The Beginning
I stepped onto the mats for the first time in 2009. At the time I was running my own trades business — an industry I had come into through family and would continue in for fourteen years. What I did not know then was that the discipline required to build a career from nothing, to show up every day and do the work regardless of how you felt, would become the foundation of everything that followed.
Jiu jitsu immediately became the centre of my life. Training under Roger Gracie — the most decorated competitor in our sport — I developed not only as a practitioner but as a thinker. Someone who became as interested in the process of building excellence as in the achievement of it. The parallels between what makes a great athlete and what makes a great business were always there but it took years to fully understand them.
Throughout those early years I was funding my passion from my earnings running a trades business. Everything went back into the sport. The discipline of managing that — of choosing short term sacrifice for long term gain, year on year — was its own education in what it takes to build something real from nothing.
Building the Club
Roger Gracie Bristol began as a passion project — two days a week in a children's crèche. There was no business plan, no external funding, no safety net. There was a belief in what we were building and a willingness to figure everything else out as we went.
For a long time the business ran me rather than the other way around. No systems. No financial clarity. No understanding of why some members stayed while others left. I was learning how to run a business in real time whilst trying to be a father, a full time coach and remain competitive simultaneously. I funded early growth from personal savings, took on personal debt, and made every mistake available to me but crucially I learned from each one.
What changed things was the realisation that I needed to apply to the business the same five elements I had always applied to athlete development. Discipline. Consistency. Accountability, Authenticity and Alignment. Not occasionally or in part — with the same rigour I demanded of myself and my athletes on the mat. When I did that, things changed. Roger Gracie Bristol now has over 1,000 members across multiple sites and is recognised as one of the leading coaching clubs in the UK.
The Competition Team
Alongside building the business I have maintained a commitment to developing athletes at the highest level. Our full time athlete development programme operates on a ten year plan — split into two five year cycles. The first to reach the highest level of the sport. The second to conquer it.
Carson Coles, Tom Barry and Ashley Bendle represent the tip of the spear of the current generation of that programme. Athletes who arrived with the right mix of discipline, consistency and ambition and who have exceeded every expectation in their development. Watching Carson compete and win on the biggest stages in Europe, Ashley and Tom making their mark internationally with multiple British Championships, European and World Championship medals between them — these are the outcomes that make the daily commitment worthwhile.
As a coach I am driven by a deep belief that if you are going to commit to something, you do it to become the best. That belief applies to our athletes and to the businesses I work with in equal measure.
Social Impact
Alongside everything else I had been managing a social impact programme informally since the early years of the club — providing free and concessionary training to vulnerable people in the Bristol community. In 2024 I formalised that programme as BJJAID and structured it properly as a standalone initiative.
BJJAID serves over 300 people in need with free and discounted training across a number of targeted groups — vulnerable women, children at risk of gang involvement and knife crime, people facing mental and physical health challenges, those dealing with substance misuse and members of the City's blue light services. The work is delivered through Roger Gracie Bristol's facilities and is supported by a network of referral partners across Bristol.
Formalising the programme required me to build a structured business case, engage institutional investors, and manage a £390,000 social impact investment from Bristol & Bath Regional Capital. That process — of structuring an operation, making the case for investment, and delivering measurable outcomes — is a direct parallel to what I help consulting clients do in their own businesses. The same disciplines applied at a different level of complexity.
The BJJAID programme has been covered by The Business Magazine, Business Biscuit, Insider Media, and Bristol & Bath Regional Capital's own publications. The investment helped facilitate the growth of Roger Gracie Bristol across the city.
Visit bjjaid.com →
