Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

P.S. The Transcript – How Pink Belts Help People with Breast Cancer with Dr. Greg Moody and Chief Master Michelle Landgren Lee

Pink Belt Revolution Transcript – October 06

This is Greg Moody with Success Training for KarateBuilt Martial Arts. And I’m here with my good friend, my instructor. And longtime fellow martial artist, almost ninth degree black belt, eighth degree black belt, Michelle Landgren-Lee, Chief Master Michelle Landgren-Lee.

Thanks a lot for being here.

@1:00:10 – Michelle Lee

My pleasure. It’s always exciting to talk with you. You’re full of lots of ideas and motivation.

@1:00:18 – Greg Moody

Oh, well, you too. That’s why we always get into arguments over things. Well, you’ve been doing the pink belt campaign for many, many years here.

And I was wondering for my students and for all the students that might watch this, how did that get started and what did you want to accomplish with it?

Oh, it’s a fascinating story, actually.

@1:00:41 – Michelle Lee

So it was 14 years ago when one of my little kids in one of my academies, he said, you know, my mom or my grandma has breast cancer.

And it was when they were doing the three-day walks and Susan G. Komen was like the big, big rage for pink.

And And he asked if, he said that he had seen in my warehouse, I had this box of white belts.

And he said, can I have them? And I said, well, yeah, I mean, they were kind of like dirty.

They’ve been sitting in this box. I go, you can have it. I didn’t even ask what he wanted it for.

I just gave it to him. And it turned out he dyed them pink. And all of his friends and relatives, they wore the pink belt.

And they marched for three days with it. And they raised a ton of money. And so he came back and he’s like, will you promise me that you’ll do this next year?

And I said, oh, sure. And I totally forgot about it. And it was September 15th. And OK, October 1st, you’ve got to be prepared.

And he came in with his mom. And they’re like, do you have like a lot of the belts? Like, we’re going to do this this year?

And I was like, yeah, I’m going to do that. And I started to like see if I could go to Amazon and buy them.

And they didn’t have pink belts. And then I freaked out. That’s like. So Martial Arts. And I said, I have a complete disaster here.

I need. And at that time, I said, you know, I need 2000 pink belts. And they said that they could do it.

So I was like, Oh, cool. So I got the 2000 pink belts. And when they arrived in one day, they all sold out.

And I was like, No, no, I need 15,000 pink belts. So I called Century and they worked 24 hours a day for three days, and got all these belts.

We put them in boxes and Tony and I put well, we spread them out in Arizona. So we all had a bunch to sell.

And then we put them in the back of our truck, we drove to California, through the night in the dark and stuff.

We met at gas stations for different ATA schools. And then we were giving them belts. And everything was sold out within three days.

@1:02:51 – Greg Moody

Wow.

@1:02:52 – Michelle Lee

Yeah, we’re like, wow, this is and I mean, that so much money was made. And it was just spectacular.

So that’s, that’s what I give that little boy all the credit.

@1:03:03 – Greg Moody

wasn’t my idea.

@1:03:07 – Michelle Lee

I can’t remember his name right now because it was 14 years ago, and he was just a kid. I don’t even think he made it to Black Belt, but he’s in pictures, but I have to go back because the people from PV probably remember his name.

@1:03:25 – Greg Moody

We’ll have to add it to the show notes if we can remember his name and give him congratulations for starting something.

@1:03:33 – Michelle Lee

Yeah, it was incredible, and I had to get permission from the ATA to the Can I Do This because it’s Founders Month, and that was their fundraising, and I was able to convince them because Mrs.

@1:03:46 – Greg Moody

Sunsey Lee had had breast cancer, and this was near and dear to her.

@1:03:50 – Michelle Lee

So, you know, for the foundation on behalf of Mrs. Lee, even, not just Eternal, made it very special, and then everybody was on board for doing it.

@1:04:01 – Greg Moody

Yeah, for the students I have that were watching that maybe don’t know, Eternal Grand Master H. Lee, who passed away in October, so that’s why it’s called the Founders Month, and so if anybody didn’t know that, it’s a good time to do this.

Now, so what happens is, for anybody who doesn’t quite understand this, or for next year when I would send this out to the students and they get to know the story, they get to purchase the belt, and then that money goes towards the Breast Cancer Foundation.

@1:04:28 – Michelle Lee

Yes, and I have people that are in ATA and people that are out of ATA, so when it’s out of the ATA, two-thirds of the money that is raised goes to, you know, women fighting breast cancer.

So we’re continuously trying to get people who we know that found out throughout the 12-month period of time, and then that way at the end in December is when, because we do it in October, the most of the people do it in October, and then it takes us all the way through November.

November. We get everything situated with the funding and sending the money back to us, and that’s just the way that we do it.

But sometimes when it’s people that are outside of the ATA, they will just keep the two-thirds and find somebody that’s fighting breast cancer.

But if they don’t have somebody in their dojang that is fighting breast cancer, many times they’ll just send it back to us, and then we will go ahead and distribute it.

And we distribute it to people. They don’t even have to be martial artists. It’s very wide open. I don’t advertise it, like, on TV.

One year I did. I thought, oh, this will be great, because more people will want to do pink belts, but all it did was give me 1,000 people that needed a $500 grant, and that’s kind of how we do it is.

We break it up into $500 grants. Half the time, the schools don’t even have somebody in particular, so I don’t advertise.

But we really like it to be… Somebody that is connected to the community. So it could be a grandma that doesn’t do martial arts, or it could be anybody that’s like their best friend even, but just not generically to the public.

@1:06:11 – Greg Moody

Oh, so that’s something important for people to know, that this can help support them, the students in their school and the community, and it has a little bit more of a personal connection.

@1:06:21 – Michelle Lee

Right, and we take it, even if somebody has been in remission, up to two years, we will still accept that, because you’re still dealing with a lot, even when you’re in remission.

So there’s a bigger window to it. When I originally did this, I got excited because I used to be an intern for Make-A-Wish Foundation when I was in college, and I loved it.

So that’s kind of how I formatted what they do, such that they get the money and they can do whatever they want with it.

So it’s like kind of their idea of what they want, and I mean, a lot of times it’s, you know, the family wants to paint her bedroom and make, maybe even get a new bed.

@1:07:11 – Greg Moody

That’s amazing. And I really am intrigued by having some schools that are outside of the ATA do this. You know, that’s something I didn’t realize you did.

And I can, I’d love to, you know, facilitate that. When you’ve taught other martial arts schools, like when you went to Washington, did you mention that there or was that not part of the event?

@1:07:30 – Michelle Lee

Um, I, well, it was in Buffalo, Buffalo, New York is where I went. What’s that? Can you just go to Washington and met some people that we have common people we know from there?

We met on Zoom.

@1:07:44 – Greg Moody

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

@1:07:46 – Michelle Lee

Yeah, we met on Zoom.

@1:07:47 – Greg Moody

You let those people know that that this is something that they can do?

@1:07:51 – Michelle Lee

Or is that probably you’re busy with other stuff when you’re Well, I, I did let them know, but, um, their organization that the…

Inventions organization, I should say, they already they do a very big fundraiser. And I think it’s the traditional ones like Shriners or things like that.

But I did talk about it. That is something that we do. And especially for martial artists, it’s a great thing to do a philanthropic activity in your dojang, however you’re doing it for the community, because that really is part of our tenets of what we do.

@1:08:24 – Greg Moody

Yeah, well, and I think for for the schoolers, it’s something they would love to do that their students would feel like they’re connected to the community as part of their school.

You know, that’s a big deal that part of being in the martial arts school as a student means that you’re contributing and you’re doing something to community.

That’s one thing that we always talk about that they’re supposed to be black belts outside the school, not just in the school.

@1:08:46 – Michelle Lee

Mm hmm. And we have items other than the belts like, you know, we’ve got pink shirts, we’ve got next year is going to be a huge hit.

I think you’ve seen me where my pink camouflage pants. Yeah.

@1:08:59 – Greg Moody

Yeah. Yeah.

@1:09:01 – Michelle Lee

I bought those. That was a long time ago. It was like 10 years ago. And it was when Susan G.

Komen was big. So everybody was doing it. Everybody was wearing pink socks and, you know, the football players. But the Army did it.

And then they had a surplus of pants. So I bought a bunch of them at the time. And I gave them as gifts to people that had been doing things.

But we’re going to have them made in something that’s more comfortable for a martial artist, kicking pants, that are camouflage.

Oh, I think that’s great.

@1:09:31 – Greg Moody

That’s a plus you don’t have to wear the same thing all the time that you can wear something different for you.

@1:09:35 – Michelle Lee

don’t want to wear a pink belt. Some people, you know, they, they, they’ll, they’ll do the pants. They’ll do the shirt.

They’ll wear the hat. They’ll do, you know, we’ve got the little dragon key chains and we put a pink pearl.

We sell those too. So it’s not just belts that we have. There’s a lot of items that are branded, but if it’s an organization that it’s multiple people and it’s going to be a bulk order of things, then we can brand it.

It’s going way. It’s

@1:10:00 – Greg Moody

And that would work too. Yeah. I think, I think a lot of organizations might be interested in that maybe a separate conversation with, uh, about that.

Cause I’m, I’m excited about that. I didn’t realize at all that you were working with some other people.

@1:10:12 – Michelle Lee

And I think that makes it, we want to bring everybody together. Absolutely. I mean, breast cancer, it is on the rise.

It’s crazy. They’re saying that, but like the statistics are just huge, like one in eight sometime in their life is going to happen.

@1:10:25 – Greg Moody

And I think it might even be going like smaller than that.

@1:10:29 – Michelle Lee

So it’s just, uh, yeah, it’s just a, it’s a good thing. And it, it empowers them, the, the people, everyone to, to work out harder.

I mean, if you do martial arts or you, you fitness and you do those things, you’re going to have at least a better chance of not getting it.

@1:10:47 – Greg Moody

We find that’s really important.

@1:10:49 – Michelle Lee

Another thing that was really cool that happened and it was at Chief Master Wackel’s location. And it was the very first year.

And one of the mommies had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Hadn’t told the seven-year-old child and because we launched it and we talk about what breast cancer means, especially with the littles because they don’t even kind of understand.

We do it in a gentle way. And but that mom, we were on the news with her because she was saying it was so easy for me to tell my child because the seven-year-old knew what breast cancer was.

@1:11:23 – Greg Moody

Oh, that’s really, that’s sweet.

@1:11:27 – Michelle Lee

Yeah.

@1:11:28 – Greg Moody

That’s amazing. Yeah, I think that, yeah, I’m sorry, that was, that’s like emotional and, you know, just special for the mom.

And also, you know, now that you said that, I guess for kids to know, even if somebody in their family doesn’t have breast cancer, for kids to kind of be exposed to this, as you said, in a gentle way, they kind of understand about real life and really what’s happening.

And then they can have some empathy for other people that might be going through something that’s difficult. Whether that’s breast cancer or anything else.

@1:12:02 – Michelle Lee

Right, right. And I thought it was pretty awesome, too, that this year, Senior Master Rungi from Colorado, he came down here because he’s retired, and he was, you know, training with us.

And while he was here, his daughter, who’s only 23, got, and with two babies, just got a breast cancer diagnosis.

And it was an emergency two days later, a double mastectomy. And so, like, every year I have a patch.

So this year’s patch, that’s a picture of her punching. And so, you know, it really worked out amazing. And so this whole year, my schools were fully supporting her in what she’s doing.

We gave her the $500 grant right away and making it important for the child to be a part of it, too.

So that was pretty cool. That’s fantastic.

@1:12:54 – Greg Moody

Well, for schools that want to get, participate, what do they need to do, and how would they?

@1:12:59 – Michelle Lee

would do do How would they get started now? Well, they would just reach out to me, and then we would design what it is that they would like to do.

I mean, there’s so many different products that we have and so many ways to do it. It does not have to be October.

At first, we were just hell-bent on that because we’re like, okay, we’re going to work for three months, and we’ve got to put this down because we do not make any money off of this at all.

And it is a lot of work with the shipping and things because when we ship it out, whatever we send it as a kit, they don’t pay anything.

Whatever is purchased, then that stuff just comes back. Whatever wasn’t purchased, that comes back to us.

@1:13:37 – Greg Moody

Okay. they don’t have to maintain that.

@1:13:39 – Michelle Lee

They don’t ever have to. The school owner does not have to pay for anything. We pay for the shipping.

It’s just a little consignment kit. But what has happened is not everybody is being diagnosed for cancer in October.

It’s throughout the year. So a lot of people will call and say, hey, it’s May. We want to do it now.

We want to do it before. Or, you she’s going in for her surgery and we want to celebrate this.

So we now do it year round. So it doesn’t have to be October.

@1:14:07 – Greg Moody

And it seems like if somebody is listening to this and they want to do something like this and they’re not in martial arts or they want to do it for their company or they want to do it for their church group or they want to do it for something else, then they could they maybe just wouldn’t use belts as the is kind of the artifact that they sell.

They would get something else. Absolutely.

@1:14:25 – Michelle Lee

Absolutely. And I mean, I encourage people if they if they want to go just do it on their own, make whatever, you if they want the belt to be designed for them, whatever their style is, I’m happy to share how they can do it themselves.

@1:14:39 – Greg Moody

1. You know, they don’t they don’t have to go through me.

@1:14:42 – Michelle Lee

You know, it’s not I’m not like proprietary information or anything at all like that.

@1:14:48 – Greg Moody

I just want to help people with breast cancer. That’s awesome. Well, what way would they contact you? What are the best ways?

@1:14:53 – Michelle Lee

Uh, I would say by email.

@1:14:56 – Greg Moody

OK.

@1:14:58 – Michelle Lee

Lee’s a martial arts edge.

@1:15:00 – Greg Moody

Yeah, I’ll put that in the notes in the record, but it’s le***************@***il.com if somebody wants to write that down so that they can contact you.

Yeah, because I think even some of my families that are listening, I would encourage them to do this for their company, and it would be a real easy way for them.

I mean, I think when we’re doing something like a fundraiser, for somebody that’s so busy and they’re either a business owner or they’re an important person in their company, the fundraising has to be easy enough for them, and then the money has to go in the right place.

Because, you know, let’s face it, you’ve got other work to do. You’re doing way more work than everybody else in this, but, you know, you’ve got other stuff to do.

And so I think some people don’t do these kind of fundraising things that they would like to, because they think it’s going to be all-consuming and take away from the rest of their work or their business.

@1:15:47 – Michelle Lee

Right. Well, you and I both remember, I mean, back in the day, we always did it for, it wasn’t Shriners, what was it?

It was for St. Jude’s. It was St.

@1:15:57 – Greg Moody

Jude’s.

@1:15:58 – Michelle Lee

And everybody in our organization. We did it. And, but the kids had to go out and shake down people for money and coins and all that stuff.

And then we had to do the board breakathon. And then we got all the money that we sent it back.

That’s a, that’s a lot of work. I mean, literally you just take a table, put a pink thing over it or something, whatever, just to make like a tablecloth or something, plastic thing from, you know, Party City, put this stuff on it.

We, we make a little menu board and we put a box cause our, a lot of our staff is like, we don’t want to be having to, you know, be at the desk and take the payments and do all this stuff.

People will just put checks in, they’ll put it in an envelope. They’ll, um, we’ve got a QR code. They can just go straight through the portal, which is even better.

And, and we don’t want the, the school owners or whoever’s in charge to have to be working. It should just be a thing that happens in, in almost every location.

There’s some mommy from the bench that’s like, I’ll take care of that, you know? And so. It’s, it’s just easy.

I wish everybody would get on board.

@1:17:03 – Greg Moody

It frustrates me. Some of my best friends, they don’t even do it. And I’m like, you guys, it’s why, why not?

Well, and that you’re making a good point. don’t think everybody understands how easy it could be if they set it up that way.

And, and again, I would, you know, we’re doing in our school. So, so the students that we have that are watching this are going to, are going to hear, hear about it from us here, but also that Mr.

Cicinelli and Senior Master Sam would have been, you know, promoting it. But, but for the people that have businesses or other things, they could do exactly the same thing.

They could have a table in their, wherever, where their employees go and, and somebody could make it really, really easy.

@1:17:42 – Michelle Lee

Yeah. Yeah. We do another fun thing that this is just kind of a segue, but we normally do a kickoff, whatever the first day, October 1st is.

mean, unless it’s a weekend and then we have to move it. But, so we have balloons and we encourage all of our parents cards.

Let see. They get on the mat and take the class with us. So Master Hill had this really creative idea with our ambassador program to kind of tie it with it.

So if the parent came and took it, then they could get the wristband saying that they did it and stuff.

And she knocked it out of the park. She got so many parents to come in. And then when they came in, they said, well, you’re already on the mat.

You loved everything that we did. We’d like to gift you for coming out here a month of martial arts and stuff.

And, and like almost every one of them took it up. It was just, her pitch was just right that it became contagious.

@1:18:35 – Greg Moody

That’s great. That’s great. mean, both things are good for them, right? mean, 20 for breast cancer, but also more of you guys doing martial arts and more people doing it because it’s going to be a great value for you.

Well, good. Well, can you tell, I mean, I don’t want to take up all your time. Can you tell us a little bit about dignity or is there anything, first of all, you want to add for the pink belt, you know, event?

@1:18:57 – Michelle Lee

I think that’s enough information that they can understand. But just to know that I’m a complete open book with this stuff.

So feel free to reach out.

@1:19:06 – Greg Moody

So, again, Lee’s A-T-A martial arts at gmail.com. And that’s where you go to contact you. And I’ll put it in the notes here, too.

You want to talk a little bit about Dignity Kids?

@1:19:17 – Michelle Lee

Yeah, it kind of, well, it didn’t come in conjunction with this, actually. This started for me, it was in 2008, where I really felt that I needed a nonprofit so that I could get into elementary schools easily.

And so that we formed Dignity Kids. It is a nonprofit, nothing that we do. We do not collect money from it.

We do not, you know, charge anything. So, I mean, that was the main idea with Dignity Kids is to be able to give kids more than they don’t get at regular school.

And whether it’s the bullying or anything, but Dignity Kids can encompass a lot. I don’t. And I know you really don’t have any problem getting into schools, but there’s a lot of people that do for either legitimate reasons that the districts are just too tight, or usually it’s the fear of rejection, so they don’t even try.

And with Dignity Kids, we get the 501c3, and once you’ve got that piece of paper, basically you can do anything you want.

@1:20:24 – Greg Moody

Yeah, yeah.

@1:20:26 – Michelle Lee

In the school districts, as well as charters and other schools.

@1:20:31 – Greg Moody

Yeah, so this lets them reach out on the community and have the backing of something that feels more, the schools might feel more comfortable with, or organizations might feel more comfortable with, because they’re not trying to make money from their students.

@1:20:43 – Michelle Lee

Right. And everything that I design, I design it like, it’s like I’m a teacher, and they’re, you know, they’re a teacher.

And so it’s, it’s not martial, like, you know, we’re not going to get in there and be like, okay, I mean, we do martial arts and stuff, but, it’s more like a child’s joyful experience that they do. That’s awesome.

@1:21:07 – Greg Moody

That’s awesome. Well, so for, again, for other businesses that would like to work with you or Karate Bill Martial Arts at the same time, or anybody else that’s listening, they can contact you and talk about that.

@1:21:18 – Michelle Lee

Well, anything else to wrap up with, ma’am, that would be important to mention about these things or anything you’d want to tell people?

No, I think that covers it. Okay, we covered everything.

@1:21:28 – Greg Moody

All right, well, I want to thank you so much for being here. Again, you know, for my students, if you haven’t met Chief Master, please, you know, meet her at the tournaments or whenever you get to see her.

And I think maybe they’re intimidated by you or something. Maybe, I don’t know.

@1:21:45 – Michelle Lee

You shouldn’t be when I look like this with my paint hair. Actually, tomorrow I get to take it down.

I do it for August and September for promotional purposes because everybody that sees my hair, they say something. And it reminds me that I’m supposed to talk about this.

Oh, that’s a good idea.

@1:22:00 – Greg Moody

That’s By tomorrow, my hair will not look like this. I could paint my head. I could paint my head.

That might work. Or do the beard. Yeah, do a pink beard. Yeah, do the beard. Then I would remember.

That’s funny. Yeah, that’s a good idea, though. Maybe I should have all my guys do that, too, because then people would talk to them.

@1:22:19 – Michelle Lee

People do. I meet everywhere, at church, in the grocery store, in the mall. I meet so many people because of this.

@1:22:27 – Greg Moody

That’s awesome. All Well, thanks so much. Again, please, anybody that gets to meet Chief Master, make sure you talk to her.

She’s a lovely person, a wonderful friend of mine. We’ve known each other for, it must be our whole, it’s been over 30 years, so it must have been our whole lives.

@1:22:40 – Michelle Lee

We must have met when we were born, I guess. I think we met 38 years ago.

@1:22:44 – Greg Moody

Yeah. Yeah. So we must have been, too.

@1:22:49 – Michelle Lee

Yeah.

@1:22:52 – Greg Moody

So if anybody gets that joke. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. And I hope everybody has a great day. We’ll look forward to seeing you at the next success training.

@1:22:59 – Michelle Lee

Absolutely. Bye, guys.

 

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