Every 26 seconds in America, someone becomes a victim of violent crime. By the time you're done listening to this teaser, a dozen more people have been attacked. Last year alone, over 6 million were victims of violent crime. That number is hard to imagine. You know, that's just in the United States. But think about this. Commercial airlines, 36,000 planes in a single year crash.

Every person lost. That's 6 million people. That's the scale of victimization. And into that world we're sending our kids. 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted during college. Crazy enough. One inch 16 men. Two 24,000 college students attempt suicide every year. More than a dozen don't survive. On top of that, half of all college students drink every single month.

Nearly a third of them binge drink. So I have to ask you, is your child ready

Are they ready to go out there ready to go to college? Are they ready to walk home from a library at night and take care of themselves? Are they ready to notice who's sitting behind them on the bus or on the train?

Are they ready to sense when a party is turning dangerous and leave before it's too late? That's called situational awareness. The ability to see what's happening around you. Recognize danger before it strikes and make smart decisions in the moment. But here's the truth most kids don't have it. Schools teach them how to pass tests, not how to stay safe in real life.

And it's not just about safety. It's about character. It's about finding the right friends when they go off to school. Jordan Peterson put it best. Choose friends who want the best for you. Because in college, the crowd your child falls into can shape their future. Way more than a GPA ever will. That's what this podcast's all about. We're called market prep.

We're here to help parents and kids build real world skills, teaching them how to be aware, prepared, and willing to handle the challenges. So stick with me because your kids deserve more than just education. They deserve to be prepared for life.

Steve, how old are your kids? So I well, I've arranged nine, 12, 18, 22 and 25. And do you think your kids are ready to go out to college?

You know, are they ready? Are they prepared? No. I mean, my daughter, she's 22 years old and she's been out of the house for a while. She's been at school, but she recently moved into an apartment with one of her girlfriends. So you have two young girls, right? Living together. And it's not. It's not like it's in a sketchy part of town.

But I can tell you, Robert, like, it freaks me out. Especially with what? What's going on out there in the world? Yeah. You know, I, I, I feel for you. I know, kids in high school are not prepared. They're not taught what to do when they get out of school. They go to school. I think one of the most interesting things I saw recently as my son was in, in his academics, there's 560 kids in his high school, and 380 of the kids got these ropes that they put on their collars, for academic honors or some kind of event that they did.

I mean, our schools aren't teaching kids how to prepare for real world. They're trying to teach them copy and paste. And then it's the everybody gets a trophy generation. Yeah. I mean, and what's interesting is I remember when he came to my office not too long ago, and I think was the same day there's a shooting in Jefferson County, and that's where my daughter and son go to school.

And I was just thinking like, wow. Even like, so I told you, I'm paranoid about my 22 year old. I'm paranoid about everybody, right? All my kids. But especially like the younger kids, like preparing them for what's to come. Like, here's my daughter, 12 years old. Here's my son, nine years old. I don't think they're naive enough. Where if somebody pulled up in a car and said, hey, you know, come get in, little kid.

I got a candy bar for you. But still, I mean, there's just a lot of stuff out there, and that's why I'm excited to do this episode with you. Because you you have this depth of knowledge that I think you need to share with the world. Yeah. You know, about five years ago, we put together a, critical response class.

And it kind of leads into that shooting that you're talking about. This was the catalyst for what we're doing. One of our students was named Mary. She was in, Florida State this April when they had a shooting there. I think there were, two people dead, six injured. And it was, you know, all over the news.

But, Mary. What who did our class, you know, five years ago was calm, cool, and collected. She, she actually was on, you know, on the other side of the campus quad. They all heard the shots. She got everybody the second story of the the building they were in, they closed down the doors on the bottom.

They got to the second floor, and they actually opened up the elevators. They put tables in the elevators and all this kids were going chaotic all over the place. And this girl, Mary, she was like, man, I was, I was prepared. You know, a lot of people don't under don't realize it. A lot of stuff we talk about is common sense and but it's it's about having the awareness of it.

You have to be introduced to it at one point or you have no idea it's even there, you know. So she had this in her past. It immediately came to the top. And then she actually got everybody around her really cool, calm and collected. That was the catalyst for us. Like, we've got to get this out to more people.

And so that's why we're here. And how many kids do you have Robert? I have six kids. Have six kids. And talk about your animals too, because when you told me about, like, the number of animals you have, I was like, wow, I've got to have, like, a farm. Yeah. Right now I've got four dogs because I have three.

My my son's other dog is staying with us. So we have four dogs, a chicken, I think a turtle, two cats. Yeah. We've got a zoo at our house. Okay. So you have six kids. You have all these animals you run, one of the top schools, unity schools in Colorado. You're a busy guy. So why all the sudden did you decide to start this, this new business, this new venture, this podcast to, you know, educate people about situational awareness?

Because it's a gap that's missing in the schools that kids aren't ready to go from high school to college. They get to college and then they fail. You know, they have these problems. You know, I don't know if you saw recently, I think it was in Washington, D.C., a girl was walking down the the, the path at 550 in the morning.

She was ran up behind, choked from behind. Phone falls everywhere. She, you know, she ends up punching the guy and getting away. But, you know, that kind of thing. It's that close. And this is happening all the time on these schools. And I think, you know, if we tell these kids what these young adults tell, you know, what they can and can't do and how to prepare for these things, it'll really help them.

You know, there's tools that we're going to be sharing with people, you know, and once you have tools, you then you're prepared. You know, our motto is aware, prepared and willing. You know, we're here to make the kids aware, make people aware of what's going on. Know your surroundings. You know, we're here to prepare you. Once you're aware of something now.

Ha! I have to take. You know, I have to figure out what I have to do, and I have to be prepared for the situation. And then willing. You have to be willing to act. If you're not willing to act, it doesn't matter. You know, you become a victim. So all those things combined, you know, we put together in a real good package and, we're here to share it with people.

So let's break this down and dissect it so people like me, right, parents out there that are listening to you can really take home some practical things that they can really implement in their lives, because this could go into so many different directions, and we could do an episode that's five hours long and, you know, so let's get a little narrow here.

So as a parent, okay. And I love the talks that we have. You know, just on Saturday we had a talk after class. And you know, you're you saw me clearly frustrated and you sat down with me. And just the way that you talk to people and you mentor people, including the kids and adults and everybody else, I think you do such a wonderful job.

So do the same thing with me right here and right now. We're I'm sitting here as a parent thinking, I got kids that are out of the home. I got two kids that will be out of the home in a blink of an eye. What can I be doing right now as a parent, to prepare myself and to prepare my kids for what's to come?

Is there like one or 2 or 3 things that you could think of or what are your thoughts on that? So are you familiar with the bystander effect? Now tell me more. Okay, so so the bystander effect is, you know, you'll be in downtown Denver. We're here in Denver. You know, you're in downtown Denver and you see somebody start convulsing on the side of the road and you see 100 people walking by them.

That's the bystander effect. Everybody who's just walking by is going to keep on walking by because they assume there's somebody better. They can't handle it or whatnot. Now, if I teach you the bystander effect, you're twice as likely to help because you have knowledge. You know what's happening and you can pay attention to the situation. This the thing that you need to do now is you need to make your kids aware of the dangers.

You have to give them the tools on how to, to go out into the world and to make decisions, and then they're going to be in a lot better position because they're going to be at the meeting, interrupt here real quick, because I think that and this is really goes back to your framework, the aware part. We're on the first step.

And so when it comes to awareness how do you make them aware without freaking them out or walking around like Chicken Little. Like you know, the sky's falling and everybody like the whole world's going to crap, right? So how do you like, educate them but not scare them even when they're, you know, nine years old? Yeah. Well, you know, on a daily basis, you know, my kids make fun of me because I'll always sit at a chair at a restaurant where I'm facing the door, you know?

Why do I do that? Is because I want to be in a position. Position to protect my family if something bad goes wrong. And you just talk about these things, it's something that you can actually put it into your daily life, you know, in a shooting situation. Here's an interesting one they did in Walmart. You know, that happened up I think it was in Thorton or something.

You know, a guy comes into the front door of Walmart and he starts, you know, he shoots up the store. Everybody in the back of the store starts to run out the front of the doors. Well, what are they going to do? They're going to run right into harm's way. You know, if you're if you're, you know, where you're walking around places with your parent, you know, your kids you can talk to him about, hey, where are the exits here?

You know, if there was a fire here, where would you go? What's the closest door? You know, pay attention to these things. You just can't walk around blind. Yeah. You know, there's a there's a tool that we use is called s by, John Cooper. It's called the Cooper color code. They use it in, the police all the time.

It's, you know, they've got four different stages of colors, you know, white. We're at home, we're safe with our family, and you can relax. You know, the moment you step outside, you go into yellow. You're in. Yeah. You're walking anywhere you're at. You go for a jog with your earbuds in. You know, you do that. You're. Yeah. You start to somebody starts running by you.

You know it's elevated. You get into the Orange State. If they get so close to you, they grab you. Now you're in red. You know, these kind of tools, just the awareness of that tool. When a kid goes running, he's going to pay more attention to it, you know, and they might think of, hey, rather than running with both my earbuds and maybe I run with one earbud in, you know, depending on where I'm at, if I'm in Highlands Ranch, you know, Irvine, California, the safest communities in the country, it's a little different than if I'm running down the streets of downtown Denver.

Yeah, but we got to educate them, though. I like that. And so can you go too far? And let me give you an example here with my kids. I don't know about you, but I remember growing up in, like, sex education was this thing. I mean, I was super, like bashful around the conversation. And when you refer to your parts, you know, maybe you use other symbols instead of, like, naming them.

And with my kids, ever since they were young, you know, I just taught them. I said, hey, this is a penis. This is a vagina, right? And I used those term, that terminology because I wanted my kids to know, like, hey, it's inappropriate if somebody touches. Right? And be explicit about the body part, because what you don't want to do is beat around the bush and say, hey, look, yeah, if anybody touches you in your private or secret areas and they're like, well, what is that exactly?

So I think sometimes like that specificity is really important. And I think like the same thing is true with any situation, with awareness where you say you have to be aware because somebody could come in with a gun and literally shoot up your class, like, is that going too far because you don't want to tell a 9 or 10 year old and say, be careful at school because somebody could come in and harm you with a weapon.

It's like, how explicit do you have to be? Because that's the reality that they're actually living in. And unfortunately, so do you want somebody else to tell them that it's a serious thing, or do you want them to know it's coming from you? Good point. You got a shit from you. Do you know if you know the schools are doing these shooter drills?

I don't know about you. I remember we had tornado drills. We had I, I can I'll take you back. I remember bomb drills like nuclear. You know, we had to get under the desks. I don't know what that would have done for us, but, you know, this is the problem is we've always we're always leaving an education up to everybody else.

We're leaving. You know, the schools are educating our kids, you know, and they do it in a copy and paste kind of way. They're, you know, they're teaching them to regurgitate information. They're not teaching them to learn and to be, you know, self-aware. We need to teach them that, you know, this is the hover parent generation.

Our kids are not allowed to go outside and explore. I don't know about you, but when I was out exploring, I learned a lot of situational awareness. And it wasn't because I did everything right is because I failed often. And then you learn from those mistakes. We're fortunate enough that we didn't fail bad enough to where something really bad happened.

But the more information we can give to our kids now, they won't have as big A failures. And so hopefully, that's what, you know, we're doing as parents. Yeah. And I like what you're saying there. And and tell me if you agree with this. You know, oftentimes I'll talk to the kids as well about like, probabilities, you know, I'll say, look, there is a 0% chance you will get pregnant at a, as a teenager if you don't have sex 0%.

Right. But if you do engage in sexual activity, even if you use birth control, there is some probability. Same thing is true. If I get in my car and I drive drunk, maybe I make it home. Okay, cool. I got away with it this time, but there is some type of probability that I could get a DUI or I could kill somebody, God forbid.

Right? But there's a 0% probability that would ever happen if I don't drink and drive, right? So I think every time we go out into the world, sure, the probability that something like this may happen to us, like you're going to get stabbed in the back of the neck walking down the street, or there's going to be a school shooting, or you're going to be assaulted at a party, whatever it may be, the probability may be the probabilities.

They're right. The probability sure is there. So is that what you're saying with awareness is like you don't want to go around paranoid, but you also have to go around with your eyes open, thinking something like this could happen by putting myself in this situation. Yeah. You know, a lot of times people become victims. You know, I believe, you know, I don't want to say, you know, they they created themselves, but often they do based on their choices.

Yeah. You know, example of that is, if you have, bad friends, the probability of you getting into trouble is going to be much higher. You know, part of our program is going to be about character development. You know, I think, you know, your friends, you know, really dictate how you grow in your life. We don't, you know, a lot of people, we don't talk about this.

We talk about how to learn, how to grow, how to get ahead, how to beat everybody else, how to be the best student, how to know everything you know how to surround yourself with really good people is a really important part of situational awareness. It's going to help you more often than not, because you're going to have guys like Steve.

You're here because you're pushing me to get this thing started. If I didn't have you here, I'd probably be sitting at home. You know, we're not I. Who knows what I would be doing? But now we're going to get this started, and we're going to actually share this with people. And that's because I got a good guy like you to help me grow.

You know, in college, my son went to Kalamazoo College. And one of the things that he told me is like, you know, a lot of schools you go to or, you know, you get in the wrong cohort of people, you know, hey, let's go out Friday night. Let's go drink. Let's go to a party. Let's go. You know, they're always bringing you down.

You know, you know, he had a cohort that they were challenging each other to see who could get the best grades. You know, that changes your your outlook. It changes how much you know, bad things happen to you. Sure. So it's really important. Well, you kind of touched on it. So before we move on to prepare, because I think that's I have a lot of questions around, that whole part of the framework.

I want to ask you more about why you wanted to get into this, because how many teams have you taught or coached over the years? Yeah. So, I've coached probably 35 teams football, baseball, basketball, soccer, wrestling, jujitsu. That was a national junior basketball president for four years. I was a vice president for Little League. And throughout all those years, I, you know, I, you know, coaching has been a passion of mine.

It's kind of like a purpose. You know, I believe everybody's here built to serve. And then, I had a business before, and I actually went to Pepperdine to get my master's degree, and I was thinking, yeah, I'm going to grow this business. And at that time, some guys brought me to Brazilian jiu jitsu. That kind of turned my life upside down.

I sold a business, I closed a business, I moved to Colorado, and then I started teaching jiu jitsu for a living. I've opened a few jujitsu schools. I train every day. I, I get to help people every day, and it's, it's pretty rewarding, you know, to watch people grow. And so the more, the more you help people, the better everybody is around you.

So I'm pretty fortunate that I'm able to do it. What? I love it like this. This time when we're recording, it's October and up on the screen there are these TVs in the gym and or at the school. And there's one of you in this Halloween costume. It's like a skeleton, you know, tight shirt thing. And, and you're with all the kids for Halloween.

And I just love that picture. I, I look at it all the time when I'm sitting there stretching or doing the warm up, and it just it makes me think of just like, how big of a heart you have and how cool is that? You get to share that heart with so many people and see them transform. So I guess my question around that is like you've you've seen a lot of kids progress over the years, transform over the years.

And like, what is it about like like what do you see in the younger generation? Are you more hopeful? Are you more worried? Or you just want to continue to transform lives? Like, what is it that's driving this, this greater purpose of helping, especially the younger generation to be prepared? You know, Brazilian jiu jitsu is one of the things that, you know, obviously I do, but it's it's one of the things that transforms kids the most, at least what I've seen lately.

This is the hover parent, you know, hover parent generation. These kids, they they, they, their parents do everything for them. My favorite thing about Brazilian jiu jitsu is when a kid signs up, he goes under the mat. Nobody can help him, and he has nobody else to blame. You know, many other sports. I can go blame somebody.

I can blame the pitcher. If my baseball team is doing bad, I can blame the hockey goalie. If you let schools and. But in Brazilian jiu jitsu, you can only blame yourself, you know, because that's who you know. That's who you are. You're out there on the mat doing yourself. And a lot of these kids, they don't have these tools and you can see it.

They just, you know, they're looking for them. They want them, but they don't have them. So, you know, when you when you see that you really want to help people, like, so they can get these tools. Yeah. No. And I love that. And so you have this background with coaching. You know, you're you're an amazing coach amazing mentor.

Talk about from like the self-defense side because you know, if I'm listening to this I may be wondering why should I listen to you. Like who makes you the expert in all this and share a little bit more about your background with coming up through wrestling? I know you wrestled in college as well, and then your whole journey in jujitsu, you know, especially as a black belt.

Like what makes you qualified, for this? And I know you're a super humble person, so you're not going to go into all your accomplishments, but, just give a little bit of background for the listeners out there. Yeah. Like you said, I'm a dad at a six. I, you know, I wrestle high school and college. You know, I started jiu jitsu at the late age of 39.

You know, I've, you know, once I got on the mat, I never left it. And I, you know, I, I enjoy it. I don't know, I don't just they think that, like, all my knowledge comes from me. I'm very fortunate in Brazilian jiu jitsu, if you come and see our cohort, I've got Army Rangers, I got G.I.

Guys, I've got guys from, you know, all different walks of life in the military and, you know, business backgrounds like yourself. That. And I just love to acquire information. You know, I have a growth mindset. I always, you know, I'm willing to learn and grow. And I love to share. And so, you know, when you do that, you know, you, you know, I'm not saying everything I am is, you know, God's word, but it's, you know, I think the more people have some information, the safer they're going to be, and they're going to be more successful in life.

You know, I read a lot of books, you know, I've got guys that drop books off, you know, one of my buddies, Chris, he drops books off of me all, all the time. And every time, you know, you go through him, you read him. He's like, this is great information, and you want to share it. So, you know, I love that.

Okay, well, let's get into the second part. Prepare because I have a lot of questions on that. What can somebody do like and I'm talking about for myself. What can I be doing here Robert, to be a better dad, better husband and to then use that knowledge or use that preparation to then help my kids be more, more prepared.

So let's talk about from a parent standpoint first. Then we can get into the kids. Yeah. You know educate. You know obviously it's all about educating ourselves. If you understand if you find out what the what the dangers are out there, you can look at what tools are out there and available for kids to be, you know, to to keep them safe.

You took a big step starting Brazilian jiu jitsu. Brazilian jiu jitsu is an unbelievable. It's the best martial art for self-defense in the world, bar none. You know, a lot of people think they're going to go teach you a, you know, a small girl how to kick somebody, you know, in the nuts or something like this or trying to hit somebody.

But you imagine, you know, a girl's, you know, 105 pounds and she punches a guy who's a 195 pounds or, you know, kicks him. He's just it's just going to escalate. It's going to get hotter. You know, Brazilian jiu jitsu is all about de-escalation. It's about control. You know, a lot of times people think I'm, you know, when you're teaching Brazilian jiu jitsu, you're teaching people to engage.

You're actually teaching people to disengage. You know, most important thing I teach people in self-defense is how to fall. You know, lie. If you fall and break your arm, you're in trouble. If you're on the ground, if you fall and you're safe, you got a chance. Then the second thing I teach him is how to get up.

If you can get up before that person starts attacking you, you can get away. That's like the most important part. Self-Defense. People think, you know you're going to Brazilian jiu jitsu to fight. There's so many schools that teach jiu jitsu like it's a competition. You know, we're here to to beat somebody. Not that you're there to, you know, learn about yourself and grow, but you're really there to, you know, protect yourself.

And that's what we do. Okay. What what if somebody is like that's great, but I don't want to do martial arts. Maybe they're not even athletic into fitness, but they still want to be prepared. Are there things intellectually or like other things that they could be doing to be prepared as parents? Yeah. You know, look for the gaps that people are missing between high school and college.

You know, and when you talk about gaps, we're talking about gaps of, you know, like you say, situational awareness. We're talking about gaps in financial education. You know, kid goes to college. The first thing they do is get 27 credit cards sent to them. You know that's crazy. You know, there's so many places that, you know, you think you're protecting your kid from just from, you know, injury and knives.

And no, you're protecting them from themselves, you know, getting caught in a financial trouble. Oh my gosh, that can go way down gambling. You know, again. And it all goes back to when you start thinking about these things. It goes back to teaching kids how to, you know, find the right friends, find the right groups. And you know, educating them.

Yeah. No, I agree. And you know what I love? Like you always say to me, you're like, Steve, stay curious. And you're telling me when you first started out, you had the story of your friend where you two would go to practice, you'd compete, and you saw this rapid acceleration on your end. And you always say it's not because as smart or anything better, stronger, faster or whatever, it's just you look at every single thing as like candy.

A kid in a candy store, like, oh, I want more of that. I'm so curious. I want to just soak it in. So is that what you're referring to when you talk about being prepared? Just like being hungry, being thirsty for knowledge and new things and just staying curious and open. Yeah, you know, knowledge is the king, you know?

And, you know, the more we learn, the less we know. So when you go down that path, you start to go, oh, wait, maybe, I don't know, I need to, I need to do more research. I need to find more. So, yeah, I believe that the more, you know, curious you are. And we go always back to that growth mindset.

If you're, you know, if you know that you don't know, you're missing something that you and there's, there's resources out there, to find information on how, you know, to get better and how to protect yourself, how to get your kids ready. Yeah, I think that's great. So what about the kids, though? So let's just say, it's the last year for a parent.

Their kids are about to go off to college here, next summer. And they're starting to think, wow, the clock is really ticking here. I need to start preparing because maybe I didn't do a good job preparing my kid up to this point. What can they do? They can add accelerated path, to get their kid ready for what's ahead.

Yeah. You know, we're we're we're we're launching our our marker prep school here soon. It's going to be a great tool for people to learn things like the Cooper color code. Are you familiar with the Ooda loop? Now tell me more about this. Yeah. So again these are more tools that people have that that we're going to be teaching.

The hula hoop is you know, it was it's observe, orient, decide and act. It's a method. It's again, it's a tool that we can share with these kids, to pay attention what's going on around them. Observe. You know, Orient. Where are you at in the situation? You know, and so. Oh, if you if you do that, you have a, you know, better basis of making a good decision.

And then once you have a decision, you have to act. You know, if you don't act, you know, you're again, you become a victim. And the more tools we give these kids, the more they're going to, you know, they can repeat and go through it and then they can make better decisions, when they get off to college.

Yeah, I think that's great. I've already prepped my kids. I was telling my daughter the other day at the car wash, I said the because she's like, who's robber? Who's robber texting me? I said, oh yeah, you know, that's that's my professor at you did see you and I said, and he's putting together this program. And I said, it's going to be a mandatory curriculum in our house, so get ready.

And she's like, well, what's this all about? And I was telling her, saying, oh, that would actually be really cool. And we had this conversation about it. And I think there's this awareness with the kids. Sometimes they realize, okay, I am grossly underprepared for like, what's to come, but sometimes kids, it's like they don't even know what they don't know.

So like, what do you do in those situations? I guess you just say start like, start bringing up awareness, start giving them tools. But I think there's some kids that are maybe less naive and other kids that are, I don't know, more a little bit more pure. Naturally. What what are your thoughts on that? This is exactly what we're talking about is, you know, having the conversations with the kids.

You know, I it's funny because one of our, one of our classes is, is going to be about, digital awareness and well-being, you know, getting the email scams, and all that. Now, I don't know about you, but I've been really close to falling for them because some of them are really, really good. And so, but if you don't talk about them, you have no idea.

You just kind of go through it and then you, you know, you get caught under your email and you're just moving through it and you see something and you click on it. But if you pay attention and you talk about these things with your friends, your family, all of a sudden you say, oh, wait, I need to check on this.

And especially in this digital age with AI, with AI coming, it's going to be it's even more rampant. My son Isaac now, who's 15, sends me so many different memes or, you know, new studies that are coming out, how people are scamming people. And, well, this is now he's engaged and learning about this stuff. And it's like, I'm not teaching him.

He's teaching me. It's fabulous to. And so how do you develop discernment? Because like you said, RJ, I think he's a great guy. I've had the chance to roll with him a little bit here and there, and he seems like he has discernment, like he has a good head on his shoulders and like, how do you teach somebody that when I talk about discernment is knowing the difference between like, what's truth and what's not truth, especially in a world where you can get a DM from somebody, break on social media and they make a comment about like a post, oh, wow, you know, you're you look really pretty.

Your hair looks pretty. Not me, because I'm a bald guy, but they say, hey, yeah, you know, I really like this. Or and you're like, wow, I'm flattered. It's another, you know, Sam. Sam, a 15 year old girl, I may say, oh, it's another, you know, 15 year old boy saying there's. So that's nice. Little do you know, behind the scenes, it's not a 15 year old boy.

It's a 50 year old man who may just be trying to lure you, you know, down this dangerous path. Like, how do you teach kids discernment, when there's so many fakes out there and there's just so much they stuff. And it's, to your point, super convincing. Otherwise to teach them to question, you know, you know, somewhere along the lines, you know, our authorities are, you know, in the schools we're teaching our kids to read, you know, just to copy and repeat.

Like I was saying earlier. Yeah, well, know, you question these things, you question everything. And the more you question, you know, the more you you get people to, to think. Here's an example. Last night we were at, we had a dinner, we had some friends over, had kids that were nine, 13, eight, and we were talking and one word came up was backwash.

And so I said, what's the opposite of backwash? And she's like, I don't know. And so every word that came up, we kept trying to think of just different words that, you know, what's the opposite of Frank? She came up with frame. What's the opposite of a picture? Picture frame? And then I think we came up with chaos.

Could be the opposite of that, because it's not framed. Yeah. But you know, it's these conversations you can have that get your kids to think, you know, because it says so in the books. It doesn't mean that's all the way it is. You know, a lot of in Brazilian jiu jitsu people do this, though. They talk in absolutes.

You know, these if you have a professor come tell you this is the way it has to be done. And I don't know, I've seen some really crazy things done. I always tell people, if it works, you did it right. Yeah. You know, if for you to that day, it's okay. And you could always refine and get better.

But, you know, there's so many different ways to get to the same point. We had Kyron Gracie come to a seminar with us, and I, you know, he did. He I had him teach all my teachers. It was amazing. So I've got a bunch of brown and black belts, guys training ten, 15 years plus and Kyron comes to show us fundamentals.

And he showed us some things that, you know, half of us have never seen before. I have a three straight black belt, which means you've been training, you know, black belt for ten years. Three straight in judo. He goes, I'm not only listen, I'm not only learning jiu jitsu, I'm learning how to teach jiu jitsu, and I'm learning jiu jitsu.

I never knew before. And and but Kai, what he Kyron said was like, oh, you're not learning anything new. You're just learning a different pathway to do the same thing. And it's just more efficient. It's kind of like going down the roads when you're going, when you pick a better, a more efficient pathway, you can you can do the same thing three different ways.

You can get there, three different ways. One takes you five minutes, one takes you 30. So but if you teach your kids to think that way, you know that it's not you know, and I'll be I'll be if somebody you know says its word, they start to question. And that's like my son Isaac, you know, I'll talk to him about these things and then he'll go like, wait a minute.

No, that doesn't make sense. And I'm like, okay, maybe it doesn't. And then I again then I get four more texts from him saying, well, this defied that. And I'm like, okay, maybe I was wrong, right? Right. So I like that. I like that kind of thinking. And I think also with being prepared, it's being able to see a little bit ahead.

And it doesn't mean you're going to have like a crystal ball and know exactly what's going to happen. But I know for me, you know, maybe I'm a little crazy, but I always try to talk to my kids about this, this concept of just look like a few steps ahead. So, for example, let's say we're going to go skiing one day and we know that it's going to be a three hour drive up to the mountains and we leave at 11:00 and we don't eat anything.

Well guess what? We're going to get there at two. Everybody's going to be hangry. It's going to be a miserable time that it out. Right. And you could start seeing through like see what's ahead. So you can start preparing to your point and planning. So it doesn't mean that you're going to know how everything goes down. But when you talk about, okay, I'm going to go into a restaurant, I'm going to like face the door just so I could be overprepared.

If something happens and you just kind of think through things a little bit more, then I think it will help you. Same thing. Like when you kick things off at the beginning about like the school shooting. Okay, if this happens, what would I do to prepare to protect myself and to protect others? And so it's allowing kids or enabling kids to think forward a few steps.

What are your thoughts on that? And how do you practice that in your life. So I, I think what you should probably take that to and talk to yourself about that in jujitsu. I think it help you, you know, probably exactly. Well, if that's what it is, that's what jujitsu is, is it's playing chess, right? You're you're going ahead.

But you could do this in so many aspects of your life, you know, daily preparation, you know, you know, people talk about it business, you know, making a daily, you know, a daily checklist. Okay. And then you're forecasting your week, you're planning your week, and then you're putting goals to your week and then your month, and then you set out goals that you're going to go for in the year.

It's just you can do this on everyday situations. Where are you going? What. Just like you said. Well, you know what's going on. What am I doing tomorrow? You know, we talked we were talking about that with your kids. You know, the kids, you know, they're always last minute, you know, like that sense of time, you know, hey, you know, clean up your room before we leave, and then we're getting ready to leave, and nobody cleans up their room.

It's like, why is because they they just didn't foresee that they they had a problem coming. Well, the problem is, is I don't take them with me. And then they're like, well, why does that happen? So because you didn't do what you were supposed to do, right? And so the more you do these things, you know, and you know, this leads to the thing that I think people miss.

You know, these hover parents miss just like they let their kids go every time and they protect them, you know, they don't let them fail. Oh, I can't tell you. I coach so many kids and I remember my son. My son has some baseball for friends that that ran my team. And, you know, there's intelligence. They're smart, there's hard working and such.

And these kids he took, you know, my son RJ told me one of these kids, he got all A's in high school throughout all of high school. And I'm like, as a person, I coached a kid. I'm like, that's not possible. I was like, how do you get. There's just you. He couldn't have done it without a lot of help along the way.

But it also it tells me that the, the value of what the grades are aren't the same anymore. So somebody along the way is helping them, not, you know, helping them not fail, which is a huge failure for parents. You know, kids when they when they struggle, we can't do the work for them. Yeah. They have to fail.

And and if you don't fail, you don't learn. It's the quickest way to. And we talk about it. The quickest way to grow in jiu jitsu is fail. But it's the same thing in life. Now, as parents, we can protect them to a point where we're guiding their failures. But in school, grades A grades, our grades, if you protect them from, you know, doing their work for them, you're not you're you're you're you're doing a great disservice.

You might help them into college, but then when they get to college, they fail. They're because they couldn't do it in the first place. So exactly, it's like the it's like the kid who is restricted. They never get cookies or soft drinks at home. Then they go to college. They say hook up because they're like, it's a free for all.

I've never had this before. Okay, so we talked about being aware. We talked about being prepared. Let's talk about being willing. What does that mean to you. So you know, willing is having you know, being able to take the responsibility to act. And this is a this is one of those things that a lot of people miss is like, we we try to, you know, and again, the hover parents, they take responsibility away from the kids.

So if the kid doesn't he didn't fail because you protected him. You took the responsibility of their failure away from them. So then later in life they're going to miss on, you know, taking responsibility. They, they, they walk away from it. They don't want to be a part of it. And so, you know, when you're willing to act, you're taking responsibility.

You know, right or wrong, you know, but at least you can. It's really important if you don't, if you're not willing to act you, you become the victim or you become a bystander, which, you know, both can be pretty bad. Yeah. No. And I like it. And I like what you said about, you know, taking the responsibility because I agree with you.

If you remove the consequence, like the kids will never learn and I think it is a huge disservice. I mean, it's a huge disservice. I mean, that's the same thing. Like if you are enabling somebody, somebody has a drug addiction and you're just constantly feeding the money or you're not doing anything, to, to prevent it because you don't want to feel like a bad parent or you're worried about this and guess what?

They die or end up in jail. That's going to be terrible because, you know, you enable that. And so like, I have a buddy is his Steven and he runs, a and he runs an addiction recovery center out in California. And he's constantly harping on this where like, the worst thing you could do as a parent or as a loved one is enable.

And whether it's with drugs or whether it's with alcohol or whether it's with other types of behavior, even if it's not like severe, even if it's just a little kid, if you take away that consequence, if you take that responsibility on yourself and you take that away from your kid, they never learn. And then the behavior keeps repeating, repeating, and you take away the opportunity for them to grow and transform.

Yeah. You know, the same thing that you're about to. Everybody gets a trophy generation. Yeah. The thing you take away from kids when you do this is confidence. Because the kid he doesn't feel he doesn't overcome, he doesn't build confidence. And he's always at that same level. You know, you watch kids in jujitsu come when they start to get beat.

You know, they start as the white belt with no stripes, and they come in and they get smash, smash, smash, and then eventually get 3 or 4 stripes on their belt, and all of a sudden they beat somebody. All of a sudden you see a kid go from this to this, you know, like shoulders, heads down to looking at you.

And that one month on the mat, I see a kid go from he won't talk to you straight in the face to lifting up his eyes. Jordan Peterson has a great book. 12 rules for life. I give it to every one of my kids before they're 18. But, you know, he's got one of them where he says, stand up straight with your shoulders back.

Just your posture creates a different thing, you know, in people, you teach kids about posture at, you know, when they go off to college, you know, people, you know, the guys look for victims, they look for body, they look posture, how they're walking away, how they're standing, all of that. You can they can spot a victim from a distance just by changing the way they stand is going to make them safer.

You can't. That seems kind of crazy, but it's real because those guys, those guys that are going to do that, they're going to find somebody who is not confident, who has no self-esteem, who's, you know, kind of closed off, won't look anybody in the eye. They become victims. But as parents, we can teach the kids that. And.

Yeah, you know, and I agree, and I like I like all this because when it comes to accountability, when it comes to responsibility, you know, I think it's our responsibility as parents to, empower these kids, right? Empower these kids with these opportunities to learn, to grow, to feel like you're mentioning earlier. And I think it's good for them to go out there and, and try different things to fail to learn, to improve and make these adjustments in their life.

And without it, yeah, they're they are just victims. And I also I want to touch on like that whole victim mentality too, because I think it's easy to fall into the trap of like, well, Robert, that's just the way it is. That's just the way the world is. And you and I both know people that say, well, look, it's the Republicans.

They're in charge. Oh, it's the Democrats. They're in charge. You know, it's the economy. It's my boss. It's this new law. It's that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like, you could blame everything. Oh, it's the weather. But I think, like until we start taking responsibility for our own lives, like we're not willing if we're not willing to, to change, we're not willing to make improvements.

And we're we're sitting ducks. Yeah. Choices. Yeah. I always say, you know, if you don't make a decision, oftentimes they get made for you, you know, so you have a choice. You know, when something bad happens, you have a choice how to respond to it. You know, you might not have a choice that it happened to you. You made a comment earlier that there's 100% chance you won't, you know, get into a DUI accident if you don't drink and drive.

It's not quite true because somebody else on the road might hit you. And if they're drinking and driving, you have no choice. And so yeah, but how do you how do you respond to it is is how, you know, in anything how do you respond? You know, you respond, you know, by having tools and the ability to make good choices.

And so, you know, that's what we're doing. All of these things in our market prep is going to be about how to build good character, how to be, you know, educated, how to have a growth mindset, how to get all these tools to help you make good decisions. And, you know, so you can grow. You know, I always tell my kids, right now, this is like the most opportune time, for kids, you know, that, you know, with all the stuff that's going on in the world, politics, I and everything, you know, there's going to be two sides eventually.

You know, there's going to be haves and have nots. You can be on the side where you're going to blame everybody for your problems, or you're going to be on the side that takes, you know, responsibility. The ones who take responsibility are going to grow and they're going to be ahead. And that's kind of, you know, how I talk to my kids.

In reality, I don't, you know, we try not to sugarcoat it and, you know, hey, you can be anything you want. Yeah, you can, but not quite. There's there's limitations for all of us. Sure. Well, I want to touch on one last thing. I want to wrap up on this. You know, you just said something, and I think you're absolutely right.

You could be doing all this. You could be aware, you could be prepared, you be willing. And guess what? Sometimes bad crap happens to good people. I mean, that's just life. But I think then what you followed up with saying giving them the tools to bounce back, to be resilient, I mean, I think that's really the key because, look, you may be a victim of of a violent crime and you may be doing everything that you should be doing.

It just that's what happens. But being able to bounce back from that, I think is, is super critical. And like you said, it's just the simple tools that these people can learn, simple tools that can change a life, can save a life can transform a life. Yeah. You know, it goes back to this. You can start this early, you know, let your kids fail at a young age and let them overcome those obstacles themselves.

Let them grow from them, and they'll do it enough times that, you know, when they get to college and they have something bad happen, they figure it out. They might not even call you and they might handle it. That's what the goal is, you know, to make these kids self-sufficient. So, hey, my kids, I've heard some things that they've told me later, you know, I have a 29 year old and he's like, man, they made it through.

They didn't call me to take care of it. They figured it out. They they move on and they grow from it. But the more we protect these kids from failures, this is a I, you know, I, I get I don't know the statistics on it, but with all these suicides and stuff in high school and colleges, I'm a big believer that it's because these kids never failed before in their life.

And then all of a sudden they're 17 years old and they had a breakup and they think the world's over, right? It's like they didn't build any. They they didn't build anything thick skin. And so, you know, that's what we're doing. We're going to help these kids become aware, prepared and willing. And we're going to help them, you know, build some thick skin and kind of grow in their mindset and help them, you know, succeed in their college careers.

Yeah. I love your purpose behind this. And I think you're going to do an incredible job. And I'm so excited that we're able to do this episode together because the world, like, literally needs to hear this, and they need to share this with everybody that they know because it is such a critical topic. So thank you for having me on the show.

Yeah. No thank you. Like I said, you know, I actually call it we call it episode one. This is just kind of the idea that we're bringing to everybody. Our first episode, we're actually going to bring on Mari and talk about how she went through that, that shooting in, Florida State and, you know, give people these tools and keep this stuff going.

So thank you for taking all the time. Really appreciate it.