Hilary has been one of Oregon's first female black belts in BJJ. She's competed against Cyborg, gone to war at purple belt with a Polish judo national team athlete who's now one of her best friends, and fought Gabby Garcia at Fight to Win. She also works as a paralegal during the day.

In this episode, Alex visits Unicorn Jiu-Jitsu in Portland, Oregon—a gym Hilary and her husband Brian built deliberately around a culture filter: the name alone weeds out the people they don't want.

The result is a gym where noon classes run 80% women, world-class competitors like Dominika Stranková show up to coach and paint murals on the walls, and purple belts teach classes because they're better at certain things than the black belts are.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• How Hilary went from competitive equestrian to college basketball walk-on at TCU to training alongside active UFC fighters at Team Quest, and why jiu-jitsu is the one that stuck
• Why she named the gym Unicorn, what it means to her personally, and how it became the most effective self-filtering tool the gym has
• The "think street, train sport, practice art" philosophy she built the gym around, and why she believes more women leading at the front of the class changes the culture of the sport
• How a supportive landlord who waived rent during COVID shutdowns is the reason Unicorn survived, and what happened when he sold the building
• Why she lets a purple belt teach the no-gi class, and what that says about how she thinks about ego, expertise, and building a team
• What she's learned watching kids transform on the mat — and why one shy, homeschooled kid who's now leading the line makes all of it worth it

If you've ever thought about what kind of gym you're actually trying to build—and who you want walking through the door—this one's for you.

Unicorn Jiu-Jitsu is based in Portland, Oregon. Hilary is one of Oregon's first female BJJ black belts and has been competing and coaching for over 15 years.

When Lisa's boxing gym closed during COVID, she didn't stop training. She paid a coach to work with her in the playground across the street, on concrete, in masks—until more and more displaced members started showing up. A year later, she had no choice but to open a gym.

In this episode, Alex visits St. John's Boxing in Portland, Oregon, where Lisa—a former roller derby athlete and community justice worker with no business background—built an inclusive, mixed-level boxing gym from scratch out of a closed dance studio, a rented hourly space, and eventually a neighborhood landmark that had been a men's clothing shop since 1940.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• How a year of training on a concrete playground during COVID turned into an accidental gym — and why Lisa was the last person who expected to open one
• Why she built St. John's around the middle ground between fitness boxing and competitive boxing — and why that niche is almost completely underserved
• Her "social entrepreneur" philosophy: how boxing creates bridging capital by pairing strangers who'd never otherwise meet
• The real cost of rising rents for small gym owners — and why being in a neighborhood for 30 years doesn't protect you from a building sale
• How she inherited a community from a closed gym and has kept those coaches, members, and relationships alive four years later
• What she's still figuring out with Gymdesk — and what she's found most useful for managing a growing, diverse membership

If you've ever wondered whether you could build a gym around community first and competition second, Lisa's story proves it can happen.

St. John's Boxing is based in Portland, Oregon, and has been operating for four years. Lisa trained at Sweet Science Boxing and coaches alongside a team of six independent contractor coaches.

Adrian walked into his first jiu-jitsu class, didn't love what he saw, and walked right back out. The next day, he signed up—and never left.

In this episode, Alex sits down with Adrian, owner of Gracie University Amsterdam, who moved from Cape Town to the Netherlands and built the city's only Gracie University location from scratch, starting with three one-hour classes a week and growing to 14 classes running daily.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why his first impression of Jiu-Jitsu nearly drove him away, and what a stack of flyers and a YouTube wormhole changed his mind
• How a move to Amsterdam for an unrelated job became the opportunity to build the city's first Gracie University location
• His deliberate choice to build the gym around working professionals and self-defense, not competition — and why that's the right call for his community
• How "you learn to fight so you never have to fight" shapes everything about how he teaches
• Why he chose Gymdesk from day one, and what changed when Gracie University HQ standardized on the platform across all locations
• His take on jiu-jitsu as a kind of moving meditation, and why that resonates so strongly with adult students juggling jobs and family

If you've ever debated whether to build your gym around competitors or around your actual community, this one will get you thinking.

Gracie University Amsterdam has been operating in the Netherlands for several years and is one of Gracie University's certified training centers worldwide. Adrian trained under James Smart in Cape Town before relocating to Amsterdam.