Ep. 108 - What's Up Across the Pond?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let's take a trip across the pond for this episode of the ATA Nation podcast. Let's get started. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Sir. I will live with perseverance in the spirit of taekwondo, courtesy for fellow students, integrity within myself, and to become a black belt leader. Welcome to the ATA Nation podcast. [00:00:27] Speaker A: Ladies, gentlemen, masters, instructors, parents, students of song arm Taekwondo, welcome back to the ATA Nation Podcast. This is episode 108. My name is senior Master Zach Hayden. I am your host for the ATA Nation podcast. We are thrilled to be back with you again this week. We have so many amazing episodes coming up. This week, we talked to a returning guest, Chief Master Shreiber. And Chief Master Shreiber is across the pond over in Europe, though I don't know how the English feel about Britain being considered part of Europe. I've heard that can be contentious. [00:01:07] Speaker C: I don't know. [00:01:08] Speaker A: Anyways, he is over in England, in the United Kingdom, and is really helping spearhead all of the things going on over in ATA Europe. And today we have him talking about just how things are going there. And then, of course, the european camp and championships that are coming up as well. So let's get right to our interview with chief Mester Schreiber. [00:01:35] Speaker B: Special guest interview. [00:01:38] Speaker C: Shreiber, how are you today, sir? [00:01:40] Speaker D: I'm great, thank you, sir. [00:01:41] Speaker E: How are you? [00:01:43] Speaker C: I'm wonderful. It's nice to talk to somebody across the pond. We've been trying to hit people from all over Ata nation, globally. So we thought we'd hit some of. [00:01:53] Speaker E: The english speaking foreigners. [00:01:58] Speaker D: Well, yeah. Winston Churchill supposedly once said that America and England are two countries divided by a common. [00:02:07] Speaker C: That's. He was a smart man, that Churchill. So you've got a school that you've opened up there not only just helping all of the european ATA nation people, but you decided to open up a school. [00:02:23] Speaker E: How's that going? It's going. [00:02:26] Speaker D: You know, when I moved here, I wasn't intending to open a school. I thought I would just focus on helping grow the ATA in Europe. [00:02:34] Speaker E: But I missed teaching. [00:02:36] Speaker D: I wanted a place for my kids to train. And I also wanted to test whether the approaches that we used to running martial arts schools in America would work just as well in England and in Europe, because I felt like it would be easier for me to help people grow and advise them if I could show that the things I was suggesting actually work out here. So I opened up a club about a little under two years ago, April of 2022. And then by a year ago February, we had moved into a full time school location. So we've been at this commercial space for a year and we have about 135 active members now. So it turns out everything we do in America works just as well here. [00:03:20] Speaker E: It's very well received. [00:03:22] Speaker C: How is it in England for professional schools? I know we talked a few episodes. [00:03:31] Speaker E: Ago to Master Tenger and he was. [00:03:36] Speaker C: Like the first guy really in Portugal to have a professional school. You know, it was not heard of there. How is it there in England? [00:03:47] Speaker D: Yeah, it's similar. The industry here is probably 20 years at least behind the industry in the US. So most of the martial arts programs in the UK are clubs. They're operating out of village halls and rec centers and stuff like that. Very few people are doing martial arts as a full time profession. It's mostly a vocation that people do on the side after they get done with their regular job during the day. They don't really have a sense that it's something that they can do professionally or make a real living doing. And then the customers also are not really habituated to understand the value of martial arts or the kind of commitment that they should be willing to make to it. And so you get a lot of parents who think they only want to bring their kids once a week. They don't want to make commitments beyond month to month. The pricing that they're used to is much lower. The typical martial arts club in England charges like 45 pounds a month, which. [00:04:41] Speaker E: Is like a little over $50 a month. [00:04:45] Speaker D: And so for me, part of what my job has been to educate the market about the fact that martial arts from other after school recreational activities. And it's really a character development. So unlike most martial arts programs, I have a commercial school with a permanent facility. We start our students in a six month foundations program, which is less than I did in California. I did a year long foundations program there. But six months is kind of unheard of here. Leadership and legacy programs. I typically did three years in the US, but they're two year programs for me here and I've met no resistance to that at all, even though it's not something other martial arts programs do. And then the pricing. I've just gotten people here used to understanding that they're going to pay more for my program because it's more valuable. And so instead of 45 pounds a month, people are paying me about 100 pounds a month, which again is lower than you would pay in the US, but a lot higher than people are. [00:05:41] Speaker E: Used to paying here. [00:05:44] Speaker C: Wow. Yeah, it does really sound like 20 years ago or so or more in the US. Is that the case all around for, is it just that in the US, it seems that everybody has their kids in 20 different after school things and they're trying to get them these things for colleges and whatnot. Is that less the case in England, just the busyness of how they have their kids in committing to things than. [00:06:16] Speaker E: Too, to some extent, there's definitely not. [00:06:19] Speaker D: As much focus on filling up people's resumes for college applications. The universities here aren't as focused on extracurricular activities anyway. I remember when my wife, who is English, was applying for scholarships to study in America like 25 years ago when she and I first met and were getting ready to move back to the US. She was just baffled by the application questions she had to answer for american universities that kept asking about extracurriculars and about her leadership skills and stuff. And she was like, she's a novelist now and she was a writer back then and she was just applying for english programs. She was like, I do English. [00:06:58] Speaker E: Why do I have to tell you more than that? [00:07:02] Speaker D: So there's not that much of that. [00:07:03] Speaker E: But the people are really into soccer. [00:07:07] Speaker D: Here, which they call football. And so almost every kid in particular, boys, because it's still kind of a gendered thing. But almost all of them are doing at least one football club and some kids are in two or three, so their schedules are very busy just with practices and games for soccer. And that's the one challenge we got to work around. But there's not like a million extracurriculars like you see in the US. [00:07:33] Speaker C: So instead of battling against every sport and being sport just compared to just football, that you got to really work towards. [00:07:43] Speaker D: Right. [00:07:44] Speaker C: You need to get the ATA Europe to sponsor some football club out there and do a bunch of cross training. [00:07:52] Speaker E: Stuff and you'll be exactly. [00:07:55] Speaker D: Well, and, you know, the other cultural change I've had to kind of teach. [00:07:59] Speaker E: Is that parents are used to dropping. [00:08:01] Speaker D: Their kids off and then going and doing errands while their kids are in class, I have bit by bit gotten parents to start staying and watch class. And once they do that, they start to recognize how this is different from football and it's different from other things. [00:08:14] Speaker C: Well, fascinating. It's so neat to see just the different schools across the country or across the globe start to learn some of those intricacies and what's going on. I think I saw from you recently, or somebody over there that somebody had just moved out there from California or someone. It just be neat to see as Ata continues to grow, just having more of those people come from the US and be able to help out in India or help out in Portugal or wherever the case might be. And there's an opportunity to come out and visit Europe soon. [00:08:57] Speaker E: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:08:58] Speaker D: So, so before we get to that, I'll just finish what you were saying, which is, I call it the Taekwondo Ata diaspora. There's a group of people from other parts of the world who have just ended up in England. And so there's a woman, a student of chief master Wachels from San Diego, who is doing a master's in public health in London right now. There's a woman from Portugal who's doing her law degree in London right now. One of senior master Schaeffer's juniors, Caitlin Calabakos, just moved out here to London. And so they all come out to my school and train with me. In fact, they were out at my school yesterday along with some other instructors for some instructor training. So it's nice to be able to kind of recreate the ATA community wherever. [00:09:38] Speaker E: We happen to be. [00:09:40] Speaker D: But, yeah, coming up soon, we have our european camp at the end of April, and I know we're going to talk more about that, but in conjunction with that, senior master Demetrius Hill, who runs the ATA university program through Lee College in Texas, has organized a trip for Americans to come to Europe as kind of a cultural, educational experience. And it'll be centered around the european camp in Portugal. So people who come on this trip. [00:10:07] Speaker E: Will come to Lisbon, they'll train with. [00:10:08] Speaker D: Us and compete in our tournament, and then after that, they'll do some sightseeing in Portugal and move on to France. [00:10:15] Speaker E: For some additional sightseeing before heading home. [00:10:18] Speaker C: Well, I've mentioned the camp on the podcast before. I've sent people over and I've looked at the itinerary, and it just makes me don't want my kids to get. [00:10:29] Speaker E: Older faster at all. [00:10:31] Speaker C: But when they're a little bit older, after looking at that camp, after talking with some people about the Pan am championships, I'm like, we are going all over the place for ATA when my kids are just a little bit older. So we'll be out there visiting guys, you've got this big tournament and camp coming up. What's kind of involved in that? What's going on? [00:10:59] Speaker E: What's the plan there? [00:11:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a three day event, and it's obviously the largest event in Europe. And it was happening before I moved out here, but it got shut down by the pandemic, and then we've started it up again in 2022. So this will be the third time I've helped host it. And I host it with the other masters in Europe. You mentioned Master Tanger. There's also senior master candidate Miguel Lurado and then Master Amaral, Master Montaro, Master Reyes. And who am I leaving out? I think I got everybody. Master Montaro, I think I mentioned. But we host it together. It's two full days of training camps and then a class A tournament. And so it's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday event. Friday we do an international black belt testing, and then we do training all day for all ages and ranks. Saturdays is the class A tournament and that includes ATA Tiger competition as well. And then Sunday we do legacy certification tests and more training. And we always bring guests from other parts of the world to come and teach with us. We had the privilege of having presiding grandmaster Mk Lee at the last two camps. And we also had chief Master Andrade from Brazil here last year. This year, Chief Master Skyles will be coming along with the ATA University group. And for those who don't know, he's the director of training for the ATA worldwide. So we're excited to have him here. And Master Evan Turner is coming, too. So we're going to be doing a lot of ATA Max training at this camp, which we're excited about because that's. [00:12:35] Speaker E: A curriculum that's really starting to grow in Europe. [00:12:40] Speaker C: Do you guys see an uptick in the know, just some excitement with the. [00:12:46] Speaker E: Different ages and mean, it's behind where. [00:12:50] Speaker D: The US is, and so it's something that we really want to see grow, and that's why we're eager to get. [00:12:53] Speaker E: Master Turner out here. [00:12:56] Speaker C: I think that'll be great. I think there's a lot of opportunities for individuals. What's the overall state size of kind of ATA Europe? We've talked to a couple of people in different spots. We had an Instagram follower. I've got to reach out to him sometime. Mango. [00:13:17] Speaker E: Martial arts, I think, over in Ireland. Yep. Yeah. [00:13:23] Speaker D: So that's the. Actually, they had an interesting trajectory. Mr. Bardwell is English and his wife, Anne Marie Bardwell, is Irish, and they had been in Texas for a few years for her work. And while they were there, they enrolled their kids in an ATA school in Texas, and it's now run by Susan Muggy, and they loved training with her. Once the kids were training, the parents got involved as well. And by the time they were ready to come back to the UK, they were just totally passionate about the ATA and wanted to continue. [00:13:55] Speaker E: So they looked me up. [00:13:56] Speaker D: They came to England and moved to the village where I live and stayed here for two years to train with me to get their black belts, get certified as level three instructors, and to learn how to open and run a school. And now they've just moved back to Ireland, and they're running a club there right now that just opened about a month ago, and they're just about to sign a lease on a commercial space. So they'll have a school in Ireland as well. [00:14:22] Speaker C: How exciting. Oh, man. So what's the growth looking like? That's another kind of been to us back and forth. How much are we seeing? Kind of that versus homegrown. I know since it's such a newer industry in Europe, I know homegrown is probably taking a lot more time. Probably some transfer data and things like that as well. [00:14:45] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:14:47] Speaker D: The country where we've seen the most growth has been Portugal. Because in Portugal, master Jose Pedro Reyes moved from Brazil to Portugal about 30 plus years ago. [00:15:00] Speaker E: And he did a great job of. [00:15:02] Speaker D: Inspiring and motivating people to become instructors. So there's just a longer history in that country of organic growth. And then, of course, as you mentioned, master Tanger now is a very successful multi school operator, so he's personally overseen a lot of growth. Senior master candidate Laredo is another one who's done a really good job motivating and inspiring people. He has three juniors who are becoming masters this year. So there's a good concentration of schools in Portugal. Then in Spain, master Natalia Busca has, I think, seven locations, mostly in the Barcelona area and outside of those two countries. It's just kind of a smattering. And it's often Americans who have ended up in a european country for one reason or another. So we have a couple people who've been running clubs in Italy who came from other places. There's a club in Prague which was being run by Jamie Freeman, who's also an american, but she recently moved back to the US. [00:16:01] Speaker E: And one of her czech students has. [00:16:03] Speaker D: Taken over and is still running the club. There's a club in Sweden which actually, I have an attachment to this one because it was started by master Nils. [00:16:14] Speaker E: Bestito, who started training with me when. [00:16:18] Speaker D: We were both students at Harvard in the mid 1990s. And then he came back to Sweden and opened his club. [00:16:24] Speaker C: He was in my master's class. It was great to meet him. I'd never met him before that. And we got to talk and hear a little bit about his journey going through the mastership process. [00:16:34] Speaker E: Yeah. Cool. [00:16:36] Speaker D: I don't want to be remiss and neglect to mention also Mr. Martin Oms, who has a really successful school in the Netherlands, in Rotterdam. He's got like 300 students. And I went out there in November and got to celebrate his 10th anniversary with him and do some instruction. So he's got a really good crew there. [00:16:55] Speaker C: Wow, it's so neat to hear about those growth there in Europe and just the different things. It sounds like there's still so much opportunity out there in different countries, different places. Is it more challenging legally setting up a school and stuff, or is it same basic things you're going to end. [00:17:19] Speaker E: Up with wherever you are? It's pretty similar. [00:17:22] Speaker D: Yeah, every country is going to be different. In the UK, actually, setting up the british equivalent of an LLC is a lot easier and a lot less expensive, but there's different regulatory requirements in different places in England. The country here is real big on what they call safeguarding. So making sure not only that we do criminal background checks, but that there's training on what the ATA has always done, which we call our youth protection training, but that's done throughout all industries that work with kids in the United Kingdom. And then taxation is different, of course. So the big challenge here is that there's something called. It's called tenant rates or something like that. But basically, if you're a tenant in. [00:18:13] Speaker E: A commercial building in England, you pay. [00:18:15] Speaker D: It could be close to 30% of. [00:18:17] Speaker E: Your rent in taxes. So it's not the landlord that pays, it's the tenant. Yeah, that would make it definitely more. [00:18:28] Speaker C: Challenging to go from club to school. I'm sure no matter what industry you're. [00:18:35] Speaker E: In, you're going to just have to. [00:18:37] Speaker C: Figure out taxes and what's going on that way. I guess if you're opening a school in Europe, a guy who's a lawyer. [00:18:45] Speaker E: Is a decent resource to check. Not that he's necessarily practiced law in every country, whatnot, but have a good resource out. [00:18:57] Speaker D: You know, I'm obviously not qualified lawyer in any of these countries outside of the US, but the basic information is the same. And so when I was negotiating my. [00:19:07] Speaker E: Lease, the lease that the landlord sent. [00:19:09] Speaker D: Me was a real bare bones document and didn't have a lot of provisions I would normally have in a lease in the US. [00:19:15] Speaker E: And so I just met with him. [00:19:16] Speaker D: And said, well, I'd like to do this and this and this and this, and I just imported all these american practices into our lease. [00:19:21] Speaker E: And he said, great. [00:19:22] Speaker D: And so now I've got an american lease here in England. [00:19:25] Speaker E: Sounds good. Awesome. [00:19:28] Speaker C: What would you tell people, as we wrap up Ata nation, across the globe, kind of the state of Europe, what you might want to see over the next couple of years? Just maybe some goals that you guys. [00:19:44] Speaker E: Might have out there in Europe? Yeah, well, a couple of things. [00:19:48] Speaker D: I mean, I'm always eager to see growth throughout Europe. I particularly like to see some growth outside of Portugal so that we can expand our footprint a little bit. We do this european camp in Portugal every year and an instructor camp in Portugal because that's where the bulk of the ATA membership is. But I'd like to shift the center of gravity a little bit so that people in other countries are able to host events as. So I'm trying to get more clubs and schools opened up outside of Portugal, particularly in the UK, because that's where I am. And I want to build a good tournament circuit here for my students, for no one else. But we have a nice community here. I started to mention Scotland. John McCulloch has a school with about 150 students that he's been running for a long time. Just celebrated 10th anniversary of his current location. So trying to build more of a network and then going along with that, it's a big focus for me, is building community, getting all of the instructors together to train on a regular basis, getting all the students together to train on a regular basis. I've always felt that's really important within every region of the ATA in the United States and here in Europe, where people are more separated geographically and tend to get more isolated from each other and have always been very isolated from ATA headquarters and kind of the center of activity for the ATA. I want people to feel connected to each other and to ATA headquarters and to the broader community. So I try to do a lot of training with the ATA community here online and in person. And actually, this weekend, I'm hosting here in England, mastership training for all the masters and master candidates in Europe, which is a first. Normally, as you know, when you're going through mastership or senior mastership or chief mastership, you're required to go to spring nationals, which will be happening at the end of March in Dallas, and do the training with everybody there with Grandmaster and the master's council. And along with that, there's fitness assessments and assessments of your form skills. So the master's council and presiding grandmaster, MK Lee, have authorized me to do that with the european group here in England this year so that they wouldn't have the expense of going to America in March. So it'll be a great opportunity for us to all get together and train and prepare these guys to be masters. [00:22:13] Speaker E: That's awesome. [00:22:14] Speaker C: That's awesome. I might reach out to you after and maybe we get somebody from this year's master's class in Europe onto the podcast to talk a little bit before world championships. You're right. Community is such a thing. And I think it's the thing that sets ATA apart a lot of the times. It's this family feel and seeing with technology and Whatnot. Just the family is global and being able to interact and make sure that we're continuing to build those bonds across the globe, I think is super important. Well, thank you very much for your time today. I won't be out into Europe this time, but it'll happen one of these days. Especially you get it moved over to get it moved over to England. [00:23:07] Speaker E: My wife and I will be great. Well, you're always welcome. [00:23:13] Speaker C: Yeah, we're excited to visit out there one of these days. Get to see ATA family in Europe. Thank you again for your time and all you do for ATA. Say hi to all of the ATA nation over there in Europe for us here in the US. And we'll see some of you guys. [00:23:29] Speaker E: At world championships, I'm sure. Oh, yes, definitely. Good. [00:23:32] Speaker D: Well, thank you, sir. [00:23:33] Speaker E: It's good talking to you. Thank you, sir. [00:23:36] Speaker B: Here's what's going on in AtA Nation. [00:23:44] Speaker A: So, Ata Nation, we wanted to make sure we mention one other awesome event coming up that we've been hitting. Lots of different things going on. Obviously, this european trip that's going on, you can check out online, but the ATA Max gathering, and we're going to have an interview about this in just a short amount of time. A couple of episodes. The ATA Max gathering two is taking place May 3, fourth and fifth in Little Rock, Arkansas. You need to register before March 1 to make sure that you guarantee your t shirt. I just saw a picture of these t shirts online the other day. They look super awesome. Master Swalze, Master Turner, are both going to be there working with a bunch of the other people. There's the Saturday night show where there'll be battles, prizes, team and sync, demo, competition stuff after party, all kinds of awesome stuff. So make sure if you are into wanting to level up your at max training, you definitely want to make an appearance at that max gathering. So check that out atamarstralarts.com and get ready to row. Okay, that's going to wrap it up for us today. Please leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast player. Share this with a friend we want to make sure that we're out there reaching all of ATA Nation across the globe. So make sure you share it, leave a review, subscribe and until next time, get out there and take action. [00:25:23] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to another episode of the ATA Nation Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share with your ATA family. [00:25:39] Speaker A: Man, I just finished another interview with somebody today. It was a great interview, all kinds of cool stuff, but now I got to go through and fix some things because my software crashed while I was recording the interview. Ease stuff kept recording real good and my side went down. I think it was because I'm trying to up my audio a little bit. I had really great audio before using a quality mic and then I kind of got out of the habit of doing it with the high quality mic and went to do that today and. [00:26:14] Speaker E: I kind of crashed it. So we'll see. [00:26:16] Speaker A: Okay, Ata Nation, get out there, take. [00:26:19] Speaker E: Some action, do some work, be awesome later.