actually think it makes it a lot more significant because it is what it is. There was a moment in time, you guys trained, you were expected to do well, and all three of you guys were champions in your divisions, came home with a gold, got the photos, you got the recognition that you were looking for, and then you put on a clinic and a demonstration for your team. And now it's time to get back at it. It's funny. My medal has been just sitting in my truck car door. It literally has been there for like a month and a half. I have a bike, whatever. You know how many times I've trained and just like driven that thing around just like sitting as a dust collector in my truck door for- Oh, you're going to have to frame it. You got to do something with it. Yeah, when I got time to do that. Thank you for listening to the BJJ Executive Podcast. As a reminder, if you enjoyed the contents of this episode and other episodes, then please do us a favor and spread the word to others in the community. As always, thank you for making this a part of your journey, and we are out.
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