Stepping back into the podcasting ring, I've wrapped my hands, set my stance, and I'm ready to share a heartfelt narrative that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. My journey reconnects me with my passions: the artful dance of martial arts, the rhythm of music, and the humble beginnings of my career as a striking class instructor at Ant Dogs MMA. Prepare to lace up your gloves and match the tempo of my life's soundtrack, as I sit down with Eric from Alloy Guitars, whose own story harmonizes with the pursuit of change and the melody of personal growth.
The Bay Area's martial arts scene and the pulsing heart of the NorCal all-ages music venue have been the stages of my evolution, and in this episode, you'll feel the vibrancy of both worlds. As we unpack my guest's narrative, you'll discover the transformation that leads from being a disciplined Muay Thai instructor to strumming success in the guitar industry. We'll explore the guts it takes to rebuild after setbacks while finding new rhythms in life, whether it's in the gym, on stage, or in the market of strings and frets.
Wrap your fingers around the mic and join me in reflecting on the powerful impact of community and determination. From coaching gritty fighters like Diego to my own personal tales of perseverance, this conversation is all about the art of giving it your all and the relationships that shape our paths. As we navigate this symphony of stories, the chords of passion, failure, and teamwork play out in a crescendo that reminds us of the endless possibilities when we're in tune with the right ensemble. So, tune in, turn up the volume, and prepare to be moved by the combat of life and the song in our hearts.
https://linktr.ee/Thehassleofhair
Stepping back into the podcasting ring, I've wrapped my hands, set my stance, and I'm ready to share a heartfelt narrative that floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. My journey reconnects me with my passions: the artful dance of martial arts, the rhythm of music, and the humble beginnings of my career as a striking class instructor at Ant Dogs MMA. Prepare to lace up your gloves and match the tempo of my life's soundtrack, as I sit down with Eric from Alloy Guitars, whose own story harmonizes with the pursuit of change and the melody of personal growth.
The Bay Area's martial arts scene and the pulsing heart of the NorCal all-ages music venue have been the stages of my evolution, and in this episode, you'll feel the vibrancy of both worlds. As we unpack my guest's narrative, you'll discover the transformation that leads from being a disciplined Muay Thai instructor to strumming success in the guitar industry. We'll explore the guts it takes to rebuild after setbacks while finding new rhythms in life, whether it's in the gym, on stage, or in the market of strings and frets.
Wrap your fingers around the mic and join me in reflecting on the powerful impact of community and determination. From coaching gritty fighters like Diego to my own personal tales of perseverance, this conversation is all about the art of giving it your all and the relationships that shape our paths. As we navigate this symphony of stories, the chords of passion, failure, and teamwork play out in a crescendo that reminds us of the endless possibilities when we're in tune with the right ensemble. So, tune in, turn up the volume, and prepare to be moved by the combat of life and the song in our hearts.
https://linktr.ee/Thehassleofhair
The hassle of hair. We're back. We're doing it. I'm interviewing and I'm back to podcasting. I try to do like Adia's productions and try to do this, this, like different names oppressed the flesh, all these different names, but I'm, I made a mistake. I like I tried it out. I'm just sticking it with the hassle of hair and, yeah, just putting out podcasts, putting as much content as I can.
Speaker 1:And I took off to Portland, me and my buddies Diego, the two Diego's I hang out with. We flew to Portland, had great food, interviewed Eric and got to meet a guy that I went to different gyms and I've seen his picture and the American Muay Thai team, csa pictures. I've seen and heard of him through. It was Diego's coach and so I've always heard of Eric, and then it was my coach's teammate. So I've always heard of Eric but never really met the man or talked to the guy. And finally getting to talk to him was pretty cool, it was, it was cool. It wasn't pretty cool, it was cool, it was. You know, like I think I'm, I'm most interested in this story because I see a guy that's ex, ex, ex sows at everything he does, from playing in in bands to fighting in martial arts to now working for a guitar guitar company that's producing a bunch of guitars and it's only a three-man team, alloy guitars and I don't know. I just I find people that do multiple things. I find it super interesting that they're, when they're able to excel at multiple things. And I'm getting back to interviewing, so it's like I wish I don't know. It is what it is. I want to go interview, but I wish I would have been, wasn't gonna be rusty and and that was still learning, especially like traveling and getting shit together, planning everything out. It's a, it's a learning process that I need to get better at. But um, yeah, it was, it was cool, it was, it was, it was what I needed, you know.
Speaker 1:But after this, after we got back from Portland, I found out I was gonna be teaching at Ant Dogs MMA and MMA gym in Gilroy, california, and I'll be teaching striking classes Monday, wednesday 5 30 pm, thursday 6 30 pm and I'm excited. I'm excited to be part of a team that has multiple fighters, has a, it's a big, it's a big gym and it's been around for a while, you know, and I'm excited to be part of the team. Couldn't think thank Anthony enough and the Figaro family. Enough for bringing me on and giving me a chance to teach again. And if you guys are interested in taking my classes Monday, wednesday, 5 30 pm, gilroy California. Thursday 6 30 pm, gilroy California, and dogs MMA.
Speaker 1:And if you guys want private lessons, if you guys want private pad work, hit me up, message me at Jesse the hassle Diaz I'm taking privates now and book something and have some fun. And also, if you guys need a photo booth about a sample of photo booth our family's photo booth, my wife's photo booth if you guys have an event coming up, you guys want to capture it and and pictures and and I don't know, it's fun. I really like doing it. I really like going to these parties and seeing people take pictures and giving them memories. It's. It's honestly one of the best things that's happened to me and my wife best like bonding moments, doing this and and getting to go out to different parties and run a business you know and yeah, guys, I love you guys.
Speaker 1:Have a great night or great day, enjoy the episode. Like subscribe, subscribe guys. This year I will get to a thousand subscribers and I will get to putting out more interviews and I will get better and better, and better, and better and better and better. I love you guys. Have a great day. It's the hassle of hair. Be good. I don't know what that was. First of all, thanks for doing this. Yeah, I appreciate it. You believe it or not. I've seen your face in like five different games. Well, it's because of the, just because the with all your belts, I think that one picture with all the, the fighters yeah, the combat sports category yeah, house of champions pitcher yeah.
Speaker 2:Have you seen the one with four fighters for fighters?
Speaker 2:yeah that's it, kariah and Jim. That's at the, the CSA gym, right, yeah, the first house of champions pitcher is like me, amber, and like Daniel Kim and like one other fighter was so small back then. That was like right, as we were moving to Dublin and that's when that gym blew up. Prior to that we were in Santa Clara, at ASD, at the Academy of Self Defense, and then as our fight team grew, kieran kind of wanted to create his own gym, was on fight team because he was the one running the fight team, those all his, his team and he knew what he was bringing to the table. But then he was like, oh, let's go to Dublin.
Speaker 2:When we went to Dublin, john Hearny was like one of our first guys through the door.
Speaker 2:For the first two months Kieran mandated that like all of his fighters went, I think was two to three times a week and he didn't even take membership for like two month. Those that go free opening but people would just watch champion fighters train through the window and then they come through the door and John Hearny was like one of the first ones. So if you look at combat sports category, the first pitchers, like four people and it's so real. And then when you see the pictures, like years later and you have a cat or a mouse, miriam, like a who's who of Muay Thai I'm sure Ambers told you about like what it was like back in the day-to-day, how it kind of came into what it was. But it was interesting to be a part of that, you know, and well lucky to be a part of that because you put how many people go to a gym to lose weight and then end up being part of one of the bigger fight teams in the US well, I think it's something like that.
Speaker 1:As time goes on, it like becomes bigger and bigger. For what you guys did because I was even trying Diego's just like from the lineage that me and him come from, from who we learned from it was like you guys were like one of the best, through the first like team in America to really be on the world stage. Yeah, yeah, and that's like we come, like the, you go around San Jose or the Bay Area and it's there's Muay Thai gyms and MMA gyms everywhere. Yeah, and like back then it wasn't that many.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not the same way as it is now, definitely, yeah, I mean, luckily, the Bay Area has always been like a big martial arts place. Like you, look at the history of different martial arts people Bruce Lee have a school in Oakland for a while, hey, like that's all part of the history. There's been great boxers and you know great martial artists that come through, a lot of them from kind of the Pacific side of it. Right, when you're in San Francisco, it's one of the main ports for the Pacific all the Japanese, chinese, hawaiian, filipino fighters that are coming through or kind of setting their territory there. So there's always been like a little martial arts, like Ernie Reyes, right, ernie Reyes is huge. His son was in the Niger Turtles movies, right, ernie Reyes Jr. So there's always been. But then, kind of when a k came around and MMA came around, yeah, that totally changed everything you're kind of.
Speaker 1:You went from that the martial arts to not doing this right now, to building guitars and being part of something where it's like you're just saying that's a three-man team and you guys are putting out a bunch of guitars how tons yeah that's that's awesome, like it's just. And then me telling you like your brain works better than mine, like you fought on a high level. You're doing something in a career where it takes a lot of skill. Like I think you're different in ways.
Speaker 2:I think so and some good ways, some bad ways. And you coach, yeah, I mean I kind of always. I mean I'm lucky because I grew up like my parents were very much kind of their own people. And you know my mom, even though she's not like a extravagant or like eccentric in any way, you know she's always been very much like a spiritual person. So even in like the 80s and 90s when it was weird we'd be doing like manifestation type thinking and you know projection and things like that, meditations and things like that. So she always told us from when we're a little like, basically like, if you are the best in your field, there's money to be made, right. If you're the best disc golfer, you go win tournaments. You make a couple hundred thousand in a year, right. So if you're really good, the money will come. And so I don't know, at some point I just started chasing what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:I mean I've always been into martial arts and I kind of did them on and off, kind of mixed with music, right. So I was a kid I did martial arts. I learned how to Kimbo, which is karate, judo, jujitsu, kimpo in boxing it's a Hawaiian system that's one of the original came out of world post-World War 2 when all these black belts got together and started this style. So it's basically like MMA, but really old-school like wear your gi and bow to each other, but you learn is like overwhelm your opponent, throw them to the ground, beat the hell out of them and submit them, which is it's like MMA, you know. So I did that as a kid and then kind of always wanted to do music. So then when I was in high school there was a big all-ages scene out of like NorCal where Paparoche came out of and like Devtones came out of Sacramento's NorCal scene, but everybody was playing shows within that. You know Gilroy gas lighter, the Gilroy gas lighter all the way up to like different places in SAC, and so I've always had the opportunity to do different things and it was kind of like going and out.
Speaker 2:So when I started doing martial arts, it was right after a lot of my friends got signed and my band broke up and I was like I want to do cupwata, do some martial arts. My friends had been doing it. I've snapped my ankle doing some like cupwata and it totally threw me off for the next like two years. It took me about three months to walk without crutches. And this is when you're in high school. This is like right after high school. So basically when I was a kid I did kajikimbo, love martial arts. Parents couldn't afford it. Get into high school, become like a skater kid, start doing like music, basically, you know, hardcore or whatever, a new metal kind of mix, got really into that. The bands took off, some did, some did. My band broke up but a lot of friends that we know got signed there or the guys that got signed, oh, like Popper, oach and Trapped and those bands. But you were around them at the time. Yeah, we were opening shows and and playing the same shows in club the cactus club. How's that?
Speaker 1:it was cool did you know the cactus?
Speaker 2:club was really weird, right, because it was it was a famous bar in San Jose, in San Jose, right, yeah, now it's what's that bar Diego shit? It's a cross from a Dega, you know, the one that has the parking lot. It's not the cactus anymore, it's got in front and the back it's a cross from the pool hall. Anyway, that's where it was. So the cactus club was in that one, across from the pool hall, right on the corner on first, not and did you know at the time that?
Speaker 1:did you see, like obviously you were trying to make it, but did you see something in Papa Roach that was different?
Speaker 2:oh yeah, hell yeah the Jacoby man, their lead singer, was like you see him with fans and you'll see videos and he's like super friendly, super warm, inviting. He's always been like that and he's always had a way of like inciting a crowd to like bring energy. You know, I mean I've spent my first three shows looking at the back. I'm gonna look at my drummer, but you know it's funny is like things come around right and if I hadn't got over my stage fright and crowd anxiety, like you fought, right, you've been on a card, you've weighed in and your chums, like none of that bothered me, like the walkout, the stare down, not a single thing about the process of being in front of a crowd doing this, because I was like I've been in front of crowds, you know, singing my songs, doing lyrics, so it just kind of helped, like things.
Speaker 2:It's funny how sometimes you don't realize something you're doing will give you a skill or bring something to the forefront, make you stronger in a way, where later on you're like, oh, that part didn't work out for me, but I took forward this part, you know. So I was lucky because being in the bands and playing those kind of shows with you know hundred, 200, 300 people there definitely got me prepped for what it's like to do. You know a crowd to do your walkout and do all that stuff. I just love walkouts. I see people just like fall apart in a walk you know some people get really scared.
Speaker 2:You've seen it right. Like you know, when you stare a guy down and you watch him, just do the look away thing.
Speaker 1:You're like, alright, and well, before I even decide to fight, like I would think about my walkout, like that's all I think about the walk. I'm gonna walk to this song, I'm gonna this is how it's gonna be, and like I would visualize that more than the fight doesn't. Actually, when I started training, then I'd visualize the fight, but then, like the walkout is what I wanted since the beginning so obviously then you've got like mentally prepped yourself, you've visualized and gotten that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean kind of goes back to you know, coming back around to what I started at, my mom was somebody, my dad was people who said hey, you know, if you have an interest, pursue it. You know, go after it. Me and my brothers always did that, you know. We went, we went hard into the band thing. After the band thing didn't work out, I was like let me do martial arts again, ended up snapping my ankle, which totally threw me off for like two years. I got up to 320 pounds just because I was used to doing something all the time and I couldn't walk for like three months so took me a year to be able to. Jog is like like literally tore tendons.
Speaker 1:And I said young age well, my daughter just broke her ankle and she knows a tear, not a tear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like my whole foot. Like you see this scar tissue. There's a ball of scar tissue right here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's from that snapping oh, so it wasn't in the bone, it was just Jesus. Isn't that like super thick?
Speaker 2:yeah, and it just like when I rolled my ankle. This part of my ankle actually touched it, like folded over so hard.
Speaker 1:That's why yeah, that's crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:So I got really big and I was like not doing music anymore and I was watching a bunch of pride fights all the time. When pride was on video and UFC was in that weird like UFC 20 zone where you have a cool fucks fighting like why do I care about this, you know? And even though they had some great guys like the Militich camp and some of those guys you know Robbie Lawler and some of those guys fighting during that era, that was a really raw era. Ufc, that was like right when they introduced weight classes. So I was watching pride fighting. I was like man, I want to get back into martial arts again and so I ended up going to a Crop Gym just to learn, like brutal street, yeah, and that's where I make. The end was a Crop Gym and it kind of.
Speaker 1:So all of this stuff is just kind of this and that, you know, but this is just an extension of me liking music and when you don't learn guitar and like you're, you excel at everything you do, right, I mean the belts where you're at now, like all of it says that you're taking one thing and then you excel at it. And you, similar to me where I see like similar things, where you, you excel at one thing and then you jump into another thing. Like when did you know that? When you were singing and playing guitar in a band, when did you know, like, okay, I'm gonna move on.
Speaker 2:I didn't. So what happened is like everybody started getting signed like the traps, the pop roaches, and we broke up, yeah, and I was left like out in the blue, like what do I do? I've been dedicated my life like the last two years. Were you good at school? I was not academically good because I hated homework. Yeah, so I would do like really well on a test, ace a test and then get a seat in a class, you know me. Or ace a test and get a f in a class because instructors like you didn't do any of your papers. Yeah, but I know this stuff, you know. So I just kind of have that problem, you know where. I wasn't really a disciplined person until fighting brought that into my life. I was fighting, the taught me.
Speaker 2:They're like just every step, one step every day, where I think you know the reason that I excel in things is more of like an obsession. So I have a bad habit, good habit, guess how you look at it. When I get into something like I'll grab every single piece of literature that I can. I'll go and find a group. I'll go and find a club. I'll go and find an expert, I'll go and pay money to go and take classes and buy materials and buy tools, buy gear, whatever it is. But then I don't just do all that and stop, like a lot of people do with like ADHD. Yeah, yeah, I mean, what I'll do is kind of just pound it out.
Speaker 2:And you know, what got me into guitar building is, you know, I was a coach for a long time, yeah, and I was working for UFC gym for the last two years that I coached in the Bay Area and so when I moved up here I like went from being a gym manager running the program, teaching the martial arts instructors how to sell and running all of that, to kind of starting over again in the in the whole fitness field right, because you can't move all your client base. So at that same time I ended up like I was having a lot of pain in my hips in the last year of coaching and I ended up, a couple months into moving here I ended up getting diagnosed with like hip arthritis, osteoarthritis, so overuse, so I have basically the hips of a 60 year old from kicking too hard and you know was it kicking, or was there an injury that you could remember?
Speaker 1:no, you know, I mean I've been.
Speaker 2:I've been on and off with weight. So you know I was 300 points at us, 300 pounds at a certain point. But I really think my hip started bothering me from being in a bike stance for like 10 hours a day holding pads. Some days I was doing a minimum of five hours a day holding pads and it was just beating me up. So when I moved up here I was kind of looking at career changes and kind of trying to figure shit out. I wasn't really doing Mu Thai. So I'm like you know I need something to get me moving.
Speaker 2:You know, and I've always wanted to learn guitar. I bought a guitar when I was a teenager but I couldn't figure it out. It was like all my friends are great guitar players. There's like session players and like guys who are just amazing that play in San Jose, regularly play shows and down in LA. That I know and I was like I finally learned this.
Speaker 2:So I started picking up guitar and because it was at the same time that I had this injury, that my career was changing and everything, it kind of took a lot of my focus and energy and kind of redirected it and helped me kind of have something to look forward to a hobby and so I decided, hey, what I've done in coaching, especially towards the end of coaching, was more of marketing. I can go through the whole history of UFC gym and what I did there, how I started and all that, but I was really at that point in coaching doing a lot of sales and marketing. I was selling like my best month was like $24,000 in sales. That's me selling my training. You're talking about.
Speaker 1:you're getting clients as like students. That's who you're making 24,000, if you've ever been part of a gym that's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so UFC gym was based on a personal training model, so they give us classes, but all our money was from personal training. So I got to the point where I was. There was like five levels of pricing and I was on level four. And what year is this? It was in like 20, whenever I left, 20, 17, 2018. And you were using what Facebook and I was just at the gym selling and people had known me by that point. I've been coaching for like seven years.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the people in Sunnyvale who had come into UFC gym some of them were doctors, some of them own companies, some of them were lawyers One of my clients runs a team for Merrill Lynch, so he's investing multiple retirement portfolios that are million dollars plus. So these were my clients at UFC gym. So I was selling personal training to the point where, like on a good month, I would sell 10, $12,000 with a personal training, and so I was already kind of in that marketing sales mindset because of UFC gym. So I decided, hey, I'm not going to be coaching anymore. I don't think so let me get into the sales and marketing side. And while I was doing that, I got into selling just memberships at gyms and doing management up here. And I started getting into the guitar thing and I'm like, well, why not market and sell that? Like I like it more than what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:I don't like the physical fitness gym industry. I like martial arts, but up here I mean there's like one Muay Thai gym. I mean there's several Muay Thai gyms, but a lot of them. You know they're guys who did Jikun Do or some of their martial art and then they add Muay Thai in and they go and get the ranking from what's his name? Arjun Chai, up in the hills here in you know, washington, and that's their experience. You know it's not like being in the Bay Area, where it's like, you know, you have Johnson on on Daniel Fairtex, you know I mean all these other guys that are just legends on top of the guys I was training with. So I was like I'm not going to be doing Muay Thai up here. I got into the gym and fitness thing, was still doing my sales thing and marketing and I was like, well, let me take my hobby and let me move my skills into my hobby.
Speaker 2:So I started just learning as much as I could and basically from that, I ended up connecting to a company called Stu Mac and Stu Mac is the biggest seller of online they're the biggest online seller of guitar parts and tools for guitar makers and I somehow connected through the Instagram messenger to their VP of marketing and him and I just started this relationship where I give them like brand tips and insights. And what was what?
Speaker 1:was pushing you like, so you went from coaching. Like what, what keeps you going? Like, what kept you going to like I got a strike to be better or do something good for myself? Like was there, do you have a family?
Speaker 2:I mean, no, I don't have kids, I just have me and my wife. But I mean, nobody wants to be stuck in a position where you feel like something you had something you loved. Like I loved coaching Muay Thai. I dedicated like a decade of my life to that sport and I'd wanted to be a Muay Thai fighter since I was a kid. You know, I saw kickboxer and you know that scene with Tong Po he's kicking the beam and I was like I want to do that pretty much when I was a kid, so the martial arts was always me wanting to kind of go into fighting. But you know you're a kid and you don't do that and the parents can't afford it. So you move on to other hobbies and whatever and just kind of in and out, and I was kind of really missed doing something that I was passionate about. You know it's hard to wake up every day and say, okay, I love what I'm doing, I'm interested to grow in this field, just intrinsically, without any outside reward, you know. And so then that was what motivated me was well, I can't do Muay Thai at the level I did before. I can't One. This is like a tertiary market, so there's not as many people doing it and two, it's just beating up my body. I'm going to not be able to buy. I'm going to need surgery in like five years if I can do a miss.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to do something else I love and I started really from learning to play guitar and buying little cheap guitars on Craigslist and fixing them up and flipping them. I learned how to fix and that's where I got into it, and so I connected with this guy from Stu Matt, and we started this relationship and I learned pretty quickly that all of my insights were what they were utilizing to kind of build their marketing strategy up. And so he gave me a really good reference like and that's when I was like, okay, I'm going to go to school for what it takes to do marketing now, or at least you know web marketing, web design, media marketing, social media manager, all that stuff. So I went to school up here I learned SEO. I learned I got what they call a search engine optimization, so that's where you are putting the code on the back end so that the web crawler can read and organize it for people to read and you're also making the keywords there for that people are searching for and also something that you know engages the user right. So SEO is optimizing what the search engine directs, and that's all based on metrics that you can control.
Speaker 2:So I learned that I learned some web design stuff. I have a web design assistance with the kit. So I learned basic HTML, basic Java. I learned how to use WordPress and I kind of knew like as I was transferring, like okay, I want to do this job, so I would go look at those job postings and look at the skills, and then I went out and got the skills and so, but what like?
Speaker 1:why this is? I'm like in my life right now, I'm like looking at the people around me and some people just can't figure it out yeah, they can't figure out like they're stuck, they can't get unstuck. I'm not saying anybody that I'm close to, I'm just saying like literally watching people like that are around me, like I'm not pointing out anybody, but it's like people can't get unstuck and there's very few people that actually grow in everything that they do. Like what? What is it that you're doing different than everybody else? So move forward.
Speaker 2:No, no, here's. The thing is, like you know, I don't think many people have tried enough things or gotten out of their comfort zone enough to do things, to find what sparks them. You know what I mean and so for me I've always been kind of open that way, Like I'm going to flow in a lot of ways. I mean, you know some, not for everything, I don't like clips for sure but for the most part you know we'll go anywhere, do anything kind of person, and eventually you learn like what sparks you. And so you know, for me I'm motivated more by that passion of what I do than by anything else.
Speaker 2:And I think people get stuck in, like I need to be doing this at this age, have this lined up, have this whatever, and they never think about like seriously sit there and think about why am I doing this and what is it about my life, my interests, my goals? That has me doing this, and you sit about and think about it. Most people waste their time just doing a normal job because they want to pay the bills and survive, and they're not thinking about well, if I just put in a little bit more energy here, there or wherever, I can change my situation Right. But I think the difference between me and a lot of people is not afraid to try new things. I'm not afraid to fail, like I fail. So here's the thing for all the successes that people point out, I fail so much more Right. So I can kind of play guitar, but I fail that like when I was younger. I'm just persistent, like if something is something I want to do, I'll just keep doing it until I trigger it out.
Speaker 1:So and like our system, where we, our education system, is built where failure sucks, or if you fail, then you fail Like you're literally not going to go anywhere. And then, for me, marcel Arns taught me that failure is part of the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's nothing like prepping and being ready and doing everything you can and getting beat, and there's nothing like winning a fight and getting beat Right Like. I've had fights where everybody was so convinced I won that the ref raised my hand and then they call out the other guy's name, and so you know, I guess, when you learn that like that's not the end of the world, like whatever, you just move on and roll onto the next one.
Speaker 1:For me, it's worse to to get defeated and stay there.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. I'd rather go fail again than to just be like I gave it one shot and it didn't work out Like. I can't settle on that. That's not something that's going to sit with me.
Speaker 1:And like I'm even watching my daughter because she has something that I never had was like she's good at school, like super good at school, like she's my wife was showing me like a recommendation letter she got from her teacher and it's like, oh, that was, I never even got that. Like it was like you just need to do better at this or like it was all failure and it's it's crazy to think like just listening to your story, I'm starting to reminisce on what I'm doing and it is like I think martial arts was that booster, like I'm not doing it as much anymore, but like I've taken it into everything I have else I'm doing and I'm I'm like okay, just keep on going with it. Just keep on going with it. Eventually you're going to learn. Eventually you're going to be able to do what you're failing at now, hopefully.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the kind of the goal I mean. Yeah, the thing that martial arts is such a great teacher in that respect of a couple really fundamental ideas for what it takes to succeed. Right. One is you can't skip road work. Right, like no matter where your talent is, if you're not doing the day to day, you're not going to get there Right. And the other thing is is you can prep all you want, but there's no guarantee for success, right, and that doesn't mean your failure just means you didn't win that fight.
Speaker 2:So if you carry those two things forward, they're two really valuable lessons. You know, can't skip road work. You got to do the nitty gritty. You know I could have wanted to do this job and try to find a way around it, but I went back to school. I didn't want to go back to school at 38 years old while I had a full-time job going to school at night, online, doing programming, which I didn't ever want to do programming in my life but I knew I couldn't skip that. That was something I had to do because it was part of this. So I mean that lesson is one of the best lessons.
Speaker 1:You know can't skip road work and like doing the programming and all that stuff, like was it what was like difficult about going back to school and something? It was something you weren't good at, like you didn't want to do homework. And then like, at 38 years old, how did you transition to that?
Speaker 2:I mean, I just knew that I wasn't the best like for me. As much as I like to learn by reading things and watching videos and stuff, it's really valuable to have somebody there that I can ask questions to and I just knew that I couldn't learn anything the other way. For me personally, you know I wasn't going to be the guy that goes on YouTube and just aces it. You know I just need somebody, at least the first two or three times, to be like, hey, see that party fuck that up. I'll be like, okay, I'll fix it whatever. Or that was good, I'll try this next time, you know. So I knew I just kind of had to do what I wanted to do and at that point I was so motivated to take these skills that I had gained. I mean, when I was a kid I was the kid that when you go and sell chocolates for your school, I'd be in front with my brothers and they'd sell their whole box and somebody would tell me no once and I'd go cry into the car Like I wasn't a salesperson.
Speaker 2:I learned that at UFC because I wanted to thrive as a coach and in that system that was the only way I could thrive as a coach. So once I wanted to take those sales skills and I got really into sales, I was like I want to be a sales and marketing guy. What do I have to do to do that? And it's just taking that kind of okay, I know I want to do this, what does it take? I looked it up and just did all my research and just kind of said, okay, that's what it takes. If that's what the job description is, I better get really good at doing, or at least good enough that somebody will hire me because I know my sales skills are there. So that's what got me into all of this.
Speaker 1:So you go from marketing, you go back to school. And then how did you get to guitars? I marketed them. So, how did you find that? It's alloy right yeah.
Speaker 2:So alloy is connected to a lot of major brands.
Speaker 2:So the company I work for alloy guitars. We do OEM and that's original equipment manufacturer. We produce designs for companies according to their spec. So I knew of them because of different companies and different guitar people that I had spoken to that had worked through alloy and so I kind of always knew they were here and I was doing marketing at the lab at Rose City Labs and at that point it's a cannabis lab and they were an environmental testing but they were getting ready for their mushroom testing it's now they're the only state sanctioned mushroom lab, whatever and I was really happy there.
Speaker 2:But I was looking at the cannabis space and I was like I don't know if the cannabis space is for me. It's really iffy right now. A lot of business is closing. So I always got this gray market thing that I wasn't too happy with. So I was like you know what I need to? I'm done marketing. I wanted to do marketing to get into the guitar space. I like guitars. Now I have enough of a resume, let me look for guitar marketing jobs. And I looked on Craigslist like that week and the straw was up.
Speaker 1:And you already have the background with being in a band. Do you have a love for guitars?
Speaker 2:I do. It's funny, like when I was a kid I always thought they were so cool, I wanted to learn how to play and, like I said, I just couldn't figure it out for the life of me until YouTube again. So YouTube has helped me with guitars. Because I don't play them, like, I don't think about the notes, I can barely hear the difference between notes, sometimes, like I couldn't tell you what a G is. Just by hearing a G I can tell you, oh, that note sounds a little sharper, flat. But I can't really do all that. So I learned it like the same way I learned.
Speaker 2:Martial arts is just learning patterns. So just a scale is a pattern, it's whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. So you just have to know where to move and then, once you learn that, you just move it up and down. The fretboard and that's the beauty of guitar is, the layout is such that when you learn a pattern, that pattern is repeatable in a different key. So I just learned it physically through YouTube, because I was like I always love this instrument and what really kind of got me into it again was that we were up here, we had just moved here.
Speaker 2:As our first year here, there's Thanksgiving and my mother-in-law gave my wife her grandpa's guitar so my wife is named after her grandfather and my mother-in-law said here's this guitar, you know, it's your grandfather's. And that's what did it. As soon as that guitar touched my hands, I was like I'm going to learn this. And so I got into YouTube and started learning and started fixing and I was like all right, let me take my marketing into my new hobby, my new passion. And then started figuring out well, if I couldn't get hired in that field for marketing and guitars then I needed to get the skills for it.
Speaker 2:And so, from this, going back to the Stumak thing, just kind of way back in what we're talking about. So Stumak actually gave me a job offer, but their offer was in Ohio. I'm not going to move to Ohio, I have just moved here. So after this relationship with a VP of marketing at this company, he was like hey, you know, we have this role, social media manager. I'd like you to apply for it. I got offered a pretty far down the line interview and I said so do I need to move for this?
Speaker 2:He was like yeah, and so I said so I said do me a favor, if you found value in what knowledge and insights I gave you into the market, could you give me a recommendation letter? That's what I used to get the Rose City lab job and then at that point, a year and a half in, I was like man, I don't get in cannabis space anymore. These people right.
Speaker 2:Like some of the people in the cannabis space are basically coming from the black market. They don't always pay their bills on time, they don't always like dealing with authority, they don't see why regulations are necessary. And working in a cannabis lab, dealing with those people, I was like that's not what I want to do a long term. So then yeah, at that point I was like I've been wanting to do this guitar thing. I'm going to look up jobs. And as soon as I looked up a job, this one came up and so I applied and Steve took me in and said hey, you have a great recommendation letter, we'll start you with social media, marketing and sales. And it turned into like a product development and manufacturing job too.
Speaker 2:Since there's three of us, I ended up doing like everything that is not specifically the high end Lutherie, which is guitar building that Chuck does, and the CNC that Steve does. Everything else I have my hands in. At some point, all three of us have our hands in. So I started writing contracts for our production deals, or at least sending the contracts that we have that's a standard and filling out the right fields, sending quotes and doing all that stuff. And when did you start trying to build. That was part of like.
Speaker 2:When I got the guitar, I was playing for like two months before I wanted a new guitar because I didn't want to ruin my wife's grandpa's guitar and every time you play guitar you put wear and tear on it and she was at a certain point like you're putting hours on seven day, like this guitar is. This is my grandpa's guitar, it's going to get worn out. So I started buying cheapy guitars on Craigslist and then just learning what they needed to have fixed and flipping them and I was like making money that way, flipping guitars, and I really learned that more than playing guitars I really like fixing them. Like I like fixing more than I like playing, because there's a certain kind of fun to taking something that is dead and making it make noise.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we were talking about getting into building guitars, yeah, and you were just talking to Diego about just the A lot of technical. Yeah, it's crazy because you're even talking about it over there and it was like all of it was going over my head, because it's like a whole different language.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got its own. All the parts have their own names and they all have very specific purposes, and it's like you learn about it like anything else. Yeah, like if you're into cars and you're like, well, what do I have to do? Like, if my brakes are soft, well, you got to make sure that you pump the line and get all the air bubbles out, and you learn all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But in the guitar, like you see that we're talking about the different, I guess, shapes. Yeah, like what's this part called? That's just the body, the body. But like, does the body make a different? Like if you have a different body, does it sound different? Like I look at all the metal guitars they have, like it looks like evil. And you look at the old school blues guys, more of like a rounder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, rounder the man, the message boards are going to light up. No, so there's a big argument in the electric guitar world, Because the part of the electric guitar that actually picks up the sound is the pickup, and so what this is is just magnets wrapped with copper wire and basically they create a magnetic field and the strings become part of that magnetic field and so anytime they vibrate, that vibration is transferred into a very small electrical signal, and so that's why you put it into an amplifier, so it can amplify that electrical signal. So because in electric guitars the part that picks up the vibration of the string and transfers it into your amp is this magnetic thing, yeah, people will say that everything else is secondary or doesn't matter, and some people swear on the Holy Bible and God's gospel and all that, that the woods change the tone dramatically or the shape will even affect the tone, and some people will say, like none of that matters. So what side of the argument you're on is kind of where it falls. I'm on the side where, if this bridge is sitting on a surface and the strings are vibrating and the density of the surface is either going to absorb or fight that vibration, there's going to be some more sounds that come through the strings right, given the material density. So this shape to me, I don't think shapes are anything other than a comfort thing or a style thing personally. Yeah, what you're going to get is the different construction methods Like this is a bolt on guitar with a flat top.
Speaker 2:In order for this bridge here at this height to work, the neck has to be pretty straight. If I were to tilt the neck downward, I would have to lift this bridge up because otherwise the strings would hit right here. And so some people like, like on a guitar like this, you can see that there's a slight angle, and that's because the bridge on here sits higher. So in order for the string line to go straight, this has to be at an angle. So some people like, like a guitar with a set neck, with an angle. It feels good in their hands, the way their arm moves feels good. Some people like this because you know the way it feels in their hands it's straight and your arm moves straight and it feels good.
Speaker 2:And so a lot of the different things that actually affect tone don't have anything to do with, like, body shape or even neck angle, a lot of what really affects the tone in a guitar is going to be the length of the string. So this is an E, right, and on this one it would be an E but it'd be a smaller scale. The strings are going to be tighter when it's a longer scale at the same tuning. So an E and an E for me to get it. On a 24-75 scale guitar, which is the distance from here to here, is the scale, it's going to sound looser because the strings are actually looser and at this one the same note, the strings are tighter, and all that just has to do with a formula on how you're splitting the notes up.
Speaker 1:And how long did it take you to learn all this? That?
Speaker 2:you're talking about A couple years and some good books and some good YouTube and some good friends. It just took that much and that's what got me here at Alboy and I've learned so much more since I've gotten to this company here about guitars on just hands, on working with them every day, working with guys like Steven Chuck that have been making guitars for so many companies for so many years that they've gone through all these different construction methods and wood and different kinds of ways that guitars are built and different gadgets. I mean people are always trying to put gadgets and guitars. We've seen almost every gadget that somebody can try to stick into a guitar.
Speaker 2:My favorite band, I mean I grew up listening to a lot of disco and soul and my parents like that and my mom really liked all the American stuff that people listened to, like Eagles Creed and Slinard Skinner. So when I think of like a really great favorite band, like it's either that or somebody from that, like metal, new metal era, like I'd have to say. My favorite band like actual group of people, if I think of a catalog, is definitely Leonard Skinner, and I know it sounds hokey but they have so many great songs and it's such an interesting catalog and they're all just like classic American songs. But most of my favorite players now have been blues players. Just because the way they hold your attention and hold a note, like they know how to make a note vibrate and bend and just last just that one second long enough, that you have a feeling and there's something to me about the simplicity of that of being able to just hold your attention with that one voice. You know what I mean With that one expression.
Speaker 2:So I mean, yeah, I saw BB King in 2004 and ever since then, like those old blues players are just where I'm like man, that guy is just amazing. Got to see Buddy Guy there's a big blues festival here every year and one of the bigger blues festivals on the West Coast and seen a lot of great acts there. This young guy called Kingfish that's his like Christon Ingram that sounds like a blues name, yeah, and he's young and he's good. But a lot of those guys I mean, if I go back to like bands bands like Slayers, pantera, sepultura, like that whole era of like 90s metal machine head I used to love machine head, davidian or like Centon Hammer those songs are just like where it's at.
Speaker 1:Did you see Pantera? The lead singer, do the Hail Hitler.
Speaker 2:I mean, phil Anselmo has always been known for that. I used to. They used to come around like in tour, like every year, every couple of years, and they'd be at the San Jose State Event Center, yeah, and so I've been in so many Pantera mosh bits. Yeah, I just yeah, it's rough because Phil Anselmo is known and has always been known for being kind of like that person. But the other band, like Back when Dimebag was still alive and Vinnie Paul, they all had the whole other side of it.
Speaker 2:That was not that person, you know so, but just something about like power groove metal where, just like you know, sepultura or Pantera is a great example of that. Right Machine head, too, is one of the like lesser known examples. But I don't know, modern music, wise bands, bands I really haven't kept up with anybody too much to say like, oh, this person or that person is where you got to be listening to. I mean, there's so many great artists that I feel like with the self promotion that happens on the internet, you really end up going to your niche or your market rather than, like back in the day, the radio would put you out, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's what's cool about like road trips. Is that? Like, when you go on a road trip, that's when you get to really like find new music, oh yeah. And this guy over here introduced me to Buckethead. Oh, buckethead, yeah yeah. Buckethead's like insane to me, because I never listened to an artist not sing one word, but like really listen to like five, six songs in a row. Oh yeah, and it's just like guitar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's amazing he's in that virtuosic like of Steve Vai. If you're into that kind of stuff, you can go off into a world of like guys who do nothing but instrumental guitar. And some of those guys they're just amazingly talented, to the point where you look at them you're like I'll never be that good. But the point is you don't ever need to be that good. Some of the best songs ever written are super stupid simple. You know, you play them, you learn to play them and you're like, wow, that's it. And you learn a catalog pretty quick with a few chords.
Speaker 1:So I think New Metal was like like known for that. Yeah, Like basic songs, it's like.
Speaker 2:I feel like chugging came off of the back of New Metal, like before that. Like Metal was super, like fast and people were doing like especially, who has it? Ozzie's guitar player? Why can't I think of Randy Rhodes, right, he've kind of brought in the whole like classical guitar playing into Metal and at that point everybody's just all over the fingerboard, like then you know they're like Eddie Van Halen's right. And then all of a sudden you have the like, I guess, groove metal, power metal and New Metal era that came in in the mid 90s where it just like when you're like grooving to this heavy riff, you know, so you know those virtuosic players. They've always been there. That's funny that you like Buckethead of all the people. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He just showed me one day and it just like I was like this guy's insane.
Speaker 2:He has like a hundred something albums, oh yeah, and like all of them are just a KFC bucket and a weird mask. Yeah, and that's his whole shit. Pretty place.
Speaker 1:So well, you know, and I haven't seen him live, but I've seen, like his YouTube live and it doesn't sound like his albums. Oh yeah, it's like just he's just jamming. Yeah, like the same song, but just different. Yeah, it's crazy, and he's not that like, he's not a big artist, like you know, you say Buckethead not anybody, not a huge following.
Speaker 2:He's almost like a toast and a bossy or one of those other guys that's like. That's another virtuosic guitar player that is very well known and actually, you know, owns a guitar brand and stuff like that too, which is interesting, right, because it's like a. Obviously it's weird because in the guitar world the players can be so disconnected from the making Like I've ran into people who've been playing guitar for 10 years and they shred up and down but then you ask them why they like a certain guitar and they don't know anything about how it's built or the specs of it. So it's like two very separate worlds. And what's funny is Leo Fender, from the guy who started Fender guitars, he was a radio and amp guy and didn't ever play guitar. He just went from electronics and radios and all that into the guitar world and started one of the biggest guitar companies ever but couldn't play a single lick.
Speaker 2:And so it's funny because you'll have like really great guitarists that we run into that know what they want in a guitar, right, and they know exactly what they want, they're very precise and other great guitarists that they're just like give me a guitar, oh, this one fills a little too, whatever, and you're like, but why? And they're like I don't know, it just feels that way, like whoa, it's so disconnected. So part of the fun for me is that, as much as I maybe feel like I'll never get there in one space, like maybe, like, oh, I might not be the bucket head guy, but I can you know, in 10, 20 years I guarantee you I'll build a sick ass guitar, probably better than I'll ever be able to play a guitar. So it's kind of fun in that way too, because it gives you a way to master the instrument Without having to master playing the instrument.
Speaker 1:So it's all the fine details like, even like even holding pads, or even like using Boxing gloves or more tech gloves, like it's all the finer details when you look at like the, the Bottom of the line, like brands yeah, and then even like holding pads, like Smaller focus myths that have like a curve to it. Yeah, I like being able to feel you want to couple it and fill it. Yeah, I don't like you look at the cheaper ones or they're like you get sick of that if you do that for like six hours.
Speaker 2:That's why you see all the old-school guys with big pads, because they've been doing it so long that they're like oh, my wrist and my elbow. That actually started happening to me at UFC is like the year right before I left UFC, that January. I left in July and that January I had been holding pads for so long that I started getting random spasms. My arm would do this and I had to go to physical therapy to get my arm to release like the tension for like three weeks.
Speaker 2:But you get, you know, as you get older you're not gonna want little pads man, you're gonna need the big pads. But yeah, and that's part of like the whole thing, when I was at UFC it was so different coaching there compared to everywhere else I had coached. But yeah, I learned a lot about like corporate stuff there and I also learned that I do not want old pads for seven hours a day. I don't want to be a pad man, that's for sure You're. You got maybe 10, 15 years of that before it starts breaking you down your elbows, shoulders, you know, I mean throwing kicks all the time. So he's checking all the time doing something, you're always being a fucking crash test dummy.
Speaker 1:So that's what it is You're taking impact. Yeah like, when you really think about it, you're taking impact for hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's rough, yeah. So, yeah, that's part of why I like, when I moved up here and I was looking at new things, I was like, huh, I don't know if that's my long-term vision, as much as I love Muay Thai.
Speaker 1:Yeah how was?
Speaker 2:it coaching Diego Morales. How is it coaching Diego Morales at the beginning? Yeah or later?
Speaker 1:on.
Speaker 2:Who's the? Who's the? Diego Morales. So Diego Morales actually walked in with a, with a friend of his, josh Ponce, and Josh was the one who found the gym at Kaio Teja. So, interesting story, the way I started Kaio Teja was I was doing intros at Kyrion's and Kaio Teja was our Jujitsu instructor because we had the Caesar Gracie affiliation and Kaio was gonna open up Kaio and San Jose and he asked Kyrion Like can you recommend anybody? And Kyrion put me out there. So I was coaching at Kaio Teja on Park Avenue and Josh Ponce walks in, starts training with me and then he brings Diego and this is when they were tow truck drivers and the first day he walked in and we start doing pad work and I have to demo it because it's just like he was doing like this.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Where he had like this like little footwork thing. That was like this weird shuffle. Yeah, it was so fucking awkward and the first two weeks I kept calling him like each other's names I'd called Josh, diego and Josh and he was just like so stiff at first but his dedication to the sport and like showing up and you know, at a certain point when I moved to UFC I wasn't gonna coach a fight team anymore, so I sent him off to Rudy's and I called Rudy and I said, hey, you know he needs a fight coach and I'm not gonna be fight coach in this space. And yeah, he's gotten better every. And you know he wasn't a lefty, that's the other thing. Yeah, fuck him. You know, diego started as an orthodox fighter and what happened is we went to go see goat horror and some other bands what I don't know if it was the Warfield and and he, we went. He's like let's go to the mosque. And I was. I was tired, I had just run a half marathon that day. I was like I'm not gonna go in Chuck's.
Speaker 1:I ran a half marathon in.
Speaker 2:Chuck's around the SF half marathon in Chuck's, because those were my running shoes at the time. I felt comfortable and I didn't want to trade things out, so we were at a you, sure, your?
Speaker 1:arthritis is from Hicking and I might be from running might be from road work.
Speaker 2:Kieran was never nice about letting us skip road work. We were. We would do burpee miles. Where you have you heard those stories you would do I probably forgot you do a burpee broad jump and that's the only way you can move forward. Fuck yeah, burpee, broad jump. Imagine doing a mile, a mile. It took the fastest person, which was Brooks and uh, gaston, like 45 minutes and me I'm an hour and 15 minutes in to do a burpee, fucking broad jump mile.
Speaker 2:Like he used to do that kind of shit to us. Like he went on Joe Rogan and said I would never do what I did to those fighters to anybody, because I over trained them. Like that's no joke. Like when I saw that clip I was like, yeah, motherfucker, I was fighting like every six weeks on average. I fought like nine fights in one year. And to be training like that and fighting nine fights, like it was rough. Like it was rough. I was always in pain. But yeah, the the hip thing might. But Diego, we were in this mosh pit and he comes back up and he's like I think I like hurt my foot. It's like feels funny here. He walked on this broken foot for like three days Before he finally got x-rays thinking was like a sprain, and then, because his foot was broken, then we had to train him as a lefty from then on. Oh shit, that's crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he wasn't a lefty until he broke his foot and then, even after that, when he popped his knee Training with Frank Sanchez, then we still had to kind of keep him reinforcing that and that that was his left leg at the time. So I was like the fuck leg. But he was one orthodox or unorthodox orthodox, you know. I mean he was a righty, but he was doing all this like weird steppy stuff then.
Speaker 2:And then two Is he was a right hander, he was an auto lefty and all that trained up and then I had to train him to be a lefty and I had bought probably Almost all my title fights were against lefties. I'd bought like four or five lefties so I had a decent amount of understanding. Like the tricks of the trade, you know If you're a righty fighting a lefty or doing the same thing they're doing to you right power, hand power, kick, circle, the other way, you know, foot fight when the foot placement position, when the hand fighting, and so, yeah, there was a whole process of me going back into my head and being like, what did I have to do to fight lefties? And you know, there was a certain point where I think we were at Kaio Tejas when it was the Institute of Martial Arts, where it was like half lefties. It was so weird I had to train.
Speaker 2:All these people aren't like fucking devil worshipers. I you know that's the old like thing that they used to say about lefties, like in the catholic church. You know he's always messed with them. But Diego, always been a pleasure to train as a person but not as an athlete, like when somebody like is like you're like, okay, well, I'll work with that. He's willing to work with this, so let's roll with it. But I mean, yeah, he's, it was just interesting because to see from where he started, I would never imagine they'd be here at this point. You know, not, not at all. No, so just goes to show the dedication.
Speaker 2:And also great teammate, always there for his teammates, training partners. I don't think I've ever had to ask Diego To show up for a training partner. I mean, like a lot of people and even myself, there'd be times when I was training and fighting, when I was tired, where I was like I don't want to show up for this guy sparring rounds or whatever, you know. I mean I want to prep him. I would, because that was who we had. But I don't think I've ever had to ask Diego to show up Like just hey, we have this and that's it. He shows up.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it shows in his character. I think that that dude he shows up for a lot of people, but I think in fighting that's like I think in anything any sport, anything that you do, work whatever, you need people to show up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like it's crazy. Like you see, some of I think he was telling me there's a. There's a world champion who trained with just white belts and jujitsu he trained with just white belts. And there's, like people that are high level that can never get to that champion level because, like, they don't have people around them. Or like the little little tiny cities have these, these great athletes that Can't get anywhere because they don't have enough people. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's what was the name of that? The champion? Wow, lovato, white belt, use white belts to get him championship.
Speaker 2:That's nuts. Well, I mean, white belts are spazzy as so. You know, the worst night, the worst time I ever had with the white belt, was nick green, and he's pretty known in jujitsu now, um, and when he came to the academy of self defense, he was a wrestler. At the time, he had never done jujitsu. He's a white belt and he went hard wrestling on me. I managed to submit him, luckily, and I think that's what taught him the value of jujitsu. But no, I remember, like some of these guys, that when they started with us going back to what you said about, like how Everything blew up from things right, like when we went to ifma in 2008, hmm, the us team at that point had fielded people from different parts of the country and it was never cohesive and they could never get more than one or two successful guys.
Speaker 1:And the year we went, I was like, if my people are listening, they don't know what that is if most of the world games for Muay Thai I wish I had my medal right. I should have bought my belt.
Speaker 2:No, if it was the world game for Muay Thai in 2000.
Speaker 1:Olympics for Muay Thai.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in 2008 I went with the us team and that was when the current president of the us Muay Thai Federation, chase Corley, michael Corley that was his year that he fought so, as me and Gaston Michael Corley, daniel cam, chris Kwiatkowski, who's a really well known east coast fighter, and then, uh, jesse Gillespie, who was one of like Kieran's kind of favorite students at the time, and out of the six of us, three of us brought back medals right, which was huge because the just the percentage of people getting medals at the time the us team never had such a high count for such a low team. And that's when the next year, in 2009, the whole like dream team Got together and they sent Miriam and everybody came back with golds. And then us team has been on a gold streak ever since. Right, they, they haven't ever let down.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of cool to be in these early frames of things, you know, and kind of look back and be like, oh, I was there when that fighter had just started, like, meeting Gaston Balanos when he was like 15, arrogant little kid and seeing him grow into an athlete.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Uh, meeting Kevin when he had just moved from master Totties before, when he was kind of in this middle part of his career where he'd had some success but then it kind of things were not happening and then he had a lot more success. You know, seeing all that germane to rondami, watching her train for a first MMA match To where she became, you know, ufc champion yeah, so it's kind of interesting to have been in those little moments. You know I'm a lucky person in that respect, just like watching popper oach play a hundred person club, watching this band or that band, and you know, sometimes it's like really cool to be in these moments. I feel like I'm lucky because I end up in places where things sprout from. You know what I mean. It's not luck.
Speaker 1:Like, look what you're doing, like that's not luck, because, like, your dedication to what you're doing and your Commitment to learning gets you to these places. Because of your commitment, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the timing is a big one too, because, like I could have started a year earlier before there was a fight team with I could have started two years later and joined in the middle of everything. You know what I mean. I was really lucky in that respect, especially with the fighting thing, to see so many great athletes start from like zero and then be like damn, you're fucking good, or guys, they like I was a year or two ahead of, and then like they just get good at another skill really fast, like wrestling or jujitsu or whatever. So I feel like that's just always been A cool moment to be part of, you know, and with my students and stuff. It's weird too because a lot of them gone on to coach or I've known a lot of coaches that were fighters when I was a fighter, like my whole team is coaches now. You know, like you have, you know strike fitness, you have, um, the resistance right, those are all people that, like you know, amber and johnny, those are, those are my people, those were, those were our team. Like we beat each other up so much. We beat each other up so much, you know, I mean because we were all we had. So there's just awkward too, because you'd be sparring john or some other guy that's like half your size, but it is. It's cool to see where they've gone to, you know, and be what they've been able to do.
Speaker 2:As far as I was the first one that started coaching out of csa, that was a student that started, you know. I mean Kieran basically gave me his blessing and said go coach at kiosk, which turned south really quick when kio Kind of in kieran fell out right. That's the problem with moitai I've always had in martial arts Is I I'm supposed to follow some kind of like loyalty affiliation thing. But people fight all the time like oh, that was your coach and that was your guy that trained here and we were cool and you told me to go train at his school, but then now it's awkward.
Speaker 2:So it's always been a little bit like that. But it's cool to see, like that whole, all the coaches that are people I fought or people that I trained with, it's like super awesome. Now Even one like my opponents, like dino poctagon, uh, who was the guy who was the dominant fighter in my weight class at the time he coaches uh, guy, I won my, my belt from my first belt from daniel agate really tough. Well, one of the few fighters that almost knocked me out and nobody knows that, but he wobbled me hard in the third round, uh, and he hit me with a liver shot like shortly after that and both those shots are the two toughest shots I've ever got. But he coaches out in oakland.
Speaker 1:How long did it take you to recover from the the rock Meaning like after the fight? Oh, I have a good chin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you can watch videos of me fighting, where I literally got roundhouse to the head by Crazy by uh hailey scott.
Speaker 2:Hailey scott was an opponent. He was eight and one when I faced him. He had a like five knockouts at the time. I think he fought until a couple years ago, was on the us team maybe two or three years ago, and he was like clark kenton, superman like you. Like he would put on his glass and be like, hey, what's up, guys, and he's super cool. And then you take off his glasses and fight and you look like saggett, what the hell. But that guy was known for this mean roundhouse kick and there's a good video Of that fight, uh, and I could link you to it later. But he hits me with a roundhouse at the end of round two and it's just like and my mouthpiece goes flying like literally Out and then I just look back at him and I get ready to go, but the bell rings. But I've always had a good chin.
Speaker 2:The person who rocked me the most was um. He has a school in redwood city. He was a isk, a kickboxing champion Shit, I forget his name, david, something, um and he fought on one of the first strike force cards because he was a known kickboxer. We were playing around and he was getting ready for MMA and uh, you know, we were going over there to coach and kind of cross train with him and I had had him in the clinch that day and I was being nice and jesse gillespie, he's like, don't be nice to him in the clinch, you know, because he couldn't clinch. He was a taekwondo guy and I was good at the clinch.
Speaker 2:So, of course, what am I going to do? Fight taekwondo with you? No, I'm going to do what you don't know how to do. But I was being nice, giving him light knees and one I don't know if he just felt he had to get back, but I threw a jab and he did this weird duck out, spin, kick thing and he just clipped me right with his heel on my temple and that one took me a month to recover from. And I fought dino, like two weeks later, who had like a knockout streak, and I remember the. Every morning I was waking up dizzy from just like feeling like I had the spins, like drunk, and I'd have to put my foot on the ground and let myself Give my orientation. And so I was like going into that fight, knowing that, you know, and he threw His combo, which is like a hook, uppercut hook and he used to be a break dancer, so he had all this torque you know, and that's why he was knocking people out.
Speaker 2:I mean, the guy Was a background dancer for like a lia nely frittato. You look at these videos and he's in the backer. You're like that's who I'm fighting. But man, he threw this combo, hook, uppercut hook, that was just. It would knock people out and I was like look out for that combo. And I got hit with it like two times and I was already wobbled from that thing for the whole two weeks and it took me an extra three weeks to recover. So every day I would wake up dizzy and there'd be spells where I'd just fall Shit. Yeah, I'd be standing up and all of a sudden I just it took me like a month to recover from that and that's the worst I ever got was getting spinning heel kicked by the taekwondo champion two weeks before fighting for Muay Thai title and then fighting a knockout artist, and Then that whole month I was just waking up dizzy every day and then sometimes I'd be standing there and it just all of a sudden just fall over Jesus and that.
Speaker 1:Do you have any, any side effects now?
Speaker 2:Not that I know of. Yeah, I mean, I could probably do a brain scan and figure it out, but part of me wanting to learn stuff and always learning stuff is there's things that Regenerate your brain or help you get a better chance right, and there's things that Make it plastic or static. And you know, you don't, you don't, you don't want your brain to start shrinking because it's not being used, and so I think part of it is Because I'm always practicing things or learning things, I think it's really shrink if you don't use it like a muscle.
Speaker 2:No, it's not like that. It's just that you're not making as flexible connections. So your brain is more about like the more it's in the practice of making connections and expanding on those connections, then the easier it is to keep your brain health up. So that's why I like doing the things I do. Is, you know, part of wanting to learn the guitar too?
Speaker 2:I know I used to joke around with Andy, andy, when and he's a student that Diego's friends with, yeah, and he would he would always worry about CT. When all the CT stuff came out I was like learn a language, go play an instrument. I don't know, what do you want me to do? Like, there's only a few things you can do. You can, like use CBD or some other neural protectant right, cannabis is a great neural protectant. You can, you know, live a clean life, avoid heavy metals like Mercury and lead and your food in your system. You can get plenty of oxygen and exercise. Or you can do puzzles and learn things.
Speaker 2:Right, I was. So I'd always tell him like go fucking learn, go do some puzzles if you're so worried about CT, and I think part of why, like really Part of the reward of it, is I knew somewhere in the back of my mind like I hope I'm saving my brain. I really hope I don't get to the point where I'm 70 and don't remember anything, but at least I remember it now and it was worth it. Yeah, that was the roughest I ever got, was that one?
Speaker 1:and, and you know that, is what it is, but it's just like that's. It's crazy to think like I know it's like I'm just keep on, I tell everybody how, like, what you guys did, and I think it's not really talked about I guess, cuz Muay thai. Muay thai is like pretty, it's not huge, yeah, it's its own little.
Speaker 2:yeah, except you know the zone shows Muay thai from, I think, roger Domner now, and my father-in-law, who's a big boxing fan. He's like an encyclopedia of boxing. He started watching Muay thai on the zone and so he'll wake up at 5 am Every Saturday now to go watch live. It'll call me and be like man that Muay thai fighting with those elbows man, there's nothing like watching an elbow though I think the elbows are this thing, so it's cool. It's a small thing, it's growing, but, yeah, kind of like watching?
Speaker 1:Did you watch? Do you watch Muay thai?
Speaker 2:still, I still watch yeah, I mean I don't watch MMA really. Yeah, I can't, especially UFC, just cuz I can't get over how they're paid. Like there's a mental block where I'm like oh man, I can't watch these guys get paid seven thousand dollars to get their main event fight card. You know what I mean? 10, 15, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:But you fought for the world team and you didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 2:But it's different, right, world team is different. It's like the Olympics. A lot of times the Olympics it's a national pride thing and it's a pride thing in your competing country against country. Yeah, when you're playing, when you're fighting in a promotion, the promotion decides a lot of what's happening. You know what I mean? Yeah, like they decide who gets matched to who and what fights are made in a tournament, they start drawing names out of a hat and they put you in a bracket and then you fight whoever the hell they picked in its country against country.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, I didn't feel like it was exploitive in any way. I just sometimes I'm watching Combat sports and I know the way butts in seats is like the biggest Motivator for promoters and if you can't do that past your second fight, you're not gonna get a good third or fourth fight, you're not gonna get a great fifth or sixth fight if you're not a draw. So I mean, with the national teams there's no promoter that's making anybody Fight in any way. Right, you kind of earn your way up, you get an opportunity, you go and fight, they draw from a tournament, you know, and that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1:Well, like Luke Leslie just fought on the one championship yeah, he's a East Coast, east Coast fighter, right East Coast fighter, crazy fight. Like crazy one championship fight, and like that's he's. He's American, yeah, like born and raised, yeah, and like I think I Think what you guys did and be cool to To interview everybody that was on that team all at once, but one day, yeah, and but I think that that it's like movie worthy, you know, and it's.
Speaker 2:Have you ever seen the movie best of the best? Yeah, I feel like that was our trip.
Speaker 1:That was so cheesy.
Speaker 2:If you watch, bro, I swear to God, it was six of us, right, and we had at the time the stone was like 15 or 16, so we were chaperoning I was actually his roommate chaperoning him and the six of us going through the streets of Korea and Going into the tournament and fighting. It was very much like best of the best. Even to get a bronze medal Was like a big deal. Like in the movie. There was injuries, a little bit. To me, when I watched that movie, I feel like we can make a modern version of that with the 2018 and it would be like the same fucking story, but except with some weird cool shit that we all did. That, you know, nobody ever was about.
Speaker 2:Part of the fun was like you'd be out in the street and there's like this huge arcade culture in South Korea and so all of a sudden, you know those punching machines. It'd be outside an arcade and then Somehow every fighter from the tournament is starting to congregate and you're like there's Denmark and there's Poland and there is, you know, saudi Arabia and we're all just trying to beat each other. You know the Polish would carry around beers while they were walking on the streets and, like you hand them out to you. You'd be like, hey, what's up, broster, whatever. And they'd be like, hey, hey, it's cool.
Speaker 1:But I feel like we're out of the country before you did that. I was born out of the country, oh shit, yeah.
Speaker 2:So my parents moved here when they were kids, from the Azores, which small group of islands a lot of Portuguese people you're from was bano, so you must know a shit ton of Azoreans. Like anywhere where there's cows in California, there's Portuguese people yeah, portuguese huge, yeah, the Portuguese festival, and so all of them are actually from this group of island called the Azores, most of the Portuguese people in California. So my parents came here, move back with their, with my older brother when he was born, to like raise their kids there. But it was just no opportunities there when we were kids. Now it's a lot of tourism, but back then it was all people visiting family in the summer was the only tourism. No, I came here when I was poor so we would go back and forth and travel. I had. I actually went to Amsterdam for the Millennium New Years 1999 it was all gonna fall apart.
Speaker 2:No, but we were like, let's get out of America because people are being paranoid, yeah. And we somehow Some friends of ours who are 18 were like, let's go out of the country, let's go to Europe. We looked up flights were like shit, we can go to Amsterdam pretty cheap, and somehow convinced our parents to let us, like, go to Amsterdam. Yeah, I was like almost 18 at the time.
Speaker 1:I was dead looking crazy.
Speaker 2:I was 17 and no ten months or whatever, so I'd been out of the country a few times by the time I went to go fight at the where. It was weird because I'd never been to Asia and Flying that way across the Pacific is so much longer, like flying across the Atlantic is like seven, eight hours From Boston. You know it's not, it's not a long flight, but flying From here to even get out to Japan, to transfer to Korea, is like 15 hours or whatever it was. So it was a long flight and it was just really weird.
Speaker 1:How was that Amsterdam trip at 17 years old during the Millennium?
Speaker 2:It was interesting. No, we were really young and you know we're all Kind of really into cannabis at the time and so being able to tour all the coffee shops this was in, you know, before anything was ever dispensary or any legal cannabis here. You'd tour that and feel the freedom. You know, being in Amsterdam, which is a crazy city and has its own completely crazy nightlife and Other crazy things that are happening, and just being around I mean it's the most people I've ever been near, because from Central station there's a street called the Domstra that goes all the way down to the main square and the down and so that whole thing. That has callie tracks and a pedestrian walk and a little two-way street Like it's a wide street, was Packed where people were climbing signs and bus stops. It was like being at a sports game. That was like in the streets kind of a deal. It was the most I've ever been chaos around people, it was nuts, but it was fun. I mean, what do you do when you're a kid and you go Amsterdam? I just use your imagination, but I remember that was just the experience of being there and kind of all the people was really wild.
Speaker 2:And what's funny is is I didn't know how into to Greece. They were like the movie Greece, because at midnight they started playing Greece songs and everybody knew like the Greece songs. They're like. You want that, I want it. I was like man. This is so surreal. You know, it's like New Year's 1999, you're in the streets of Amsterdam and people are singing songs from Greece. You know, just imagine all whatever else was going on. You know, I mean fireworks everywhere, people are lighting bottle rockets, people are lighting M80s. It was nuts, but that's what that was like. I mean, on top of it, we did all the cultural things. We went to the museum and went to the Van Gogh Museum. We didn't do the Anne Frank House. That's more of like a house with a lot of history. So it's not as interesting. The history is more interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were going to do the tours out here and then I was like really looking at it and it's just a basement. The underground, yeah, the underground tours, it's just a basement, like I've never done that tour.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny is since we got here, like pretty much immediately after there was the pandemic, yeah, and you know I've done what I can in the area.
Speaker 2:What's crazy is me and my wife usually go, like you, there's the Portland Metro right, which is kind of the big giant name Like it would be like the Bay Area, right, the Portland Metro, and you go just outside at any 20 minutes and you're in farmland, you know, you're in somebody's orchard or some farm or whatever, some nursery.
Speaker 2:So a lot of times we go out that way towards like the coast and between here and the coast you can go and pull over and go to like all these farms or you can go to wine country or you can do all that. So if you go towards the gorge, which is, you know, going along the Columbia River out East, like Multnomah Falls that's the most like photographed waterfalls in the United States, you know the one with the two it's literally right off the freeway. You can look to the right as you're driving past it and see the full falls, so you can go and do that kind of stuff. So you know we don't do tours, we don't do too much in the city just because, like it's never been our thing, we go out and hike a lot, or go out to the farms, or go out to the gorge, or so Portland's wild, like I think I'll end it with talking about Portland.
Speaker 1:Portland is, it's like I was describing it. It's like it has its culture, everything's nice, like it has the good food, the good atmosphere the good coffee. It's awesome, but at the same time you're doing all that stuff, it's like the world's ending around you, like you have homeless people, like we were at psycho donuts or not, psycho Voodoo.
Speaker 2:Voodoo donuts, which is like where psycho got their concept from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, voodoo donuts. And there's a homeless guy who I thought died and he's like, oh no, he's good, he's good. I was like he's pale and he just, he just did some drugs passed down and woke up.
Speaker 2:Like he's called nodding off. Yeah, now you know it's wild. That's here's the thing is. It's weird, right, because cost of living is a big factor in anything.
Speaker 2:I grew up in San Jose, from the time I was four, you know, in 1986, there was still orchards in San Jose. Yeah, the orange, the orange, right. There was orchards, cherry orchards, plum orchards, and so you'd go out into a little patch and there'd still be an orchard there. You know what I mean. So, watching the city grow as everybody bunches in as cost of living goes up and, like you know how tech is, a techie could make as much as a family or more a single person, right. So the cost of living went up and all of a sudden you see all the problems, those problems. The only problem we had in San Jose in the 80s was gangs. Yeah, I mean, it was a decent gang problem, but it wasn't any of the same homeless problems or any of those issues.
Speaker 2:Anytime somewhere becomes attractive, you're going to price people out, but people are still going to want to be there. And then the other thing is is you look at this, on the West Coast especially, any place that gives people assistance is basically going to get have places that don't want those people send them over. And, like I said earlier, I was talking about the busing. You can go and look up articles about Nevada and Texas and all those states busing people in with medical problems, mental problems, because they just don't want to deal with it. They just one way ticket or one way ticket to jail. And so I feel like the big problem here a lot of it comes down to people are tolerance, which is a good thing, but it can be a bad thing. There's a cool freedom of who you can be and expression, which it brings a lot of the free spirits, but it brings a lot of the nuts. And then the other thing is anytime you offer help, people are going to come to the help. So if you're giving any kind of assistance at all, I mean it's.
Speaker 2:When I got here, it was okay. It's never really been that bad to me because, like I said, I grew up East Side San Jose and you know there was always homeless people on the East side. I mean because it was right near the creek, not too far from the creeks you know Guadalupe and all those coyote creeks and all those and they're not too far off so people would wander into the East Side or you know, travel down story and they end up on story and kings. They're where the Chapa Cana is and like there's always been stuff. So it's never thrown me off. It's just the fentanyl is crazy because it's eating people's brains up. You know I've dealt with tweakers a lot.
Speaker 2:Back in the day it was all tweakers and you'd be worried about a tweaker doing something to get jumpy or whatever. But I feel like the people who are on this have your drugs now. They're just losing Zombies, they're just losing their shit. Yeah, it's kind of a combo of everything. I mean, it doesn't bother me as much because I'm so far out here in Beaverton, which is the Burbs, you know, and you can see you go out here and there's like almost none of those problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're downtown, yeah, right by downtown, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're on Burnside, that's where Voodoo is. It's going to be the biggest concentration because there's a lot of missions. But it's a weird town because like it's kind of this small town-ish thing but there's a lot of industry around here. I mean there's an Intel, probably like 10 minutes from us, where they do all the microchip manufacturing Nike. From here you guys want to go to the Nike campus. It's literally a mile away. So it's kind of like this weird mix of like a lot of opportunity, good cost of living for the opportunities that you have and the money you can make. But then it's attractive to people who are like I want to go like back in the 60s, when people are like I'm going to go out to California and just like whatever. People are like I'm going to go to Oregon and like whatever.
Speaker 1:Doesn't? That doesn't work that way. Well, that's why I'm doing this. This is why I'm doing it to see perspective, to get perspective.
Speaker 2:Don't come here in the winter. It's already dark. It's like four o'clock folks, yeah, crazy. It's like it's black outside.
Speaker 1:I'm like, are we going to make the game? And I realized it's four o'clock but the Blazers game it's $3 a ticket. We're going. But this is why I'm doing it, it's for perspective on life, right, like I didn't get out that much. I married at 22 years old. I pretty much was doing Muay Thai for about four or five years. I did martial arts for like trying to. That was just like my main goal was doing was trying to get to fighting right.
Speaker 2:See the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, now I'm like I haven't seen the world at all. Like you talk about going on trips, this guy's always, he's everywhere, this guy's been everywhere and I'm like just sitting at home like man, I haven't seen anything. So now it's like I'm trying to get out there and see it, and Oregon was my first, like Portland was.
Speaker 2:Portland is a bad representation or a lot of the Oregonians in the South would be like poor alarm Because like this is like the blue zone of all of Oregon and then everybody else is real rural and red you get into like Lumberjack and ranch territory.
Speaker 1:That's how California is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like California, you know, same, same idea.
Speaker 1:Where we live, it's red, it's it's.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I know Los Baneos, sure. I mean, like I said, like half of our relatives are out in those valleys. You know, in Portuguese, people like I would go out there for the Feshter, go out there for my cousins or whatever. You know, my grandma was actually staying in one of the nursing homes there in her final years, so we'd have to go out to Los Baneos to go see her. So you know, it's like the same thing, same thing everywhere you go. Big cities are always going to have higher concentrations of academics and you know people who have a higher level of education, people who left their small town to go somewhere else. So you know, big city versus small towns always going to be that dynamic. The thing about Portland is it's like such a unique part of Oregon, it's so different from the rest of Oregon that, like it's, if you go outside anywhere you're going to get a whole different experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been to Medford. Oh yeah, I've been to Medford. It was like Los Baneos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same thing.
Speaker 1:Just a little bit more hills, more mountains and stuff. So, yeah, it's I don't know. But this is like, honestly, eric, I was excited to do this because of your background with Muay Thai. This guy over here, he talks high of you and then the guitars, and I just wanted to get a chance to talk to you. I just thank you.
Speaker 2:No, no worries. I mean it's been great talking to you. I wish we could talk more like in a straight path. I know we kind of circle around, but that's because everything I do is always kind of weaving back and forth and tied to something in the past, like why did you try this? Because I failed it before. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the main purpose of this podcast, because it's almost a little bit like my life, where it's like I'm doing all these things right and trying to be successful at the same time and learning from all my failures of I decided to get married and then I was like I'm going to be a FedEx driver, then I'm going to fight, and then I'm going to do this podcast and I'm going to go into.
Speaker 1:Now I'm working in the bar industry and it's like I'm doing all these different things and it's like I want to show people like, hey, it takes failure, hey, it takes you putting yourself out there, because that's what you talked about was like just trying stuff, and that's what I'm doing here. Like I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing here. Like that's these guys. Like I'm just like I'm making mistake after mistake and it's my first trip where I'm going to go podcast and it's like I'm only here because I decided to try and you're only here because you decided to try all these, all this cool shit, and that's what I want to put out with this podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, try, fail, do it again, find something new, do it again. Really, you'll land in something. You know what I mean. If you stay in the same place, you're always going to be in the same place. That's really the reality is, you're not going to have very many moves doing the same thing in the same place. Then, in order to make moves, you got to make moves. So you do it. Put yourself out there and I have so many scars and so many failures and so many errors and wasted time, wasted money. But if you think about where all of that connects, I mean I always find a way to use a lesson from that. So I mean, if you find a lesson to learn and a lesson to use, you'll be fine. You'll just be able to charge it all forward. That cost is already paid. So then you take all the success for it and hopefully you just rebound and do your things.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:And how do I know alloy, alloy or alloy guitars, like you know, like when you bring things together. So the name of alloy guitars, steve, our owner, came up with it when he was originally starting this company to make more guitars like that, their standard guitars to sell as kits for people to make it home. He wanted to think about the way guitars come together. So alloy guitars, a-l-l-o-y. A lot of people think it's because we use like metals or aluminum, like some guitars use. But Isn't that what Terminator's made out of? Yeah, so now alloy is just like a mix of metals.
Speaker 1:Oh, t1000 was made out of yeah, okay, so alloy guitars alloy guitarscom, if you're interested in learning.
Speaker 2:we do a lot of what. We kind of created a product category where you can cut out your own shapes out of pre-routed. So we take all the components and put all the holes in the right place. So all you got to do is cut the outline of a shape you want and learn how to put these things together. So it's been cool. That's how I started. Was I started buying parts and things and putting them together and that's how I found these guys. But yeah, alloy guitars, if you ever want to learn how to build your own guitar if you want to start your own guitar brand, which is the main majority of our work.
Speaker 2:I mean, we didn't get into that, but we do get to work with some really cool brands here, some national level brands, some guitars that I've always seen and thought were cool, that friends of mine have wanted to own, friends with cool gadgets, and things that are new and things that are old. So check us out and if you want to make your own guitar brand or if you just want to build your own guitar, we do it all.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah yeah, thank you for doing this, eric. I appreciate you. Thanks for stopping by. Yeah, yeah, can we just say one word? I confirm, diego Morales was unathletic.
Speaker 2:Diego Morales and originally training horrible athlete, great person.
Speaker 1:This is facts.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is facts. I want to hear that fact, hey. But hey, it should give all of you guys hope. Because let's, I mean seriously, I'm not joking the first time I saw him in that like footwork waddle he did, I was like I don't know if this guy has hope. And he used to like do his hands like a cholo. You know what I mean. You have that cholo fight stance and like here's the thing, if you can work your way through that and become like from not the best athlete to becoming a pretty phenomenal athlete, it just kind of proves my point, man, it's all about Diego could do it.
Speaker 2:It's okay, put your time in, find the right team, be as giving as you want to take. That's the other part is, if you want to, if you want to get something, start by giving something. Okay. So my philosophy is almost everything I've ever done I give burst. Before I ever ask for anything, I start off putting value forward and then I say, hey, now that I've given you that value and you can see that I've given you, now I want my return, or you know what I mean. Or hey, let's work together.
Speaker 2:I don't always go into it thinking that it's going to work out. I'm totally willing to dump all the work I've done in most scenarios If somebody's like, nah, that's not going to happen, you got to give freely. But yeah, at the same time it's like always start off by kind of putting out and giving, and if you do that, then you'll find your team and you'll find your spot and you'll like that's where Diego kind of you know I mean, why would I spend so much time training somebody who's unathletic? I just thought like man, he's here, man, he's here for it. And that was basically that's. That's. All it took was like man, he's here and he's here for it.
Speaker 2:Like, how many people will train in a chair because their foot's broken? You didn't train in a month doing chair boxing. Have you seen videos of me and him chair boxing? No, we put two chairs in front of each other and just fight in the pocket. Fuck, yeah, that was it. Is this okay? Block and move your head and hope you don't get knocked out, because we're going to learn to fight in the pocket because that's all you can do, like. If you're willing to do that, you'll be okay. Train with broken foot. Train with the twisted knees.
Speaker 1:Too bad knees. Yeah, diego's a good person, not a good athlete. You guys are going to, you guys are going to put that.