We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rafael Ramos. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rafael below.

Rafael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I would like it to be that we were able to be a positive influence in our community, from the kids to the adults .

That everyone that comes to train with us , don’t think of us just as a martial arts school but also a school that has a great environment that people wants to be there as much as possible.

In summary , we want to do for others , what jiu-jitsu has done for us !

Rafael, 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?

I was born in Rio de Janeiro , Brazil and was always into sports . Soccer (of course!) , tennis , swimming , Judo and the list goes on ….. After Judo , i started training Jiu-Jitsu at the original Gracie Barra school in Brazil . This was around 1994, and i never stopped.
In my early twenties i was in Law School but i wasn’t really excited about it and i was searching for something that i was passioned about.
That was when my friend and now business partner Nelson, called me and said that he needed some help to run his school in Encinitas . Jiu-Jitsu was the only thing constant in my life , and it took that phone call to realize what i waned to do with my life.
I was 24 yrs old when he called me and i immediately hopped on a plane and spent 10 days with him discussing some details and getting to know the area and the business .
After those 10 days i went back home , got married with my girlfriend (now wife) , got all the documents that i needed for my work visa and move to Encinitas on August 10th , 2006.
Since then , we’ve been growing our business and changing lives through jiu -jitsu in the community of Encinitas and North County San Diego.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Well , this was a great marketing move that we made but also a stressful one.

I think it was around 2007/08 and we ordered a lot of those yard signs with the name of our business and the phone number .
We put them all over town . I think it was about 80 or them and we were getting lots of leads . It was the best result of any marketing campaign we had ever done back then.
We thought that we were marketing geniuses . Until we got a call from the city saying that we needed to remove all of the signs or we would get fined . So we drove around town collecting them but we didn’t remember the location of all of them so for weeks we were very anxious about the possible fine but it never came !

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

We have been in the same location for almost 17 years now , so 90% of our clients come from referrals . Our goal from day 1 was to create a business where people feel at home a family/friendly environment and i think we did .

We are very thankful for the community of Encinitas and all the amazing people that come in everyday to learn Jiu-Jitsu with us .

Contact Info:

• Website: gbencinitas.com
• Instagram: @gbencinitas
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/graciebarraencinitas
• Linkedin: n/a
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/gbencinitas
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/sealgb72

Image Credits
Anni Dayan