Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hiroko Holland. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hiroko, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

I’ve been familiar with the concept of family business since I was very young. My mom’s side of the family runs a family business in Taiwan and I grew up watching them work hard and play at their factory whenever we visited them. My mom used to tell me how lonely she felt growing up because her parents were always working to make their business successful. My mom instilled the importance of the family time and that will always be my number one priority. This has worked for me and for my family so far and I am lucky to have a supportive family who let me do what I do. I try my best to separate a business time and the family time but I constantly have to watch myself not to mix them together. That would definitely be a pitfall for having a family business since there are no obvious separation between the two. I would want my children to join the business if that is what they want. They already help running a class most of the times so I am hoping they can help running a business someday. Most of Universal Kempo-Karate Schools are run by individual families. I’ve seen them come together and build a wonderful community. I look up to all of them and I hope to follow their steps.

Hiroko, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Hiroko Hattori Holland, I am an owner and Head Instructor at Universal Kempo-Karate Schools(UKKS) Hendersonville Branch. I am from Japan and I am married to a USAF Veteran husband and we have 2 daughters together. I met my husband when he was stationed in Tokyo, Japan and we moved to the United States in 2012. I have been learning Kempo-Karate under UKKS since 2014 in both Colorado and California. and when my family and I found out we are moving to Nashville area, my instructors and my family encouraged and supported me to open up my own branch. I am passionate about Kempo-Karate especially under UKKS system because it teaches self-defense physically and mentally, and I truly believe it helps anyone of any age to live healthy and happy life. I am also passionate about working with children. I have background in education and child development. I want to provide a safe and fun environment for kids to learn and grow up to be well-rounded human beings. Our school is family-oriented, friendly, uplifting, and always encouraging one another to be better. We become one big family and we all take care each other.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

I think it is to get in front of people; in person or on the internet. In person, we go to local events and set up a booth. I love meeting people in the community in person. I get to connect with them and I get to share my passion with them. People get to feel what our school is like and what kind of people are running the business. Connecting is one of the important things for me so I love being in front of people in person. Having said that, it is difficult to be in present in person all the time. So I try my best to keep my internet presence updated. By sharing the videos and pictures, people get to see who we are and what we work on, what we represent, and what our school is like. I try to keep our internet profile as authentic as possible so that people can actually feel what we are like, just like meeting in person.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

After I had my second daughter, I needed something for myself. Not as a mom but as an individual. I’ve always played sports growing up so I wanted something active. That is when I tried a woman’s self-defense class at Moms group and I just loved it so much. I loved the fact that I get to learn how to protect myself and my family while I stayed active. I felt powerful and confident as I kept training. It was obvious that my physical and mental state changed for better and I just enjoyed every minuet of my training. When Covid hit, I struggled a lot in many different changes. The only thing that stood strong and didn’t change was my Kempo training. My instructor kept his training over Zoom and he opened up the door for in-person training as soon as it was allowed. Being at the training became my escape and sanctuary from a daily chaos and it was a place where I could just focus on myself being better. It was the only place where it felt stable when everything else seemed to fall apart. Kempo training kept my sanity and saved me from mental breakdowns. Through these times, Kempo training became a part of me and it became my lifestyle. Since there is no Universal Kempo Karate Schools here in Nashville, the only option I had to keep training was to open up my own branch. With the massive support and encouragement from my instructors and my husband, I was able to open Hendersonville Branch in November 2022. It is almost a year since we opened and we are very lucky to have some of the best students at our school who works hard every single class.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hattorikempo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hattorikempo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hattorikempo/