Welcome to the Vici Code, where we unlock real stories of small business owners who've battled chaos, crushed doubt, and conquered their challenges. Faith, family, and finances. No fluff, just raw, honest conversations that decode the path to victory, one story at a time. All right. The grit, discipline, and mental fortitude required to not only succeed as an athlete, but to build a business and a community from that passion. The Warrior's Purpose, from the mat to the mentor, the journey of a purpose-driven coach. Everyone, I'd love to introduce you to my friend and coach, Gee Vien, with his impressive credentials, husband, father, second-degree black belt, and the head coach of VN Jiu-Jitsu. He recently said, give it your all and die with no regrets. His mission, to share the highest quality and most effective technique possible and foster a healthy gym culture. I gotta say, G and I have known each other since high school. And over the years, we've kind of followed each other's journey. And I was very excited to see when he opened up his own jujitsu gym, not only a jujitsu gym, but down the street from us. So it looked like an amazing opportunity for me to support someone that I knew personally and someone's mission that I also supported. So G's not only transforming lives in our community, but he's impacted my family personally. Both of my older children have gone through his program. And I hope that my younger children will be excited as they get older. And because recently, I know you guys had this new anti-bullying. I want to get into that at some point. You guys have the Women's Self-Defense Program. That's amazing. I think all these things that you're doing beyond, you know, having the jujitsu gym has been great. But I'd like to introduce G to the show. G, thank you Joey, that was quite the introduction. Thank you. It's Yeah, so we got a couple segments. We got a lot of questions. We want to get through them. Very excited. So our first segment is going to be about the journey in the background. And this question kind of is more around the transition from competitor to coach. It's an interesting move, and I think we see it often, but everyone has their different moments of why it happened. You've had an incredible success as a competitor, including being a black belt Pan Am placer. For your profile notes, you've truly settled into a full-time role as head coach. What was the pivotal moment your focus shifted from personal glory on the mat to purpose of developing others, and was that a difficult transition? So this is actually quite interesting of a question, and this is how you know that these aren't, we didn't rehearse this a lot, okay? So a little bit of a history is I took a very rare route. I'm actually a coach, I was a coach before I started competing. So I was coaching and more in the sense of an instructor, not so much a coach, there's a little bit of a difference between the two, but I was more of an instructor. And I feel like because of A, my wife's passion for competing and B, just the type of grapplers we drew, the athletes we drew, I felt like I needed to compete and learn more about that side of the sport. So it was more of an instructor of the art and then a little transition to kind of like a dual role between being a coach and competitor. So It was kind of backwards and probably not ideal, but I did learn a lot either way from that experience. And I got to say, I'm a much better coach than a competitor. That's interesting. So I didn't know that. So I guess, I guess the question should have really been is, you know, so obviously you went from coach to competitor and then continue on as a coach. Did you face any specific internal or external challenges in letting go of the competitive spotlight though, to embrace coaching again? Not so much. I really do enjoy competing. So, I mean, I enjoy being out there on the mat and having matches against other competitors. I really, really dislike the whole lead up to a competition. I don't enjoy cutting weight. I enjoy the training. But besides that, I don't enjoy the travel. I don't enjoy the financial. part of it. I don't enjoy time away from my house and my business. So it's not that hard. I enjoy competing because I like hard roles and hard physical tests. And besides that, I really don't, I don't really enjoy That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And then, so I guess the other question is, is usually when you take that, that step, away from the competitiveness into the more of the coaching role. Sometimes you have to unlearn some things. Have you had to unlearn as an athlete to become a Not so much unlearn, So I found that it's really, really difficult to concentrate on my own training. if I have a tournament coming up, but also give my athletes my full attention. So I feel like I have to be a little bit selfish with my training. And it's more about splitting my focus more Got it, yeah, well played, yeah, understood. And now I wanna get into like building the culture. This is what we take very seriously here at Vici Financial is culture. We say internally that we're not really spending money on marketing for new clients. We're investing in our culture, right? We wanna attract good talent and good talent will also attract good clients. My question goes back to your motto, give it your all and die with no regrets. And you've committed to creating a healthy gym culture where everyone can flourish. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in creating that specific culture from the ground up? And was there a moment or a particular difficulty that led to a breakthrough in how you manage your gym and So I would say, honestly, the biggest challenge was financially getting off the ground. I think everything else was fairly easy because we had such a deep passion for what we truly believe in our mission. creating that culture, I felt like we always, if you're authentic, you're going to attract the right people. And I think that the breakthrough, I would say, when we first opened, a little bit of a history here. When we first opened, I was still working a full-time job in a factory. So like the 40 hours a week, 45 hours a week. So I was doing like 70 hours a week between the two gigs, right? So the breakthrough I would say is when my company that I had worked for for 12 years, they let me go. And that was the breakthrough when I had to fully commit to my business. And at the time, I was probably a little upset. But it was the best thing Exactly. And how many times have we heard that story where you're burning the candle on both ends and something happens for a reason and it kind of just catapults you full in and it's kind of what you needed, right? Oh yeah. Love that. I love that. Now, here's a question that I'm excited to ask because it's an art and I know this, and I'm curious how you see this. How do you instill a no-nonsense, high-energy cerebral approach into your students while still making the gym a welcoming place for So, once again, I believe just being authentic. Authenticity, I feel like, is the most important thing because then you'll attract the right people. When they walk in the door and they take a class, they can kind of see that we are friendly, we are welcoming, but we take great pride in what we do, which we try to achieve excellence. in all things. So I want it to be not much of a culture shock like that. The first class is kind of the authentic experience, if you will. And we don't change it from there. So I do believe everything trickles down from the top from where I've trained in the past before I took things that I liked from those places and then discarded things I didn't like Yeah. And being authentic is so important and it just, it makes being consistent easier because you don't have to think about it. You're, you're, you're dealing it down in a way that, Hey, listen, this is how things are going to be. And I think it speaks to, um, redefining masculinity a little bit as far as, listen, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna be honest. Uh, but we're also gonna educate you at the same, same time. Whereas I think in the past, you know, our fathers and the father for that. It was really kind of like, this is how it's going to be. And that's how it's going to be. There wasn't that, that, that, uh, that educational aspect of like, listen, you know, I had to talk to you that way in that moment. And this is what it really means just so you know. And I think being authentic, I've seen you in the moment in the raw with these kids and even, uh, young adults and adults as well, where, You got to kind of be a little curt with them, but they get it. And especially when they've been there for a while, they know that it's coming from a place of support and love. So I've seen it. It's been great. And I love what you're doing, man. Thank you. So this next question is more around balancing passion and life. which is not always easy. You're a business owner, a coach, an athlete, husband, father. You have a lot on your plate. What's your biggest challenge right now in balancing those roles? And what does your film study in redefining the mental approach look like behind The funny thing about all those roles is there's a lot of overlap between them all. And the fact that my family all trains and they compete, we're spending time together on the mat. So there's not much of a struggle between balancing those roles. As far as the film study, the mental approach was rough. That was a long, That was a long road. To dial that back a few years, my wife, April, is an avid competitor. Biasly, I'm saying she's probably the best male or female competitor in all of Central New York. in jujitsu terms, right? So coming up, there was a lot of mental struggle and a lot of figuring things out on her own. And she dealt with a lot of anxiety, a lot of hurdles. And between paying for a mental coach or a mindset coach, as they call it these days, and just kind of trial and error, we figured out a lot of things on our own. Now I'm seeing it with my son Kai. My son Kai is going into 10th grade. He competes in Jiu-Jitsu and he's a wrestler, so seeing him make some jumps and just working with him on his mental approach has been really rewarding. I see that a lot of competitors, almost all competitors, all go through the same thing. It's just how they handle it. As far as the film study, I'm just kind of a nerd when it comes to that. And I just like to watch old matches, new matches, even some instructionals. I watch instructionals. You got to be careful which ones you watch, but I really enjoy watching matches, especially in... Lately, I've been watching a lot of folk style wrestling, and that's been really fun watching that and seeing what I can take from A student of the trade, man. Never stop learning, right? What advice would you give a coach or a business owner who's just starting out, trying to find their own purpose? What's As far as a coach or a business owner, you have to be authentic. You have to treat people well. Um, besides that, you just kind of got to let the chips fall where they fall. Um, you know, I, I heard a, a quote one time, it really resonated with me and it goes something along the lines of a hater will see you walk on water and say, it's because you can't swim. And, um, if you are worried about being liked by everybody, um, you're gonna have a tough time because people are gonna find something to talk about. You win, they're gonna talk. You lose, they're gonna talk. So just be yourself, treat people well, and Well, and you lose yourself. Who are you really if what people think matters? And then that alters how you're coming off, you know, in your own authentic way. Right. You have to stick with who you are and what you know is right. And the other quote about haters I love is, you know, you never find a hater All right, well, Gee, thank you so much for coming on. Just for our listeners, a couple of takeaways, you know, the importance of transitioning from personal achievements to coaching others, the power of building a strong culture and how jujitsu can be a vehicle for purposeful life for you. Gee, thank you so much for your insight and sharing your mission. I just want to connect real quick on what a great job you've done with Kai. I've got to see him grow over the last few years in the gym. He's helped my son, who they go to school together the same age. They're on the wrestling team together. He's constantly his own coach in his own right. And you're raising a true leader and it's what we need these days. There's a lot of followers and there's a lot of scared people out there. It's good to see kids at an early age taking on that leadership role. So keep doing what you're doing. And I just wanna remind our listeners, where they can find you. You are on Facebook and Instagram. You're at Gee Vien, that's at G-E-E-V-I-E-N. Also at VN Jiu-Jitsu, V-I-E-N-J-I-U-J-I-T-S-U. And of course, your website, where you can find out a lot of information about the coaches, the schedule, the approach at vnjiujitsu.com. V, thank you so much, I appreciate you. Joey, thank you. Thanks for tuning in to The Veitchie Code, where the underdogs rise and the numbers finally make sense. If today's story hit home, share it. 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