The Surprising Connection Between Success in BJJ and Success in Business 

II recently came across your work and just wanted to say big respect for your BJJ achievements. As a BJJ brown belt myself, I know how badass that is.

“I randomly got into direct response by helping my partner with her business and now I’m on a mission to get my black belt in direct response and leave my job. What I find most fascinating is how the hardships from BJJ translate into business. And how fundamental positions such as mount, side control, and the dreaded closed guard are just like your favourite tools in direct response – the latest being the 4U’s, which I’ve just picked up from you.

“Thanks for sharing the wisdom.” – KB

My Response: You make a good point about the similarity between the skills we must learn to succeed in BJJ and the skills one needs to succeed in business. One that is rarely talked about is the ability to be sensitive to the weight distribution of and the force coming from your training partner. Once you develop that skill – which is a skill of perception rather than force – you have a tremendous advantage that strong and aggressive combatants won’t even notice. You will be able to find the moments and the spots where you can use your opponent’s momentum to your advantage. You will be able to protect yourself from much larger and stronger opponents and eventually overcome their natural strengths with skill.

This has always been the way I looked at building wealth. When you give yourself the goal of accomplishing what very few people do – i.e., moving to the top 10% or even 1% of the general population of income earners – you are going to run into all sorts of expected and unexpected forces. If your strategy is always to meet force with force, you will eventually fatigue yourself and fall into a set of habits that you probably won’t even recognize, let alone be able to overcome.

Success in increasing your income and growing your wealth cannot be had by being clever. And only a fool would attempt to achieve it with luck. The only realistic way is to gradually improve on the small skills that will allow you to meet and defeat any of the uncountable forces that come against you in your journey.