In this interview on the Motion Mentors podcast, Mark Toorock, owner of American Parkour (APK), shared valuable insights from his extensive experience in the parkour industry.
One of the most poignant moments was when Mark talked about the emotional difficulty of closing his gym. Despite this tough decision, he emphasized the importance of consistency in building a parkour community. Mark underscored that employees, especially coaches, are the heart of the business, reflecting on how they are the product being sold to customers and the critical role they play in the success of a parkour gym.
Mark's entrepreneurial journey began in London, where he was inspired by David Belle, a pioneer of parkour. This inspiration led him to quit his job and start the first parkour gym, Primal Fitness in D.C. He described the early challenges of introducing parkour before it gained popularity, emphasizing that parkour was not well-known back then. Mark's approach was to align parkour with other fitness initiatives like CrossFit, which helped attract early adopters. He highlighted the importance of demonstrating parkour's benefits to people, which was crucial in the success of his gym.
A significant pivot in APK's history was moving from a gym-centric model to a broader community and educational approach. Mark discussed the evolution of Primal Fitness into APK Academy and the role of the APK forums in building a national parkour community. He explained how they connected parkour enthusiasts across the country and organized national jams. This transition allowed them to focus more on spreading parkour through educational programs rather than just operating a gym.
Mark also shared his thoughts on the importance of mentorship and professional guidance in running a successful parkour business. He acknowledged that while the parkour community is full of self-starters, there's immense value in seeking help and learning from others who have more experience. Mark praised the work done by Motion Mentors and similar organizations in applying sound business principles to parkour, helping gym owners avoid common pitfalls and succeed more quickly.
Finally, Mark talked about APK's current focus on integrating parkour into school curriculums. By conducting free events and consistently engaging with schools, APK managed to introduce parkour to thousands of students in D.C. Mark stressed that persistence and consistency were key to these efforts, ultimately leading to parkour being included in the physical education programs of many schools. This shift not only helped spread parkour but also aligned perfectly with APK's mission of making parkour accessible to as many people as possible, thereby creating better citizens through the sport.
Hotelling's Modle of Spatial Competition
During the interview, Mark references a video describing why businesses often open right next to each other. Check it out below.
Mark also later emailed in after the interview to add this
"Here's a LinkedIn article I found that highlights some of the points as to why competition is important for a healthy business."
Mark also mentioned he loved the site Managertools.com for all things team leadership and manager-y.
Transcripts
So Mark, welcome to the call.
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Thanks for joining us.
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Thanks for having me.
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Absolutely.
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And also we have Christopher Hollingsworth on here.
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Hey Chris.
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Hi Jimmy.
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Hey Mark and also everybody listening.
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Super excited to be a part of this call.
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They were the first big company that I ever discovered.
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Their APK forums back in the day were really instrumental to helping me just get involved in
parkour and fall in love with it.
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So I have so many questions that we could jump into, of course, and my intention with this interview
is just to take Mark's 20 years plus, because I know you were up to a lot before you got into parkour,
20 years plus experience to see what we can bring
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So Mark, give us an idea of the beginning of your parkour entrepreneurial journey.
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How did you get started, where were you, and what was the journey from like zero to, Let's say
your first 10 ,000 in revenue.
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Whatever you were up to at that time.
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I think I've hit 10 ,000 by now I'd have to go back and count so I was living in London I was a technology
manager for an investment bank and I saw one of the early David Bell videos, and I was just blown
away I was like everything at
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railing like how who knows how many stories up and I was like that's that's real that's that guy
just did that and what's his what's his confidence what's his mindset that he can do that because
he doesn't seem to be suicidal and he doesn't just seem to be an
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this is this is really cool it's something that I want to do and sure enough within two years I
quit my job and I thought maybe I'd go and be a personal trainer and one of the things David Bell
had said is that he would like to start a
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parkour.
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We're talking about before James Bond Casino Royale You know a couple of people saw jump London
a couple of people saw the Ripley's believe it or not episode But really people people didn't
know they needed parkour Back then so it was it was really slow going and and my
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Like it might be several years in of running the gym and things like that.
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And this comes across weird to a lot of people, but I'm money agnostic.
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I really, the money isn't the thing that I care about at all.
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So frankly, I've probably put more into APK than I've taken out of it at this point.
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So it's made some good revenue.
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It's had years over 500 ,000, but that money has gone mostly to coaches, employees, growth,
we just bought a forklift.
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So, you know, I'd rather have a forklift than a paycheck because now with a forklift, I can make
and sell more equipment and distribute more stuff.
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So, I hope that answered the question.
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Yeah, so in the beginning, you started your first parkour gym, was that Primal Fitness in D.C.?
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That was Primal Fitness in D.C., exactly.
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And at least the version I saw, it was like a CrossFit gym on the bottom half, originally, I think,
and then a parkour space above.
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Tell us a little bit about what that model was like, what worked, what didn't work, and yeah,
just your experience.
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So, it started out, it actually started in another building before that, where they were both
in, I want to say it was maybe 1 ,400 square feet.
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And so, I was making the CrossFit equipment, and I made what I think might be the first vault box.
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I was making the CrossFit equipment, I was making plyo boxes, and I was like, what if I made one
of these plyo boxes tall enough that we could vault over it?
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And so, I just did.
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And so we had like that and just like very sparse parkour equipment.
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But we had the training.
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We had the idea.
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And I think that being aligned with CrossFit in the early days was a big help because it helped
Jesse Woody, who started the gym, was a very, very early adopter of CrossFit.
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I was an early adopter.
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So I think there's over 15 ,000 now.
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So we were pretty early days there.
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And having that tie to this black box fitness initiative and that view of how parkour could help
people's lives I think was a big part of being able to start a gym that was successful.
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I think that one of the key ingredients in having a successful parkour gym is helping people
realize what it's doing for them, why they need it.
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A lot of people don't even know why they need certain types of training, and that's why they go
to a coach, they go to an expert.
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So we started that, and I think that the model, our dream was that people would do CrossFit and
parkour, and there were, in 20 years, there were six people who did that and two of us were coaches.
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So, I think that one of the issues was people want to be good at something kind of right away, right?
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We all like that instant gratification.
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And so, Parkour and CrossFit both take time to get good at and And most people didn't want to take
the time to advance both at a medium pace.
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They wanted to increase their lifts or they wanted to get better at parkour fast.
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And so if I had my way, people would work first on their sleep habits, they would work on their
mental health, then they would work on what they're eating, and then they would do physical
exercise.
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And here's the key to that.
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I call it RTFM, which is rest, think, fuel, move.
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If you're too tired to think, then you won't take care of yourself, and you won't be motivated
to eat well, and you won't have the energy to move well.
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So if you mix up that order, it really doesn't work.
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You can try hard.
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You can't out-train a bad diet.
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originally wanted people to do both parkour and CrossFit and it turned out that that was kind
of too big of an ask and people went one way or the other and so we Kept them both going for 17 years
or something like that Yeah, so you had an idea
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I think that's a pretty good holistic way to look at it, especially for a beginner, especially
for an adult beginner trying to get back into fitness and trying to figure out their own body
and then how to have fun with movement.
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So definitely a respectable way to approach that.
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I know that after at least some amount of time, the CrossFit downstairs started being deprioritized
and I think it started to slowly become like the you had like a two-tier gym which was in a an old
firehouse which I thought was super cool when I was there.
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The bottom story which was CrossFit slowly evolved into a parkour space as well.
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What was that transition like?
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Like why did you pivot more into parkour?
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And then my next question is like when did like the clothing and the outreach and the forums like
when did you go from just a box at one location to attempting to be at least the digital communal
hub for parkour in America, which is how I found you guys.
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I think we were actually that hub first.
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And so we actually, when we started Primal Fitness, to us, that was parkour and fitness together.
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And I think it was, I want to say, five years in, we changed the name to APK Academy because we had
this huge community for American Parkour.
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We had something like 125 ,000 followers on Facebook somehow, but they didn't see Primal Fitness
as theirs.
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They didn't connect to it.
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And we had those, the APK forums, which you mentioned earlier, that already existed.
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That was pretty solid from 2004 on and was really kind of probably in its heyday in the 2009 to
2011, I think in 2011, I went to like 21 jams across the country.
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So jams were huge, they were everywhere.
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We had all these national jams and El Salvador, like they were just all over the place.
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And so I think for us, it was a matter of trying to tie those two communities together.
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And we always wanted the gym to be that community's home.
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gas stations are always on the same corner and And the fact is, if you had another parkour gym
right next to yours, you would both do more business than you do right now.
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And I know that sounds counterintuitive and it sounds like competition, but the fact is, the
more people that are advertising parkour as a viable fitness, exercise, fun, recreation,
activity, whatever those positive benefits are, The more people that are talking about that
and doing it and offering it the rising
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the CrossFit we had a hundred and fifty members and parkour was down to 40 members.
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And then there were times that parkour shot up to and and it wasn't we weren't good at marketing.
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We didn't have.
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You know, I'll take a moment, Jimmy to just give a shout out to the work that you've done.
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You know, with with Chris and that that whole thing.
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You've done incredible work towards actually, I'm gonna use the word scientific, but applying
a business mind and sound principles to marketing, to parkour business.
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We weren't doing that.
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We weren't doing any of that.
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We just, we were having fun.
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We knew we had a great thing, but we didn't know anything about all those other things and we didn't
know how to do it.
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And that's why I'm so happy that you're here helping the community do this.
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Both of you are here helping the community to do this, because there really are a lot of tools
that just work, and I think that parkour people, ADHD people, just want to do everything themselves.
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We're self-starters, and that is a double-edged sword, because there are great tools and great
knowledge out there, and a lot of times, we'd be so much better off if we just paid the person that
already knew what they were doing to come and teach us that thing.
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the communication and into the the idea of parkour There's more energy.
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There's more people more more conversation It just raises the level of legitimacy to someone
who maybe they only saw parkour from the office, God forbid.
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So when they see actually there's multiple people talking about the benefits of parkour and
that parkour really is a sport that you can participate in, and there's multiple on the same
corner, like the gas station analogy, it really does invite people in.
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So Mark, you're familiar with the business 2Brain.
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They help CrossFit gym owners and other fitness gym owners.
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like a really smart like sophisticated person and then it had and then it had like a an enlightened
like big brain person and it at the the dumb person I'm using air quotes with the dumb person it
basically said like too dumb, can't run business, need help.
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And then the caption was like, hired mentor.
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Then the medium one was like, I can do this on my own.
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And then caption was, doesn't hire mentor, struggles for 20 years.
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And then the big enlightened one with the big brain energy was like, I'm enlightened.
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I need help, gets mentor, gets success fast.
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So it's interesting that the people who are just like, I don't get it, I need help, and the people
who are like, I do understand that I do need help, Are we kind of both the same answer and it's that
valley in between where you're like you know I
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I'm gonna find all the mistakes on my own I'm gonna figure it all out from the ground up kind of
tends to be the slowest most painful solution Which I ran into That's so many choose.
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I think about this I do a lot of trail running and where I am is particularly rocky so the Appalachians
are the oldest mountain range in the country.
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So you're literally running on the top of the mountains.
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It's like, I call it stegosaurus back.
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Like the stones are sticking straight out of the ground.
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And I think about this all the time because that is the path that I've chosen my entire life is
the rockiest, most ankle-twisting, brutal terrain.
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And it's like, why?
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Why didn't I run down the paved street, right?
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There's challenge to it, but it really depends Are you are you trying to strengthen your ankles
or are you trying to get somewhere if you're trying to get somewhere?
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Take the paved road put the keys in the car and go you know we have vehicles to get there So if you're
trying to get somewhere use the tools that will get you there in the fastest safest surest method,
I think, would be my message for people.
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And again, I am all for banging your head on the wall.
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I'm all for grabbing a bunch of two by fours and glue and sticks and trying to make something.
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I love that stuff.
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But you probably didn't make your own car.
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I mean, maybe you did, I did at one point.
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I mean, not make my own, but rebuilt the engine and all that stuff.
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You know, why?
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Like, just go buy a car, right?
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It depends on, and again, And if you're doing it because building that car is fun, that's great.
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If you're trying to get to the grocery store, you probably don't have 10 years to build a car to
go buy your groceries.
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You'll starve to death.
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Yeah.
00:18:50 1
And, you know, I think a lot of people can relate to what you've shared in so many ways.
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One of which being, you know, so many gym owners and entrepreneurs that I come across in this
industry start in really similar ways that you did where you were so inspired by parkour and
it gave you something that you wanted to share with everybody else and that was your
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And that is common, you know, and what I come across with that is a lot of people have an aversion
to making money because they don't want to shortchange their customers.
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They don't want to ever have money be a bar of entry for movement.
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in the community and charging enough money to pay your coaches a livable wage and and hire the
right structures that you need, like a sales team, having a head coach in place, having a general
manager in place, having paid trainings where people are learning how to actually deliver
that
00:20:47 1
And luckily, Jimmy and I have been on that route, and we can say, hey, here's all the pitfalls
and the hurdles and how to fast track your business to that here's the key components that are
missing that if you just plug this is this in it's available but I
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butterfly twist in 30 minutes I can give them all the components that they'll need to master
that.
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I still really enjoyed that process and that's why we've also made our resources completely
available on our blog.
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So for if you're an entrepreneur or you're a business owner listening to this and you just need
like a tweak in the right direction, chances are Jimmy or myself have created a topic that will
help you out in the specific instance that you're dealing with and that's also why
00:22:02 1
I think everything that you're saying is is very relatable for everybody listening Yeah, cool.
00:22:08 1
Yeah, I just want to add to that.
00:22:10 1
I think you're spot-on.
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I think that One of the things that's tough to realize as the person who doesn't want to have the
money be first up front, right?
00:22:21 1
We, we swore, Jesse and I swore we would never make people sign a contract.
00:22:27 1
We changed that, but I mean, we, we like cut our hands and spit and shook on it and like mud wrestled
each other, swearing as brothers in arms that we will never make someone sign a contract to come
to our gym.
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And the fact is you have to, you have to.
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You can't deliver your services.
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One of the things that, I may someday write a book, and if I do, it's gonna be called Selfish, Self-ish.
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And the first chapter is gonna be, please put your oxygen mask on first, right?
00:23:12 1
Because how many gym owners get to a point where they're struggling, they're so stressed out,
strung out, frankly depressed, that they can't help anybody.
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You can't help someone if you're not breathing, if you're not eating, if you're not sleeping,
you're not bringing that energy and love and joy of movement to other people.
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They're just seeing you be stressed out.
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And they're like, why are you stressed out?
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And you're like, oh, well, my gym doesn't have any money.
00:23:41 1
They're like, well, then charge people more than seven dollars a month you know like you gym
owners I'm talking to you you deserve it you deserve it you are providing something that is valuable
and you are valuable and you deserve to do that from a position of relative comfort
00:24:02 1
yeah and being able to have comfort prevents you from having burnout prevents you from closing
your gym as soon as the first like catastrophic thing comes your way.
00:24:12 1
So yeah, I think you're spot-on with that, Mark.
00:24:15 1
Any gym owners, if you know you're already suffering in the price department, reach out to us.
00:24:19 1
We have a price increase strategy and letter template and even a way to make it feel good and rewarding
to your members.
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It gets them rallied behind the idea that this price increase is tied to a value increase, an
experience increase, and we tie it to your mission, too.
00:24:37 1
You know, if Freedom Motion and Motion Mentors mission is to teach a million people parkour.
00:24:41 1
If we're broke and dead in a ditch and out of business, we can't do that with anybody.
00:24:46 1
So I love that you said that, Mark.
00:24:48 1
So at this point you have you have Primal, you've turned it into the APK Academy, you already
have vibrant forums, and you're connecting, you know, hundreds of thousands of people in the
States to parkour.
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And right around 2007 I was one of them, and I love those forums.
00:25:05 1
You know, so fun.
00:25:07 1
So moving past maybe 2012, 2011, what were some of the pivots APK made along the way?
00:25:13 1
What were some things you tried, some things that were successful, and maybe some that weren't?
00:25:18 1
And give us the stepping stones on how you ended up where you are today.
00:25:22 1
One of the things that I think that we wanted, or I wanted, or I'm not even sure who wanted it, maybe
I didn't want it was a parkour clothing line and so much energy went into this and then I realized
one time as I was helping a Child in
00:25:56 1
I I don't want to be a shoe salesman.
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That's not what I want to be as a shoe salesman.
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I want to be a parkour gym owner.
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And so, you know, I spent so much time, energy, and effort on trying to make clothes that people
liked, which is impossible.
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We, fun quick anecdote, we tried 12 different tank tops.
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for women we put such an inordinate a disproportionate amount into trying to get a product that
the women would like.
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And it was just so hard.
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They already had, they loved their Lululemon, their whatever else.
00:27:05 1
They already had something they liked.
00:27:07 1
They had a shape, a size that fit them well, that they already liked.
00:27:12 1
And us trying to figure that out, like Nike has billions and billions of dollars and they change
stuff all the time.
00:27:29 1
No So, you know that that was definitely one That's one place I wish we spent a lot less energy
if I had just outsourced shirts if I had two shirts available One with somebody jumping like
this and one with the APK logo.
00:27:45 1
That would have been enough Um, I do love, love that we were given the opportunity first by K-Swiss
to help have input on literally the first shoes made specifically for parkour.
00:27:58 1
Do you remember the old K-Swiss bowling shoes?
00:28:02 1
Um, I love the Ariakes.
00:28:03 1
I wore the purple, green, and white Ariakes to my prom.
00:28:07 1
Yes.
00:28:07 1
Those were, those are so cool and they were weird.
00:28:11 1
They looked like shoes, not sneakers.
00:28:14 1
But we were so grateful to be part of that.
00:28:17 1
I'm so grateful.
00:28:18 1
I'm still Part of Olo.
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I'm on the advisory board.
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I love Olo I love chip and what he's doing and they now have some really incredible sneakers for
parkour They're they're using a new Michelin compound on the sole that is just phenomenal and
that has taken seven iterations from an industry leader making shoes.
00:28:44 1
So, you know, I think that again, I'm grateful to be part of that, but it's not what I want to do.
00:28:51 1
And I think that a lot of the parkour community's resource, frankly, has been spent on that.
00:28:58 1
I look at all the time that Tempest spent and they had some awesome stuff.
00:29:04 1
Where did it fit in?
00:29:05 1
I don't know.
00:29:12 1
I just wish I stopped it sooner for APK and focused on other things, focusing on equipment sales
and home training programs and things like that, that are the things that I and we are good at.
00:29:48 1
APK what it is.
00:29:50 1
So forgive me when I say I, I mean we, and it really was all of us who did anything good that came
out of APK.
00:30:01 1
Yeah, it definitely takes a village to raise a business.
00:30:05 1
That's for sure true.
00:30:07 1
Travis, if you're listening to this, shout out to you.
00:30:10 1
How's it going?
00:30:10 1
Haven't seen you in a little while.
00:30:12 1
Okay, so you're saying that for you and for APK's mission, actually let's hold it right there
for a moment.
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What is in, do you have like a one-liner for what APK's mission is?
00:30:25 1
I do.
00:30:26 1
I probably don't.
00:30:26 1
I don't have it.
00:30:27 1
I should have memorized it before this call.
00:30:30 1
We have a written mission statement, vision statement that I revisit all the time.
00:30:37 1
But effectively, I'm going to go on a slight tangent and talk about why Parkour is important
to me?
00:30:45 1
To me, I can boil it down to one thing that is what's important to me about people learning parkour
and training parkour.
00:30:56 1
And that is, once you have fallen down and picked yourself up, you'll never look at another person
on the ground without offering your hand to pick them up.
00:31:07 1
To me, that is the core of parkour training, is we fall, we fail all All the time, we fail over and
over and over and over, and Parkour is just learning to pick ourselves up.
00:31:22 1
And when we do that, we become better citizens.
00:31:25 1
We become more likely to help the people around us.
00:31:29 1
And to me, that's the true value of Parkour training.
00:31:33 1
So, it's physical, it's mental, I could list a thousand benefits of Parkour training, but to
me, just making better citizens is really the core of it.
00:31:45 1
And that's APK's mission is to get the benefits of parkour training out to as many people as possible.
00:31:54 1
Excellent, that's a great way to put it.
00:31:56 1
It's super in line with the value that I see with parkour and the thing that a lot of the parents
at the gyms that I own, the reason why they even keep their kids in it at all is because of how parkour
shapes them to be humans on the
00:32:09 1
So a great job boiling that down for sure and the reason why I ask what the mission is is because
it sounds like T-shirts didn't get you towards that goal.
00:32:20 1
You know, it took a lot of time took a lot of money Took a lot of your attention And you at some point
and I think now you guys either sell very little or not at all clothing on your website So the point
there is like if you know
00:32:40 1
This tentacle, me doing clothing, is taking up too many resources, and it's time to cut it.
00:32:46 1
And my experience of you in the last few years is that the direction you're moving in now, which
is very in line, I'll let you explain what you're doing now, very in line with what you just said
your mission is, it seems like you've been able to put all
00:33:13 1
right for your business And now you're moving in the direction you are so glad to hear that you
made those pivots If there's anything else you like cut off along the way to focus yourself on
what you're doing now like feel free to share them here And then what
00:33:32 1
This tentacle to cut off, I might even cry when I say this, was closing the gym.
00:33:37 1
I loved that place so much, and I loved those people so much, and that community, that was a close
community.
00:33:46 1
Those were neighbors, those were friends, those were family that, you know, different.
00:33:54 1
I love the online community, I love the parkour community at large, but people that you could
reach out and touch every day and and kids that came to our classes, we had kids that came four
times a week.
00:34:07 1
So, you know, we have their parents that I still go to their house for dinner and sleepovers and
just, you know, they're still friends of mine.
00:34:16 1
And one of my best friends from the gym comes and lives in my house every once in a while.
00:34:21 1
So, you know, those were just relationships that that were, you know, so so special to me and
closing that was extremely difficult.
00:34:34 1
I would never be able to do the things that we're doing now and still have the gym and so that was
that was a tough tough tough decision one of the toughest decisions I ever made but it was the
right decision.
00:34:53 1
So how did you know to make that decision what happened so I if I have a superpower it's having
an extremely hard head I am stubborn and stupid and I will do the same thing wrong over and over
and over and over and over and over and over and
00:35:35 1
ideal that I had in my head, and I think that's very hard.
00:35:39 1
I think it's hard for me, and I think it's hard for a lot of people.
00:35:44 1
One of the things that I talk about a lot is getting what you want is actually very easy.
00:35:52 1
Knowing what you want is incredibly hard.
00:35:56 1
I don't think most people know what they want.
00:35:58 1
If I say, what do you want?
00:35:59 1
Oh, well, I want this and that and that and that.
00:36:02 1
But do you really?
00:36:03 1
I feel like, and maybe this is just my own projection, but I feel like we all have these ideals
and And not all of them really belong to us.
00:36:14 1
Not all of them fit our own personal core missions, but they are ideals.
00:36:20 1
They're things that we have, the way that we dress, the music that we listen to.
00:36:25 1
All of these choices that we've made are skins that we've kind of piled on.
00:36:31 1
And I don't think we, excuse me, I don't think a lot of us, or at least myself, do a good enough job
of shedding those skins once we've outgrown them.
00:36:42 1
So for me, I've outgrown them.
00:36:45 1
It's hard to.
00:36:46 1
It's hard to shed those skins, because oftentimes, we can't even tell that we're wearing them.
00:36:53 1
We're just acting them out as if it is us.
00:36:56 1
And I've come across this already in the few years that Jimmy and I have been in business together,
working one-on-one with people, having them very closely examine what it is they say that they
want and then how correlate their actions are with that you know are you actually taking
00:37:38 1
point, to discovering those things about yourself.
00:37:42 1
But it really helps to have people that have been in the same situations that you have that may
be able to point out those tendencies.
00:37:51 1
One really big tendency that I've noticed about gym owners is a self-sacrificial tendency,
the tendency to kind of put themselves last, very, very last.
00:38:12 1
There's often an experience of Like people don't care as much as I do You know and and that's a
function of the disproportionate amount of work And there's no structure to support them so
as you're sharing your experience I can just really relate to what I've already seen myself
00:38:32 1
It's difficult to examine yourself and say wow you know What what do I want if I really want to
share parkour with as many people as possible that's going to require That I let go of this thing
that I love so dearly and you know as you were sharing
00:38:52 1
I've seen the impact that having a gym in a community just Disappearing closing down can have
you know Um, so yeah, I just, I can relate, you know, I can empathize too.
00:39:08 1
Yeah.
00:39:14 1
Two things really stand out to me.
00:39:16 1
One, you don't even know you're wearing that skin.
00:39:19 1
And I think that that's, that's where having a mentor can be so critical is, is I think that we
don't, we don't know that our own habits are habits.
00:39:32 1
They're just us.
00:39:33 1
We just do it.
00:39:34 1
Right.
00:39:38 1
And it does take courage.
00:39:39 1
That's the other thing that you said it really stood out to me is the amount of courage required
to face yourself is is so understated in our world in our society.
00:39:52 1
We talked about self help and improvement and all these things.
00:39:57 1
We don't talk about that.
00:39:58 1
It's effing scary.
00:40:00 1
It's dumb, right?
00:40:02 1
It's terrifying to actually look at yourself in the mirror and say, Am I doing the things that
I want to do for me?
00:40:13 1
Am I putting myself again, selfish, putting myself first enough that I will be able to continue
to provide the things I'm providing for other people.
00:40:24 1
And you just Like I just said, they're paying themselves last, they're doing more work than
anybody else, they obviously care more than anybody else because it is literally their baby,
right?
00:40:34 1
So there's never gonna be anyone that cares as much as you do about your own business.
00:40:39 1
And there's my favorite kind of joke about entrepreneurs is they're the people who are willing
to work 80 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours a week.
00:40:50 1
Right?
00:40:50 1
So.
00:41:14 1
a very scary like just situation to navigate as a business owner and So watching them navigate
that successfully watch their watch them send that email out and then the parents are all like
it's about darn time You started charging more.
00:41:30 1
We've been we've been waiting to support you.
00:41:33 1
We've been waiting for you to charge more I'm gonna buy a year-long package You know like that's
actually stuff that happens and then the the business owners get to see oh my gosh Like there's
actually a huge community that wants to contribute to me I feel so much like
00:41:56 1
It's super scary It's way more comfortable to you know work with your 50 to 85 students you know
and your three coaches that you knew and you grew up with and It's scary to scale and say you know
what I actually do want to make a difference on the
00:42:32 1
have to learn about business You know your passion isn't really gonna float the ship at the end
of the day.
00:42:38 1
You have to really develop a new learning and education and I hear I hear you did that like so stubbornly
one step at a time stumbling upon every roadblock but at the same time learning you know what
to do and what not to do which is insanely valuable insanely
00:43:08 1
And that is nothing changes if nothing changes.
00:43:12 1
Change is hard.
00:43:14 1
But if you don't change things, they're going to stay the same.
00:43:18 1
And you can, and I see this with so many, especially small business owners, parkour gym owners.
00:43:27 1
The difference between you working 80 hours a week and you working 100 hours a week, is you just
made yourself 20 hours more stressed out.
00:43:38 1
You didn't change anything.
00:43:40 1
You didn't reach more people.
00:43:41 1
You didn't help more people.
00:43:42 1
You didn't give them a better product.
00:43:44 1
In fact, you might have given them a worse version of yourself because you're just that much
more stressed out where if you prioritized, and one of my favorite concepts is The One Thing.
00:43:59 1
There's a great book called The One Thing.
00:44:01 1
And it's if you could do the one thing that either That has the most impact effectively if you
do the one thing that has the most impact every single day Then you will be successful, and it's
hard to find that one thing I actually have a calendar and I
00:44:33 1
actually split it now Because there are still two the most important thing I have to do and the
most important thing I want to do Because there will still be things that you have to do there
Those things are there and we can't deny that and we can't pretend
00:44:52 1
So there are still things that drive me but I've also decided that every day I'm going to drive
something and And so I have a red stamp and a blue stamp for the frog that drives me.
00:45:07 1
Did I do the most important thing?
00:45:08 1
Like if I have to pay a tax bill today, I have to do that, right?
00:45:13 1
That's still a blue stamp.
00:45:14 1
It's still a frog.
00:45:15 1
It's still the most important thing.
00:45:17 1
Did it move my business forward?
00:45:18 1
No, but it didn't get my business shut down either.
00:45:22 1
But did I also do that marketing thing?
00:45:25 1
Did I do that creative thing?
00:45:28 1
Did I do that new offering?
00:45:36 1
So I think that's critical to keep both of those in mind.
00:45:42 1
Yeah, you can hear it too.
00:45:43 1
You can hear how important it is as a value to you to make sure that the time that you are investing
in something is actually making a difference and is actually impacting what you want it to impact.
00:46:07 1
It was a little grid, a little four-way grid, and it was just a simple way to determine what you
were investing your time in.
00:46:14 1
Is what you're investing your time in going to take a long time and have a small impact?
00:46:20 1
Is it going to take a long time and have a big impact?
00:46:23 1
Or is it going to take a small amount of time and have a small impact?
00:46:32 1
There is where you want to have most of your actions You know and so taking some time really I can
hear this is like a super important skill You've developed taking time to examine Wow, what
am I investing my time in and how much of it is?
00:46:51 1
actually having an impact on what's important to me and And that's something that we really
look at together, Jimmy and I, what are you putting your time in?
00:47:01 1
Can we take that time away?
00:47:03 1
Can we recapture some of that time?
00:47:06 1
And can we reinvest it into different areas of the business that are actually gonna move the
needle where you want it?
00:47:13 1
And maybe that needle is more money.
00:47:16 1
Maybe that needle is you're miserable and depressed from running the gym and doing everything.
00:47:41 1
how you said most of the time people don't know what they want and it's not that they don't know
what to do I will come across that as well people know exactly what to do to move needles but they're
just not doing it for one reason or another and
00:48:13 1
know or maybe it's a really tough conversation that you have to have with an employee that you
know you have to have but you're conflict avoidant so you're just not taking that action because
you want to be a good guy you know you don't want to you don't want
00:48:43 1
guys make a lot of those resources is available and I and I think that you are really providing
valuable stuff that people should be checking out for sure.
00:48:54 1
Thanks Mark yeah he was in the front row I remember that yeah and on Chris's note of you know what
to do you're just not doing it.
00:49:05 1
A lot of times we find gym owners who and you know not just parkour gym owners I'm talking about
parkour business owners who are trying to affect the whole industry, they know the thing they
have to do, and they also do it, and then they turn around and ask,
00:49:19 1
you know, mentor, I did it, it doesn't work.
00:49:22 1
But when we examine that, and it's like, you posted on Facebook once in the last month, so you
think you did social media marketing, when in reality, our minimum is twice a day.
00:49:33 1
You know, so we're whatever, 15, 30Xing what you're doing, or you sent one email last month,
when really like we're sending multiple a week.
00:49:44 1
So a lot of times it's yes, that is what to do, but the quantity or the quality, you need to do more
of it.
00:49:50 1
After you're doing more of it, then you need to do more better of it.
00:49:55 1
So a lot of times there's that nuance to it.
00:49:58 1
And having a perspective to compare it to, like what quantity and what quality equals actually
achieving the result you want, that's when having a community of business owners who's been
down the path before really helps give you perspective and sometimes really just slaps you
on the ass because you're
00:50:25 1
I just want to add one thing to that it's just a way that that helps me to achieve things is actions
don't achieve things habits achieve things right because again you can do one thing that's
brilliant that's perfect it's like throwing a pebble into a lake it's it might
00:51:10 1
people ask me over the years, how do I start a parkour community?
00:51:14 1
And the one thing I say is consistency.
00:51:18 1
Go train at the same place every Saturday at 9 a.m.
00:51:23 1
and tell people you're gonna be there.
00:51:25 1
And for the first five weeks, nobody's gonna show up.
00:51:29 1
And week six, someone's gonna be like, oh man, I've been watching this and I've been wanting
to do it and I just haven't been able to.
00:51:50 1
six weeks, and so you know it took time It took time and time and time again, and you just have to
keep getting that message out there even they say in In this thing called manager tools which
is one of my favorite things They say that in a good
00:52:29 1
sending out two emails a month is marketing.
00:52:37 1
That's one of my favorite sayings on exactly that idea.
00:52:41 1
Manager tools, I also like manager tools.
00:52:44 1
I'll link that in the show notes.
00:52:45 1
And I first discovered it from you mentioning it, Mark, in some Facebook group decades ago,
or ages ago, I don't know.
00:52:53 1
Okay, so let's look at what APK is doing now.
00:52:57 1
Because I know what you're doing now is you're in schools, you're providing equipment, you're
educating teachers, and as I said a little while ago that's like so is your mission of connecting
the individual to that life-changing process of parkour and because you're in schools you
you are at the
00:53:30 1
So one of the most common questions I get is how do you get into schools and the answer is consistency.
00:53:40 1
We did probably 30 events for free at local schools and one parent two years later told the head
of health and physical education.
00:53:57 1
What a great time their kid had at a free pop up event that we did one morning on a walk to school
day.
00:54:05 1
And that one tip is what got parkour into 30 DC public schools.
00:54:12 1
Every seventh grader in DC public school does parkour over 35 ,000 kids have been through the
program now.
00:54:20 1
So and that was It's literally one parent, but it was one parent out of 30 events that we did.
00:54:29 1
So there are probably, I don't know, 30 times 250 parents that saw it, but you need that one that
says, wow, this was great.
00:54:39 1
That person has the spark.
00:54:40 1
Sometimes it's a single person in the PTA who just is willing to be the champion of the idea and
carry it forward.
00:54:59 1
So I didn't go in saying, I wanna sell you parkour.
00:55:04 1
We went in just showing them what parkour was, providing them, literally providing them with
parkour for free.
00:55:10 1
And it took time and time and time and time again until they said, wow, this really is a great thing
that the kids enjoy and has these benefits.
00:55:40 1
group of people We were able to meet each of them in a way that was suitable for each of them as an
individual while doing one coherent class so we didn't split them up in six and say okay you get
vanilla ice cream and you get strawberry and you
00:56:13 1
able to meet people through games, activities, drills, and coaching, and so they saw that and
were very impressed with it and decided to put it into the schools.
00:56:25 1
And so now we, and this is again, Travis Graves worked a lot on the curriculum with a couple of
school teachers.
00:56:34 1
We now teach the DC Phys Ed teachers every year on their professional development day.
00:56:52 1
I think a lot of people especially again parkour people are very do-it-yourself and and hands-on
and That's that's again a double-edged sword Because one person can only coach so many people
and again and there's such a huge burnout rate and all those other things.
00:57:12 1
But if you coach coaches, you can reach a lot more people.
00:57:17 1
And I think that people just need to realize again, when the goal is introducing thousands,
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to parkour, that's not gonna be me showing
someone how to do anything, right?
00:57:34 1
It's gonna be us as an organization creating materials, creating systems processes that work
repeatedly safely time and time again no matter the audience and we can teach them how to do that
repeatedly in a way that makes it fun engaging for their students and that's what I think has
00:58:16 1
90, 120 thousand and how many of those kids will fall in love with parkour and will become coaches
on their own and will start their own like group.
00:58:27 1
So your unseen impact is gonna propagate and and that's really cool to have that position.
00:58:33 1
So knowing that what you're up to, Mark, is directly helping our mission of a million people
parkour, like you're definitely an ally.
00:58:42 1
Yeah, congratulations to you, man.
00:58:44 1
Very cool to hear.
00:58:45 1
Thank you.
00:58:46 1
One other big thing just to jump in as well and just to add on is I think it's so cool that parkour
is an educator's education tool.
00:58:58 1
Like, we literally are educating educators on, a big one is like falling safely, you know, but
Parkour covers so much, like physical strength, mental strength, emotional development,
social development, dealing with competitive situations and the high emotions that come
along with that, remaining humble in the face of victory, and,
00:59:21 1
you know, like, just dealing with defeat well and being like a good loser when you lose a game.
00:59:28 1
All that stuff can be found in a parkour class and teaching teachers how to give them access to
that is huge.
00:59:38 1
There's so many studies that show the type of neurological connections that child's brains
make when they're playing and learning at the same time.
01:00:07 1
what I mean?
01:00:09 1
So, yeah.
01:00:11 1
Yeah, I agree, and we tie it in, and it's great.
01:00:39 1
of American parkour because they're now helping us develop our materials and And so, to the
point, this year at the national conference, SHAPE is the Society for Health and Physical Education.
01:00:53 1
At this year's SHAPE conference, there were two presentations, actually three presentations
on parkour.
01:00:59 1
So, we talked about more gas stations.
01:01:01 1
There were three presentations on parkour at the National Conference for Health and Physical
Education.
01:01:15 1
And she had Travis and I there kind of as their backup singers, but then also doing the physical
part of it.
01:01:31 1
So probably about 80 of them did the physical part and a lot were just in the periphery, just observing
it.
01:01:58 1
own presentation on it for the teachers in one of the more physical kind of things but it was great
to have that and now I I've started using, I've started having teachers be our coaches at some
of our outdoor parks and recs events.
01:02:16 1
So as we're traveling to places outside of DC doing parks and rec pop-ups with both Chase Tag
and Parkour, I'm inviting local PE teachers to come and coach with us because for most of it,
again, we're talking about a kids obstacle course That's pretty set up.
01:02:37 1
It's very basic parkour.
01:02:38 1
They're doing some vaults.
01:02:39 1
They're doing some balance.
01:02:40 1
They're doing some precisions Most PE teachers like the one who helped us most recently coach
gymnastics for 22 years so she could easily step in and do balance vaulting and Precisions with
just maybe you know 20 minutes of training on and she just got it right she she got
01:03:17 1
schools School districts whole entire regions across the country.
01:03:21 1
What do you think mark is needed to?
01:03:25 1
Expedite that you know if I gave you a challenge God himself Whoever your God is showed up and
said mark you need to like get this into all the schools across all the nation and you have like
two years to do it.
01:03:38 1
How would you take that on?
01:03:40 1
Like what amplifies this?
01:03:42 1
Two years.
01:03:44 1
I was shooting for 10, so.
01:03:48 1
Okay, he strikes a bargain and says you can do it in five.
01:03:50 1
How do you do it in five years?
01:03:51 1
So my five year goal is 10 school districts.
01:03:57 1
So that's my five year goal because DC has had such a huge impact.
01:04:10 1
So That's coming up May 23rd.
01:04:13 1
We're gonna have 350 kids at a parkour jam as their track and field day.
01:04:18 1
So and I'd love to do that with more schools I I think that I think that one of one of the hurdles
is is the perception of parkour because of the media that's produced by the parkour community.
01:04:38 1
And this is, this is not, it's not good or bad.
01:04:42 1
But when you show people, I'm going to, I'm going to point out Joe Scandrick, who is just clearly
one of the most capable human beings, one of the brain of Joe Scandrick to do the things that Joe
is doing is just superhuman, so far beyond what most people could
01:05:07 1
Most people wouldn't do in a video game what Joe does in real life.
01:05:11 1
But then when these are the videos that are shown, there's a perception around parkour in terms
of what it is, how safe it is or isn't.
01:05:33 1
People love to watch a train wreck.
01:05:35 1
We just do.
01:05:37 1
And good news goes away very quickly.
01:05:41 1
And there's a neat kind of anthropological, I think that's the right word, route for this, which
is we are problem solvers.
01:05:56 1
We go.
01:05:56 1
Oh, that's great, and it's gone But when there's a problem, we're like oh, there's a problem.
01:06:01 1
There's something to solve we can do this we can do this so We gravitate towards negativity in
a way because the good stuff doesn't need to be fixed.
01:06:11 1
It's already there.
01:06:12 1
It's good It's great.
01:06:13 1
It's done.
01:06:38 1
verify it Jimmy convert anybody can verify that that's why they show bad stuff on the news because
that's what gets all the views and so So, that's tough to overcome, so convincing schools that
parkour is safe is convincing schools that what they think of as parkour, and again we
01:07:14 1
I had parents show up to the gym and be like, so you're going to throw my kid off the roof?
01:07:21 1
That's that's day two not day one.
01:07:23 1
Give us some time um so just Having people understand, and I think that we're we're we're starting
to get to this point and this is this is something I I discuss a lot.
01:07:34 1
I'll go through it really briefly is we're in what I call the saddle so Parkour had a bad phase
where it was cool It was neat a ton of people tried it a ton of people were into it and that died And
the good news is we're in the
01:07:50 1
We're in the bottom of that Starting to ramp back up the good news is the next phase is the real
face the next phase is people understanding that parkour is an effective training method for
body and mind and That it's a worthwhile Venture right the difference between a fad
01:08:20 1
I'm going to commit my time to doing this Because it will get me the things that I want The the abs
the whatever whatever people's fitness goals are motivated by right?
01:08:35 1
People are starting to understand that parkour is a path to that But I think that our job as the
community and this this is this is the tough Work because this is not fun.
01:08:47 1
It's not glamorous.
01:08:48 1
It's it's an uphill battle all the way is Showing people that part how effective parkour is at
creating a better life for anyone who practices it and I think that that Doesn't get shown in
videos, right?
01:09:06 1
It's a video of a move Parkour is not a movement Parkour is a training method.
01:09:14 1
It has movements, but those movements are not parkour.
01:09:18 1
Right?
01:09:18 1
Parkour is a training method.
01:09:20 1
It's the benefits received over time by going through the training that are really important,
but those aren't glamorous.
01:09:30 1
Yeah, you almost need a documentary here on Netflix or something where you're shown an athlete,
maybe a kid or an adult who doesn't think that they're an athlete, can't jump up to a box two feet
without being terrified.
01:09:43 1
And the documentary is like them taking that on with a coach who's caring and showing like, no
actually you you can jump a little higher than you think.
01:09:52 1
Let's go through the progressions and then the next day you know like you can take yourself through
this parkour course even though you think you can't.
01:10:00 1
And maybe there's like a cutscene where the person keeps failing and they are frustrated and
they want to quit and they walk out of the gym and that's the end of the episode because it's like
And maybe don't quit parkour right here.
01:10:12 1
Come back next episode or whatever.
01:10:15 1
But it takes so long to tell that story.
01:10:18 1
It takes literally an entire documentary series, which is why it doesn't work on Instagram,
because there's so many moments of little tiny blinks of success and character-building moments
and moments where you feel like you're defeated or you have failed.
01:10:33 1
And it just takes time and repetition and a coach and a community, which is why the parkour community
is such a thing in our sport.
01:10:41 1
The people around you encouraging you to help find your own best version of yourself in that
moment on that topic you're trying to get through, whether that's learn this hard move or get
past that mental hurdle of it's OK if you're not going to be the best in the
01:10:57 1
It's OK if you need to fail a little bit more than that person online who you just saw them only
succeed, because that's the only thing they put on the internet.
01:11:25 1
a stronger, more capable body.
01:11:27 1
And giving that whole documentary, which doesn't exist yet, and we should make one, to the school
boards, to the parents, to the decision makers saying this actually is parkour.
01:11:40 1
It's not the guy who just jumped off a five-story parking garage and grabbed onto a pole, a street
light, and slid down.
01:11:46 1
Although that's sick, he got there at the end of a massively long journey.
01:11:53 1
So yeah, Mark, I hear you.
01:11:55 1
If we could just give that documentary, give that journey of what parkour really looks like
for the average person, the average person who struggles with themselves, even as an athlete,
mental health-wise, physically-wise, and show them how huge it can be for people, for kids,
teens, and adults.
01:12:12 1
That's really the work all of us on this conversation are really trying to affect here.
01:12:18 1
So I love that you pointed that out.
01:12:20 1
And anyone who is making content about parkour or talking to a parent or talking to a decision
maker at a school board, it's important to realize that they might have that in their head.
01:12:49 1
topic mark.
01:12:49 1
Thank you for saying that you know that's the biggest thing too is All of us know What parkour
can make available?
01:13:07 1
That's your life Jimmy like and at 30 40 50 years old there are still people in the community that
are pushing themselves and training and encouraging people to to seek out parkour and You know
I really view it as my job to to provide coaches and parkour gym owners
01:13:47 1
but the values there, so I think that's something yeah like like you were saying Jimmy We're
all on the same team for that here And are really attempting to make that difference and and it's
gonna take equipping every educator with the tools Necessary to fight that uphill battle like
01:14:06 1
yeah, you're gonna have to have conversations with people I don't know how many times I've talked
to a parent though.
01:14:12 1
I couldn't do that.
01:14:13 1
I'd break my neck no, you wouldn't come out here on the floor right now and do this step vault with
me and Feel how good it feels to just like extend your hip on a step vault.
01:14:25 1
It's awesome.
01:14:26 1
You know and it's easy So I love that.
01:14:29 1
Yeah There's there's a a graph that I draw on the on the whiteboard for every adult class that
I teach and it's basically Think of like a fried egg, right?
01:14:41 1
you've got this little circle in the center and then you've got this kind of big blobby thing
around it and the big blobby thing is what people are capable of and the little dot in the center
is what they think they're capable of right and I talk about parkour
01:15:17 1
you do is figure out that you can do that step vault you can jump with both feet yes it's scary and
I think that we need to we need to we need to do a good job and be conscious of how scary that is there
there's a thing that
01:15:57 1
And so, you know, they get a class and they're like, all right, we're going to do double A twist.
01:16:00 1
I'm like, no, they're still on precision jumps.
01:16:04 1
Their day one is always going to be their day one.
01:16:07 1
And they're always going to be people in that class who are terrified to lift both feet off the
floor at the same time, and that's okay.
01:16:16 1
It's not good or bad, it just is, and those, we need to always meet people at that level, no matter
what level we're at, because that's where they are, and it's getting them to get both feet off
the ground is one of the biggest accomplishments you can have as
01:16:41 1
Yeah, gold is coming out of your mouth right now, for sure.
01:16:46 1
As my brain, my brain's really fresh on class structure right now, and in every single element
of a class, whether it's warmup or conditioning or a skill station or a game or a course, you have
to make sure that you're creating an environment that is approachable for any person
01:17:30 1
group and barely like focus on instruction you have to be aware of that you have to be aware that
you may confront that and be prepared for that.
01:17:39 1
It's so important.
01:17:40 1
So I think that's, yeah, super, super key, Mark.
01:17:45 1
Yeah, I always say that the hardest thing or the most critical skill in being a coach is running
a three ring circus.
01:17:53 1
It's not, and I'm a technical person, so I gravitate towards technical things, progressions
on a movement or whatever.
01:18:02 1
Those are almost irrelevant because you're dealing with humans and you're dealing with so
many humans.
01:18:08 1
Like you said, you don't know what someone's struggling with that day, what someone's afraid
of.
01:18:14 1
And then I see often a lot of coaches don't know how to deal with that one person.
01:18:20 1
I had a guy who I would literally triple the warmup for and he would still be bored.
01:18:26 1
And I'd be like, his name was Nate.
01:18:28 1
And he was just this beast athlete.
01:18:31 1
He's an adult who came into our classes.
01:18:51 1
do his 10 precision jumps in the time that Nate can do 50 right so that if you're listening to this
call I want to see you good SPL, okay?
01:19:02 1
But yes, absolutely, you want to cater your class to the advanced and to the people who haven't
developed those skills yet.
01:19:10 1
Yeah, it's got to be everybody.
01:19:12 1
You've got to meet everybody at a level that puts them in that, I forget the name for this, but
there's a correct challenge zone, right?
01:19:21 1
If you're not challenged enough, you're bored.
01:19:23 1
If you're too challenged, you're stressed.
01:19:24 1
There's a correct challenge zone, but it's different for every person.
01:19:45 1
That's scary, being in a class and being afraid to admit that you're afraid of something, right?
01:19:50 1
We have this big stigma on fear and failure, and I think that we need to be the facilitators of
opening that up and saying, hey, you know what?
01:20:00 1
It's okay to be scared of jumping on a two by four.
01:20:04 1
Like if jumping on a two by four and lifting both feet off the ground two inches is scary for you,
fantastic.
01:20:11 1
It's scary for you, congratulations.
01:20:13 1
Face that fear.
01:20:15 1
You know, whatever that fear is, doesn't matter what it is.
01:20:19 1
We need to help people wherever they are.
01:20:23 1
Absolutely.
01:20:25 1
Lots of great topics here Mark.
01:20:26 1
I think as we get to wrapping up this interview I definitely can see us having you on again in the
future because you know I've been taking a couple notes here along the way and there's so many
other tangents we could go into, so many topics I know I've
01:20:46 1
So definitely a wealth of wisdom.
01:20:48 1
Is there Are there any last things you want to leave us with here?
01:20:52 1
I think there was one that I was hoping, and maybe this will be next episode with me and Christopher,
is one thing that I would love to help the parkour business owners with is what I call lighting
the path.
01:21:14 1
And I think that one of the biggest challenges we have is member retention and member engagement
where we do have kids coming once a week instead of four times a week and for me one of the biggest
areas for opportunity there is showing them what they're going to learn
01:21:37 1
I think a lot of times the coach says okay bye in APK Academy the coach was tasked with Asking every
single person when they were coming in again, and what they were working on and asking them Walking
out the door mark you're you're you're spoiling You're spoiling some material
01:22:02 1
It's okay because I can talk about it now Maybe by the time this is released that will be out, but
I was just having a conversation with a general manager about how important it is to have a distinct
section at the end of class that that it's like you
01:22:40 1
your rotation is powerful and it's set up and you have a good head coach that has been putting
some intellectual effort into things then you can very easily say next week's skill practice
is this next week's game is this and you should have this to look forward to and
01:23:11 1
Or, yeah, dude, I love that you want to practice Kongs.
01:23:15 1
Today, we're practicing lazy vaults, but next week, we're specifically practicing on connecting
vaults.
01:23:22 1
So you can practice Kongs out of your lazy then.
01:23:25 1
So creating that future and then also acknowledging people for what they've accomplished,
the bravery that it takes to even show up to class, a lot of that can happen in that distinct space.
01:23:41 1
It can't be like a wishy-washy You know I really train coaches to deliver that section of class
as if it's like a public speaking thing You know like a seminar a very few minutes Yeah, that is
the most important part of class the most important part Because if they
01:24:07 1
A big thing that we do at the gym is on their first day, we have a whole process for how coaches create
an amazing first experience, how they like connect them back to the enrollment team at the front
to sort of ensure that they come back because if you
01:24:24 1
You lose them on day three or 12, you for sure lose them forever, you know?
01:24:29 1
So yeah, there's so much, so many little touch points in how you can optimize for someone's enjoyment
and get someone to the point to where they think that parkour is their sport.
01:24:38 1
They have ownership in it.
01:24:40 1
Mark, any other little acts or tricks that you think you discovered with APK Academy on this
topic?
01:24:46 1
Well, the other thing I wanna say on that, and for me it's kind of a little drop the mic, is how are
you as a business owner doing that for your coaches?
01:24:58 1
So I think that a lot of business people think about their customer journey and they don't apply
the same thing to their employee journey and to me that's that's critical because your employees
are your business they are your coaches are the product that you're selling to your customers
and
01:25:20 1
they are the the interface to your customer and so what is your coaches opportunity to grow how
are you taking that same time that same public speech with your coach and saying hey, here's
what you're gonna learn, here's how you're gonna grow as a person within this business over
01:25:50 1
So I think that that's critical.
01:25:53 1
And I guess one of the ways that we did that at Primal slash APH Academy was through a book club.
01:26:01 1
And we had a book club and they were great books like Getting Things Done, The One Thing, Who Will
Do What By When.
01:26:10 1
So just some great, great books that everybody benefits from.
01:26:16 1
But using them, and here's the key, it's not reading the book that matters because again, habits,
not singular actions.
01:26:25 1
We would take a chapter and the homework would be, okay, how did you use this chapter in your job
in the past week.
01:26:35 1
Everybody needs to bring that to the meeting on Friday.
01:26:39 1
Tell us how you use the thing that we learned in this chapter, how you use that this week.
01:26:44 1
Doing that for every chapter in the book, and by the time you're done, you've got 14 new habits
or skills that you've built in that are now skins that you wear that you don't even think about.
01:26:56 1
But they're new good habits that you have.
01:27:00 1
And so I think that that was one thing that we did that was really, really popular and worked well
with coaches.
01:27:10 1
And I feel like it made our employees feel like they were valued and it was part of their job.
01:27:18 1
They were paid for the time to read and the time to come to the meeting.
01:27:22 1
And it was literally part of their job was to improve at what they were doing.
01:27:28 1
Love that.
01:27:29 1
So you guys had a book club, they were paid to do it.
01:27:46 1
so keeping that institutional knowledge around.
01:27:49 1
Yeah, it's absolutely a great thing to try on.
01:27:52 1
Some other things we've seen is just having like a literal document that shows the coach's journey.
01:27:57 1
So if they enter the business at what pay rate, what are they responsible for?
01:28:06 1
Now what are they responsible for?
01:28:08 1
And having those milestones that show the different pay rates, show the different accountabilities,
the different skills that they might have acquired or are now acting within, all the way up through
maybe what does it look like to become a head coach?
01:28:20 1
Or where can they bolt on other things like your coach plus social media?
01:28:24 1
You know, having that thoughtful, laid out document, at least in the form of like you've typed
it up, That can do a lot to create the experience of having a career and create the experience
of there's somewhere for me to go in this company.
01:28:38 1
So, if you are a, especially if you're a gym owner, you know, that's a really critical piece.
01:28:42 1
And you can have a book club kind of be the fuel that carries that along the way.
01:28:47 1
And outside of a parkour gym, if you just have a team, like what is their Ascension model for your
team?
01:28:53 1
So, that's absolutely a great, great piece.
01:28:56 1
Good mic drop.
01:28:58 1
I do want to I want to throw something on the end of that before the mic drop and maybe this will
be the mic drop Is I'm gonna speak directly to you Jim owners the most important part of that Ascension
document is Being tough not giving that raise until
01:29:40 1
me so just be strict on that make sure and the only way to do that in my opinion is one-on-ones you
actually have to have discussions with people let them know the expectation let them know when
the expectation is being met, and when it's not being met, and when
01:30:03 1
So it's not, I'm blaming you for not doing this, it's I'm coaching you to do it next time, and that's
when you will get the raise, is when you consistently demonstrate that you have this skill and
that you are doing this job, that's when you get the raise.
01:30:22 1
Love it.
01:30:23 1
All right.
01:30:24 1
That's super good.
01:30:26 1
Business owner, manager experience, you know, advice at large, CEO advice.
01:30:31 1
Just make sure that is occurring in your team.
01:30:33 1
You know, you got to be feeding into each other, mentoring each other for sure.
01:30:39 1
Okay, Mark, that brings us to the end of that conversation.
01:30:41 1
I would love to have you back on in the future because, you know, even a double mic drop in one episode
is is pretty hard to I'm sure you have plenty more mics in your back pocket to throw at the floor
here.
01:30:52 1
So thank you for coming on.
01:30:54 1
Appreciate you with your generosity with your sharing and also your time.
01:30:58 1
So Mark from American Parkour, thank you very much.
01:31:01 1
Thank you.
01:31:03 1
It's great seeing you guys.
01:31:04 1
And again, you're doing great work.
01:31:07 1
And I'm excited to be now a little part of that.
01:31:10 1
So thank you.
01:31:11 1
Awesome.
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