From Fight Club to Life Coaching: Emmanuel Manolakakis’ Journey

 In this episode, host Rexhen welcomes Emmanuel Manolakakis, a martial arts master and personal development coach with over 30 years of experience in mindset, discipline, and human performance. From founding Fight Club Martial Arts in 2003 to coaching athletes, leaders, and everyday individuals, Emmanuel brings a powerful perspective on growth, resilience, and intentional living.


Connect with

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuelmanolakakis/
Website: https://www.fight-club.ca/
Website: https://www.mastersmethod.ca/

Transcript

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 0:00

Listen, people come to me all the time, young, I teach kids, I teach adults. Some people come for health, but then they love the martial arts. Some people come for the martial art, they love the health. And some people overly serious. My ideal customer, a client, whatever you want to call them, is a person that's willing to say, you get to that point in life where you're like, I want something better right now. I can be more. And it doesn't have to be a lot. I remember, you know, I start some of my seminars by asking everybody, how many of you are tired of what you say and what you do? Almost everybody.

Davis Nguyen : 0:31

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda: 1:03

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Regin, and today's guest is Emmanuel Malokakis, a Toronto-based martial art instructor and personal development coach who helps people build strength, clarity, and character from the inside out. He's the founder and head instructor of Fight Club Martial Arts and Fitness Training Center since 2003. Emmanuel blends three decades of practice with a BA from York University and a career leading teams in the corporate world. His teaching pairs practical self-defense and conditioning with breath, structure, and mindset so students don't just move better, they live better. And it's a pleasure for me to have him on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Emmanuel. Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful introduction to thank you, Emmanuel. So I wanted to dive into the beginning of this. I know it's been quite a few uh wonderful years with your business. So if we go back at the beginning of it, 2003, what inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business?

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 2:08

I graduated York in early 90s. And at that time in Canada, there was like kind of mini mini recession. Economics weren't that good. And they weren't hiring a lot of teachers. I was educated as a teacher. And so, you know, like all kids after university, you're like, you want to work, you want to make some money. So I ended up getting a job working at this big phone company. And coincidentally enough, cellular phones were brand new and I've never ever heard of them. So I started working at none of my friends had a cell phone. Cell phones were just for big business guys, right? Kind of it. And I watched it grow over that period of time in the early 90s, straight through. I progressed very quickly. It was my I worked just answering the phones for a year or so, and then into different levels of management, away I went. So I I had good education in terms of schooling, and I went to school for for teaching and learning. And then I then, because that they started managing people and being a leader, really be is basically here, manager as somebody's responsible, right? And this whole time since 1990, 1990, pardon me, 1985, I started martial arts. So I had always done martial arts for a long time. And uh then I just I I said, you know, I got married and I I moved to a different part of Toronto, more towards the city where my wife was worked for the city and so stayed close to work for her. And I said, you know, I wonder if I open up a small club here just so I can keep training. Because once kids start coming, it's very hard to travel too much. I mean, you need to be around for them. So I figured a local club would would be better for me in this time of my life. So I started up my own school in 2003, a month before my daughter was born, uh, my first child. So that's why I always know how old she is, is how old the fight club has been. And honestly, I I was expecting very little from it. It was going to be this, you know, part-time thing I had. I had an established career at this phone company. I was doing well, I was making great money. I had no want to do this, to be honest with to open up my own school. But I did it out of convenience and then it just really grew. And I got a chance to, when you work for uh a school board or when you work for a company, you can't just do what you want. You have to do what the company kind of asks you. So you don't have complete freedom. But when you have your own business, you do whatever you want. You can make it as you like. So, like all good teachers and all good leaders, you teach and lead who you are, exactly how you are. You you can't be every kind of a leader, you can just be a certain type of a leader. It was Winston Churchill, you name it. You're leading. So I was I'm an educator, so I put a uh big focus on education. And I've always, through martial arts, understood that I need the idea of growth and slow, consistent discipline, how much it helps. And oddly enough, it works in the business world even better. So having that discipline and focus and all put all that together, I had never started a business. I've never even taken a business course. And I figured it out. It's not that difficult. It's most important, you have to love what you do, and that's what I did. And then before you know it, I had two jobs. And then I'm like, okay, I think I have to let one of these go. And it's risky doing your own business, I get it, but it's one life. And we have to we can't have too many regrets about the things. Opportunities come and um we have to either take them uh or not. Being a good opportunity, strategically taking that leap of faith is very important. So it took a leap of faith. I started my club and it grew to a and I still have it to this day. We do all kinds of stuff, martial arts, I teach archery, teach health classes and fitness classes. And the personal development piece of everything came out from this hunger that I was training some pretty elite athletes, and you start realizing how from the beginner to intermediate level, it's one type of an athlete. It's hard work, but try hard. But from intermediate to advanced levels, it's and it's the same in martial arts, it's different training and different mindset. And there were a good percentage of people that I knew that wanted that kind of mindset training. It's like, where is your mind at? You know, these kind of things, they might seem subtle, but they're huge. When you talk to champions, they think things quite differently than an intermediate level person. Effort, just give you an example, trying is not a good sustainable source of power. You're you're you need a champion pulls his high-level skills from relaxation, from confidence built in, right? And the same in business world. If you want to be a good leader, as stuff hits the fan, you need to right away relax more to find uh what to do, not not get angry or or work harder per se. So it's quite I I look as you talk to me and I I look I look back through the journey of FICO, there's some million stories in there. And I I wrote about some of that in my book just after the pandemic. Uh I was uh had a lot more free time like all of us did during the pandemic. And uh I wrote a wonderful book called Eudaimonia, and it kind of expressed all the stories of my life that have shaped me. And as I'm telling your listeners these stories, there's so many millions of things in there that I I could talk about that were pretty profound. And some will understand it, but and some you might not quite understand what I'm saying. It's because it's hard to put a pin on it. You're talking about artistry, creativity, adaptability. These are it's hard to say luck or was it the right spot at the right time? Yeah. I knew what to quit very quickly. That's another strong talent that people have to have. People, you need to be tough with things, there's no doubt. Have resilience. But in the same vein, that when you realize something's no good for you or something's not working, quit it fast. Like don't, you know, doing the wrong thing for long is dangerous. And it's hard to even tell you how that happens. But if your listeners are listening, so a great book to understand this, other than mine. A great book, a great book would be uh Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets. Great book. A world champion poker player, how to make decisions when you don't have all the cards. Great book. Really should be like a number one for martial artists, for business people, because we never have all the cards. We don't know. But we have some cards. And the dilemma we have is this. So really it's a real dilemma. It's will you know the difference? Your listeners, will you know the difference between a good decision you made, but it had a bad outcome? It happens. Sometimes you made a perfect decision, but you can't control outcomes. Outcomes happen. Other times, people made a bad decision, but it had a good outcome. So somebody drinks at a party, ah, it's okay. I drive home and they got home okay. But somehow that outcome was good. You got home, but it wasn't a good decision. And over time, it'll be really bad. You see, like so many business people, much like poker players in many ways, they get lucky and then they think that that bad decision, because it was a good decision, it's not a good decision. You have to know the difference. It's not, and and that's why that's what made Annie Duke so like world champion poker player before it was hip. You know, but it was poker in the raw days, right? Not now, it's a lot more mainstream. It's kind of a long-winded talk I'm giving you now. But the fight club and then the and substantially the the the business that came off of fight club as a spin-off was master's method, which is I've studied from so many masters, and then I've been doing things for so long. You realize there's actually a method, regardless of the art that you're studying, on how to get somebody to become more creative, more authentic. Because that listen, a chef, he knows how to cook, right? But what separates a Michelin star? It's a little bit, of course, professionalism and standards, but then it's the chef's creativity and it's who they are. And that's hard to get at because we have to look inside ourselves because we all have our problems and we hide them, but that doesn't make us unique. What's unique is it's what in the early, you know, I watched two athletes of of notoriety. Mike Tyson was one. I watched him in his heyday, and you know, he was just an animal. You saw the guy, he was just angry and an animal. And to watch the evolution of the man now, he's like a philosopher now. He's somebody who's come to peace. Um, and if your listeners haven't a chance to listen to him talk, he's actually a comedian now. I have a hard time understanding him, though, I gotta be honest. He's just got a little bit of a thing. He would laugh at that if you heard me say that. But what's interesting was there was an interview I saw him maybe a year ago, and they were talking, the interviewer was talking about how great he was. And at one point he looked at the interviewer, he goes, you know, people call me the great or great one. And I've been around many great people, he said. And he paused and he said, But they weren't good people. And he goes, You can't be good if you want to be great. And he goes, I want to be a good person now. And it was profound for me because it's very wise what he said. Because those two don't exist. For you to be great at something, you almost have to walk over people. You have to push them down, you have to do a lot of stuff that doesn't make you no. So but he's he's matured a lot and and he's changed so much. He's learned, you see an incredible transformation humbleness and humility to the purse. He laughs at himself a lot. He's heard critics and all that stuff, he's heard everything. So he was quite an interesting athlete, and you saw the dark side in boxing. Your dark side is right in front of you. You know, you you see it. For us, we all have a dark side, but we tend to hide it. We don't want people to see it too much. But if you want to get to that high level, right, expose you. So I I've competed in very high-level competitions, world championships, you name it, and things. It there's so much pressure. Pressure is two things for those people listening. Pressure is a combination of two is heightened um arousal. So your body is very aroused. Okay, like the crowd, the and then heightened expectation. Those two things combined are pressure. That pressure either breaks you or you use it. It's two ways it can go. There's no in between. Many Olympic athletes will tell me that that pressure made them achieve things they could never have done on themselves. But that same pressure breaks people. So you have to know how to handle heightened arousal and heightened expectation. Lose, don't mess up. It's really difficult. And you can talk all the mantras you want. You know, you could talk all the, you know, oh, I'm a when you're truly when there's a lot on the line, you know, like life and death or a lot of money. Those guys are like, well, one one thing is like worth millions or something. It's it's a lot of pressure. So there's so much there. And when you're talking about leadership, and when you're talking about teaching, you're talking about excellence, it's all the same. It's pressure. It's just pressure. Pressure to perform, pressure to do good, pressure to win as an athlete, pressure from your parents, pressure from you name it, can come from all kinds of places. It's mostly external in that case. Can be, but can be internal too. A lot of athletes are they're very hard on themselves, you know. It's, you know, no ugly uh a good movie a while ago, uh, Kinro and uh Borg and Mackro, the the the story of the movie about the two two big tennis players back in the 70s. And you saw how driven each one of them was. Yeah, it's external, but it's they they wanted to beat each other, man. So it was quite I played a lot of sports, man. Sometimes it's you know it's inside, other times it's outside.

Rexhen Doda: 14:02

I want to ask you a question because you were talking earlier about the kind of like the beginner student and then like intermediate to advanced in terms of like mindset, there's a difference there. Just a question, like when it comes to mindset, would you say like sometimes, not too often, but sometimes someone can just like get by off of like raw hard work.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 14:26

You you can uh so try to try to sit there, try to understand. So I do archery and I I as well as martial arts, I I compete quite heavily in archery these days, just a lot of fun for me. Uh I'm at such a high level that it's the the pressure is awesome, it feels feels great. Everybody can get a bullseye. Anybody get a bullseye. First time pick up the bow, I've seen some people for first shots right in the middle. But can they do it seven times? You can do it ten times in a row. We all get lucky and hard work is is great. The problem is it's very hard to sustain. It's very hard to sustain. And it's also very hard to be super consistent with that. So the mindset, when you're talking about mindset, you're talking about you're all alone. You're I'm a soccer player. I have the game is in overtime, we've gone into penalty kicks, I'm taking the last kick to win the game. When you're sitting there moments before you hit that ball, everything in your head is screaming at you. All your doubts come forward, all your fears come forward, and it is not about hard work. It is about what kind of conversation am I having with myself? Do I know how to yell at myself? Do I know how to be kind to myself? Do I know how to the the words are very important. The words and the way you talk to yourself are under pressure, right? I got this. I've done it many times. It's positive, you do. Like you have to, you can't just fake it. It's gotta be, it's like me to do this. I made tons of these kicks. It's like me to make them all the time. Put your head down and do it. Like that, that it is. I've never met a person, no athlete in what it is, that said it was an effort under real hard times. And it's it's very much like life and death, because really, like though you don't want to die. It's much more subtle. Again, I've never read it on anybody's epitaph. I wish I worked harder. There yeah, there's I I'm not saying not to work hard. Please don't misunderstand this. I work very hard. The point is to pay attention, it's not a box to check. I've worked hard, so I'll be successful. Not at all. If you work hard and you're paying attention, you have the potential of figuring out what works for you under pressure. That's the most important. Nothing works for everybody. Nothing works for everybody. It's a big thing in martial. When I train people at the fight club, number one thing I want to do is make sure they're having as much fun as they can. Because fun, you're learning. So talk about scary subjects, but laugh a little bit. Because if you want to dance with your dark side, if you want to study how to bring your dark side close to you and really see what happens, right? You have to laugh. You have to have a heightened sense of humor. Look at the comedians, right? It's a sad thing, but a lot of comedians, you know, that they end up committing suicide. They said they're they're there's they're they make so much fun, but they're so close to the dark side, sometimes a little too much, right? It's a little too much. The point is, under extreme stress, there's so much pressure, you don't need more pressure, you need more relaxation. It's it's kind of like this at the beginning, beginner intermediate, you're not so serious. So you need to work hard, right? And you're not playing for serious things. You're just but then later when the situations get serious, you need to have a heightened sense of like calming down. That's why you hear the famous tennis players and golfers talking about breathing, because they're under so much pressure. And the same, I mean, I believe the average entrepreneur is probably under the same damn pressure because you got to pay the bill, you have to chart the course of the company. There's just you're you're bombarded with pressure. And you need to know if you're not practicing some sort of relaxation practice, whether it's breathing or stretching or something that calms you down, getting into nature, I'm very hard. This is it's it's a heightened sense. And when I talk to the military guys that I train, and it's it's one type of training to go to war, and it's another type of training to come home. And that's where people get in trouble. It's coming home. It's that the war is dangerous for sure. But then coming home is hard, but in a different way. You can be mean to that, but it how will you be with yourself? It's terrible. We have an example in the when I was younger, I I wasn't part of it, but you saw what happened to the soldiers that came back in America from Vietnam, and and and it was terrible. These soldiers just literally coming home from a war country, just going right into their society. This they were damaged beyond belief. Mentally, they were damaged. Their bodies too, but mind was completely damaged. So we want to make sure that when we train, we can we can train hard, we can train with serious things, but laugh a little bit. Just just just it it's better for learning. You know, making you know things too serious, I'm not quite sure we'll get a better result than if you just lighten up a little bit. Doesn't mean it's a big joke. It just means that you're it's it's amazing. American politicians are not not this one, but but in the past, American politicians they usually were quite known for having a sense of humor and it served them very well on the on the stage. It brought some tensions down, right? But you gotta learn how to use it. Too much humor, you become like a clown. But use just right, it it it can soften some serious situations, right? And allow you to go to places you couldn't go if you were too serious.

Rexhen Doda: 19:43

Yeah. Now I want to go to the other side of that. So what I was talking earlier is I was kind of like trying to be the defendant of these hard workers. I want to go to the other side of it. For people who want to be consistent at what they're doing. You said that is tough to maintain. Is there any advice you'd like to give to these people that want to increase that consistency and discipline? So the two there's there's a couple of practices that you that everybody should be is.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 20:11

First, try live as a minimalist. Okay, try that. That doesn't mean you throw stuff away. It doesn't mean that you have to have one shirt. It just means take a good look at yourself and say, what do I truly need? Like truly what you need. Because we collect a lot of stuff and then it doesn't allow us to see what we have, right? When you know you have five shirts, five pants, five, like you know you you know what you have. So we have so many things in our societies that we don't know what we have. As an athlete, sometimes we do so many things, we don't know what caused the positive or bad result. If you're doing 20 things, you you can't trace back what was good. So if you look at a dietitian, if you don't, if you go to a uh a nutritionist and you don't document for about a month or so what you've eaten, when you've eaten it, how much you've eaten, how will they help you? If they don't know what you've done, having a running more of a minimalist style allows you to understand what caused an effect. Second, a practice of journaling, but not diary. It's not a diary. I'm talking unedited journaling. So I sit down in the morning, I do my journaling in the morning, and I write, I can't stand my kids. I hate my dad. I I whatever's on my mind, I put that down. It doesn't matter if I like to read it or not. I write it down and then you can throw it away if you want. But the point is when you're doing things that are right and you're doing things right, you feel differently than when you're doing them wrong. And it's a super interesting exercise to practice unedited journaling. And what is on your mind matters. And sometimes what we do is we filter our minds. Because think of it. We walk through the day and we see somebody doing something stupid. We don't tell them. We just say in our minds, what the hell is that guy doing? You know, his nose, or the guy's driving his car and he's picking his nose. What do you need? You don't stop and say, What are you doing? You just like we do this so much. I don't know how bad is it like where you are, but in Toronto, there's some weird stuff going on, man. It's people, it's comedy sometimes going on the street. So we always edit as a manager, as a teacher, you gotta be very careful what you say. You gotta, because it's hard to tell some people some stuff. You gotta be careful how you do it. But you're editing, you're editing, you're editing. And the problem is that doesn't allow you to even be honest with yourself. Before you have a bad thought, you already edit it, but that's a thought. So my two practices that I find help me grow the most is I I write a lot and edit it. And if you're working hard, which I don't mind working hard, it will it, if you work too hard, it agitates your nervous system. And then by agitating your nervous system, you start to become negative thoughts and you see it in your writing. Just like when you eat some food, the smell comes to your skin, or it it it goes to your pen. When I'm training right, when I'm doing things the right way, I'm resting, I'm working hard, but I'm learning. That's the most important. Training is trying to make me better at something, and I need to pay attention if it's having that effect. So I need to be patient, give it 30, 60, 90 days, give it some a couple of months, you gotta figure that out, and then write a lot and then be minimalist so that you can see the cause and effect. It's like a scientist, man. Scientists, they make one change because they if they make two changes, they're not sure which change the caused the reaction. Right now, what I see is, and you see it, I'm sure, there's just so much information out there. There's just about everything. The problem is there's no wisdom because wisdom comes with time. So, you know, there's an old saying here, I don't know if they have it there. It says, you know, knowledge is know that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is don't put it in a fruit salad. That's wisdom. It takes time. And I see a lot of people mistaking knowledge, lots of great information, but they don't have wisdom. And that's a the and I see that especially a lot in North America when it comes to Europe. My background's Greek. I have a lot of family in Greece. I have lots of students all over Europe. And I ask people, you know, that come in North America, and they have so many opinions about Europe, but they've never been there. What you read there is completely wrong. I guess I was there, it's completely wrong. Yeah. I've been I'm there. I've my whole family's there. I can call them up. I've been there every other year I go to these places. So that's mistakes that's sure we're not mistaking knowledge for for and let's make sure we're we're mistaking hard work with success. It is a part of success. Knowledge is a part. But the other part is work hard, learn, be aware and adapt. What my biggest success, like when I look at the the asset, I'm a really patient person. You gotta be patient. Life is not good, it's gonna come the way it can come quick, it can come slow. Whenever it comes, that's it. You you work hard as you want, but it'll come when it comes. That doesn't mean being lazy, just things take time. Then uh so patience for sure, dedicated yourself to something. Don't do things you don't like. Find the things you like. You don't like to swim, don't swim. I see people all the time doing a practice that they don't really like. They did it because, well, I want to lose weight, or this is what they say is do it. It's like, why would you do this? If you don't like it, don't find something you like. I I did things I didn't like. You know, I listen, I loved running. I used to love running. But I don't like running anymore because it hurts my knees a lot. Um, you know, I'm almost 60, I've I've been an athlete, I was my body a little bit too much in the early years, like most people. And running just makes my knees sore. So why would I continue this practice when it makes me sore? But a lot of people do that in business. They they stuff that hurts their business or hurts them. Pay attention, journal, get rid of stuff, look, and observe what happens, and then make those changes that are necessary for you, right? And for your business. And really, for anybody that's listening to this with a business mindset, you cannot, in this day and age, especially for the next four years, you cannot have like like in concrete things. The amount of change that's coming, like I I'm I'm almost 60, and I I the only time I've ever thought, wow, we are this is even more powerful than when we got cell phones. This is more powerful than when there was when I was around I hand wrote my papers in university. So there is an entire generation of kids now that have have born and they've had technology from the day they were born. Yeah. That wasn't me. So with AI, with new things changing in the world that we see going on, it's very hard for us to say it's in stone. We have to be adaptable. It's very we need to all be very adaptable, super open-minded, like not resistant, you know, and we have to. It's just I I still remember my my stupid computers, you know. What you could resist, like I think everybody when I hear people knocking the AI thing, right? The other thought, guys, this is coming whether you like it or not. This is like it's already done. Yeah. So it's scary. I get it. I get it's scary, but we're all in this together.

Rexhen Doda: 27:21

So would you say then that what usually creates problem for consistency is the fact that there's a lot of distractions, and oftentimes having a minimalistic kind of style helps you always um like avoid not missing out on that consistency.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 27:40

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. I I or anybody to try, don't even go crazy. Just if you op if any of your listeners open up their drawer, I guarantee you probably got two times as many socks as you need. Three times as many underwears as you need. Just throw away a few, okay? I'm not telling you to like clear out your closet. If I open up my closet, I and the only reason people hold on to stuff, especially clothes, okay, clothes, is because they're attached, because they feel I paid for this much for it. I only wore it a few times, I'll wear it again, or I gained some weight, I'm gonna lose a little bit of weight, and then I could wear it again. But it doesn't happen. And they just end up the only thing they really do is fill up their closet. That's all. They didn't. I really want you to say, if you're gonna have clothes, make sure that it's workable, like you actually use them. Of of course, we have suits, maybe we don't wear them all the time, but I'm you know what I'm getting at. It's a lot of people I would say are carrying 50% too much of everything. Look, uh how many martial arts skills I have, I can't tell you. I practice the kicks, the punches, the this, the that, the wrestling. I've probably been in a handful of fights over my years, maybe 10. I don't even know. I probably use four things. Like it it's simple. But we do these things because it humors us, because we're bored with our lives, right? So every I'm sure all your listeners have those friends, they don't have a problem. So they there's problems that are made problems because you don't have one. So I I had many friends like this, they made did it to themselves. So when you're more of a minimalist and you you have a little bit less, all of a sudden you start to really understand what makes you happy. And you really start to understand what what does it say about you. And then because for all those listeners listening now, listen, the end will come for all of us. It's not a morbid thing. It's just we can't live forever. And what people will remember of us is very simple. It's not some complex thing that they're gonna remember. They're gonna remember you're a good person. What did you do for a living? Did you care about people? Did you help people? And and these simple it's it's look at the words they say, it's very minimalist. So why would we complicate our lives? Nobody will remember this and for who, right? And for who. So take the time to minimize stuff. Take the time to write unedited so that you really understand what's in your mind and you can start to get at it. Because we don't want to bury ourselves in thoughts. We want to understand our thoughts. I don't know how much you guys know about the samurai. It's a good example, just as as a because a lot of people under know what the samurai was, right? It wasn't just a warrior. Samurai was represented the highest order of that society. He was a figurehead. He was a statue of that country, of the of what it meant. And the most important attribute of the samurai was not his fighting skills. The samurai knew he was going to win. There was no doubt. He was very skilled. He knew he was going to win. But his number one premise was to not fight. Because he sets in motion something that he can't stop, which is revenge. So somebody comes to you and you're going to hurt them or you kill them, then it's just a cycle of revenge now. And it never ends. He tries to understand how not to fight. And if you want to understand how not to fight, you have to understand your emotions. And if you want to understand your emotions, you have to understand it, put it through a sequence and everyone's personal of one, two, three, four, five. When I get an emotion, I I put it through like uh so that I can understand it. Because if I don't understand it, it's a wild horse. And I will not be able to control it. That means I will be fighting all the time. I don't want to fight all the time. Why why would any of your in a bigger sense in the business world, there's always somebody to argue with, but it won't serve any purpose. You you need is of your company or what you're trying to do. That's your interest. So I can't tell you how many meetings I was in in corporate world and I just wanted to punch the guy out in front of me. He was so bad, right? But I had to figure out a way of why his this emotion's coming to me. And understanding it in a different way allowed me to go back to martial arts and understand how important it was and how important it is for all of us to take a second and just try figure out how we're gonna understand sadness, anger, ego, like all the different things that we need to understand these things. Otherwise, we don't really understand what we're trying to do in life. We don't.

Rexhen Doda: 32:05

Because it is a without a doubt. Absolutely. So for all of them, all of the people that are listening right now, I wanted to like give a little bit more information um who your ideal plan profile is, what's it like to work with you, both on the you could talk about both the martial arts instructor side or the personal development coach side. Uh just give them kind of like um an idea of like your offers and yeah, well, listen, people come to me all the time, young, I teach kids, I teach adults.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 32:36

Um some people come for help, but then they love the martial arts. So people come for the martial arts, they love the health, and some people overly serious. I I look my ideal customer, a client, whatever you want to call them, is a person that's willing to say, you get to that point in life where you're like, I want something better right now. I I can be more, and it does it doesn't have to be a lot. I remember, you know, I start some of my seminars by asking everybody, how many of you are tired of what you say and what you do? Almost everybody puts their head the present way, I'm tired of what I say and what I do, to be honest with you. So we need to see it differently. We don't even need to change anything. You need to see it differently and make the idea if you want to change. So when people come, whether it's like you said, martial arts, try to see fighting as something different. Try to see it as a way. Imagine if we could say, you know, like uh in rural rural or Pakistan or Iran, they have wrestling schools that are 500 years old. And if you go there, it's like it's your birthday, we wrestle. You're getting married, we wrestle. It's a funeral, we wrestle. Like they they and it's so beautiful. It's not just seen as a self-defense. So try to say to yourself, I take those people, say, imagine if this could be a celebration. And and so I love people that maybe are very successful in business. So there's a lot of musicians that have made one hit. That's possible, but very few that have made a career out of music. When you think of all the musicians, very few, and those type of people need creativity. They need that. I so I love to me those clients that are like, I've done something really good, but I want to do it better and again. And then that's where I really help. Because I I've done, I've been hugely successful in about four different areas of my life, and in business and martial arts, and archery, and uh personal development, and coaching, and writing a book. And like I didn't do anything other than uh understand myself. So back to that old thing about know yourself. So I love helping people understand who they are so that they know themselves, so they can be more authentic, and then they can start to find some real happiness because when you're authentic, when you're really you understand who you are and what you're supposed to do. So I have two websites it's fight-club.ca and mastersmethod.ca. Both lead to me. I've written a book called Eudaimonia, which is uh the highest human good. Uh, you can find it on Amazon as well. The book, the websites, they kind of all lead back to me. And you can taught people, I teach people online weekly. I meet with them, we talk about stuff, I work with people in person, I do seminars around the world. There's a lot of ways of getting through to me. But the most important thing is to sit down and have a conversation with somebody and see if you're a good m you're a good match. You know, coaching and leadership is all about good matches. If you're both on the same page and you we have to say and we can work with each other, it'll be very fruitful for people. I mean, I I what's super interesting to me is I went to York University, and if you look at the years where I was at York University, those years I was at the university was when Ben Johnson won his gold medal. Why do I say that? Because he was training at York University. And I watched him train hours on end. For those of you listening, he had five coaches watching him at every step of the way. And for many cases, the people I train, they want to have very similar results. They want to be at the top of their field. You're not going to do that if you don't surround yourself with coaches. I don't know what people are thinking. As a martial artist, as you don't have good coaches, you won't go to very good places because you can't analyze yourself. It's very hard. I can't do it. You know, you know what I do when I make a video? But I was for the listeners who are a good lap, people would send me martial art videos, like students of mine from around the world of them training. I would sit my daughter down who is six years old. I'd say, Well, how does that look to you? And she would watch it and I would listen for her first words. Stupid. Or it says, Wow, that's interesting. And okay. And because I see this all the time. She doesn't. So you can never, the first words out of a kid's mouth is like unedited journaling. If you're fat, they can say you're fat. You're like hair, if no filters is the favorite thing because as adults, we can't, you know, you're at the dinner table, whatever we could eat. So I want to say the same thing, but my mother will get mad. But if she says it, that's okay. It's just a kid, they say those things. So they get away with what we wish we could, right? So when you get a coach, especially a really good coach, and he can set you, he can save you so much time, right? Now, listen, there's bad mechanics, there's bad construction workers, there's bad everything. You have to find a good one, of course, right? And I like to, you know, and you can, they're pretty obvious. I mean, from the this one hour talk we're having now, I think people can get a sense of who I am. There's some people I can work with and some people I can't. It depends on what they want. I, you know, some people are just personalities. Yeah. It's just just personal, it's nothing more. It's not personal, just personality. So when people look and they they my book and they they go to my site, they give me a call, they'll find out very quickly if it's something that'll be fruitful. And most cases I find it usually is. I have a good beat on people and get a good read on people to understand what they want from me, and I'll know if I can deliver it for them.

Rexhen Doda: 38:05

Thank you so much for coming to our podcast. My pleasure. We will be uh linking both websites into the description. So we have number one, fight-clap.ca, and then the second one is mastersmethod.ca. So we'll put that into the description for people to find it easily. But thank you so much, Emmanuel. You're so welcome. Yeah, thank you for coming. This was uh this was a great conversation.

Emmanuel Manolakakis: 38:31

Thank you, man. I'm glad I hope I hope it went well and thank you to all your listeners for taking the time.

Davis Nguyen : 38:36

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you, visit join purplecircle.com