We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rodrigo Martins a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rodrigo, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
The hardest thing for us as a jiu jitsu gym to bring and keep the students are the parents to understand that jiu jitsu is not easy, most of times the kids will ask to quit, we fight, we sweat, we cry and we take them out of their comfort zone, what kid wants that ??
That’s why jiu jotsu is amazing, we bring life problems and hard situations to the mats, to make them ready! Unfortunately, the parents aloud the kids to have options and they let the kids quit when they are uncomfortable.
Rodrigo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I grew inside a bjj family, my brother is my master and I had no option but follow the path, o started teaching as a purple belt when I created and lead the kids program at my brothers gym in Brazil! I moved to USA with my wife in 2019 before Covid, we went trough a lot of problems and difficulties untill we open our gym with a couple of students in 2022/23.
Since then my biggest motivations is inspire my students, motivate them and change their life’s, either physically, mentally, help kids with bullying problems, confidence, etc.
I have accomplished a lot of tittles inside jiu jitsu, but my biggest reward is seeing my students being champions in and outside the mats! My goal for life is change and help as many people as I can for good!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Me and my wife moved to USA in 2019 right before Covid, we lost everything, everyone was coming back to Brazil, but we stayed, worked with delivery, different shifts since we had our son 3yo.
We restart from zero, I was teaching for free, nobody believed we could make it, 3 years after we have our own gym with almost 200 students and now we have 2 kids!
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My partners have 2kids, twins. They brought them once to train where I was teaching and after couple months they started doing privates with me. After a year of privates the twins started to give results, they were world champions, pan American champions, national champions and then the father ( purple belt) call me and invite me to open a gym and now the kids are men’s, really well accomplished in jiu jitsu and the father is one of my first black belts
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