www.TeenMartialArts.com John Graden was a fat, out of shape 13 year old when he took his first karate class in Largo, FL. He knew from that first class he was going to do martial arts for the rest of his life. In the past two-decades no single person has had a more powerful and positive impact on the martial arts industry than MATA Executive Director John Graden. An 8th degree black belt under Joe Lewis, Mr. Graden was an accomplished international competitor before he realized that he could not deposit his trophies in the bank. Mr. Graden began to study martial arts schools that fulfilled two criteria 1. The school had to produce excellent black belts. 2. The owner had to have a personal income of $100000 or more. He studied schools meeting that criteria and learned certain key, consistent strategies that were in place regardless of the school’s location or style. He applied these principles to his own “Dungeon Dojo” and within a year mushroomed to over 600 students in two locations and surpassed the $100000 income mark in 1992. In 1993, he wrote Black Belt Management, which described those strategies. The book was a bestseller. Mr. Graden sold his schools and created the first martial arts professional association and trade journal. For the past 15 years, he has helped tens of thousands of school owners around the world to achieve success without selling out. Timeline 2008 — Author, The Impostor Syndrome: How to Replace Self-Doubt with Self-Confidence and Train Your …