Hey Blueprint Family! I just uploaded brand-new videos in the Classroom → Coaching Section, go check them out when you get a chance! These are packed with insights to help you become a more effective kids BJJ coach, and I want to make sure they’re as useful as possible for YOU. Drop a comment and let me know: Is there a specific subject or topic you’d like me to cover in future videos? I’m building this resource FOR you, so your input matters! See you on the mats! 🙏 Coach Joao

I wanted to give you all a heads up about our community pricing.: Right now, you're locked in at $27/month, and here's the great news: **this price will remain for all current members until we reach 100 members.** Once we hit that 100-member milestone, the price for NEW members will increase to $97/month. But don't worry - if you're already in, you keep your $27/month rate. This is my way of rewarding our founding members who are helping us build something special from the ground up. You believed in this community early, and I want to make sure you benefit from that. So if you know anyone who's been thinking about joining, now is the time to let them know. Once we hit 100 members, they'll be paying almost double. Thanks for being part of The Children BJJ Blueprint family. Let's keep growing and getting better together! Oss! Joao

Buddy Week is one of the most effective, and underused, tools for growing your academy. The concept is simple: invite your current students, kids and adults, to bring a friend to train for free. No commitment, no pressure, just a chance to experience what you do. But the magic is in how you run it. Before the Week Build anticipation. Talk about it in class two to three weeks ahead. Post about it on social media. Send a message to your parent group chats. Make your students feel like ambassadors, because they are. Give them simple language: “Hey, I train at this great academy and they’re doing a free week for guests. Want to come check it out with me?” The easier you make it for them to invite someone, the more people will show up. During the Week When a guest walks in, treat them like they’re already part of the family. Give them a loaner uniform so they feel like everyone else on the mat, not like an outsider. Design a slightly easier, more accessible version of your regular class. You want them to feel challenged but capable. You want them to leave thinking “I can do this.” Make the instructor introduction personal. Shake their hand, learn their name, ask them why they came. That first connection is everything. After Class This is where most academies leave money on the table. Have a simple, warm conversation ready, not a sales pitch, a genuine check-in. Ask them what they thought, what surprised them, what they enjoyed. Then invite them to continue. Have a clear, easy enrollment offer ready for Buddy Week guests only, a discounted first month, a free uniform with sign-up, or a waived registration fee. Make the decision easy. Make it feel like a natural next step, not a transaction. Why It Works People join Jiu-Jitsu because someone they trust brought them in. Word of mouth is your most powerful marketing tool, and Buddy Week turns every one of your students into a recruiter, without it ever feeling forced. Your current students also get to share something they love, which deepens their own connection to your academy.

When a child misbehaves, consequences aren’t punishment. They are emotional communication for when verbal communication isn’t working. They create the contrast a child needs to understand: “when I do this, that happens.” Punishment and reward are just two sides of the same coin, both keep the child externally regulated, always scanning for what happens to them from the outside. Both place the parent at the center of the moral universe, teaching the child to manage your approval rather than read reality itself. Consequences work differently. They aren’t leverage, they’re information. Consistent, honest, connected to the action itself. Not “I’m going to make you feel bad enough to stop,” but “this is simply how things work.” And for this to land fully, the consequence needs to be relational, logically connected to the behavior, not arbitrary. When it flows naturally from what happened, the child can’t argue with it. It stops being about your anger or your authority. It becomes something the child can actually feel, process, and learn from. That’s what makes it communication rather than control. And it treats the child as someone capable of learning from reality — not someone who needs to be managed into compliance.

Parents used to ask me all the time when their kid would get a new stripe, and I’ll be honest, it used to get under my skin. I thought they just didn’t get what Jiu-Jitsu is really about. But I changed my mind. Parents bring their kids to Jiu-Jitsu because they want them to grow. And if they don’t speak the language of Jiu-Jitsu, they can’t see the progress happening on the mat. Stripes become their way of tracking that growth. Promotions become moments where you can look a kid in the eyes, call out their effort, and plant something in them that sticks way longer than any technique ever will. These moments are gifts. Don’t waste them. That said, handing out stripes every 10 weeks just to keep everyone happy, regardless of effort or behavior, is one of the worst things you can do. For the kid, for your culture, and for the integrity of the belt system. Promotions have to be earned. They have to feel real. At our academy, promotion means a minimum class count, time on the mat, and, most importantly , we need to see real growth. If a child isn’t ready and we promote them anyway, that’s on us. We didn’t do our job. Make sure your staff knows how to talk to parents about this, warmly, clearly, and with confidence. Parents don’t need to be Jiu-Jitsu experts. They just need to trust that you have a system and that you care. Because kids don’t remember every move you taught them. They remember the coaches who actually gave a damn.