Kenny Kim has been in martial arts since he was three years old — Taekwondo, boxing, Muay Thai, and then jiu-jitsu, which he found in his early twenties through a training partner who described a man in Alabama he called the Brazilian Mike Tyson. That was his introduction to Roger Gracie. It changed everything. He opened his first school at twenty, has built and run successful academies for over twenty years, and has spent that time developing not just competitors but people — with a philosophy that has always been about the human being on the mat first and the athlete second. He is the president of the Korean American Jiu-Jitsu Coalition, the curator of the world's largest BJJ gym directory, the author of Mat Made (his personal story from troubled immigrant teen to academy owner) and The Jiu-Jitsu Millionaire (the business blueprint written with Chris Wojcik). He is the creator and host of the Mat Made show — a docuseries in the tradition of Anthony Bourdain, telling the real stories of jiu-jitsu through the people the major media never covers. Mat Made is currently in a new season, shorter format, wider reach. He came to South Florida to interview Vagner Rocha for Mat Made — we met on those mats — and is heading to Peru in November to cover the Guardian BJJ nonprofit project across two cities including the surf town of Mancora. He does not compete anymore — his last competition was about four years ago, a complete ACL, MCL, LCL tear and meniscus that took two years to recover from. He is, in every way that matters, still on the mat.
Kenny Kim has been telling me something since I met him on the mats at Vagner Rocha Martial Arts: there are stories in this sport that nobody is telling. Not the highlight reel, not the trash talk, not the medal count — the actual human stories underneath the mat. The mom who left an eight-hour shift, fed her kids, drove them to soccer, and still made it to class for the one hour that belonged to her. The Marine who had a pistol to his head and watched a Mat Made episode and put it down and started training the next day. The woman whose kid was murdered and who found that jiu-jitsu was the only thing that got her through. Kenny is building the infrastructure to tell those stories at scale — and the conversation we had in this episode made me understand why that infrastructure matters as much as anything else being built in this sport right now.
People will remember how you made them feel. I believe that with everything in me. And what I can see clearly about Kenny Kim is that he leaves behind people who felt that he cared — genuinely, without agenda, for them as human beings first. That is legacy. Everything else is resume.
From a Troubled Immigrant Teen to Twenty Years Building People — Not Champions
Kenny did not grow up with jiu-jitsu. He grew up with Taekwondo from age three, competing at junior nationals as a teenager, training boxing and Muay Thai through his twenties. He opened his first school at twenty — a small kickboxing and Taekwondo gym — because that was the life he knew. Then a training partner told him about a guy in Alabama. Compact, Brazilian, cauliflower ears, looked like a Brazilian Mike Tyson. They drove to Alabama to check it out. The man he met was Roger Gracie's cousin. Within moments of landing on the mat, Kenny understood that everything he knew about controlling another human being needed to be reconsidered.
He has been training and teaching jiu-jitsu for over twenty years. In that time he has built schools, run a consulting practice for gym owners, developed the world's largest BJJ gym directory, founded the Korean American Jiu-Jitsu Coalition, written two books, and created a docuseries. The thread running through all of it is a philosophy that he states plainly and has never deviated from:
"My goal was never to build champions. My goal was to build people."
— Professor Kenny Kim · @KennyKimBJJ · Kenny Kim Academy, Marietta, GAThe champions, he notes, will find a way regardless. They have the drive, the access, the competitive obsession that will route around any obstacle. The people who need building — the troubled teen, the burned-out professional, the mother squeezing one hour of jiu-jitsu into an impossible schedule, the person sitting in their car at a low point who stumbles onto a story about someone who found the mat and found themselves — those people need someone who is thinking about them. Kenny has been thinking about them for twenty years. Mat Made is the mechanism for reaching them at scale.
The Marine Who Put the Pistol Down: Why These Stories Have to Be Told
The Mat Made show began as a book — Kenny's personal story of going from a troubled immigrant teenager with nothing to where he is now, told through the lens of what jiu-jitsu made possible. The response from friends and family who did not know his full story convinced him there was something in the personal narrative format that the jiu-jitsu content ecosystem was not delivering. Everyone was covering the competition, the technique, the athlete. Nobody was covering the human being underneath.
The first season was ambitious to the point of near-impossibility: a seven-person crew, the production team behind Atlanta reality TV shows, $30,000 to $40,000 per episode out of pocket, network-ready quality. The goal was to pitch it. Dave Bautista was initially going to co-host — everything was lined up, then Hollywood happened. But the work produced seven episodes that are free on YouTube today, and along the way produced the message that told Kenny everything he needed to know about why he was doing it correctly.
"I had a pistol to my head. I watched your episode, put the pistol down. I will be Mat Made. I'm starting my jiu-jitsu class tomorrow."
— A DM received by Kenny Kim · @KennyKimBJJ · during the Mat Made first seasonThat message is not an outlier in Kenny's inbox. He describes women telling their stories of surviving a child's murder. Blind practitioners. People who overcame addiction through the mat. Stories that in any other context would be considered extraordinary television — and in the jiu-jitsu content ecosystem were going completely uncovered because the major platforms were optimized for highlights, results, and trash talk. Kenny's conviction: all of those things can coexist. The major organizations do what they do well. Mat Made does something nobody else is doing at all.
The new season is smaller crew, same quality, different format — closer to the Anthony Bourdain docuseries model than the reality TV format of the first season. Less direct-to-camera, more story told through experience. The South Florida episode featuring Vagner Rocha is part of this season. The questions Kenny asked Vagner — not about ADCC or technique, but about who Vagner Rocha is as a man, a father, a community builder — produced answers that Vagner told him he had never been asked before. That is the gap Mat Made is filling.
Next stop is Peru in November — two cities, including the surf town of Mancora — for a story on the Guardian BJJ nonprofit that operates across fourteen countries, providing training, education, and food to communities that need them. The head of Guardian is Ben Kovac, who is also the CEO of FloGrappling. There are conversations happening about Mat Made potentially appearing on Flo or through Flo's partnership with Amazon Prime. The goal has always been to get jiu-jitsu in front of people who have never considered jiu-jitsu — and Amazon reaches those people in a way that no jiu-jitsu platform can.
Cheapest or Most Expensive — Never the Middle
The Jiu-Jitsu Millionaire is not a book about making a million dollars from jiu-jitsu. It is a book about the business decisions that determine whether a jiu-jitsu school survives or quietly closes within a couple of years — and the uncomfortable reality that most school owners who fail do so because they confuse being great at jiu-jitsu with knowing how to run a business.
The consulting work that informed the book produces the same revelation every time Kenny walks into a struggling school: there is no P&L, no active student count system, no CRM, no structured curriculum, no pricing strategy. Coaches who cannot answer basic operational questions about their own business — and who are surprised by this, because they are black belts who are excellent on the mat. The two things have almost nothing to do with each other.
"Either be the cheapest in your city or the most expensive. You don't want to be in the middle. In the middle, you're dying."
— Professor Kenny Kim · @KennyKimBJJ · Author, The Jiu-Jitsu MillionaireThe pricing principle is the most immediately actionable piece in the book. When a black belt opens across the street from an established school and charges half the price — believing that doing jiu-jitsu for the love of jiu-jitsu is a business model — they have already lost the value war. A prospective student comparing price points does not know the difference between three classes per week in a gym with a shared bathroom and three classes per day in a facility with showers, multiple coaches, and structured curriculum. The price signal is all they have. Be premium or be the accessible option — but do not occupy the confused middle where you are competing with premium on service and with budget on price and winning neither comparison.
The book was co-written with Chris Wojcik — not because Wojcik was already a known name in jiu-jitsu, but because Kenny met him at a PGF event where Wojcik was in the finals with Ryan Aitken, recognized a quietly dangerous athlete asking genuinely good business questions, and said: let's write a book together. Wojcik had the writing ability. Kenny had twenty years of operational knowledge. The combination worked. Wojcik went on to go third at ADCC and blow up — but the partnership predates any of that visibility.
The 1977 Nova Principle: Maintenance Is the Training Now
Kenny has several hundred thousand miles on the body. He is explicit about this distinction when he meets someone who started training at forty or fifty and is burning through mat time at full intensity: their mileage is different. The same training load that is sustainable for a fresh practitioner is a compounding debt for someone who has been on the mat for thirty years. He does not say this to discourage — he says it because recognizing the distinction is what allows the experienced practitioner to keep going when the fresh one has long since stopped.
The 1977 Chevy Nova analogy is his and it is exact: you cannot run an old car at full throttle every day and wonder why the engine is not starting in the morning. The maintenance phase is not a consolation prize for aging. It is the only model that produces longevity. You wash it, wax it, change the oil, clean the inside, refurbish what needs refurbishing. You do all of that because the alternative is a car that sits in a driveway and does not start.
"My mileage and theirs is different. I've got several hundred thousand miles and they're just fresh. Without that maintenance phase, they have a better chance of lasting longer. But the maintenance is what keeps me going."
— Professor Kenny Kim · @KennyKimBJJ · Kenny Kim Academy, Marietta, GA- Weight training — five to six days per week, non-negotiable. Not heavy, not powerlifting. Consistent resistance work that maintains the structural foundation the mat demands. The days he skips it, he feels the deficit in his jiu-jitsu.
- Two-mile morning walk, daily, no phone. With his dog. Sunlight. No electronics. Just moving and being outside. This functions as zone two cardio, circadian light input, and mental reset simultaneously — without being framed as any of those things. It is just the walk.
- Jiu-jitsu — three to four days teaching, two to three days rolling. One hard session per week. The others are casual — letting students do what they want, taking the back control, seeing what happens. Not ego, not competition. Just being on the mat.
- Rolling weight limit — nobody over 185 to 190 pounds. He weighs between 170 to 175 pounds. He gives ten to fifteen pounds. Above that, the risk-reward calculus no longer works in his favor regardless of the other person's technical level. Exceptions for high-level practitioners whose training behavior he trusts — and for his own students who he knows will not stack him.
- Sleep as the primary recovery tool. He spent years treating sleep as a waste of time — in bed at eleven or midnight, up at five-thirty, constantly running. Now he is in bed by nine-thirty and asleep by ten, up at six-thirty to seven, targeting seven to eight hours. Naps of twenty to thirty minutes during the day when possible. His conviction is that the 10 PM to 2 AM window is peak recovery time — getting eight hours that miss that window is not equivalent to getting eight hours that include it.
- Mobility work, daily. Deep squats, hip and shoulder opening, whatever the body is asking for on a given day. This is not a structured program. It is the ongoing conversation with a body that has accumulated thirty years of load and needs to be listened to, not just pushed.
People Will Remember How You Made Them Feel
There is a version of success in jiu-jitsu that is entirely legible from the outside: competition results, number of black belts, school size, social media following. Kenny Kim has none of those problems. But the thing that struck me most in this conversation is how little of what he talked about was about any of those metrics.
He talked about the DM from the Marine. He talked about the woman whose kid was murdered. He talked about the Mat Made stories that are not his to tell but that he carries the responsibility of telling correctly. He talked about flying to Peru to document a nonprofit that is giving children in fourteen countries access to jiu-jitsu and food and education. He talked about connecting with Ben Kovac not because Kovac heads FloGrappling but because Kovac is doing something worth connecting with. The through-line is not strategy. It is genuine care for the human being on the other side of every interaction.
People will remember how you made them feel. That is not a sentiment — it is a prediction about what survives. The technique gets outdated. The results are surpassed. The business model evolves. What remains is whether the people who moved through your gym, watched your show, read your book, or sat across from you on a mat in South Florida walked away feeling that you cared about them. Kenny Kim leaves behind people who felt that. That is legacy. Everything else is resume.
I am a fan of Kenny's content, his work, and the mission of Mat Made. I am looking forward to seeing where the new season goes — and there is an open invitation to Lima in November that I intend to seriously consider.
Self-Discipline
He gave himself a moment to think. He does not plan for the one-word question. That is the point.
Self-discipline.
Everything and anything, he said, comes down to self-discipline. You do not want to train. Self-discipline makes you go. You want the pizza and the beer. Self-discipline makes you choose the meal prep. You are at a party and it is late and you need to be up in the morning. Self-discipline makes you leave. The cold plunge — nobody genuinely loves it. Self-discipline makes you get in anyway, because you understand that the discomfort is not the point. The adaptation is the point. The better version of yourself is the point.
He offers the simplest possible illustration: the child who does not want to brush their teeth before bed. Self-discipline makes them brush anyway, not because they want to but because tomorrow there will be no cavities and next week there will be clean teeth and in ten years there will be a mouth that works. The benefit is deferred. The discipline is immediate. That gap — between the action and the reward — is precisely where most people fail, and precisely where self-discipline lives.
Some people, he says, let the occasion take over. Or their feelings. Or their mood. And there is always an occasion, always a feeling, always a mood that can provide the permission to not do the thing. Self-discipline is the practice of not granting that permission. Not always — he is clear that he still enjoys an occasional drink, still has cake on his mother's eightieth birthday, still loves ice cream even though he hasn't had it in months. The goal is not austerity. The goal is self-governance. Knowing the difference between an indulgence and a pattern. Knowing when the occasion has taken over and calling it by its real name: a gap in self-discipline.
It is the word that makes every other practice in this conversation possible. The morning walk. The sleep priority. The weight limit with training partners. The decision to stop competing and start filming. The book, the show, the Peru trip. None of it exists without the self-discipline to start and the self-discipline to continue when the motivation is gone. Motivation, as Brian Edwards told us a couple of episodes ago, is temporary. Self-discipline — as Kenny Kim will tell you — is permanent.
Real Food for the Maintenance Phase
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Light Health · Sleep · Recovery · Luca Nero Frames
Kenny's number one recovery tool is sleep — and he has dialed the timing (in bed by 9:30, the 10 PM to 2 AM window is peak recovery). The light environment around that sleep determines how much of it is actually working. I wear the Biospectral Luca Nero frames with yellow day lenses every day while on the computer, on the phone, and under LEDs — and my orange night lenses should be here any day now. Use code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at biospectralsystems.com.
Premium Mastic Gum · From the Greek Island of Chios · grecogum.com
Thirty years of mat time demands maintenance at every level. Greco Gum's premium mastic gum from the Greek island of Chios is the kind of product that belongs in a community built around long-term performance and longevity. Use code IAMJOSHBUTTON for 10% off at grecogum.com.
@KennyKimBJJ · @matmade_show · Kenny Kim Academy, Marietta, GA
Kenny's Instagram @KennyKimBJJ is where the coaching philosophy, business insight, and community content live. The Mat Made show is at @matmade_show — the new season is active, the first seven episodes are free on YouTube, and the stories being told are ones the rest of the jiu-jitsu content ecosystem is not telling. The Jiu-Jitsu Millionaire is available wherever books are sold — essential reading for anyone considering opening or scaling a martial arts business. And if you are a school owner who wants to consult with someone who has twenty-plus years of operational knowledge in this specific industry, reach out to Kenny directly.
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