Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

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Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Okay, I am looking forward to our podcast today. Welcome, Mr. Dwayne Flees. Thanks for being here. He’s with KarateBuilt Grand Rapids. How are you doing today, sir?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Great, sir. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Well, I’m Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor, and let’s get started. Today we’re going to be talking about Having Your Kids Work, so that’s our topic. We have a lot of parents that have talked to us about, for one thing, having their kids work at our martial arts school, but also, “Is it a good idea for my kid to get a job when they’re 14 years old or depending on the state, 12 years old or 16 years old?” Or, “Is it more important for them to only do school or maybe only do their martial arts classes and do school and should they focus on school?”

Sure, we feel like school’s a very important thing, but let’s answer the question or talk a little bit about the value of doing work and doing a job while they’re getting their education. So let’s talk about the value of those things, and we’ll give you a little bit of a summary. So couple of things. Again, I’m Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor. Mr. Dwayne Flees, fourth-degree black belt owner of the KarateBuilt School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We may be joined here today with, of course, our other special guest, Senior Master Laura Sanborn, and we’ll see if she makes it. Oh, I want to mention Mr. Flees, let’s go back a little bit, and I’ll have to share our screen again, but that’s okay. But Mr. Flees is the author of the new book… You have your book with you, sir?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, sir. I don’t have it by me right now.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

You didn’t bring it with you, but it’s the Life Sucks When Your Kid’s A Jerk: The Guide to Building Successful and Respectful Kids. I think I got the subtitle pretty close, and that’s on Amazon. It’s a great book. You ought to make sure you get that. In fact, I have a copy of it here. I just finished my new book. For those of you who haven’t got a copy of this, Bullying: Truths, Myths, and What to Do! So we’ve got a couple new books on Amazon that we want to share with you, probably should have had it on our screen as well. But a couple of things that we wanted to announce at the beginning of this podcast, should have done it earlier. So wanted to talk again, about having your kids work and we feel it’s a gift that you can give, them. Again, thanks for being here. Mr. Flees, when did you start working [inaudible 00:02:28]

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Officially, I probably was 14, 15 years old after school.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

What did you do?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

For a while, I did a paper route where I delivered newspapers when we had real newspaper carriers. Then after that, I worked at a party store a few blocks away three times a night. I had to go there and sort cans out before we had bottle return machines, which was a nasty job and restock coolers.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Those were jobs that existed then, but they don’t exist now, especially paper routes. I remember reading an article about, it was advertising the newspaper back, this must’ve been 20 years ago when they still had paper routes. It was trying to get more kids to be paper route people. In the article it said that some large percentage of CEOs of companies, Fortune 500 CEOs had a paper route when they were a kid. So I remember it was like 60% or 70% of Fortune 500 CEOs had a paper route. The point was is that learning those skills to run a paper route, you had to get up early. You had to go get the papers. You had to organize your route. You had to go collect money. You had to give the money to the people. You got to do your own profit and loss operation there. Having a paper route is like a running your own business, right?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Oh, yes, sir. You had to make sure you had enough money left over to actually pay for the papers because they [inaudible 00:04:07]

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

What a great job, and now we keep kids from doing that. I think a lot of times we’re worried about safety, and in reality, we know that there really wasn’t… there’s been no reported incidents. Now, there might’ve been traffic incidents, not meaning that, but I think what people worry about is somebody’s going to abduct a child, and we’re experts at training parents in all the real dangers of kids getting abducted. There’s been no incidents that we know of in all of history where somebody that ran a paper route was ever abducted and taken away from anything related to that type of business. So that would’ve been a pretty safe job for kids to do. So now, of course, they don’t do that. Now, we don’t really have newspapers, so it’s a different world in that regard. But my first job, I started working even younger. I was eight years old.

My mom had her own business, and she used to teach extension classes for the university, and she taught these classes. I think I’m still a little traumatized by it. She had 112 boxes that had to get transported to different places around California when I lived in California and then in Arizona when we moved back to Arizona. We had to trailer these boxes to where we were going to teach the classes, and I had to move them out of the trailer while my mom and dad set up the class. I had to move them back in the trailer after the class was done. 111 boxes, that was the maximum. Sometimes it was a little less, but 8-year-old Greg Moody had to go move them out. I was older later, but there were a lot of boxes for an 8-year-old and I was still moving them. You could ask some of my family members back then I was moving the boxes, and she paid me a nickel per box.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Wow.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

By the end I got five bucks, which is a lot of money when you’re eight years old. So I thought I was rich ’cause I got a nickel per box. I think I negotiated that rate with her and her opinion was I shouldn’t get paid anything at all because I didn’t have to pay rent or anything. So that’s work experience for a lot of us, but we learned a lot doing those things, I think. Right?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yeah, definitely.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah. So some of the value of this, and I know that some of the parents that have had their kids do work at our martial arts school who got similar stories about how their kids have started working with us and then later in later years they’ve become everything from doctors, lawyers. Some of my students have been vice presidents or presidents of companies or done their own startup business, and a lot of the skills they learned were because they did some work with us. But let’s talk about a little bit about value of early work experience and specifically what those are. I’ll do some writing when we come up with some of these ideas as I share this. Oh, I’m not sharing the screen now. Let me share the screen that we have up here. So what are some of the things that you feel like people get from working in general? It could be paper route. You talked about, I guess I’ll start it off from what you just said, you had to learn how to save money and not waste your money.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Right?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

So you had to learn how to save money. What else did you get from working when you were a kid?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Time management. We actually delivered papers after school where we lived, not in the morning time, so we had a evening paper. So after school we had to deliver the papers and then people really preferred that I would get their paper to them before 7:00 PM at night.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Sure. Sure. Yeah, that would be a bummer if I got my paper at midnight and you were a-

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

… slow paper route guy.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

I think any job now, if kid at work at In-N-Out Burger or if they worked at our martial arts school, they worked anywhere, they have to show up on time. If they don’t show up on time, then they get in trouble. They don’t keep their job. It’s a significant difference. For parents that are frustrated that their kid is late or doesn’t get their chores done on time or don’t get things done at home, well, they don’t have the same relationship with their boss at work. If their boss at work is going to say, “Well, you don’t get to keep your job or you don’t get as many hours if you’re not going to perform as well,” all these things become important. What else do you think kids learn when they’re starting to work early?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Well, communication skills. I know when running the paper route, like you said, we actually had to collect funds. Sometimes we had to hit them up at different times of the night so that they would be there or on a Saturday afternoon to collect our newspaper funds. Then we had to deal with sometimes customers that weren’t paying on time necessarily.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Sure, you have to deal with unruly customers or people that aren’t always nice.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yeah, when you’re 10, that can be a little traumatic sometimes, but…

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, I bet. I bet. It is interesting you say that because when one thing we hear adults complain about or adult students complain about sometimes is that when they’re managers at work, they complain about their employees or they’re complaining about their customers maybe being mean or not being nice to them. But if kids are always in an environment where at school people are pretty nice and at home, you guys as parents are really nice, hopefully, most of the time, sometimes you get frustrated with your kids, but it’s a different environment. But in the real world, people aren’t always going to be happy with you, and having to learn and it’s not because they’re… If people didn’t want to pay you the money, it was their fault.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

It wasn’t your fault. They got the papers, they’re supposed to pay you the money, but then they still don’t. That’s real-world situations that happen.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

There’s justice in that. So sometimes the world doesn’t work by the rules of justice, and they get to learn that in a real work environment versus what they’d like to have happen. So they learn communication skills and I would say even here, how the world works-

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

… and it’s different, I think we probably all agree it’s different than how they’d like it to work or how it works at home. One of the things that I thought about was that when I worked that young, or even when I had a regular job, it wasn’t with my parents when I was 14 years old too, and I worked at a store that back in the old days, they still had a store that sold electronic stuff. So I got interested in that kind of stuff early, and I had to pack stuff. I had to be on time. I had to pack stuff. I had to deliver stuff to people and riding my bike to the place, riding my bike back and all those things. But I worked a lot of hours ’cause I wanted to make more money. The money I got to make, there was money I got to spend on stuff I wanted, and so I learned a relationship with money.

So you mentioned save money, but I learned a relationship with money so that I wouldn’t just ask my dad for money or my mom for money when I wanted something. I didn’t ask him at all. I figured if I wanted more, I’d work more. So I think there’s a big difference, and I think some people would understand the value is that there’s a good relationship with money that it’s a little different from saving money, that… I don’t know if anybody knows a 20 or 30-year-old that might still as soon as they run out of money, they might call their parents or they run out of money, they ask their boss for a raise. In fact, I’ve had that happen at my businesses where somebody had asked me for a raise, like, “Well, why do you deserve a raise?” “Well, ’cause I need more money to live off of.”

It’s kind of strange. Are they getting paid the market value for their work that they’re doing? Yes, maybe even more than the market value for the work that they’re getting yet they still would like to get more money. Those of you who are managers or work in business or have your own business might think, “What a ridiculous statement. I want to get paid more just ’cause I need more, not because of the value that I provide,” or because they might be getting paid a lot more than their market value for the work that they do, but, “I just need more money.” So I learned if I needed more, I just do a job or work more or put more hours in. There’s a lot of reasons why maybe people should get more money, and we’re not having that conversation now, but there’s a different relationship than somebody who would just ask mom and dad for money all the time, I guess, is the big difference.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right. [inaudible 00:13:38]

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Any thoughts on that, sir?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yeah, I think being able to figure it out yourself, if your parents just give you money all the time, you’re not really learning how to take care of yourself when you’re an adult. So if you want something, you need to figure that out. If you want to go on a trip or you want to go somewhere special or if you want to buy a new bike, you have to figure that out. If parents and families just give the kids whatever they want, they’re not going to want to have a good sense of value for things, and they’re not going to be able to function as an adult very well right away. I think eventually they will, but in the beginning it might be a little tougher.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah, and it makes me think about how work and vacation work versus vacation work in the real world. I remember it came to me once when I was teaching a class where one of the parents set their goal. I do a big class with board breaking and some other things I do, and one parent set their goal to have their kid work. It was an 8-year-old child, and they said they wanted their kid to get their own job when they were 15. I thought, “What a great goal.” That’s one reason we we’re doing this class today, and I realized that was something that they would learn some of these skills from.

I thought about the difference between a child that works when they’re 15 or 14 or younger and a kid who doesn’t. Well, if a kid who doesn’t work when they’re young, they’ll go to school. They’ll work six hours, and then they’re going to have the entire summer off. They’re going to get a week or two at Christmas holiday season. Now they get a week in the fall and a week in the spring, and they’re going to get a lot more holidays than those of us who worked regular 9:00 to 5:00 or 8:00 to 5:00 jobs.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

My first 8:00 to 5:00 job, if I asked most of our parents, I started asking this at seminars, everybody’s 8:00 to 5:00 job when they started their first job out of college or high school, they got maybe one week vacation. So imagine the point of view of the kid. If you think about it from the point of view of the student, not a kid anymore, they get out of high school, they get out of college and they go work a regular job, they used to get three months off plus another couple weeks plus another couple of weeks plus… they really had about four months where they didn’t have to work. They only had to work six hours a day if they just went to school and they didn’t work. So now, they have to get dumped into, and by the way, if they were sick anytime, they got pretty much as much sick time, maybe 10 days, they get in trouble after 10 or 12 days.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

10 days you can get away with, but after 10 or 12 days, you get in trouble at school. So you got maybe 10 days sick time plus four months of time off and all the holidays. But now, you go to work your first job, you get maybe three sick days, one week of vacation and not even as many holidays.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

A lot of times you have to work through the holiday season ’cause you’re working a job that may make money over the holidays. Oh, well, no wonder kids would feel oppressed.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

No wonder kids would feel like, “Oh, my gosh, the company’s terrible. My boss is so mean, and I don’t make enough money ’cause I haven’t learned how to do all these things that are on our list here, no wonder. Oh, this is terrible. I feel so burned out.” Well, yeah, and if you think about somebody who even goes to college, college is a lot of work. Well, if they don’t have to do a job during college, college is only three, four hours a day. They have to do more homework maybe, but they don’t have to do chores at home. They might live in the dorm. Maybe their parents pay for college. I’m not saying parents are doing a bad job by doing that, but if they’re not working, then they jump out to a regular job where one week vacation, couple of sick days, they don’t get to really just do whatever they want. No wonder they would feel oppressed.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Makes sense now, right?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yeah.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

But if they work, they get these skills, plus they earn their own money and they feel good about that, they can feel positive about this. Anything to add there? I talked for a while about those things.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, it’s true. I think it would probably be better served for our young adults if we did have school year round and maybe just had some extra longer breaks in between for some things. I think other families would actually enjoy that too. But that’s for sure, they’re going to have a little bit of a shock when they get out into the real work world and find out, “Well, sometimes I do have to work on Saturday and Sunday because that’s the job and that’s needed. Sometimes I do have to work holidays because the people with little kids and families at home want to have that holiday off.” When you don’t have anyone, then you get picked to work.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Sure, yeah. It might seem like, “Oh, why do I have to work the weekends?” Well, when you like to do stuff on the weekends and the restaurants were open and the theaters were open and the stores were open, who was working? Somebody was working then, so somebody had to work. So it makes sense, but now that they’re in the work world, it doesn’t feel right. It’s not blaming the young 18, 19, 25-year-olds for that. Sometimes I think we look at that age group and we think, “Well, oh, they’re entitled, or they’re lazy.” But if you think about it in this point of view, it’s not really true. It’s what we built up because we haven’t had them get the right experience-

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

… get the right experience. Well, let’s talk a little bit about what it means to work at our school at KarateBuilt Martial Arts and why they get all these things, but they do get some more stuff, and what else do they get? Well, one thing they’re getting to learn is because it’s a smaller business, it’s not with 1,000 people, they get to see all aspects of the business. So they’re going to get to learn, we have them learn to be for one thing, instructors, and that’s part of the job is to be an instructor. So if they’re an instructor, they’re learning how to show other people things. Even if they’re young, they’re going to learn instructor skills.

Doesn’t mean they would be teaching a full class or responsible for a whole class, but they would learn instructor skills, so that means they learn to communicate. Believe me, that’s a skill that nobody gets to learn on their own. That’s something that everybody’s… it assumed that they learn it, but it’s a lot more than what they’ve learned in a regular type job or a different type job. They would learn how to communicate with little kids, with adults and everybody in between. So that’s one of the pieces that I think that is very unique about when somebody’s working within our business, they get to learn how to not just communicate, but they also learn how to teach and lead. You have some thoughts on that, sir, that you wanted to throw in there that is a little bit different?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yeah. When they’re learning how to be an instructor, that’s going to translate over to, it doesn’t seem like you’re an instructor. But if you have to show somebody else how to do your job, you’re going to have a little bit more of a skillset to be able to communicate that job process to someone else, even if it’s making coffee.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Sure. Sure. Yeah, and we have to teach other people, not just physical things, but also mental things like how to… Kids are going to get frustrated, adults are going to get frustrated, so they have to learn a lot of things such as, there were my pen working, such as empathy and listening. So skills that in my other work that I do as a psychotherapist, this is most of the work. When people are having trouble dealing with people, trouble talking to people, these are basic skills that nobody learns. Nobody learns how to be patient because instructors have to deal with people of all sizes, ability levels, talent levels, as we said, ages and everything in between. So even at a young age as they’re learning if they’re 12 or 13 or even younger or 16, what do we say about these kids? Usually, that they don’t have patience or empathy. Now, I’m not saying when they’re out with their other 16-year-olds that they’re not going to still act like 16-year-olds or not be a normal teenager, but this allows them to start developing some of those skills.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right. Yes.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

The other thing that’s different is that kids that start working in this type of environment, now I would say there’s other environments that they learn these kinds of things too, but they also learn discipline. In other work environments, of course, they have to show up on time and maybe wear a uniform, maybe clean the bathrooms, do different stuff. But we want them to be disciplined about everything all the way from instruction, how people put their shoes in a certain place, how people put their gear in a certain place. So there’s a much broader description of what discipline means in a martial arts school versus maybe what it means in, I don’t know, a bookstore or another business. I would say some businesses, they have to be pretty tight.

Like if you were at In-N-Out Burger, or McDonald’s, they have very strict rules, but we have just as strict rules as those types of places. The other thing that it would be different is the level of respect while people are operating in our type of business has to be a lot higher for a couple of reasons. One is, is that that’s our culture, but also if you don’t show respect and people are punching and kicking and doing all the martial arts work that we do, they might injure somebody, so those are some differences too. Anything else you’d add that the instructor skills that they learn help them in their work world?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

I think just the martial arts inherently for the discipline and respect transfers over to any job nicely because when they’re told to do something in a certain order, then they’re more likely to do it in that order just because they’re used to following those kind of directions.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah. Imagine it’s normal for them when they go on a job interview to say, “Yes, sir,” or, “Yes, ma’am,” to dress up properly, to be properly groomed, to not have any question about those types of things. It doesn’t mean they can’t express themselves, and if they felt like having green hair, they could have green hair, but that’s not really our culture or what we represent. Not that I’m having any judgment about that, but it’s not the style that we’d have. So the person that comes out of our martial arts school is going to be somebody that other people would up to. So they’re going to be 16 years old and people would look out for them. I just had a conversation with another group and they talked about, “Well, gee, you have people that are 15, 16, 17 years old, and they’ve been with us for potentially 10 years by that time, maybe even longer, and they have 10 or 12 years of martial arts experience and they’re 16 years old.”

So now they know more than what an adult would as far as the training goes, and they might be teaching a class where there’s people that are much older than them. I don’t know if you want to agree or say this, we’ve never had one time an adult or a parent or anybody else say that, “Wow, that person’s too young to be teaching class.” We’ve only had people say, “Oh, my gosh, that person…” They usually think the person’s older than what they are. We’ve only had people either say verbally or even write us letters about how amazing our instructors are, if they realize they’re the age that they are and they go, “Oh, my gosh. Those people are incredibly disciplined, respectful and skilled at the age of 16 or 17 or 18 years old.” They’re shocked at how good they are at that age. Has that been your experience too?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Yes. We haven’t had any adults say anything derogatory about the age of the students, but I think generally, they’re pretty impressed on how they can communicate different things to them and get them to understand how to do the movements. So that really goes a long way with martial arts training and relating it to older students.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yeah. So now you’re in a position, imagine your child is grown up in the system that we built and now there are 15, 16, 17 years old and now they feel confident enough to communicate to a 40-year-old how to do something. Imagine that. Imagine you were 16 or 15 years old and we told you to go communicate to a 40-year-old how to do something? Most people in the world would be completely scared and frazzled to go tell an adult to do something, but our guys don’t think anything of it because they have enough confidence to do that. That’s a pretty amazing gift right there, and that’s why we say having your kids work and particularly work in this type of environment is a gift you can give your kids. When we’ve pointed that out to parents and said, “Look at how good your kid is doing.” “Look at how your teenager is performing,” I’ve seen tears in parents’ eyes when they really do connect with that and realize how much of a difference we’ve made by having their kids do that kind of work.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right. Yeah. It does make a pretty big impact on the parents when they see that transition.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

The other thing that I wanted to mention and we can talk about a little bit is, and I’ll have to erase this to write some more stuff, the process that happens when somebody is starting out, one thing we teach is how to be an instructor ’cause anybody that works at KarateBuilt Martial Arts learns these skills. But the other piece is they learn everything from A to Z about the business. I want to be clear about this. Of course, they’re working in a business, so it has to do all the things within a business, but we teach them these things so that they can support the business, but also so they learn these things for their future in their life. So they’re going to learn how to do everything from A to Z. So what’s the first A? The first A is going to be how to market.

So they’re going to learn how to market, how to talk to people that are walking on the street and if they meet them and they say, “Hey, you’re wearing a karate shirt. You’re wearing a shirt that says KarateBuilt Martial Arts, do you do karate?” We teach them how to say, “Yes, we do, and in fact, here’s my business card.” We give them a business card or a guest pass so they can hand them a guest pass and invite them to come into the school. Now that is teaching them confidence. Whatever job they do, if they decide they want to be an actor, well, what are they going to have to do? They’re going to have to audition. They’re going to have to go talk to people. They’re going to have to introduce themselves and not be afraid of doing that. If they want to be an engineer, well, they have to have a job interview.

If they want to be an artist, they have to sell their art. If they want to be a doctor, guess what? The top 10% of doctors, of top-earning doctors in every category, in every single category, whether that’s orthopedic surgeon or primary care physician or a pediatrician, the top 10% of earners all had sales jobs when they were younger in their life, top 10%. So this is helping them with marketing and then we also teach them sales. This doesn’t mean they go out, and we’re not teaching them to be used car salesman. In fact, what we’re teaching them to do is how to communicate with people. If somebody says, “I want to get started,” they can communicate with them and let them know what our pricing is and how to get started in martial arts and do that in a way that’s positive for them so that they can help fulfill their goals.

It’s based on goals, based on helping them get their black belt. That’s the way everybody should really be doing sales. It should be a trade. You’re providing money or goods or services, but in the modern world, it’s money, for something somebody else values, and that value they get should be more than what they pay for. If I want to buy a car that I should value the car more than the money I paid for. It should be equal. If I want to go on a vacation, I’m going to pay some money, but I should get more value from the vacation than I paid the money for. That’s what we want to be good at communicating so that we really do feel like we got a lot more value for what we paid for than what we got. Hopefully, that made sense. The idea would be that whatever they do later in life, they understand those concepts so they always feel positive and ethical and great about what they do. Anything to add on to what I said there, sir?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, I don’t think so. I think that pretty much covered it.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Then we’re going to teach them all about operations. So that means how things work and running the business, opening it up, doing everything that we have to do to take care of our paperwork and things. We teach them all this stuff so that they could do it and they would understand how it works. Because it’s a smaller business and we don’t have 1,000 employees, if it’s a big company even they’ll understand how the little pieces of all that big company worked. Now, they may only do a little part of what happens in a big company. What we find is, is then when they go work for that big company, even if they work in one department, they’ll understand how the other departments work. Then they also learn customer service. So when somebody comes in and they say, “How do I do this?”

Or, “I have a question about that,” or, “I want to know why the instructors are doing something this way or that way,” they know how to answer the questions right in a very positive way so they don’t get flustered or frazzled or they can make sure everybody’s happy. So all these things fit together so that they have a positive experience. This is so that over time, if we look at what they do here, they learn more stuff and whenever they’re going to leap into what career they do, whether they’re going to be a CEO or whether they’re going to be a teacher or whether they’re going to be… not that I’d put one of those on top, we’ll put a teacher up here, or they’re going to work as an engineer or a lawyer… didn’t mean to put that at the bottom. Sorry, lawyers, but that was a lawyer joke. But whatever that skill is that they have, it’s going to help them in their future life, so that all of these things…

If you’re a lawyer and you own your own practice, you have to do all these things. If you’re a CEO, you have to do all these things. Do you have to be an instructor if you’re a CEO? You bet because you have to teach the other people around you how you want the company to run. If you’re a teacher, you have to do marketing if you’re a teacher. In today’s world, you can go to any school that you want, and people should know that you’re the best teacher. That helps you in your career. Is it as much as if you owned your own business? Probably not, but it’s still going to help you a little bit when you do your job interview. So there’s some value with each of these pieces. Now, you compare this to doing a job at McDonald’s. At McDonald’s they teach you a lot of these things, that’s for sure, but they’re not going to teach you how to be an instructor.

They’re not going to teach you how to communicate with other people in the way that they get. My son started working at my school at 12 years old. He just did it as a volunteer because in Arizona you have to be 14 to work as a regular employee. So he did it as a volunteer when he was 12, so he worked part-time when he was 12 years old, and then he was a regular employee at 14. So he’s worked there his whole life pretty much from when he was young. He’s 22 now, and now he’s graduated college, and he’s going to work in a business environment. I promise you, he’s going to have all these skills to help him. When he goes and works, for him, it’s not a big deal. If he’s going to work extra time or he understands marketing, sales and operations in the companies he’s done internships with, he’s told me many times that he learned all of this stuff. For him, it was easy because he already knew how it worked because he worked in the school. What would you add to any of that, sir?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

I would also add on like the trades, too. Being a trades guy, a plumber, electrician, HVAC people, car mechanics, they all have the same things, so they all have to do it. Especially if they’re going to be their own business, they have to do all those things, the marketing comes in. People don’t think they have to do marketing, but if you’re going to work your way to a better position, you have to be able to market yourself, self-marketing-

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Yes, sir.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

… and you have to explain that. So those still fall into place for blue collar and as well as white collar jobs.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

You make a great point there, and I think it’s awesome. One of our instructors, he wants to be an HVAC mechanic. That’s his job. I don’t know why he wants to do that in Arizona where it’s 120, but he does. There’s a lot of demand for that, so that’s great for him. He knows that he has to market now, and he’s got that experience. But sometimes people want to be the best at their job and they think that’s going to be enough. In reality, in the world that isn’t really enough.

You could be the best at your job, but you have to do these other pieces too. If you’re not good at customer service, you could be the best at your job, but you’re going to probably fail. In fact, speaking of doctors, that was a recent study on malpractice suits. Malpractice suits are much higher, not because people do a bad job of their medical practice and do poor medicine and make mistakes at their job as a doctor, they’re higher when people have really bad bedside manner, when people are rude to their patients. So that’s a customer service issue more than it is an actual providing service issue as [inaudible 00:38:17]

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

Right.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

I don’t want you to be, don’t take this the wrong way, but a bad doctor in how you provide your service, but you better not be a bad doctor in how you provide your customer service. That’ll get you in more trouble. So all of these things are very important. That’s a scary study if you think about it with malpractice insurance. Nobody wants to do a bad job of being a doctor, I hope. These are some key points. Now to wrap up today, so what are some important things? Hopefully one, there’s value in your kid working at an early age, and we’d recommend no later than 16 your kid’s got a job that they work and earn some money. There’s too, value in your kid having a relationship with money, with their money that they earn.

So they earn some money that they do something with, and they’re not going to just get all their income and their value from you. Maybe that’s money that you have them invest, or maybe that’s money that they use part of for their own expenses, but there’s some value in that connection and there’s a lot of value, three, and we love KarateBuilt has a lot of characteristics of the type of work that we do. If your child doesn’t work at our KarateBuilt Martial Arts schools, that’s completely okay. Maybe you have your own business that you want them to work at, that’s completely okay, no problem.

But we wanted to point out all the different things that we help our students with and we help the people that we have in our instructor program with so that you can make sure you pay attention to those and try to get something for your kid to do that does have some of these quality characteristics for the type of work that they do. Maybe they’ll pick something they want to do that goes along with their future. They want to be an MD, they might want to do a job that has to do with that type of field, so that’s great. That might be more appropriate for them. But if they do that, we’ve got a lot of students that wanted to be MDs and they also were in our instructor training so that they could learn the character and the instructional and the communication skills, so they got both of those types of things. Anything to add as we wrap up, Mr. Flees?

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

No, I think a lot of these things give students and kids a head start into adult life. Once they learn all these processes, they can go anywhere and do sales. It’s really all the same. It’s just a different product and that’s really going to benefit them a lot right out of the gate. Even if they are still going to college for their chosen career, these things are a good fallback, or if you need a little extra income somewhere along the lines, you can add on to your list of things that you can do.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s a good point. This will help develop their skills so that when they’re working they’re going to feel great about it. They’re going to be positive about it, and it’s going to be something that they enjoy and they’ll excel in rather than have a really tough jumpstart to their careers. All right, that’s it for today. I’m looking forward to the next podcast. Thanks a lot, Mr. Flees, for being here and we’ll look forward to next time. Hopefully, everybody has a great day.

Mr. Dwayne Flees:

All right. Bye, sir.

Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor:

Bye, sir.

KarateBuilt.com and KarateBuilt Martial Arts have been selected the nation’s #1 martial arts schools for EIGHT YEARS IN A ROW!

KarateBuilt L.L.C. was founded in 1995 by Dr. Greg Moody, an 8th-degree Black Belt and Chief Master Instructor, KarateBuilt Martial Arts, and Karate for Kids offer lessons for preschool children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up are designed to develop critical building blocks kids need – specialized for their age group – for school excellence and later success in life.

KarateBuilt Martial Arts Adult Karate training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay in shape), or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 866-311-1032 for one of our nationwide locations. You can also visit our website at KarateBuilt.com.

About Dr. Greg Moody:  Dr. Moody is an eighth-degree black belt and chief master instructor.  He has a Ph.D. in Special Education from Arizona State University (along with a Master’s Degree in Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering – he is a rocket scientist). He has taught martial arts for over 30 years and has owned eight martial arts schools in Arizona and California. Chief Master Moody is a motivational speaker and educator who teaches seminars in bullying, business, and martial arts training worldwide. See more at DrGregMoody.com.

The KarateBuilt Martial Arts Headquarters at KarateBuilt LLC is in Cave Creek, Arizona at 29850 N. Tatum Blvd., Suite 105, Cave Creek AZ 85331. You can locate the Chief Instructor, Master Laura Sanborn there directly at ‭(480) 575-8171‬. KarateBuilt Martial Arts serves Cave Creek, Carefree, Scottsdale, and Paradise Valley Arizona as well as Grand Rapids, MI.

Also, check us out on Go2Karate.com, School Listings, and Local Trust Navigator! And on Arizona Examiner and AP News.

P.S. From a parent:

“This was by far the best thing I have had my daughter do!! I tried other schools and this was the only one!” –  Joseph Morganstern

“KarateBuilt Martial Arts is really the premier martial arts school. It has helped my son Herman understand how to protect others from bullying and be safe himself! Our family is training now and when you speak of ‘legacy martial arts’ – this is the place!” – Joy Stanton

Saying of the day: Goshin: Protector of the spirit!