For as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed making things happen. The pleasure of creating something just from a thought, a mere electric signal in my brain, and turning it into something you can actually touch, feel and experience, is a high I’ve been chasing all my life. In some strange way, it even evolved to the point where it became my “career”.
I have an exceptional strong fear of missing out in life and it’s both my curse and my blessing at the same time. I need things to happen and I need every single day to count. This forces me to a crossroad with only two options to chose between: Create or consume my way to the life I want. I could get a job, make some money and wait for opportunities where I can buy myself some experiences here and there with said money. But I don’t have time for that; I can’t sit and wait for opportunities to drop into my lap one day or hope for anyone else to produce great memories for me. The clock is ticking and consuming my way is simply too slow. I need to take charge and push for things to happen that will earn me the only currencies I am truly interested in having on my “account” when this life is over: Experiences and friendships.
This is something I put a lot of thought into. For many years, I’ve been accumulating hundreds of pages of notes that I had imagined at some point would turn into a book. I still haven’t found the time—or the angle—to write that, but it did evolve into a workshop called “Create Something” that I’ve been hosting at the BJJ Globetrotters camps. It’s been a really interesting process for me to try and “organize” my thoughts around these things and turn it into a format that I can explain to others. It has helped me tremendously to understand what I do and how I do it, something I’ve never been aware of before, when I just did it by instinct. It’ll probably be a while before I’m in a position in life to write another book, but I do miss writing, so instead I decided to do shorter articles here on this blog where I’ll try to organize my many notes and thoughts on entrepreneurship and experience design. I’m not really writing it for any other reason but for myself to process these thoughts, but in case you or anyone else can find some inspiration in it, that’s would be a nice bonus.
One of the early tasks I gave myself when organizing the material for my Create Something workshop, was to try and list all the projects I can remember I’ve pulled off over the years. This was at a point where I still had a hard time admitting to myself that I have been more efficient than the average person in terms of making things happen. The list is below, and I’ll try to include some stories on this blog about how each of them came about, how I made them happen and what I learned along the way.
- Computer magazine (age ~10)
- Network chat software (1993?)
- Hacker magazine (4-5 issues?)
- Pre-Facebook social website for our group of hyperactive high school teenagers
- Martialarts.dk (a former, 20-year running online community for martial artists in Denmark)
- Martial arts summer camps & social events in Denmark
- Video production company making instructional DVDs in early 2000s and filming MMA shows for TV
- BJJ / grappling competitions (30+ events)
- Amateur MMA promotion “Beginners Vale Tudo” (6 events)
- Pro MMA promotion “Adrenaline” (4 events)
- CSA.dk academy 2003-2016 with 700+ members and 45 employees at it’s height
- CrossFit gym for approximately 7 years
- CrossFit league w/ competition software (5-6 events, 1000+ participants)
- CSA Fight Night amateur MMA promotion (15 events)
- Print-on-demand t-shirt company with funny BJJ designs
- BJJ trip around the world w/ blog
- Writing & publishing “The BJJ Globetrotter” book
- Teaching 50+ seminars around the world
- Numerous parties from very small to very large
- Bachelor parties (including fake ones)
- Web design/creative bureau in St. Barth
- Countless social events / travels / competition trips with team
- Shogunhq.com blog (2007-2016)
- Give-a-gi donating Jiu Jitsu gis to academies in poorer parts of the world
- Roll4Life 24 hour sparring charity event
- Eight year running bicep growing competition
- Move to the Caribbean to start a new life
- BJJ Globetrotters “affiliation” (world’s largest at this point, apparently!)
- Gi/gear production & online shop
- Sponsorship program for Jiu Jitsu travelers
- 50+ BJJ Globetrotters camps
- Matsurfing, a couchsurfing service for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
- “Globetrotters In Action” with several hundreds of free instructional videos and over 1 million views
- BJJ Globetrotters Pirate Radio Podcast
- A Jiu Jitsu camp wedding
- Factory & warehouse in Pakistan
- “Island Fever St. Barth” beach wear brand
- Create Something workshop and Facebook group
- Beltchecker.com a free, community based belt rank verification service for BJJ
- Clones of Beltchecker for Luta Livre, Judo, Taekwondo, Kenpo and Mixed Martial Arts
- Distribarth.com grocery shopping service software
- BJJ Globetrotters full length documentary (premiere 2021)
- DefensiveBJJ.com online learning platform
- TeachingBJJ.com platform for BJJ instructors to connect and share knowledge on teaching
I hope you’ll enjoy the content of this blog. I’m excited to get started!
Feel free to reach out to me any time on graugart@gmail.com at any point, for any reason.
That’s quite a list. Didn’t you also put together a team for a weird obscure sport that most people haven’t heard of and I can’t even remember the name of, and enter their biggest annual comp? I don’t see that in the list but at the time I read about it I thought that was quite impressive!
I wasn’t directly involved in that, I just sponsored them some shirts 🙂