Episode 1124 - Master Jesse Bernal
In this episode Jeremy chats with Master Jesse Bernal about his journey in martial arts, the challenges of product development, and the use of AI in martial arts.
Master Jesse Bernal - Episode 1124
SUMMARY
In this engaging conversation, Jeremy Lesniak chats with Master Jesse Bernal and explores the evolution of martial arts, the challenges of product development in the industry, and the transition from IT to full-time martial arts. They discuss personal experiences with martial arts gear, the importance of community, and the joy of teaching martial arts. Master Bernal shares his journey of opening a karate school and the impact of 2020 on his business, highlighting the balance between passion and entrepreneurship.
In this conversation, Master Bernal shares his journey from working in IT at Nordstrom to pursuing entrepreneurship in martial arts. He discusses the importance of support from family, the rebellious nature of entrepreneurs, and the intersection of martial arts and technology. The conversation also delves into the impact of AI on marketing and employment, emphasizing the need for martial artists to embrace change and understand AI's role in their field. He concludes by highlighting the realities of entrepreneurship, including the challenges and the importance of staying focused on one's purpose.
TAKEAWAYS
Quality martial arts gear can last for years without degrading.
Product development in martial arts requires good communication with manufacturers.
Transitioning from a stable IT career to martial arts can be challenging but rewarding.
The importance of community in martial arts is paramount.
Opening a martial arts school can be a fulfilling venture.
Finding the right gear for different martial arts styles is essential.
Passion for martial arts can lead to a successful business.
Support from family is crucial for entrepreneurs.
Successful entrepreneurs find ways to execute their dreams.
Martial arts and technology attract similar mindsets.
Balancing innovation with stability is key in business.
AI is transforming marketing strategies.
Self-defense training often seeks to build confidence.
Understanding AI is essential for future success.
Entrepreneurship involves facing tedious and frustrating tasks.
Staying focused on purpose helps navigate challenges.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:07 The Evolution of the Show
04:03 Martial Arts Gear and Experiences
06:57 Challenges in Product Development
10:09 Transitioning from IT to Martial Arts
15:59 The Journey into Full-Time Martial Arts
29:03 Finding Purpose in Martial Arts
30:38 A Turning Point: From IT to Entrepreneurship
32:04 The Role of Support: Family and Accountability
33:45 The Rebellious Dreamer: Embracing Entrepreneurship
38:21 Martial Arts and Technology: A Unique Intersection
40:12 Balancing Innovation and Stability in Business
44:11 AI in Marketing: The Future of Business
49:45 The Impact of AI on Employment and Society
57:14 Understanding AI: Embracing Change in Martial Arts
01:09:07 The Reality of Entrepreneurship: Embracing the Suck
To connect with Master Bernal:
https://coloradomartialartsacademy.com/
jesse@aurorakarate.com
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Show Transcript
Jeremy Lesniak (02:40.739)
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Whistlekick, martial arts radio. Today I'm joined by Jesse Bernal. Jesse, we know I've known you for a long time. I'm looking forward to doing this. was remembering as we were getting ready. I will tell everybody how we met because it's kind of a fun story. But for those of you out there, thanks for thanks for joining us. Thanks for spending some time here with Jesse and I.
And if you're new to the show, please make sure or even if you're not new to the show, make sure you visit whistlekick martial arts radio dot com for all the stuff we do. Anything we talk about today is going to get linked over there. We're going to drop the show notes over there. There will be photos, maybe there are the video version, the audio version, all of it's over there. And if you want all of that sent to you in your inbox to make it even easier to never miss a show, because we do two a week, sign up for the newsletter while you're there. That's whistlekick martial arts radio dot com. The rest of stuff we do, you'll find it.
And with that, Jesse, thanks for being here.
Jesse Bernal (03:42.413)
Thanks for having me on the show.
Jeremy Lesniak (03:44.26)
Of of course. Thanks for being here. It's, I'll admit, it's overdue and I own that. And I don't even have a good reason. It just hasn't happened. Yeah, it's life. man, man, yeah. But you get that, right? You're busy. You've got school and family and... When is he gonna call?
Jesse Bernal (03:52.269)
A life.
Jesse Bernal (04:04.045)
Totally, yeah, and you know, it's not like I was sitting at home going, hasn't, Jeremy said he was gonna ask me to be on this show, and man man, what the heck.
Jeremy Lesniak (04:16.141)
Yeah. Jeremy said we were going to go to the movies and he's not, he's not calling. Yeah. Yeah. For it. It's that it's, it's nothing. It's nothing like that. Now, my, and I think this is, I don't know why my cameras are freezing. You know, if I move the mic out, maybe that'll, it'll, the focus will be a little better. Come on. Come on. There, come on. There we go. my earliest memory of you is probably like eight, 10 years ago.
Jesse Bernal (04:19.469)
Uh-uh.
Jesse Bernal (04:23.255)
Hahaha!
Jeremy Lesniak (04:46.649)
you gave the Spartan gear a try. And you wrote up and you said, I'm gonna write a blog post about it. And I'm gonna paraphrase here, brutally honest. However I feel about it, that's what I'm gonna say. And I remember just being struck because most people aren't that candid. And I appreciated that level of candor.
Jesse Bernal (04:50.85)
yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I did.
Jesse Bernal (05:09.645)
I still have your whistle kick boots that I got. I still have them. I still use them. So of course I don't spar as much as I used to so they've lasted a lot longer than I thought they would.
Jeremy Lesniak (05:20.365)
But still.
a decade later and this is, you know, I don't want to turn this into an advertisement, but I'll tell you what you buy gear from just about any competitor, if not every competitor, because I haven't tested everybody's stuff. You put it on the shelf for a decade. And it degrades and our stuff does not degrade. The foam degrades in most products.
Jesse Bernal (05:40.055)
yeah.
Jesse Bernal (05:43.384)
Yeah, no, it's still supple and works really well. I know it's my preference for gear. What I like about it is that I can put it on over other stuff. So yeah, my son likes to use it. He spars quite a bit. yeah, since we're talking about gear.
Years ago, you remember, well, have you seen the stuff the century put out? It's like the G-Kundo gloves. Have you seen those?
Jeremy Lesniak (06:03.321)
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (06:16.429)
I think so, kind of like a.
Jesse Bernal (06:17.591)
They're like, they look like the Bruce Lee style, you know, like gloves from, you know, the, where they have the faint, articulating fingers. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (06:24.011)
I know what you're talking about. I don't know if I'm remembering a specific product line.
Jesse Bernal (06:29.365)
We call them, well, Century made some and they're meh. We call them the bear claw gloves, because it's like wearing bear claws, right? But years ago, another gear person out there, I'm not going to say who it is, they created some foam dipped versions of those. And they had little rings. You'd put your fingers in like a little ring in it.
Jeremy Lesniak (06:36.215)
Yeah, sure.
Jeremy Lesniak (06:53.335)
I've seen this.
Jesse Bernal (06:59.201)
Man, I love those things, but they don't produce them anymore. And so I'm calling you out, Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak (07:05.815)
You know, anything with open finger, I'm gonna guess that you liked them because it allowed you to do things like getting close and grab. Which is also when foam does not hold up well.
Jesse Bernal (07:15.787)
Yeah, for sure.
Jesse Bernal (07:21.077)
And I mean, those, I had those gloves for a long time. Yeah, in fact, those gloves I had, I had them from before I got my black belt. I think I got them when I was like maybe a high brown. And I just got rid of them. Like, I probably have some pictures. I just got rid of them.
Jeremy Lesniak (07:25.122)
Really? Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak (07:40.793)
I was gonna ask you for pictures.
Jesse Bernal (07:48.13)
maybe a year and a half ago and it's literally because the foam was degrading. Right? The foam was degrading from the inside and you know the one of the rings ripped off and I was like no I could tape this you know I was trying to limp it along you know and then finally I gave up.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:01.454)
Yeah.
Send me pictures. I'll see what we can do. can't. I can't promise anything, of course, but yeah, it's.
Jesse Bernal (08:06.221)
I Yeah. I reached out to the original creator of that gear and asked them about getting some custom made. Like, you guys have the plans already. How many do I have to buy? Right? And they said I needed to buy 1200.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:16.27)
Yeah.
Right. And what they say.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:28.481)
Yeah. Yeah, depending on where that where that's coming from. Yeah. Yeah. Shipping it. Shipping is the killer on any product, right? Shipping is the killer. And and people forget, you know, if you you spend any time on. Temu, right, or any of these any of these these things where the majority of the products are made overseas, it doesn't take long to figure out, I'm paying for shipping.
Jesse Bernal (08:28.577)
That's a lot.
Jesse Bernal (08:52.481)
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:57.645)
That's not the labor costs. It's not the raw material cost. It's the cost of putting this on a plane or a boat. And we don't do a lot of large transit stuff. the fact that we get annoyed at shipping costs domestically, you know, here in the U S and when you, when you look at what goes into that, it's, it's kind of crazy.
Jesse Bernal (09:16.567)
Right.
Jesse Bernal (09:23.629)
I mean, I get people reaching out to me all the time from overseas. Hey, you you want to martial arts school? You know, we can do the best uniforms for you and stuff. And I always tell them the same thing. Unless you're coming in at like literally like five or six bucks a unit after shipping, it just doesn't make any sense for me. I can get it. I can get it either the same price or cheaper, like in the United States, which I think is kind of the point, right?
that we're shopping within the United States. But I took a chance on these guys recently. I wanted some judo uniforms made. But I don't know if you've noticed, but judo uniforms, you either get white or blue, that's it. It's hard to find any other color, and I wanted different colors. So I took a chance and...
Jeremy Lesniak (10:08.889)
Hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (10:15.437)
That is all I've seen, yes.
Jesse Bernal (10:22.763)
you know, the guy was like, all right, I'll do it at cost just so can see what it looks like. I'm like, OK, cool. I need an adult size four. And he's like, OK, yep, we got it. No problem. I ended up with like, I don't know how tall this dude is, but the uniform that showed up, like I put it on it looked like, right, like fat guy in a little coat.
Jeremy Lesniak (10:40.985)
NNNN
Jeremy Lesniak (10:44.899)
Great.
Jesse Bernal (10:49.047)
So the uniform looked awesome. I loved the way it looked, but the sizing was so wrong. And I paid like 35 bucks or something per uniform.
Jeremy Lesniak (11:00.579)
But you learned. Yeah, it's we we've done a lot of test development over the years. mean, the sheer number of products I we had so many products in development at one point, I had to have a cataloging system. To track and identify who made what so we could move certain items forward. Yeah, it was the the second floor of my garage, which was the warehouse. It was a large garage. was, you know, you could have fit three or four cars in there.
Jesse Bernal (11:01.131)
Live and learn. Live and learn.
Jeremy Lesniak (11:30.583)
The second story was our warehouse on and off since the beginning.
Some of the things that came through, really what I've learned and, you know, peek behind the curtain for those of you out there, it's less about the product and more about the communication and the manufacturer. Cause if those things are good, you can iterate on the product. But there are so many of them out there that I don't know how, how they're making money. I don't know how that company that you talk to, they, they did all that work for 35 bucks.
and didn't get anywhere close to a result that would yield a larger order. And based on what I did, that is what I found of easily 75 % of the companies I worked with. So I don't know how they're in business. I don't know how they're making money. I had one that sent me, it was a Kyokushin style gi. I loved the fabric. I loved the proportions. It was like a size negative one.
I.
Jeremy Lesniak (12:44.633)
I couldn't even get my arm in the sleeve and my thighs pretty much, my calves stopped at the thigh portion on the pants. was, don't know. When are you ready to order more? Never. Never. And then the...
Jesse Bernal (13:00.193)
Right, yeah, and that's kind of where I was at too. like, did you like it? Loved the way it looked, but I like sent them pictures of me, you know, like.
Jeremy Lesniak (13:11.969)
If you have that picture, we got to put that picture in the notes. How it is? Okay. The worst one we ever had. And then I want to, I want to ask you about, about judo because that's something I didn't know about you. was when we did belts, we did one test run of belts. The samples came through great. So I ordered a small order and it was meant to be in assortment across color and size. And so anybody out there, if you have a whistle kick belt, there are a people I know personally that have some.
Jesse Bernal (13:14.667)
I'll see if I can find it. I'm sure I have it.
Jeremy Lesniak (13:40.087)
Hold on to them, it's the only ones we're gonna make because Kataro does a great job.
Jeremy Lesniak (13:46.712)
belts came through that they must have run out of fabric at the end of the roll and they just sewed it to another end of the roll. So you had this jagged like stitching in the middle of the belt. The sizes were so inconsistent, I had to unroll because I had them shipped rolled because I was trying to prevent propeller belt. I had them shipped rolled, which they were willing to do. But the
The sizing was so inconsistent, I had to remeasure everything.
And it was a dramatic difference. You know, it could say four on the tag and it might be 20 inches difference between the longest and shortest. was, it was, it was a nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. I think I ended up with 50 % usable belts out of that.
Jesse Bernal (14:30.275)
Wow.
Jesse Bernal (14:37.271)
Now, were these black belts?
Jeremy Lesniak (14:39.095)
It was, was a bunch of colors because the pricing worked. You know, the idea was let's do something in between the cheap belt and the high end belt.
Jesse Bernal (14:40.877)
okay.
Jesse Bernal (14:47.501)
Yeah. I, so there's a, there's a belt seller here in the United States that I've started using for color belts just because most students are only going to keep their belts for three or four months. Um, and so, but the belts have a shelf life of about three or four months in that if you have a student who's tying the belt daily or, you know, a couple, two, three times a week,
After about three or four months, usually the stitching on like the side will come out where the students are, you know, pulling on, which is fine, you know, three or four months, that's all they needed to work for. But it's worth it for the cost because the cost for their belts is quite a bit lower than most others. And when you're ordering 50 or 60 belts over the course of a year, you know, you do that three or four times, you save an okay amount of money.
Jeremy Lesniak (15:39.874)
It matters.
Jesse Bernal (15:45.857)
But, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say the names of places that I use. Your sound is gone. I'm not hearing you. there it goes. Okay, there you go. Now you're back.
Jeremy Lesniak (15:49.057)
You I don't mind. do some reselling on belts and uniforms now. So.
Jeremy Lesniak (15:58.52)
We do some reselling on belts and uniforms. know, they're in our store. They don't have, they don't say whistle kick, but we found probably like you, we found some suppliers that do a nice job on something. It's nice and generic. It does never brand on it. And because some of the feedback we've had from people is, know, yeah, I want to buy your gear, but I don't want to buy your gear, the gear here and the belts there and the uniforms there. So we're just trying to make it a little easier for people. But who, who are you working with on that stuff?
Jesse Bernal (16:22.817)
Yeah. So I order all of my color belts from mabelts.com and they are a subsidiary of sparringsports.com.
Jeremy Lesniak (16:37.401)
That's where our belts are coming from. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Jesse Bernal (16:39.881)
really? Sparring sports? Okay, yeah, so and I know they're MA belts. I think the MA belts are made differently than the sparring sports belts because it is a lower price point. So.
Jeremy Lesniak (16:52.857)
Mmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (16:56.877)
Yeah, and you know, I will say that what.
Jeremy Lesniak (17:03.779)
We are having further conversations with Sparring Sports about working together on some things because they are a nice company with some good people. I can't speak to the products, you're speaking to the product, but I don't mind saying that, yeah, that's where our belts and uniforms are coming from. And the difference here is that the way we price things with the free shipping and everything, if you're buying small orders, it's probably cheaper from us. If you're buying a whole bunch, you probably want to go over there.
Jesse Bernal (17:10.882)
Yeah.
Jesse Bernal (17:32.686)
I'm trying to remember the name of the guy that I, Peyton. Yeah, Peyton and I have had many conversations. but, go ahead. Yeah, shut up. Oh, but yeah, he's a really good guy. And what got me on the sparring sports was I was looking for martial arts shoes for one of my students who.
Jeremy Lesniak (17:42.947)
Shout out to Peyton. I had a meeting with him just not even two weeks ago.
Jesse Bernal (17:59.586)
He's a little older than me and he's got diabetes. And so he's got some neuropathy in his feet. So we were looking to protect his feet and sparring sports has some really cool martial arts shoes. They're almost like socks. So I still, I use mine occasionally too. So, especially if I'm like traveling somewhere and I'm going to be on and off the mats a lot, I'll just wear those. yeah, but,
Jeremy Lesniak (18:03.202)
Hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (18:27.193)
There we go. There's a way we've never started an episode. I love it. I did. I did. did. That's what we do.
Jesse Bernal (18:28.343)
There we go.
Well, you started it because you brought up how we met right I did the I did the thing on and then and then I found out that you were involved in in the in the the Bill Wallace organization And you're a third degree with them, Okay. Yeah, I just I got my first degree with them Master Natsuki
You know, Chris Natski. Yeah, he was my first business coach. so, yeah, it's yeah. And so, yeah, so Natski was my first business coach. I see him a couple, two, three times a year now. And he did a big thing a couple of years ago where he was, you know, going around, hey, you know, Bill's going to come out and do the thing. And so I got myself and some of my students and we went and got certified. So, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (19:00.476)
Yeah, he's not far from you.
Jeremy Lesniak (19:05.037)
You know, I think I knew that at one point. I think you did tell me that. Yeah. Chris has been on the show.
Jeremy Lesniak (19:26.005)
that's great. Nice.
Let's go back to Judo. You wanted a Judo-Gi. I know you as a tank-sudo guy. Are you also, or were you also doing Judo?
Jesse Bernal (19:34.55)
I did.
Jesse Bernal (19:38.827)
Well, is anybody just one thing?
Jeremy Lesniak (19:45.593)
That's a question we can go back to.
Jesse Bernal (19:47.182)
So actually what I wanted the judo gis for was because I recently picked up Japanese jiu-jitsu and and And so the judo gis are really nice to use for that I found that the Brazilian jiu-jitsu gis are a little too tight-fitting for the just for practicing Japanese jiu-jitsu
Jeremy Lesniak (19:58.541)
Mmm. Nice.
Jesse Bernal (20:16.045)
But the judo geese have enough enough. I don't know what you want to call it. They're just just not as tight, right? And so there's a little more little more to little more grab. And so, but like I said, I didn't want white or blue. I wanted, you know, black or red and I'm still searching for it.
Jeremy Lesniak (20:23.451)
Yeah, they're generally cut looser.
Jeremy Lesniak (20:37.271)
Well, if anybody out there has a great recommendation on that for Jesse, you should reach out to him. the contact info will be in the show notes. you'll probably drop it at the end, too. That is not a request for everyone out there who manufactures to reach out to Jesse. Don't do that. He doesn't need to develop a cataloging system to track all the uniforms.
Jesse Bernal (20:54.061)
Right do not do that and if you're if you're out of country leave me alone
Jesse Bernal (21:04.043)
Right? Yeah. Cat-a-leg system. This guy sent me a uniform that was size negative one.
Jeremy Lesniak (21:05.815)
Like I did, I never want to do that again.
Jeremy Lesniak (21:13.367)
Yeah. it was there. was a Google Drive sheet and there was there was a numbering system and dates and they were in different boxes so I could find them later because there were that many.
Yeah, it was like being in the archive room of a library or something. Most of it's been purged. I have very, very few pieces left from that because... the sheet is still somewhere in my drive.
Jesse Bernal (21:32.237)
Do you still have it?
Jesse Bernal (21:37.697)
No, I meant by the cataloging sheet.
Jesse Bernal (21:43.656)
so before I became a full-time martial artist, I was in the IT industry for like over 30 years. storage is so cheap, we've become, I think society, we've become digital pack rats.
Jeremy Lesniak (22:01.817)
Lazy, we've become lazy. I don't know if you know, I know quite a bit of the audience knows. Because we've talked about this, the overlap between IT and martial arts as problem solvers, right? I used to have an IT company and one of my guys was old school enough that he refused to capitalize things because he was used to when that cost an extra bit.
Jesse Bernal (22:03.842)
Yeah.
Jesse Bernal (22:16.205)
Mm.
Jesse Bernal (22:28.971)
How old was that dude? I didn't even know that was a thing.
Jeremy Lesniak (22:31.065)
Yeah, we're going back. We're going back.
Jesse Bernal (22:35.809)
I didn't even know that was a thing.
Jeremy Lesniak (22:39.705)
I read about it in school. Like that's how old that was, right? Like that was a thing, right? What made you shift? I mean, that's, cause let's face it. IT, generally pretty secure career, generally well compensated.
teaching martial arts full time, less so of both of those things for most people.
Jesse Bernal (23:10.073)
in my case, it was martial arts, but, it almost could have been anything. so.
Growing up, my parents owned a jewelry store. And so I grew up in kind of an entrepreneurial household. And so I kind of wanted to own my own business.
Yeah, and so it could have almost like I said, it could have almost been anything when I was in the in the early 2000s, I had an IT consulting business that I ran for a few years. And when I did that, I ran it, it was almost out of like frustration slash desperation that I did it. Because I became unemployed, and I ended up working for another company. I was doing IT and then I ended up doing some like
kind of like I wanted to do IT recruiting. And instead I ended up doing nurse recruiting, which was not IT recruiting at all. And I ended up parting ways with that company and it wasn't an awesome way of like, things were going okay. And I met with the owner of the company and it's not like I blew anything up. We just had a conversation and he decided he didn't like me.
Jeremy Lesniak (24:14.648)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (24:40.489)
And so I got let go. And I was like, so like, right. And I needed to I needed to reengage my IT skills and kind of bolster my skill set. And so I was like, well, while I'm looking for a job, I'm just going to start doing IT stuff on the side so that it doesn't look like I've been on IT so long. And so that's what I did. And then it turned into a thing. And I ended up like, you know, running these big projects and
Um, and doing okay for a long time until the big Enron crash of 2008, 2009. And then all of them, all of my extra IT work, you know, dried up literally overnight. And my wife was like, you have to get a real job, right? You have to get a real job or get a new wife. And so was like, all right, well, let me reach out to some people. And I reached out to a buddy of mine and I was like, Hey man, looking for a job. If you know of anything, he sent me a link.
And, we were living in California at the time and he was living in Colorado and, he sent me a link. And as they say, the rest is history. I applied for the position and, went through the interview process, did all the stuff and the company kept like dragging its feet. And, literally. I mean, like they were like, yep, we want you, we're going to hire you. We're going to get back to you with the start date. Okay. Great. Like literally months past.
And I would keep checking in with my buddies like, yep, they're trying to work it out and da da. I don't remember the exact date, but it was in June. I want to say it was maybe the 14th. My wife and I were talking. My wife's like, what the heck is going on? Like, blah, blah, blah, right? So I'm like, if they don't get back to me by 2 o'clock today, I'm going to tell them to go pound sand. They got back to me at 11 AM. Yep. And so now I'm in Colorado.
Jeremy Lesniak (26:23.118)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (26:31.874)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (26:41.069)
Even going full time into martial arts was sort of this like confluence of events, right? I'd been trying for it, I'd been working towards it and, you know, golden handcuffs are a thing. I was working for Charles Schwab at the time and as you say, usually pretty stable and, you know, provides a good salary. Well...
In May of 2019, Charles Schwab made an internal announcement. Based on historical data, we anticipate that there will be a world-affecting event, and we are going to be getting ahead of it so that we don't end up behind the eight ball like we did with the last thing that happened. And so they did a series.
rounds of layoffs and I was in the last round of layoffs. Me and this guy that I actually brought into Schwab, it took a team of seven contractors to replace the two of us, but different bucket, different budget bucket. so in 2019, September of 2019, I was laid off.
Jeremy Lesniak (27:37.593)
Mm.
Jesse Bernal (28:02.989)
And I got a pretty decent severance package. And so I dove into the the karate school at that point. was like, if I get a job too quick, I have to give my money back. I don't want to I don't want to do that. And so so I dove into the karate school and really focused on it and doubled its income in like a month and a half just with, you know, through focus. Basically, you know, I'm no longer splitting my focus kind of thing. And
Jeremy Lesniak (28:14.713)
Hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (28:31.075)
So you'd already had a school in Colorado while you were doing this job. How long had you been running that school when this happened?
Jesse Bernal (28:34.497)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jesse Bernal (28:40.653)
So I started teaching for myself in 2014. I got my first commercial space in November of 2017 was when we opened. And so this was about almost two years later. And so yeah, so I like, you know, just dove into it and started executing on a lot of the things that I didn't have time to execute on and it yielded results pretty quick. And things were going really well. And I told my wife, said, you
in January I'll start looking for a job because we're coming into the holidays, nobody's hiring. And so January rolled around and I started to get some traction and then COVID hit. And that was that. Things were kind of shut down and all this stuff. I ended up working for a...
there was a next to my space was a FitBody bootcamp. And I have some experience with like fitness industry stuff too from my past. And so I ended up managing that location for the guy. And I was having him pay the karate school and then the karate school would pay me.
you know, he's like, I picked you because of, you know, you're a business owner and da da da, this and that. And then he proceeded to ignore every suggestion I made. And then we ended up parting ways, not, you know, not like a bad thing, but he was running out of money or whatever. And we parted ways and I went back into the karate school and, know, and I was like, you know what, this actually works out really well. The karate school needs my full attention. And, and that was, that was that, but.
I even I actually opened my second location in August of 2020. There's a rural community not far from where I live that I opened the school there in like I was subletting some space expecting you know if I can get like you know seven or eight families then this becomes a viable venture and that that area of the I-70 corridor.
Jesse Bernal (30:55.157)
was so hungry for something to do because all the traditional sports and stuff were shut down. We opened our doors with 60 students. 60. Yeah. So, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (31:03.257)
How many? Wow, that's great. Okay. So a lot we can unpack from all this, I wanna roll back a bit because we heard about Job and we heard about California and moving. We didn't hear about Jesse's venture into starting martial arts.
Jesse Bernal (31:25.837)
Sure, so yeah, I'm back to that, right? Why martial arts? So years ago, this is the easiest way for me to explain it. Years ago, my son was taking capoeira, which I think is an amazing martial art. In fact, I would say of all the martial arts that I've tried, capoeira is the most fun. Yeah, it's joyful and like,
Jeremy Lesniak (31:30.317)
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (31:48.663)
I agree. It's just fun. It's so yeah.
Jesse Bernal (31:54.766)
just such great energy and it's just so much fun. But he was taking Capoita and his instructor, asked, you know, was like, you know, what do you do? And, know, like, is this your full-time gig? And he's like, no. He's like, I do this other thing. He was like a licensed social worker. And he goes, that, that feeds my belly. And he goes, and this feeds my soul. And so when I had a chance to go full-time into martial arts, I was like, wow.
I can feed my belly and my soul at the same time. that was kind of, you know, it's this passion project that I determined how old was I?
Jeremy Lesniak (32:25.401)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (32:38.241)
I was 40. I was 40 and it was my birthday and I was at work. I was working for Nordstrom at the time. Nordstrom IT. And my boss came over to my desk. I had just gotten into work. Wasn't like I was in late or anything. And I just got to work and I was logging in to all my different things so that I could do my work for the day. And there was an outage and my boss stopped by and she goes, know, such and such, this and that is down.
I need you to get on that right away." And I'm like, I'm waiting for things to log in. I can't make it go any faster than... Right. It wasn't even 902. I think it was like 830. But I was like, I'm waiting for things to log in. Like, I can't make it go faster. Like, I'll get on it right away. And she's like, okay, well, people need to be able to buy their shoes. That was kind of like a maxim, right? In Nordstrom, people got to buy their shoes, right? And in that moment...
Jeremy Lesniak (33:13.296)
It's 902, like what do want from
Jesse Bernal (33:36.642)
That was like one of those moments where I was like, there's no effing way I'm going to spend the rest of my life letting people be able to buy their shoes. This is not how I'm supposed to spend my life. And it was, and literally like, as I was waiting for these things to like load up on my screen, I was going, I'm going to go back into business for myself and I'm going to do it with martial arts because I can't in this moment think of a better way to invest myself.
than to do that. And I was like, I love my wife. I'm fine with my car. Maybe this is my midlife crisis, but I'm going back into business. And so I said, by the time I was 45, that was the number I picked. By the time I'm 45, I want to be able to be self-employed, working for myself again. It didn't happen until I was, I think, 47.
Jeremy Lesniak (34:26.125)
You've brought up your wife a few times and obviously, you know, she's she's significant in in your life. And it sounds like in these stories as someone who is pushing you and maybe holding you accountable. What was her? What was it? What were her thoughts on you doing this?
Jesse Bernal (34:45.867)
So.
I think every entrepreneur is a dreamer. Successful entrepreneurs find a way to execute. And I'm not saying I'm a successful entrepreneur because I struggle with execution every day, but I'm definitely a dreamer. And so, you know, when I went home from work that day and said, you know what, I think I'm gonna go back into business for myself, I'm gonna do it with martial arts.
And she kind of went, know, she gave me one of these. OK, you know, like, right. And in that moment, you know, that headspace that I was in, I was like, OK, OK, I'm going to show you. Right. You just wait and see. Right.
Jeremy Lesniak (35:37.305)
So you're a rebellious dreamer. You like being told you can't because it gives you fire, gives you fuel.
Jesse Bernal (35:45.888)
I can't think of too many successful dreamers that aren't a little rebellious. And honestly, I can't think of too many true entrepreneurs that aren't rebellious, right? Because it's that rebellious nature that makes us say, I can do this better. I have something better to offer. have something different to offer than everybody else. And people need to see it, right? My thing is different enough that people are gonna...
you know, they're going to buy into whatever vision it is that I have as an entrepreneur and they're going to do the thing. So, and that's probably that dreamer, that desire to go and explore and do these different things. It works really well with martial arts and you know, martial arts and IT. I've noticed this too, a couple of times. I remember one day I'm on a site, I'm on a Facebook page called the Dojang.
And there's, think there's gosh, we're probably coming up on 7,000 members now. But this was back when there was only a couple thousand members and somebody posted a thing, hey, what do you do outside of martial arts? And it was, or it was like, what do you either do? There were two different conversations. was what do you do? And then there were different hobbies. But the what do you do was interesting because it was engineers and IT people.
They were the martial artists, engineers and IT people. And I was like, that's really interesting.
And then there's the hobbyists, right? What are your other hobbies besides martial arts? And it was either technology, most of them was technology and music, right? Musicians and technologists, right? And I can see falling into the technology group and falling into the martial arts group, I can see where the attraction is because
Jeremy Lesniak (37:35.417)
I was wondering if you were going to say it's the other one.
Jesse Bernal (37:51.946)
It's like boxed creativity, right? Where you go, well, what do you do with martial arts? Well, let me show you, right? Anybody who's worth their salt is gonna say, well, this move isn't just this move. This move has, you you've got these grabs and all these other things and you use it for joint manipulation and limbs and grabbing and doing all these things, right? And so there's all these things that you can do with the kata or the hyang, whatever you wanna call them.
And if you just take it for what it is that face value, it's just violent ballet. It's when you say, but what can I actually do with it? Why is it there? When, as I like to tell my students, the kata are a moving record of what those things are. It's like a, it's no different than
when the Vikings made their bards memorize these long odysseys to maintain the history of their culture, that's what the Hyeongar, that's what the Kata are. It's a literal physical moving history of what came before. And now you've got to figure out, they made it look nice and they put it together and they did all these things and other masters have touched it and changed it to make it palatable for competitions and stuff. How do you get back to the roots?
And I think that's what appeals to the engineers and the IT people, that brain, that technical brain of, well, what happens if instead of doing it this way, what if I drop my elbow? What if I twist, what if I just twist their arm a little differently? Or what if I do this, right? It scratches that creative itch while still maintaining that box of creativity, right? You've got some guide rails.
Jeremy Lesniak (39:47.788)
Yeah, it's that what if and what else, right? And but there are hard and fast rules that, know, an engineer is not going to try to upend gravity.
Jesse Bernal (39:51.457)
Mm-hmm.
Jesse Bernal (40:02.145)
No.
Jeremy Lesniak (40:02.827)
An engineer may test the tolerance of particular materials, but is very aware of, okay, well, if I'm going to deploy this, needs to have, you know, needs to be safe. It needs to have some of these things, but, know, within that box I can play.
And that's, I think that's a great description of what we get to do. have, there are parameters and we do get to play within them. And I think that that is also, it's kind of the inverted version. That's what, where the musical tie comes in. Right? It's, know, I've, the engineer is here's my box. I get to play. The musician says I get to play and okay, there's my box.
Jesse Bernal (40:50.797)
Yeah. And even though I'm not a musician, I think I definitely fall into that second, the second box. And that's, yeah. I mean, growing up high school, I was all into art and stuff like that. And then after I out of high school, I thought I was gonna go, you know, go to school for art. And then I ran across what I like to call real artists. And these are the people that,
Jeremy Lesniak (40:59.032)
really? Okay. You're more of a creative.
Jesse Bernal (41:20.279)
feel compelled to draw and create and do their different artistic endeavors. They're driven to do that thing. And there's not a day that goes by that they don't engage in that because that's part of who they are. And I realized, no, I'm not an artist. I'm just somebody who likes art. But martial arts for me is that way. And technology for me is that way.
I engage in martial arts and I engage with not just with technology but in technology. I engage with those two things on a daily basis because to not do that seems strange.
Jeremy Lesniak (42:07.021)
Does this impact the way you run your school or run your classes?
Jesse Bernal (42:11.757)
yes and no. I would say yes in that I'm always looking towards technology to make things easier to, you know, optimize things. and no, because I've also found that too much tinkering is not a good thing. Right? Sometimes you just leave things alone because
to the amount of effort required to come up with something else that may or may not work isn't your time and energy is better spent somewhere else.
Jeremy Lesniak (42:52.397)
Yeah. Yeah. For the entrepreneur has a hard time accepting that they have built a good business and they have to shift into business owner, business manager role. That's not easy.
Jesse Bernal (43:05.185)
Yep. No, no, it's not. and my business coach, you know, cautions us against, you know, when we're like on our big group calls, he cautions us against creating problems in our own business because we've gotten bored because things are running too well.
So, and so some, so sometimes when I look at something and I go, I could blah, dah, dah, you know, I, I have to, I, I now step back and I ask myself, is there actually anything wrong with it? Or are you just looking for something, you know, are you like, are you like the kid that can't leave their, their scratch alone? You just got to keep scratching at it, you know? So, yep.
Jeremy Lesniak (43:27.459)
happens a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak (43:54.405)
I struggle with this as well and I've gotten better, but I'll ask myself now, okay, I see a thing. It could be improved. What would it take to improve it? How likely is it that it's actually going to be better when I'm done playing with it? And is anybody going to care? Because to put in a bunch of work and risk something for 2 % better that nobody notices...
And if it has anything to do with marketing, that's the one. Right? I can go through and do a whole bunch of new photos on the website and rewrite the text and make a bunch of new pages and go through the pain of Google not showing the pages for a while because I made such big changes. then at the end, is it actually going to make people sign up more?
And if the answer is I don't know, I either need to answer that question or I need to move on to something else where I can say, yeah, that will make a difference.
Jesse Bernal (44:58.413)
Totally. Are you familiar with Tom Billiou? Yeah, so I follow some of his stuff. think he's a pretty sharp dude.
Jeremy Lesniak (45:03.885)
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak (45:10.167)
He is. He's got a pretty good podcast as well.
Jesse Bernal (45:13.517)
I love his framework around testing businesses with AI. He's got a framework and you go and you ask AI a couple questions and do the stuff. And then if the results that you get are favorable, he says then you take $100, you use AI to create a website, you take $100, you advertise your business with that $100. he said, I think he says,
Jeremy Lesniak (45:18.425)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (45:43.181)
If you get 20 people to sign up in two weeks, then your business is viable. You can move forward. But if you don't get at least 20 people with $100 to sign up and say that they're interested, then move on and do something else.
Jeremy Lesniak (46:04.269)
He's made more money than I have, I can't credit. I can't find fault with that.
Jesse Bernal (46:04.617)
AI, right?
Jesse Bernal (46:11.261)
AI is, you know, as a business owner, a spec, I think all business owners deal with this. I feel like it's very forefront for martial arts business owners, AI and marketing.
Jeremy Lesniak (46:27.309)
Mm-hmm.
Jesse Bernal (46:29.569)
And I've always said that marketing is just legal mind control.
Jesse Bernal (46:38.091)
because you're trying to influence people, right? You're influencing, it's like the old like, okay, I'm gonna control your mind. Okay, don't think about this pink elephant, right? And then you're like, I'm thinking of a pink elephant, right? So that's what we do with marketing is we get people to engage with our stuff, right? Now, chances are they're probably already looking for martial arts if they're seeing our ads, but.
Jeremy Lesniak (46:41.207)
Yeah, yeah, I believe you.
Jesse Bernal (47:05.281)
The face of marketing, and I don't mean literally the face, but the face of marketing, the way it's created, the way it's managed, the way it is as a business is going to be vastly different. In fact, I would say it's already vastly different in such a short time, but I suspect within the next two to three years, it's gonna be unrecognizable.
compared to what it is even to today. For good or for ill, everything's getting tuned and better and optimized and all these things. You see a lot of these guys online talking about how their AI ads are winning out over their real ads. The AI generated versions of them are selling more things. And I'm curious when it's gonna come back around, right?
There's already people that are publishing books that part of the hook for the book is that it's 100 % human created.
Jeremy Lesniak (48:13.837)
Yep. That's a line that we've drawn with our book division is that our, you know, we may use and we're actually working on a statement for this so we can communicate with authors and with the public.
We are not an AI book company.
the roots of it have to be a person.
Now, maybe AI helps in the editing, because that's efficient. Why would you not do that? Maybe AI helps in the formatting, which, you know.
But I spend, mean, you know, because, you know, we, we talk about some of this stuff sometimes. I spend a lot of time working with AI. I've got some projects going on a separate computer right here that are consuming most of my free time because I see immense opportunity because at the end of the day, you can't replace experience. And that's what martial arts ultimately is. It's experience with other people. And.
Jesse Bernal (49:16.568)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (49:23.147)
A lot of things will change and dry up and the way people find and connect into martial arts will change. But what we offer, I think, becomes even more valuable as we move forward with this.
Jesse Bernal (49:37.408)
I hope that's true. Did you see the Shaolin robots?
You know, I went after I watched I was like, wow, that was really cool. So now China has an army of robots that can, you know, shoot weapons and do like hand to hand combat. That's what I came away with. Right. Like the martial artist to me was like, if they can do that in the air, they can respond to people. It's, know, China now has, you know, robot armies. Now, are they?
Are they financially viable? Probably not. Not yet.
Jeremy Lesniak (50:21.197)
Probably not yet. They might become financially viable at some point.
But I don't think that most people were ever training.
fight robots or to fight armies or to go to war. mean, very few people. I've known it. Maybe a handful of people that started training because they were going to, you know, they're going to enlist or in between the deployments. And yeah, I mean, you have schools, you know, most people that come to train have self-defense somewhere on the list, but it's rarely at the top.
Jesse Bernal (50:55.65)
Right? And what's interesting is I've found that the folks who do have self-defense top on their list, it should not be the top thing on their list. The self-defense is there because maybe they were assaulted or something, and their confidence is shattered. And what they're really seeking is confidence, not self-defense. I mean, the self-defense is important too, but the chance of them
experiencing that type of event again is pretty low because they're already watching out and not going to places where that could happen and stuff like that. So it's really that confidence piece that they're seeking, not really the self-defense.
Jeremy Lesniak (51:45.176)
When you, when you take a look at the future, cause when I said, I think what we do is pretty protected. said, I hope so. My gut tells me you've spent some time thinking about this stuff. Where, where do you think AI fits in to what we do outside of the marketing?
Jesse Bernal (51:59.47)
I could say.
Jesse Bernal (52:04.462)
So the reason why I say I hope so is because
Well, here's an example, right? Just last week, I read a newsletter. I get the news in email. I use a service, a free service called 1440 because it doesn't go for either side. It just gives me the And so...
Jeremy Lesniak (52:27.694)
Right, right.
Jesse Bernal (52:32.91)
Last week, Meta said it was laying off some of its people, right? About 8,000 people. And it also suspended, yeah, so 10 % of the workforce, so they're laying off 8,000 people. And then they also are suspending 6,000 open positions that they had. Okay, so there's 14,000.
Jeremy Lesniak (52:40.835)
Yep. Yep.
It's 10 % of their workforce.
Jesse Bernal (53:01.614)
And then I'm trying to remember it was another technology company. I think maybe it was Apple. Apple is also laying off, I believe it was Apple. Anyway, they're also laying off like another 8,000 people, like worldwide. So there's 20, what's that 22,000 jobs? 22,000 jobs gone right there, which made me do a search, right?
Jeremy Lesniak (53:24.377)
22.
Jesse Bernal (53:30.582)
And I didn't even do an AI search. just popped on Google and basically said, you know, since 2025, how many jobs have been either lost or delayed due to AI? And just in the United States alone, it's between four and 700,000 worldwide. It's, know, up in the millions. So the reason why I say hopefully what we do becomes more valuable.
We have to have people who can afford our services to be able to do what we do.
Jeremy Lesniak (54:04.803)
Sure. That's an important point.
Jesse Bernal (54:10.474)
And if AI continues to replace a lot of our IT jobs, which are normally good paying, stable jobs, then we come to a point, we get to a point where the people who would normally be frequenting our businesses maybe aren't doing that anymore.
Jeremy Lesniak (54:34.617)
I think it's gonna, there's a redistribution of jobs, right? If company A, know, say Metta, this is how I look at this. there's a, for those of you out there that really don't care about this personally, there is a martial arts tie here and I'll get there if it isn't obvious at the end. If Metta lays off 8,000 people and the obvious thought is,
they're replacing those jobs with AI. AI doesn't manage AI. People need to manage AI. At some point up the chain, there's a person. But the reason, go ahead.
Jesse Bernal (55:16.514)
In the United States, 119,000 jobs have been created by AI. So if we've lost between, we'll just split the difference because I said it was somewhere between four and 700,000 because the numbers are kind of fuzzy. So if we split the difference and let's say that we've 575,000 jobs to AI and now we've plugged 119,000 back in.
There's still a deficit, But eventually, you're right. There are certain things only people can do for now.
Jeremy Lesniak (55:55.298)
And if we, if we follow that trend out, the business has the person managing the AI ultimately for increased profitability.
which turns into a larger business, because all of these businesses, you you take something like Meta, Apple, Microsoft, they're all big enough. They want to keep growing. You know, nobody's sitting out there going, we're going to cap our global headcount at 50,000 and never grow beyond that. And we're going to fight to be as efficient as possible at 50,000 people. No, they're just going to keep growing.
We're in this new sort of, of professional arms race where the move is how can we as quickly and efficiently as possible deploy AI to eat up everybody else's market share? And I'll be completely honest. That's what the projects are on this laptop. There are things I'm doing, things that you'll know about in the next month or so that I'm working hard on for this industry that to my knowledge, nobody else is doing. Because if we go way back,
what did I major in in school? Computer science and philosophy. And I didn't know why. I didn't know what I was doing with it. But I had several people tell me, so you're gonna get into artificial intelligence? like, I don't like programming, so probably not. Oh wait, here we are. It is what I'm spending most of my time on because it's how my brain works.
Jesse Bernal (57:18.882)
Yep. Do you know who Derek Sivers is?
Look him up, Derek Sivers. Yeah, he did a Ted Talk years ago. But his real claim to fame is CD Baby.
Jeremy Lesniak (57:39.161)
yeah.
Jesse Bernal (57:40.632)
So that's Derek Sivers. And so, you you say you went to school for IT and philosophy, right? I think Derek Sivers went to school for like music and something else, but he was drawn to technology. And that's how he ended up making CD Baby, right? But...
that
The crossover there just sort of struck me. And also he's a man of a conservative hair as well.
Jeremy Lesniak (58:12.28)
Hmm.
I like that. I haven't heard that one. I am a man of conservative hair. Yeah, it falls that I conserve it at the bottom of my face. Yeah.
Jesse Bernal (58:32.342)
Right? But yeah, all the stuff that the possibilities that AI has opened for so many things is pretty insane.
Jeremy Lesniak (58:47.001)
And I need to throw this out here because I know there are people who are watching or listening and their instant responses, AI is stupid, I hate it, et cetera. There have been times I've posted related to AI on my personal Facebook and people that I've known for a very long time are still trying to put the genie back in the bottle. It's not going back in the bottle. And so I will tell you whether your job is in martial arts or not, you have two choices.
You can understand how the world is and is turning, or you can be left behind because there is not an in-between option. You cannot like it all you want. There are plenty of things that I look at and I think this is not what I want the world to be. But if you look at every technology we've ever adopted, we go through a period where the pendulum swings far out and not all of it's good. And eventually it corrects and
we find how that technology ultimately fits into us as a species.
Jesse Bernal (59:48.27)
Right? I mean, the internet was the same way, right? You know, when I was, so I'm reminded a little bit, you know, like, I remember when...
Jeremy Lesniak (59:51.638)
Exactly.
Jesse Bernal (01:00:04.11)
I was working at a shoe store when no not Nordstrom's I was working for Kenny's shoes. Kenny's shoes. Yeah. Yeah. So here I am, you know, 20 years old or whatever. 1920 years old and I was working at Kenny's shoes and we started accepting these things called debit cards. Right. Or and and and we could do it through the register. We didn't have to.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:00:06.667)
Not Nordstroms.
No way. I remember Kenny shoes.
Jesse Bernal (01:00:33.464)
We didn't have to use the old knuckle duster, right? And, you know, I remember there was a moment where the new way of doing things was difficult, right? Because it was new and it was inconvenient, right? And eventually we got good at it and it was no longer inconvenient and it became more inconvenient for the people that wanted to write checks.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:00:59.737)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (01:01:00.79)
right? That our process with a debit card was faster than allowing somebody to write a check. And then I remember when the system was down, we had to go back to doing these, right? And allowing people to write checks that it was so inconvenient that we would complain, right? And it was a relatively short period of time. I mean, it was like, it was definitely less than six months, maybe even only three months.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:01:18.594)
Yeah.
Jesse Bernal (01:01:29.89)
before we were like, no, this way is better. This way is faster. And AI is in its infancy right now. But eventually, everybody is going to be like, it's not going to be too long. Everybody is going to be like, nope, this way is better. This way is faster. This is an improvement to our lives.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:01:34.049)
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:01:53.452)
It is already in use for a large portion of every single person's life, whether they realize it or not.
Jesse Bernal (01:02:00.846)
Right, yeah, it's not an accident that you talk about pizza in passing with your wife or husband. And then you pop on to.
Facebook or whatever and all of a sudden you're getting ads for DoorDash and you know it's...
Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:19.641)
Right, I'm probably gonna get pizza ads now. But when we understand this, right? And so this is, to me, this is the martial arts hook and we've got, you know, probably 10 minutes left here before we're gonna have to maybe set a second time and we go deep into the AI and martial arts world. Maybe we can connect again on that for another episode.
Jesse Bernal (01:02:35.288)
Sure.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:45.525)
As martial artists, most of us are violence averse. We don't want to get into fights. We don't go around looking for fights. Some of us will watch fake violence or...
mutually agreed upon violence, right? Sport combat or movies or TV. But most of us are not sitting there watching a fight in public with a box of popcorn going, yeah, I enjoy watching this. But we consume it so we can do what we do better, so we can have a better understanding of it. Our understanding of violence as martial artists, as students and or instructors makes us better at
protecting against it for ourselves and teaching those that we try to help to avoid it even better. AI is the same way. The more of an understanding we have of it, the more utility it gains, the more we let it control us and just, you know, I'm gonna pretend it doesn't exist, the more likely it creates problems for us.
Jesse Bernal (01:03:58.478)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you can't just stick your head in the sand on this because you you said you can't put the genie back in the bottle and I have been telling people Pandora's box is open, right? It's out and you cannot put it back. It's the world will never be the same. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:04:18.425)
100 % of the energy invested in complaining about it is wasted.
Jesse Bernal (01:04:23.34)
Yeah. I do want to circle back on what you said about, you know, watching, watching violence. As a kid, I was, you know, the Kung Fu theater kid, right? I would watch Kung Fu theater and run up and down the hall, flying sidekicks onto the couch and all this stuff, You know, I was, and on Facebook, I will purposely join, you know, like the Shaw Brothers page and stuff like that.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:04:31.544)
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:04:39.865)
I'd be surprised if you didn't.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:04:49.922)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (01:04:51.566)
And I was watching a clip the other day. And as an adult and as a martial artist, I was watching it. I'm like, wow, that kick wasn't even close to hitting that guy. But he responded as if it did. And then I sort of like took a step back and was like, wow, this is a really complex, long scene.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:05:01.229)
Yeah
Jesse Bernal (01:05:19.45)
of these guys going through all these martial arts moves. How awesome is this? Right? And it's sort of the pageantry of those kung fu movies that made them so cool. And now it's less, I would say in movies that we watch today, it's, it's less choreographed, right? It's less fantastical, I guess. And it's more of that sort of like gritty reality where you look at it you go,
Wow, that move was amazing. It would never work in real life, but that was so cool. And so I think that scratches that creativity itch that we talked about. Right. And I remember whistle kick. Didn't you guys run a, you guys ran a, you know, choreograph your fight kind of thing. Yeah. And I tried to get some of my students, I've tried to run actually a workshop a couple of times where you choreograph your own fight and
Jeremy Lesniak (01:06:09.357)
Yeah, we've done some stuff with that.
Jesse Bernal (01:06:18.198)
I get a couple of people that are interested, but most of the students are not, which I'm like, you guys are crazy. Why don't you want to do this? But in terms of, you know, combat sports and talking about how we watch it so we can do what we do better.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:06:19.289)
you
I don't get it. It's too much fun.
Jesse Bernal (01:06:35.852)
I mean, it is entertainment and it is good to, I think as martial artists, we watch the combat sports with a different eye. We can't help but to, but to do what we do better. I think at least for me anyway, I look at when I watch combat sports, I look less at what they're doing specifically.
and more at what they're doing fundamentally. And typically it always comes down to timing and distance. Right? They had the right timing for that thing or they manage their distance better than the other person, especially in a striking match, right? When you get into more of the grappling stuff, that's almost more like a chess game.
you know, that sort of responding to what the other person is doing and trying to be one move ahead, that sort of thing. I've practiced a little Brazilian Jiu actually like it. I just don't have time to engage in it in the way that I would like to.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:07:45.859)
there may be even a higher percentage of IT-minded folks in BJJ than across traditional martial arts as a whole.
Jesse Bernal (01:07:55.022)
Non-sports BJJ is a fantastic way for people who can be able to be active and do something that is both mentally and physically stimulating with a relatively low, I'm gonna say with a relatively low chance of injury.
I mean, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a low impact activity because you win and lose in sometimes fractions of an inch. And so if you're a professional that maybe the impact stuff isn't for you, it's a great way to get into it. like I said, be both mentally and physically stimulated.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:08:31.801)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:08:46.649)
with you. I'm watching our time and I want to make sure that we we have time to close gracefully. So let's make sure if people want to get a hold of you, you know, to to say, yes, Jesse, I completely agree or no, Jesse, you're so wrong. And hopefully they explain why. Where do they go on the Internet here?
Jesse Bernal (01:08:49.506)
Yep. Sure.
Jesse Bernal (01:09:06.189)
Aurora karate calm That's easiest place to and then send an email to info or Jesse at Aurora karate calm is fine
Jeremy Lesniak (01:09:21.357)
make sure that links. Thank you for being here. And I'm serious. should talk about having a separate conversation on AI. Maybe we can bring a friend or two on, we can powwow and complain and hope and.
Jesse Bernal (01:09:31.34)
Yeah. I've been wanting. I've been one of the things that I've been wanting to do with AI is. I want to shoot some videos of. I want to shoot some videos of me doing some techniques and showing common problems that students have. And then showing how to correct those problems. And then.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:09:55.042)
Hmm.
Jesse Bernal (01:10:00.632)
feeding it to AI and seeing what AI can do in terms of like creating its own sort of knowledge base and then taking a student and having them do some of the stuff, feed that to AI and see if it can identify and correct and provide proper correction. Or if it could even say, you're doing these three things, here are the videos that address that.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:10:13.401)
Mmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:10:24.311)
The only thing I can offer that helps that is that there are some apps out there in the Olympic weightlifting world that allow you to draw certain lines.
and show movement across time with certain guidelines. There may be something in there that's helpful on that.
Jesse Bernal (01:10:45.025)
That sounds very time consuming.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:10:46.809)
It well, that's the promise of AI, right? We put in all the time upfront and then we never have to touch it again. But so Jesse, how do we close today? We've been all over the map. What do you want to leave the audience with?
Jesse Bernal (01:10:50.839)
Must
Jesse Bernal (01:11:07.691)
I would say, know, cause we talked about entrepreneurship a little bit and my own journey. And we talked about IT people and engineers and musicians and stuff. And the thing I would say is that no matter what it is that you decide that you want to do, it's gonna take a lot of work, right? And there's gonna be parts of it that suck. I don't actually like
being a business owner. I like the community that I've created around my business. And I like investing myself in the people that are my customers. But the actual day-to-day running of the business is, it can be interesting. Most times it's a little tedious and many times it's boring and frustrating.
So that's, know, but no matter what you decide to do, there's always going to be sucky stuff about it. You got to focus on the, on why you decided to do it. Right. And then the other stuff is just, you know, it's like the chores or the bus, it's, like the Brussels sprouts, right? Not everybody likes Brussels sprouts. I like them if they're made the the certain way, but, there's, there's always, there's always going to be stuff about no matter what you do, there's going to be stuff that you don't like to do.
Jeremy Lesniak (01:12:27.383)
on the grill.
Jesse Bernal (01:12:34.209)
with that thing and the important thing is to stay focused on your purpose, why you're doing it.