Episode 878 - Sensei Ray Owles
In today's episode Jeremy chats with Ray Owles, a Shorin Ryu practitioner from Texas.Sensei Ray Owles - Episode 878
In this episode, Jeremy sits down with Sensei Ray Owles, a Shorin Ryu practitioner whose relentless dedication led him to spend every spare moment within the sacred walls of the dojo. Join us as Ray shares his profound insights into the world of Shorin Ryu, recounting a journey where martial arts became not just a passion but a way of life.
In an eye-opening conversation, Sensei Owles candidly discusses occasionally choosing to prioritizing martial arts training over traditional schooling. His story unfolds as he navigates the challenges and triumphs of aligning his life's priorities with the pursuit of martial excellence.
Listen closely as Sensei Owles explores the transformative power of putting training at the forefront and delves into the significance of finding his people within the martial arts community. Show Notes
Connect with Sensei Owles on Facebook and Instagram - owleskaratetx
www.owleskarate.com
✅Subscribe to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio on the following platforms:
🎧Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3mVnZmf
🎧Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yHVdHQ
🎧Google: https://bit.ly/3kLSpo8
✅You can find whistlekick on all social media platforms using the handle @whistlekick or visit our website at https://www.whistlekick.com or https://www.whistlekickmartialartsradio.com
Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:00.178)
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome, this is Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio and on the show today since Ray Owls. Ray, welcome, we're gonna start our conversation here in just a moment, but for the audience, if you're new, please check out whistlekick.com for all the things that we do, because we do a lot of things. Our goal here is to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world on our path to get everybody to train for at least six months. If you wanna support that mission, check out the things that we've got going on over there.
And if you want to go deeper on this episode, show notes, links, photos, all that good stuff, Whistlekick, martial arts radio dot com is the best place to go. We bring you every single episode over there. All of them. You can search them. Lots of lots of stuff. Lots of stuff happening there. But Sensei Ray, thanks for being here, man.
Ray Owles (00:50.555)
Thanks for having me, Jeremy. Great to see you.
Jeremy (00:51.854)
Of course, I, yeah, you too. I appreciate you being here. And so where should we start? You've listened to some episodes. If you, when you've listened, have you thought this is the thing we've got to kick off with?
Ray Owles (01:05.463)
Oh, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, I've heard a lot of different things on the episodes. I don't know that, you know, my journey is that profound or different from anybody else's journey, you know? Right, exactly. I mean, we all started the same, right? It was...
Jeremy (01:19.17)
So says everyone who's on the show. Everybody says that. Even even the best ones, the best episodes still before we hit record. I don't know if I have anything to say.
Well, how about this then? When did you start? What's episode or issue one of the Ray Owles martial arts comic book going to have?
Ray Owles (01:45.039)
I mean, I think issue one is, you know, Karate Kid movies, you know, child of the 80s and early 90s. So, you know, it was a product of the Karate Kid and the Ninja Turtles and all that good stuff. You know, the early 90s, there was like an explosion of martial arts action movies. You know, you couldn't, you know, everywhere you turned, it was Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme, everything. And I just, from a young age, I had been interested in them,
Jeremy (01:49.353)
Mmm.
Ray Owles (02:14.627)
to train, I bounced around a lot of different sports as a kid. Basketball, t-ball, soccer, you name it. None of them really stuck until I was able to get myself in a dojo finally. And that was like, something about it felt different. I'm like, ooh, this is fun. What's that? It was 91 when I started, so I was 13 years old. I went to a...
Jeremy (02:29.378)
How old were you when you started?
Jeremy (02:36.97)
Okay, all right, so we're just about the same age, 78? 77, okay, so, close, we're real close. Oh, well, that doesn't, all right. Year and a half, probably about a year and a half, yeah, just about a year and a half. All right, well.
Ray Owles (02:40.788)
70s out.
Ray Owles (02:45.688)
I just had a birthday, so.
Jeremy (02:57.651)
Did you try? Like, did you bug your parents? Did you say, I wanna do this?
Ray Owles (03:03.479)
No, not really. It was nothing I really pushed for. One of my good friends had started training and he invited me to a buddy day class at the dojo he was training at. And I went in and had that one buddy day class was instantly hooked. Ended up winning three free months of lessons out of it. And here we are 31, 32 years later, still going. My mom always used to joke that was the most expensive free prize she ever won in her life.
Jeremy (03:04.928)
Okay.
Jeremy (03:34.57)
Well said, and hey, those of you in the audience that run schools, if you missed it, rewind. Rewind, because that is a, if you're doing raffles, if you're getting names, and everyone is not winning free classes, I think you're doing it wrong. But, so you jump in there, it feels different. You're hooked, it sounds like. How much of the hook?
was because of what you watched before. Because let's face it, Karate Kid and the Ninja Turtles and Seagal movies don't really translate to what an early white belt experiences in their first few months of training.
Ray Owles (04:18.775)
No, not at all. But I think that was part of the hook is that I knew that, you know, like that wasn't something that was gonna happen overnight, but I'm like, it, again, it felt different to me than like regular organized sports. Cause you know, if I'm not the most gifted athletically, you know, the best baseball player, the best basketball player, there's people coming in that are already ahead of me. And I'm gonna ride the bench till I get good enough to.
get out there on the field, but with martial arts, it's instantly, it's like, let's make you the best you, and you're not going to have to sit on the sidelines where you're going to be there. You're going to be standing next to somebody that's really good or behind somebody that's really good and you can try to follow them and emulate them. And you don't just have to sit there and watch and go to practice, but not get to participate.
Jeremy (05:07.69)
It's hard to get better without the real, the game, and it's hard to put everything you have into practice when you don't think you're going to be playing in the game. But martial arts, in the way it's trained in most schools, there are no sidelines. Everybody's there. This idea that we train separately but together. You know, the older I get, the more that I talk to people, the more intrigued I am that we stumbled on this format.
Maybe stumbled isn't quite the right word, but it's, it works. So you're there. Go ahead. Yeah, it does. All right. So you jump in there and you're, you're having a good time and you're hooked right away. What's, what's the next plot point along your timeline?
Ray Owles (05:41.295)
Yeah, whether it was dumbled or by design, it seems to work.
Ray Owles (05:59.32)
From there, you know, I get more and more involved. I get less involved in other school activities, other sports. I put those outside.
Jeremy (06:06.634)
How about homework? Was homework getting less involved? We've heard that dynamic before. Okay.
Ray Owles (06:10.107)
Uh, it was getting done. It was getting done, but you know, had to practice my new cut the first. Yeah.
Jeremy (06:16.247)
That's right.
Ray Owles (06:20.195)
after I got those new moves down in the cut, that then I can worry about the math and the social studies homework for sure, but priorities, right? I started getting pretty involved in tournament competitions and going out and doing that. And that was fun for a while. And I started doing some student teaching. So basically just any opportunity to get myself at the dojo as much as possible, because I just loved it there. I loved the people there, camaraderie.
Jeremy (06:22.038)
Yeah, yeah, totally. All right.
Ray Owles (06:49.719)
Okay, so if I join the tournament team, I get to come to more classes, cool. Oh, I can volunteer to be a student teacher and come to extra classes and help with more classes. Cool, I wanna do that. Oh, there's a black belt club and I can come to another extra class once a month for that. Cool. So it was just really trying to find more excuses to be in the dojo. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, hook, line and sink.
Jeremy (07:11.722)
You were all in. Okay.
Jeremy (07:19.423)
What was the response at home? 13, teenage years can be difficult as is, but combine the disruption that is common among teenagers with the hormones and now maybe a potentially unearned sense of confidence from training, was that a recipe for trouble at home?
Ray Owles (07:47.143)
Um, I don't think too much. I mean, I would, would have had to have been home more for it to be a recipe for trouble. Right. I think it was good because I think from my parents' point of view, you know, they knew, well, okay, we can take them. And, you know, until I was driving on my own to get myself to the dojo, they knew that they could take me and drop me off. And there was, you know, four hours or whatever it was a day that they knew that I was in a safe, controlled environment. I wasn't going to be out running the streets, causing trouble. I'd be in the dojo causing trouble.
Jeremy (08:13.43)
so they were supportive.
They were supportive.
Ray Owles (08:18.263)
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeremy (08:20.706)
Did they ever watch you compete?
Ray Owles (08:22.887)
Um, yeah, my, my dad, uh, did a lot of driving for the tournament team. There's myself and a couple of friends and I grew up in Southeast Connecticut. So I'm down in Texas now, but I grew up in Southeast Connecticut. So my dojo was actually in Rhode Island that I trained in, but you know, in that area, everything was small. So every tournament was, you know, it's drive to New York drive to Boston drive to New Hampshire drive to, you know, so a lot of, a lot of weekend road trips. So all the dojo parents would, you know,
and kind of bundle up and sort of take turns with who would drive. But yeah, definitely in the early years, my parents were real supportive. My dad was kind of one of the main carpool drivers for the tournament team. I remember we were in one tournament in Boston and we've gone out to a restaurant to eat afterwards and one of my good friends that was with us, he decided for whatever reason not to change at the gym and wear his gi to the restaurant. And then he got to the restaurant and felt really weird about it. So he...
Jeremy (08:53.162)
can relate.
Jeremy (09:01.378)
Hmm
Ray Owles (09:20.747)
Asked my dad to borrow his keys so he could go get his bag and change clothes. Then he comes back about 10 minutes later with this really worried look on his face. And if I locked your dad's keys in his car, would that be a problem? And this is like, yeah, it's a Saturday night at like 8 PM and we're in Boston with a two and a half hour drive home. Like, yeah, it was a problem.
Jeremy (09:38.98)
It's not ideal.
Jeremy (09:44.396)
Ugh. So what'd you do?
Ray Owles (09:47.023)
Um, we ended up finding a locksmith, but we stayed at the restaurant a lot longer than we meant to or needed to, but, uh, we were able to track down a locksmith eventually. Get in, but it was a fun ride home. My dad wasn't a happy that.
Jeremy (09:49.526)
Okay.
Yeah.
Jeremy (10:01.262)
I'm sure he wasn't thrilled. No, he probably didn't drive the next event, did he? Yeah, yeah, gonna need a break for that one, and that probably, I'm guessing that kid has not locked anybody's keys in the car since.
Ray Owles (10:05.757)
He did not.
Ray Owles (10:16.015)
Hopefully.
Jeremy (10:19.15)
All right. So competitions and anybody who's spent time, especially as a teenager in competition, it can be incredibly formative because you're. You know, you're looking for so many things as a teenager and in a lot of ways, martial arts training doesn't necessarily give you the social structure and that outlet that team sports.
does, but martial arts competition can. That was my story. It sounds like that's a bit of your story as well. Were you making friends at tournaments? Were there people you were seeing time and again in your divisions?
Ray Owles (10:58.679)
Yeah, I mean, you know, there was obviously we had a lot of friends in the dojo that I was training and traveling with, but you know, you sort of start to see the same people and, uh, making a few friends outside of that circle as well from, from other schools in the area. Cause you know, especially in that small new England group, it's, you know, a lot of the same people at the same tournament. So, you know, we heck, we might've been at some of the same tournaments together, who knows? Yeah.
Jeremy (11:21.086)
I'm sure we will. I'm sure we were. Would have been, I mean, the heaviest years for me were like 94 and 95, but there was some stuff 93 and 96 as well.
Ray Owles (11:31.827)
Yeah, it was kind of 90 probably 93 was one of about the heaviest year for me. And I sort of started transitioning out shortly around after that round, little after 93. Yeah.
Jeremy (11:40.418)
Cause it's tiring. It's a lot of work. You know, people forget, you know, if you want to show up and really perform at a high level, your training in class is not all you need. And I mean, there are some schools that train in that way, but you were probably training during your quote, off time. You know, what did that look like for you? How were you getting that done?
Ray Owles (12:06.107)
Again, off time wasn't really too much of a thing. I feel like I was spending, I would stay at the dojo till they sort of locked the doors and kicked us out. And then, you know, a lot of times depending on the night or what was going on, it might be buddies from the dojo and hey, let's go down to the bowling alley. Let's play some Mortal Kombat. Let's...
Jeremy (12:13.895)
Mm.
Jeremy (12:26.972)
Mortal Kombat was definitely good practice for competition.
Ray Owles (12:29.655)
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. That was the days before the internet, right? So the only way you had to, you're always trying to cover your joysticks and nobody can figure out the secret moves.
Jeremy (12:39.77)
Yeah, yeah, you've found that move because you bought a Nintendo Power magazine or something, which I don't know if that would have been the magazine at that point, but that was a magazine through the 80s. And just like, I'm not going to tell you because now I've got you, right? And a bit of a parallel with sparring.
Ray Owles (12:58.395)
Yeah, for sure. But, you know, and then somewhere around that 93, 94 timeframe, kind of started to have a little shift maybe in my focus. I started to meet older, higher ranking, more of these, I want to say older, you know, probably, I'm probably older now than they were then, but, you know, some of these higher ranking, more traditional guys that didn't really do the competition thing and started seeing different things from what I was used to. And that was, you know, that, like, I really remember.
specifically being at a seminar that my sensei hosted and he brought in instructors from California and North Carolina and I'm watching these guys and like they're wearing the same patch on their chest that I'm wearing but they're doing things and talking about things that I've never seen and heard of and that's cool. I want more of that.
Jeremy (13:48.554)
Hmm The way you're talking about it and just the look on your face suggests that There might have been some light bulb moments for you in there Did I get the sense that you remember how that felt?
Ray Owles (13:58.859)
Oh, for sure. Absolutely.
Ray Owles (14:04.387)
Yeah, I mean, I vividly remember sitting in the bleachers at the high school gym and, you know, watching these guys demonstrate things and be like, Whoa, that's how did, where'd you get that from? Or, you know, then the next day we're in class and, uh, they start demonstrating some ground fighting techniques. And again, this is, you know, early nineties, this is like the, kind of the advent and the birth of UFC. And that's when it was kind of like the anything goes format, right? Where there was no weight classes or rounds or.
gloves or just, okay, go at it. And, you know, the time it was the Gracie family, right? It was kind of big. So to all of a sudden see that this art that I'm studying, and it was always watched that stuff and be like, oh, well, that's cool, but we don't do that. I've never learned that. It might be fun one day. And then to see these instructors taking techniques out of things that I have learned, like moves from kata, and no one would be like, oh no, this is a ground control. This is side control. This is an arm bar. This is a, I was like, what?
Jeremy (15:04.054)
This can be more than a low block and a punch.
Ray Owles (15:05.571)
Yeah. I'm not just blocking, punching and kicking. Like that, that blew my mind. So yeah, definitely a big, big aha light bulb moment there for sure.
Jeremy (15:15.998)
Now did that start to change the way you trained?
Ray Owles (15:18.903)
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was somewhere within that timeframe. The head instructor is Dave Aarons and he's been on this podcast before. Cheap plug, go listen to his episode. It's awesome. Yeah. Um, it was around the same time he, he got the great idea to start his own school. And, uh, when he, uh, when he made that decision, I was, he had sort of been the guy that taught my.
Jeremy (15:30.41)
No, no, we love those plugs.
Ray Owles (15:47.107)
very first buddy day class I went to and we had sort of built a bit of a bond and a friendship is it was not just a instructor student relationship it was almost like a I've got a big brother but it was almost like a big brother little brother type relationship that we had and when he said hey I'm gonna open a dojo I said hey I'm going with you so it wasn't I think we had very similar he had sort of seen the same things I had seen and
I think we realized we wanted to go down that path of a more.
Jeremy (16:19.382)
How old were you at that time?
Ray Owles (16:21.015)
At that time, that would have been 93, 94. So I'm 16-ish, 16.
Jeremy (16:25.31)
Okay. Yeah, so that sounds like sounds awfully mature, right? If we if we think now, a 16 year old who is competing, and I'm going to guess seeing some at least some success based on that frequency and just the way you're talking about how you approached it. I'm hearing you know what?
I'm going to stop doing that. I'm going to give up this and I'm going to go in this other direction. Am I reading that right?
Ray Owles (16:55.799)
A little bit, a little bit. And I think on the competition side, I mean, I was never the best guy at the tournament, but, you know, depending on the tournament, I, you know, I would place, went to enough tournaments that sort of by the end of the course of the season, I'd accumulate enough points to, I'd always sort of be sitting in the top five for sure. You know, sometimes I'm coming home from a tournament with a first place trophy. Sometimes I'm coming home with nothing, but.
Jeremy (17:18.743)
Mm-hmm.
Ray Owles (17:25.483)
You know, I felt like I had sort of without going to the next level of just becoming a full-time competitor and maybe getting on a travel tournament team that it's like a sponsor team, like a John Paul Mitchell team or something like that. I felt like I had sort of plateaued with where it was. It was like, okay, this is about as far as I can take it. So, uh, you know, what, what would be the next thing to, to be able to continue this journey?
Jeremy (17:52.718)
So you shift, you go into this other school as it's opening, did that cause any friction with your instructor, your other instructor?
Ray Owles (18:00.643)
Um, I mean, there was some friction within how it all went down, but I mean, not, not really because we were kind of, we did things sort of separately and, you know, sort of went to him and said, Hey, you know,
Ray Owles (18:14.131)
I'm going to go start training at this other school that since Aaron's is open and he was okay. It was kind of like a handshake and best luck to you and go for it. And I think it was at the time it was almost, it was more of a, more of a challenge to convince my parents. So, cause at the time I was probably, I was about six months away from black belt if I had stayed at the school I was at and you know, they'd signed up for the black belt club contract and
Jeremy (18:29.998)
Bye.
Ray Owles (18:40.855)
and all these other things. So they're like, well, you know, you committed to black belt. You really should stay there and, and see this through. And, uh, I think that from their point to there was some of the, you know, it's a, you're in an established dojo, which has been around for a long time versus going off more or less to your friend's dojo that, you know, we, we love him. Dave's a great guy too. But what if it, I think there was maybe some fear on there about what if his dojo doesn't work then what?
I think they were seeing big picture things that I wasn't even thinking about. Yeah, to Sensei Aarons and to myself, it was kind of a failure is not an option with his dojo. We just, it's easy to say failure is not an option when I don't know. The game plan is let's just do it. See what happens.
Jeremy (19:13.974)
Parents are good at that.
Jeremy (19:32.05)
Alright, so you sounds like you convinced them at some point and you start training over there. What's next?
Ray Owles (19:35.994)
Yeah.
Ray Owles (19:43.148)
Next was kind of the college. So, you know, kept training there. Ended up off at college. And I know that I was able to luckily, again, New England being so small, I went to University of Connecticut. So, provided me opportunities at least once a month or so to come back to the dojo and train. Through college, I got involved with, met some people.
in the college that also trained and we all basically kind of formed like a little martial arts club on campus for all these students that are sort of displaced from their dojos going to college. And that was kind of a fun time because there was a lot of people in and out of it, but it's myself and one other guy that I trained in Shorin-ru and he trained in Goju-ru. And we just have, it kind of started because we kind of go to the field house and the gym and kind of work out in the corner.
Jeremy (20:18.806)
Hmm.
Ray Owles (20:38.959)
We noticed each other kind of working out and doing martial arts and stuff. We started talking to each other and then realized that, hey, maybe this is something we can, there's probably more of us. And so we started pulling, but it was kind of the two of us were sort of the main catalyst for that. And so we got to, yeah, there wasn't, it was weird. There was, you know, I mean, there was a judo specific club and there was like fencing clubs and all this other stuff, but there wasn't like a karate club.
Jeremy (20:53.486)
I'm surprised there hadn't been a club before that.
Jeremy (21:06.186)
For folks who don't know, Yukon as a school is massive. 50,000 students, something like that. Right, so think about a town of 50,000 and they're not being a martial arts school there. It's gonna be kinda uncommon. So I'm surprised. All right, so I would imagine that that's scratching a bit of the itch, but also exposing you to more and different and interesting.
Ray Owles (21:12.42)
Um, yeah, sounds about right.
Ray Owles (21:32.975)
For sure, yeah. That started to, I think, open some avenues for, now it's not just going to class and training, right? Now it's not just going to class and teaching, but you're teaching what someone else tells you to teach. Now it's sort of, we're getting together. It's like, okay, cool, we're here. What do we wanna do? You teach me something, I'll teach you something. You teach me a kata, I'll teach you a kata. You show me a hit or a throw or a joint lock, I'll show you a pressure point or a...
wrist lock or whatever. And so kind of, you know, trying to navigate what, what do we do? How do we, what do we need to maintain? What do we want to keep up?
Jeremy (22:14.546)
Do you remember any specifics of things that you found really interesting, you know, for good or for bad? Was there stuff that you were exposed to and you went, oh!
Ray Owles (22:25.659)
Um, yeah, I don't, nothing really specifically sticks out. I just remember being sort of a fun time to learn things. Um, I was pretty involved in student activities, uh, in college. So I got some avenues there and that's how we were able to, I was able to sort of use some of those connections to, you know, get a little bit of funding through the university, uh, to put it together so we can make it a little bit bigger. Um, I got involved with the, uh, women's center on campus again, through some of my, uh, connections with student activities. So.
We started to host some self-defense seminars and things like that. We got some involvement with the university police department to come out and do some stuff. It was really cool. Again, it was just opportunities to just push the limits of what I can do and explore this thing of teaching a little bit more versus being a student.
Jeremy (23:19.649)
Cool. So college comes, it goes, you graduate, and then what?
Ray Owles (23:24.935)
graduate and moved to Texas. So not initially, no. For personal, my family was originally from Texas. My dad was a military contractor for the Navy. So that's how we ended up in New England area. It was just kind of one of those, I didn't really have anything immediately planned after college and I had an opportunity to move down, stay with some family down there for a bit outside of Houston.
Jeremy (23:28.174)
Okay, for work, for a person.
Ray Owles (23:53.851)
through the karate organization I trained in, we had dojos down in the Texas and Houston area, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, were all kind of hotbeds of our organization. So I knew that I had some connections down there. I'm like, let me roll down to Houston and see what happens. Maybe I'll spend six months or so down there and then figure out what I'm gonna do with my big boy life and we'll go from there. And that was...
December of 2000 that I moved down here for six months. And now we're about to be December, 2023.
Jeremy (24:32.158)
Yeah, wow. Now, we could talk about the personal side, but.
Jeremy (24:41.538)
Let's talk about the differences in your training. Most of us, if we think about our friends who pick up and move, they go somewhere really far away. A lot of them come back, especially at that age. They go, they do a few years, maybe six months, and they come back and it's good, but there was something about whatever they had moved to that was lacking, so they...
Ray Owles (24:50.106)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (25:09.418)
back but you didn't come back. So that suggests to me that not only did you find good stuff, you found more good stuff than you'd had. So let's talk about the training side of it. What were you finding in your training in Texas that made you, because I'm going to guess that was probably a pretty important part for you. What made you, with training it made you stick around.
Ray Owles (25:29.443)
Yeah. Um, I mean, the training was good. You know, it was, uh, you know, it, it was, it was a lot more of the same. I was, you know, training with some very high level, high ranking guys. Um, but you know, it was kind of fun getting to, it just kind of flipped the script on things where, you know, I had my Doja that I trained at and I'd get to see some of these high ranking guys two or three times a year, camps or seminars, if I'm lucky. And it just kind of flipped. And I was like, I'm training with some really high level guys on a
Jeremy (25:56.248)
Hmm.
Ray Owles (25:58.947)
weekly basis, but then still getting to see all the friends I grew up with and my instructors back home and all that two to three times a year at a seminar. So it was just, it was kind of like the opposite side of the same story. But I've never, you know, to all through that time and even to this day, I've always considered Sensei Aarons, my primary sensei. And it was never like,
I'm leaving the dojo or I'm leaving you, but it's just I've got this opportunity to explore and It just kind of panned out the way it did
Jeremy (26:35.166)
Nice. You know, one of the things that's always interesting about organizations is that, you know, and you'll be able to speak to this, but for the folks in the audience, when we think about a grouping of martial arts schools.
Jeremy (26:53.154)
even in the organizations that try to keep everything absolutely perfectly the same. It's never perfectly the same. There are always some differences. So I find that schools are either, you know, they try for that standardization and they reluctantly acknowledge that it doesn't completely exist, or those organizations are more philosophical and that the curriculum is more in spirit than it is in actual technique. This organization, which
which side of the spectrum did it trend towards?
Ray Owles (27:24.079)
Um, yeah, I think we've got a, a pretty, a pretty strong organization. And I think you can put a, you can take a room full of Katika from our organization from across the country, even across the world and put us in the same room, even if we've never trained together, you know, you say, okay, we're going to do Pasaisho and everybody's Pasaisho is going to be really close. It's close as you can get, uh, to looking similar. Um, that was.
Jeremy (27:49.407)
Yeah.
Ray Owles (27:53.715)
I've trained with some other organizations and some guys down here in Texas and, uh, Matsumura Sato guys that I trained with. Uh, one of them said one time he had him and his father had gone to one of our training camps. He goes, that's one of the things that impressed me the most about your guys organization is how uniform you guys can be and how in alignment you guys are. He goes in, you know, in our organization where there's a lot of, you know, everybody's doing things different because everybody like, well, you do it that way, but
Jeremy (28:12.139)
Hmm.
Ray Owles (28:22.139)
so and so taught me to do it this way. So I'm not gonna do it that way. So they're all kind of like, where we're all trying to be like, let's get together and unify this. I've seen a lot of organizations where they're like, well, no, the way that I'm doing it is right and you're doing it wrong. So it's almost like I'm gonna intentionally do it different from the way you do it.
Jeremy (28:24.15)
Yeah.
Jeremy (28:36.908)
Mm.
So you go to Texas and maybe the style of classes are different, but the techniques are the same, the forms are the same, and you really were able to jump in with both feet.
Ray Owles (28:48.907)
Yeah, I sort of dove right in. Didn't really skip a beat, for sure.
Jeremy (28:54.414)
Cool. Okay. And, you know, so I don't know what issue of the comic book we would be on here, but what's the next issue look like?
Ray Owles (29:04.623)
Um, you know, a couple of years go by, uh, things happen. I get to a point where, uh, the dojo that I'm training that is not, um, sort of going away. Uh, there's not really a senior student willing to take over the helm, uh, as the ability to, so it sort of scatters to the wind and I'm like, okay, well, what do I do now? Um, so I started, uh,
Jeremy (29:18.463)
Hmm.
Ray Owles (29:34.663)
training again on my own a little bit. And doing this kind of like some private one-on-one stuff with people here and there. And then somewhere out of that gets born the idea of let me start my own dojo. It worked great for my sensei. Back in Rhode Island, I can do it too.
Jeremy (29:52.57)
Now, a bit of a pressured question, but I think I have to ask it. Had you really not been thinking of opening a school?
Ray Owles (30:00.435)
No, I really hadn't to that point. I mean, I, and that's weird because, you know, I often think back to that and my dojo actually, we just had our 15th anniversary this month. Thank you. Thank you. But it was, I always knew karate was something that I loved. I absolutely enjoyed doing it. I sought out all my free time to do it. But for some reason, I just never had the connection of.
Jeremy (30:02.228)
Okay.
Jeremy (30:05.802)
Yeah!
Jeremy (30:09.867)
Congratulations.
Ray Owles (30:28.095)
Yeah, I should absolutely run my own school. It was just sort of, I love doing it. I'm gonna go to the dojo I train at and help as much as I can and teach other people. But it never really crossed my mind that, oh yeah, that would be or could be something that I could do on my own as well.
Jeremy (30:48.29)
Okay, so you start thinking, I'm gonna open a school. How long did it take from the idea to day one?
Ray Owles (30:57.155)
Um...
It took, I mean, it took a little bit of time. It was probably, I'd say there was a good year and a half in there where, um, the school that I had previously trained at, another, another guy came in. Um, and he sort of took things that he was doing, going a completely different route. He was doing like military combative stuff, like hand to hand. It was almost like a crowd Maga type thing, I guess would be the best.
Jeremy (31:21.406)
Your tone of voice tells us how enthused you were about that.
Ray Owles (31:24.287)
Yeah, but I think that would be sort of the best description of it. But he did offer me some space to, Hey, if you want to come in and work out. And there was a few people from the old Dojo that would kind of pop in and out here and there. Um, and around this time I moved out of Houston proper into the suburbs too. So that commute became, you know, turned in from a 20 minute commute into an hour and 20 minute commute is the thing about Houston, if people don't understand Houston geography.
Houston is over an hour away from Houston.
Jeremy (31:55.582)
Yeah, I've heard people say that. Well, all I, I've been to Houston once. I spent like three days there as a kid. All I remember is the most humid place I've ever been on earth. I have been, I have been a lot of places. I've been to a lot of tropical places and none of them hold a candle to the humidity I experienced in Houston.
Ray Owles (32:04.121)
Yes.
Ray Owles (32:12.771)
Yeah, I always joke that living in Houston is my training for when I go to Okinawa, because I'm always prepared for the humidity in Okinawa.
Jeremy (32:22.346)
Yeah, okay. All right, so you get going, you got some space. Are you pulling in students from the sort of defunct school or you feel like you're starting from scratch?
Ray Owles (32:33.719)
No, I'm kind of, it was kind of a start from scratch. I had, you know, one or two people that had kind of popped in when I was in the old space, but I, again, which geographically, I was not really near that space. So it was kind of a start from scratch thing. And, um, I started trying to get stuff out on Facebook groups and things like that, that I was there and pulled in, you know, it was, you know, the first year or so it was, I had three to five students.
something like that.
Jeremy (33:05.066)
which can be really disheartening, for folks that are trying to make a go of it. And I work with a variety of school owners in a professional sense and working with people as they get a school going, we all have this grand vision, right? I'm gonna open the doors and because I'm so passionate about this thing and I'm investing everything I have and I empty my 401k to buy mats and I do whatever these things are that we do.
Ray Owles (33:07.056)
Yeah.
Jeremy (33:33.218)
I'm gonna have 100 students by the second month. And more often than not, it's I have three to five students after three months.
Ray Owles (33:42.183)
Yeah. And, you know, I ended up in a really lucky situation down where I was, because I kind of started looking for, because I knew that it wasn't going to be a full time gig. I wasn't like, let me empty out my savings. Let me quit my job. Like I knew I wasn't anywhere near that point. I'm like, you know, let's see what I can make go of this. And I started looking around, you know, looking for places to stop with some like, is there like a dance school?
something I can find and eventually I find a guy who's doing a jujitsu based MMA program and I look at his schedule and I notice he has class like twice a week and that's it so I kind of get in touch with the guy and go in and meet him yeah and you know
Jeremy (34:22.442)
Hmm.
Jeremy (34:26.142)
because he had his own space, which suggests, hey, this place is not getting used most of the time.
Ray Owles (34:31.843)
Yeah. And, uh, at the time, the space was a warehouse, uh, it was owned by one of his students for a company that he ran. And it was just a little spot off to the side. So, uh, that's how he was able to get away with, with it being part-time. And I'm like, well, you know, what's going on here? Like, what are you doing the rest of the night? He's like, ah, nothing. I'm like, well, I'm kind of looking for a place to train and a place to start something up. Would you be interested? And he goes, yeah, yeah. I mean, we worked out a really great deal. And he.
He was more than really gracious that let me get up and running and how sort of that payment structure worked at first. And within about a year, both of our classes had grown to a size where we wanted a little bigger space and we were able to move to another space together. And we, we maintained a, a solid business structure for over 10 years, all the way up to, and just through COVID. And it was just within the last year and a half or so now that I finally
Jeremy (35:13.954)
That's awesome.
Ray Owles (35:30.751)
expanded my business to the point where I could get my own space. Um, so.
Jeremy (35:36.006)
You know, we've brought this up on the show, but I want to point this out for anyone who is thinking about opening a school. You know, what you did there is absolutely beautiful. Here's a school, right? So you're already going to be around some like minded people. But there are a lot of folks who are going to look at that and they're going to get scared. Right. What if they think I'm trying to steal their students or what if they steal my students? Right. Neither is something that we want.
But here's the counter argument. Where do you find every Burger King? Next to a McDonald's. Why, right? It creates awareness and that awareness more than compensates for any of the quote loss that you might have happen with the other school. And I'm going to guess if we just spend time focusing on this, which we don't have to, there are probably a lot of benefits, mutual benefits to sharing that space. If you did that many years.
with this other person, you both were getting a lot out of it.
Ray Owles (36:37.471)
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, there were a lot of times where, you know, just for various reasons, you know, I'd get a lead or he'd get a lead and, you know, we'd talk to somebody and he'd be like, Hey, you know what? It doesn't really sound like I'm quite the program you're interested in, but check out my buddy here that teaches on the other night. So same thing. I'd get somebody that comes in and it sounds like, you know, they're looking for like a something different than what I offer. I'm like, well, you know, I don't really know that a traditional Okinawan ranked martial art system is for you, but...
Hey, I got these guys. If you come back tomorrow night, there's going to be guys rolling around here doing no ghee and that sounds like it's right up your alley. So, um, so we were, you know, kind of the exact opposite of competition. We were kind of fostering and encouraging and sort of promoting each other and giving each other referrals. So.
Jeremy (37:13.847)
Yeah.
Jeremy (37:25.538)
Well, that's great. That's great. So you said you expanded, needed your own space. How did you know you were ready for that?
Ray Owles (37:33.399)
Um, well, uh, kind of got forced into that one as well. So we made it through COVID. Um, the guy that I had partnered with for about 10 years ended up selling off his half of the business. And, uh, so he, another instructor came in and took over the program and, you know, things were going great. They were fine there. Um, and then this is, I don't know, probably six, six months or eight months or so after, after COVID restrictions start to lift and we're back in business and, you know,
Jeremy (37:39.581)
Oh, okay.
Ray Owles (38:03.267)
went to zoom and was teaching over zoom, which was all that stuff. Just keep the dojo going, the business going. Um, I thought we were back in business. I'm like, all right, things are going great. We're starting to pick up, get new students. And he comes to me one day and he's like, Hey, uh, my wife got a job in Dallas and we're moving. I'm like, cool. When you move it, he's like Sunday. This is like Wednesday. And I'm like, well, that's cool.
Jeremy (38:28.045)
Ooh.
Ray Owles (38:30.027)
I said, no big deal. I said, well, what's the status with the lease right now? Cause he's leasing and I'm subleasing. He's like, oh, I'm going month to month with the landlord right now. I said, okay, cool. I'll just, I'll talk to the landlord. I'll take over the lease. I've been subleasing here for 10 years. That makes the most sense. Let's do that. So before I get a chance to talk to the landlord, the next night I'm teaching class and I see somebody come in and with a tape measure. And he's, I'm like, what is this? What's going on?
Jeremy (38:56.91)
It's never a good sign. Somebody comes into your business with a tape measure, it's not a good sign.
Ray Owles (39:00.259)
Yeah, let's go. So talk to the landlord that weekend. And I'm like, Hey, you know, I know, maybe there's something going on here on the side. I'm not really sure. But you know, I've been the guy that's been subleasing here. What's me and you let me let me let's make a deal. Yeah, I'll take over the lease and do that. And yeah, sure, sure. So I end up there later the weekend. I think it was like Sunday afternoon because I knew that my business partner was moving out. And I wanted to make sure I was just double checking. Yeah,
Both had equipment there, so I wanna make sure that, you know, everything was still in place and I was sort of ready to go for classes the next week. And as I'm there, kind of going through an inventory and checking layout of stuff, the same guy that came in with a tape measure a couple nights before, pulls up with a truck full of gear and starts unloading it. I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm taking over the lease. This is my cage. I'm setting up a giant octagon in the middle of the floor. I'm like...
I don't know about that. So I get to hold the landlord and he's like, yeah, well, I don't know what's going on. I told you, you could sign a lease, but I told him he could sign a lease. So I think he wanted us to get into a bidding war. So I just, I walked away from it. Yeah, it was kind of a weird situation. I walked away from it. Ended up a week or so late, went back
Jeremy (40:17.354)
It's slimy. I don't like slimy business.
Ray Owles (40:28.123)
the students it was kind of bad. I'm like hey guys we know how to do this. So I think I'm kind of a weird situation in that case where I think COVID actually saved my dojo because had COVID not happened and we didn't have this structure in place of how to teach via Zoom, if this happened I think I would have been okay well we're up a creek without a paddle now. I guess that was it guys good run. But we went back to Zoom really briefly. I bumped into another martial artist here in town.
Jeremy (40:43.086)
interesting. Yeah.
Ray Owles (40:57.087)
where I live, who his program had pretty much completely shut down during COVID. His was kind of based off of a after school program. And he was just trying to get ramped back up, but he was transitioning his model to more of a daycare center. So he was doing like summer camps and stuff like that. So his space was filled all day long with kids, but empty at night. So we kind of started talking. Yeah.
Jeremy (41:22.918)
once again finding the opportunity.
Ray Owles (41:25.283)
We started talking, kind of played let's make a deal. So I got into another sublease arrangement for awhile, where when I walked away from this, I'm like, I'm never subleasing again. I'm either gonna find my own space or I'm done. And then six weeks later, I'm like, ah, I signed another sublease. But did that for about a year. And then he got to the point where he was like, he was about to sell the business off, but with planning this time and I was able to, he actually hooked me up with the realtor that.
Jeremy (41:35.618)
Hehehe
Ray Owles (41:53.755)
that found my warehouse space literally half a mile around the corner. So, you know, couldn't have, I wanted to stay in an area because I had a, I didn't want to alienate any of my students and be like, Hey, yeah, we got a new space and it's 20 miles away. You might as well start from scratch if you're going to do that.
Jeremy (41:58.612)
Oh nice.
Jeremy (42:11.242)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right, so.
Jeremy (42:18.838)
We'll come back to the now, but if we were to rewind, you know, what one of the core philosophies seemingly in every martial art is, you know, let's refine, let's do it differently, let's do it better. Are you doing, was there anything you did differently the second time with the sublease versus the first time?
Ray Owles (42:39.207)
Um, yeah, I mean, I think I just had a lot better understanding going in is I, I had some knowledge behind me, you know, when I started the first time I was like, well, let's just see what happens. But I, I think I had a little bit more of a, of an idea of a business model and a business sense and what I wanted the school to be and how I wanted to identify. And, um, it was, it was an opportunity to get a little bit of a fresh start in the new space, but you know, still had a lot of the same students, but I think they're.
I think mentally in me, there was sort of a shift of, I need to get a little more serious about this now. Not that I never, you know, say I never took it seriously, but it had more weight to it, I felt at this point. Cause I think especially after COVID, I really felt like, man, I'm putting this much effort into a hobby, right? Like, um,
And so it definitely felt a little different. It felt like it was getting more real.
Jeremy (43:43.466)
Now it has not been, and I'm getting this sense, still is not your full-time job?
Ray Owles (43:50.063)
Uh, not full time now. I mean, if you ask my wife, it's a full time. It's my second full time job. Um, yeah, but you know, I've got my, my regular Monday through Friday, uh, big boy downtown office job. Um, and then I, I teach, I've expanded my schedule now cause when out and any of my subway stuff, it was, you know, it was kind of like two nights during the week and then a weekend day. So we were kind of like max out about three days a week in classes.
Jeremy (43:56.49)
Yeah, a lot of us can relate to that.
Ray Owles (44:19.511)
Um, which again, not, not that far off from what a full-time school would, would do. Most people are training on average two to four days a week. Um, but just it was, everything was crammed into a tighter spot. So, you know, I've expanded the schedule a little bit. Now we have classes four days a week, um, that we're having classes every day and kind of a variety of classes. So some people are coming four days a week. Some people are coming two days a week, but there's, there's more, um, I've got the ability now to.
offer more class options. Expand the schedule.
Jeremy (44:52.709)
When you say variety, what do you mean by variety of classes?
Ray Owles (44:56.807)
Um, when you think like, uh, it was especially when you're only training, you know, two or three days a week, it was harder to fit some things. And like, like one thing, especially through COVID sparring classes, just kind of went away for us. It's like, okay, well, we're not allowed to do contact. So we're going to do a lot of Cata training, a lot of this, but we're not, we're not going to spar. And then it's kind of getting going again. It was just hard to, I felt like, you know, curriculum became so important. It was hard to sort of slot in.
regular, okay, we're gonna spar on Wednesdays because we can't because we got to do weapons on Wednesdays because we do kata on Tuesdays sort of thing. Um, so, you know, the ability to offer like a dedicated sparring class, dedicated classes, I added a preschool program and was not anything I initially ever thought I'd do and that's, that's become my biggest class recently here, which is
Jeremy (45:54.117)
Why were you, maybe resistant is the right word, but why did you not expect you would ever do that?
Ray Owles (45:58.363)
I just, again, I just, especially in the town that I live in, there's, I think, an oversaturation of youth martial arts programs, and a lot of them are based off of after school programs or drop off and pick up programs. So it's not that I didn't want to do it. I just didn't feel like that was a, that was not a sort of pool I wanted to fish in because, you know, that was always
So anytime I got a call, hey, do you offer programs for five year olds? Sure, okay, great. What time can I drop them off in the morning to go to school and then what time can I pick them up after work? Yeah, it's not that. You can drop them off at 5.25 because class starts at 5.30 and you can pick them up at 6.02 because class ends at six. You know?
Jeremy (46:39.55)
Yeah, that's all we do.
Jeremy (46:51.535)
But again, it's the it's the Burger King McDonald's thing. Right. You get that added benefit on the marketing side of all your competitors, right. Convincing people, this is a good thing to do. And now you can add your own.
Ray Owles (46:54.199)
Yeah, absolutely. Yep.
Ray Owles (47:05.127)
Sure, absolutely.
Jeremy (47:09.718)
All right. I think the last subject I really wanna dig into here is around, you know, kind of brings it full circle what you're teaching, right? You've gone through, you know, you've talked about these kind of pivot points where, oh, that, right? You know, since the errands and going to college and getting a chance to expose yourself to these other people. And I would imagine sharing space with these other folks made you at least
Ray Owles (47:21.777)
Yeah
Jeremy (47:39.338)
at moments go, oh, interesting, right? You just strike me as that type of person who's gonna be observant. How has what you're teaching now evolved?
or change, I think we have to call it evolved because I don't imagine you would change something to make it worse, right? So how has what you're teaching now evolved over the course of the last 15 years or so?
Ray Owles (48:03.075)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I think one of the jokes we always make in martial arts is that, you know, we, we never really invent anything, right? We just sort of steal really good stuff that we like from other people. Right. There's always kind of a joke. When we go to these training camps, we'll sit around, we'll watch all the instructors and, you know, I'll demonstrate something. Somebody will come over to me like, hey, I'm stealing that. Like, cool. Because you know that thing you taught five minutes ago? I already stole that too. So I think
Jeremy (48:29.523)
Yeah.
Ray Owles (48:33.623)
you know, being able to just work on a high level with some really knowledgeable, traditional instructors and get this exposure to things. And, you know, a lot of it we want to try to maintain the spirit of, but I also know that if I try to, if you teach me something, I try to teach it, go back to my students and teach it the same way you taught it, I'm going to fail. But if I can take the spirit or the idea or the principles behind what you're teaching and...
put my little spin, my little flavor on it to make it my own, bring that back. And I think that that's gonna ring truer to me. It's gonna, I can make it make sense for me and hopefully make it make sense for my students as well.
Jeremy (49:16.526)
Nice. Alright. Yeah, keep going.
Ray Owles (49:17.633)
Um.
Yeah. So within the organization I'm part of, again, we're a big organization, but I've got some opportunities here in Texas with some other guys, and mentioned some like Matsumura Seto, which has more of a Chinese or a white crane sort of flair to his more of a family style of Shoren-Ru. So they do things a little bit different. So I've definitely got kind of that flavor, his influence, sort of the...
the things that I do and how I teach and train for sure. So I think we're all, you know, we're all baking the same cookie, but you know, maybe you like chocolate chips and I like M&M's or something, I don't know. That's a good analogy. Yeah, at the end of the day, we're all gonna have really delicious cookies though.
Jeremy (50:04.282)
I like that metaphor. That's a good one.
Jeremy (50:10.302)
Right, cookies are still good. I mean, it is a rare cookie that I don't wanna eat. Right, like even, you know, all right, fine. You know, I'll only eat two more. And, you know, so what's going on with your training now? What excites you, you know, outside of the teaching part, because I can tell that really excites you. What excites you about your own training today?
Ray Owles (50:14.823)
Thanks for watching!
Ray Owles (50:31.611)
Mm-hmm.
Ray Owles (50:35.731)
Um, I mean, obviously I think that the, like you said, the, the teaching's a huge part of it and you know, at a certain point, everybody starts training for a reason, right? Whether it be, you know, I just, I thought karate was always cool or, you know, I was getting bullied. So I learned to defend myself, um, things like that. And, or, you know, I wanted to compete in tournaments, right? But at some point when you, I think when your reason for training is internal,
Um, I think that's when you see people that sort of hit these stops, right? Like I think when, when I was on tournament competition, it would have been easy to hit a stop and say, well, you know, I've sort of accomplished what I could as this, so, okay, let's put that chapter to bed, what's next. But I think maybe the longer you train it, if your training starts to become more external, um, and it's not just about what you're doing for you, but what you're doing for the people around you.
And whether that be your students, whether that be your family, whether that be your community, whether that be the sense of camaraderie and friendship, I think that's a huge important piece of it. So, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what excites me is sort of the unknown of what is next for that journey, right? Like we talked about, you know, issues of comic books.
Jeremy (51:44.962)
Yeah, martial arts as service.
Ray Owles (52:00.311)
I'm really excited. What's the next chapter? What comes next?
Jeremy (52:04.01)
What do you hope is going to be in that book? You know, we get together five or 10 years from now, and I say, hey, what's happened? What do you hope you're going to tell me?
Ray Owles (52:07.259)
Yeah. You know, I love to see, just could I say continue to grow and prosper. I wanna see more traditional martial arts, which I think is making a big comeback in a way. I wanna see more of that. I wanna see my students continuing to grow, hopefully in five or 10 years, if I could say I've got a student that's got their own school. I think that...
Jeremy (52:26.08)
I agree.
Jeremy (52:35.516)
Hmm
Ray Owles (52:36.187)
That would be a cool thing to be able to see.
Ray Owles (52:42.191)
But it's all kind of an experiment, right? I mean, everything that we do in karate, it's something that I think is true about our training. But I tell my students all the time, don't just do something until you get it right, but do it until you can't get it wrong. And sometimes we're not sure, I think within our own training, or what's right or what's wrong, I'm not sure. But sometimes I think that means just...
Let me try this out. Let me go down this road or this avenue. Okay, that didn't work. Let's go back more towards the main road. Let's try the next exit and see what else it is that's out there. But I think the important thing is just always having that desire to strive. But there's definitely, there's a fire that's in there that, you know, I think, you know,
I've heard a lot of people, I think, say this on the show, and I think a lot of us can relate to this, right? But we'll say, you know, everybody says, you know, something to the effect of, you know, karate is not something that I do anymore, you know? So yeah, I do karate, but it's more like a part of who I am, right? Like, what's Ray Owls without karate? I don't know. I don't know if I'd recognize that person if I met him, but...
I know that a lot of who I am today and what I am today, I owe to lots of friends and mentors and instructors that I've had in martial arts.
Jeremy (54:22.698)
If you go back to early episodes of the show, there was a question I often asked, and it was, what do you think your life would be today if you had never trained? And I stopped asking that question because so many people went.
Jeremy (54:40.194)
for so many of us, and I include myself in this group, it's almost impossible to imagine what the trajectory of my life would have been because it put me around the people that I'm around and that led to who I am and what I do and what I love.
Ray Owles (54:56.207)
Yeah, one of my best friends here in Houston, he was actually the best man at my wedding. He has a saying that he got from his dad, and he says, you know, if you're a blessed human, you can hold up your hand and on five fingers, count five people that you know, or like your ride or dies, they will always be there for you for anything or everything. That's the, you know, they'll show up for a dinner party or they'll show up to help you bury a body. You know, whatever you need, they'll be there for you.
Um, and I've taken a little spin on that and I've said that I feel like because of karate that I get to do this. Cause I think I can easily count that double that number and go up to 10 just because of the relationships that I've developed through karate. Um, so I think there's, you know, there's definitely a big intangible, uh, asset to that, that it's hard to, to put a finger on exactly what that is, but we've all got sort of this shared.
Jeremy (55:34.9)
hands.
Jeremy (55:38.478)
That's.
Ray Owles (55:57.671)
experience, even if we've never trained together, we know that we've had some similar things.
Jeremy (56:06.302)
Yeah, yeah, it's something that binds us. We talk about this often on the show. We have more that brings us together, more that we have in common, than separates us for sure. If people wanna get ahold of you, website, social media, maybe an email, what stuff can we share with folks?
Ray Owles (56:23.683)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm on the internet at owlscarate.com. That's O-W-L-E-S. There's an E in there that everybody messes up. Instagram and Facebook, you can find me. It's owlscarate.tx. So we're out there. Got, you know, on the website, the social media. You can get my email and the phone number and all that through those avenues and love to hear from anybody, connect with you guys. For sure. So look us up.
Jeremy (56:40.518)
Okay, easy.
Jeremy (56:55.418)
Nice, nice, yeah. And you're connected with a number of folks who've been on the show before. You mentioned Sensei Aron's, but a few others. And so I had the pleasure of just being able to kind of step in and go, trust isn't the right word. Sometimes when we bring a guest on, if that guest doesn't know the show well, and I don't know them and I don't know people around them.
Sometimes we have to hunt a little bit to find that connection that we can build on. I didn't have to do that with you. And so that made my job really fun today. And I thank you for that, for the audience.
Ray Owles (57:28.679)
Yeah, thank you. I've been listening to your episodes a lot, so it's, and to be on the other side of it.
Jeremy (57:35.978)
It's different, isn't it? It's different for me when I end up being interviewed. I'm like, oh, is this what everybody else feels, right? My job, I feel my job is so much easier. To the audience out there, I appreciate you sticking around and watching or listening to this episode. If something in here resonated for you, make sure you share it with other people. Help us grow the show and grow our mission at Whistlekick to connect, educate and entertain everybody else who's training or.
Ray Owles (57:36.891)
Yeah, it's different but fun.
Ray Owles (57:42.074)
Right?
Jeremy (58:03.53)
maybe even more importantly, sometimes the folks who aren't training. If you want to support us, you can go even further. You can join the Patreon, patreon.com slash whistle kick, or maybe pick something up at the store at whistlekick.com. But since they rate, thank you again for being here. And now it's up to you to close us up. How do you want to leave things in your episode?
Ray Owles (58:24.019)
See, I knew this was coming. This is maybe the part I dreaded. So, you know, I was asked for these profound words of wisdom I don't know but I'll go with That's true. That's true. It doesn't have to be
Jeremy (58:32.05)
I never ask for it to be profound. I just say, how do you want it? We've had people say, keep training, and then they just call it. It could be whatever you want.
Ray Owles (58:38.711)
Yeah, um, you know, one of the things I always like to say to my students, you know, I mentioned one earlier, one of my other isms, I like to get my students all the time is a train hard and practice harder.