No Safety Net, No Students Yet—He Bet on Himself Anyway.

Nick Gullo was about to co-open a gym with his boss when he got fired instead — the boss told him it would be the worst thing that ever happened to him. The next day, on a hike for his five-year anniversary, Nick had a moment of clarity on a boulder at low tide and decided to open his own place. Three years later, Monarch Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Malverne, NY is thriving.Nick, a student of Jason Rau in the Matt Serra lineage, talks about the leg-lock era he helped pioneer as a training partner years before it went mainstream, a nine-month "vision quest" through Southeast Asia that convinced him to come back and commit to jiu-jitsu full-time, and why cutting his chaotic toddler program to make room for more classes for older kids doubled his kids program in a single month.