12/29: GOODBYE 2025, HELLO 2026

I don't know about you, but for me it's been a heck of a year.  As I reflect on all that I have been through personally and professionally, it's been great to get a couple of weeks of down time and soak it all in.  This year I turned, as I like to call it, Master's 6 (others would just call it 55).  The most important thing is that my family and I are healthy, and I hope yours is too.   In the process, however, I've battled through the worst injury I've every had, suffered heartbreak at the IBJJF World's, but also celebrated some much needed success at some local events.  I have received amazing support from all our team members and feel so grateful for the people that we have coaching classes, working behind the counter, and all the students and parents that have entrusted us with the service and value we offer.  Obviously, without all of you, GB Northville would not exist.

During the year we were so fortunate to have Coach Sara join us for a couple of months in kickboxing before a fantastic opportunity for her took her out west.  We temporarily lost Coach John due to his deployment and look forward to welcoming him back over the summer, and are looking forward to hopefully havnig Coach Aaron from Colorado become a new team member in February.  In our BJJ classes we had a number of people step up to coaching roles in our kids classes, including Coach Dre, Coach Maverick, Coach Brian and many of the Manley family children.  We also had Coach Michelle step up to run the Women's Only BJJ class.  Colleen has become a regular behind the counter as well.  We lost 2 incredibly dedicated team members in Clayton and Allison as they moved to Minnesota, but we were excited to see them tie the knot and continue their BJJ journey in their new home state.  We got to celebrate Coach Andriy becoming the first person I promoted to Brown Belt, Coach Graham getting his Purple Belt, and we are set to welcome quite a few new blue belts.....and probably another purple belt...... in the first half of the year.  We spent a good amount of time getting a very high quality promotional video recorded for our programs, a new website up and running, a new marketing company and new decor for the interior.  With everyone's help, team members, student referrals, coaches running high quality classes and a marketing company to recruit and manage new leads, we hit my year end goal of 150 members.

So what is in store for 2026?  My goals for the gym are to grow to 180 members by the end of the year with a stretch of 200.  I am looking forward to bringing Prof Carlos Lemos in for our first big seminar on Aprill 11th.  We will be running at least 1 in house tournament, most likely in March.  I would like to get a number of students to start competing at the bigger IBJJF events, joining me in Las Vegas.  I have a goal of starting a formal competition class in BJJ.  I plan on taking our Muay Thai students to at least one competition.  On a personal level, I am already focusing on getting ready for IBJJF Wolrds in September with the the goal (always) of standing on the top of the podium.

For those that have been around since we launched Gracie Barra Northville 2 years ago, I hope you are encouraged as I am with how far we have come in 2 years.  I'll never forget the first day I really walked in the building to begin building what you see.  I was fired from my engineering job of 3 years on Dec 15th, 2023 at about 1:00, just one day before my birthday.  At about 1:15 I walked in the building and started pounding out tile in the bathrooms with Coach Graham.  I had no time to commisserate.  My situation did not allow that.  I was already a month behind schedule as the building sat idle as all my effort was placed into trying to save a job that was already lost.  We started with loaner mats, no counter, no website, no billing system and no marketing plan.  But what I did have was a credit card, and most importantly, a dedicated group of 50 students and about 10 coaches that were as determined to see GB Northville get off the ground as I was.

For those chasing a dream, I can guarantee you the road is going to be difficult.  I was as scared as I ever was jumping into a business that needed an immense amount of start up investment while just losing my primary source of income.  There are no guarantees, but knowing that God had directed me to this very place, it kept me moving forward with hope and assurance.  The new year is a time of reflection and renewal.  It's a time to reset yourself, forgive yourself and start anew.  To all of the adults reading this, don't ever give up on dreaming.   When I was in my late 30's and early 40's, I stopped dreaming.  I thought that was just for kids.  Wrong.  None of us should ever stop dreaming.  It's the only way great things occur.  Most of us all have to work a 40 hour a week job.  At the end of the day and at the end of the week, we have 2 choices.  We can go home and complain about all the things we don't like and do things to try to forget about the dulldrums of the day, or we can take that same amount of time and get to work on chasing our dreams to have them replace the things we are currently doing out of necessity.  I chose the latter, and I hope in 2026 if you aren't already doing that, you start on it immediately.