GIOVANNI SOFFIETTO
"Martial Arts Is The Only Reason I Am Where I Am Today"
Our Founder and CEO’s own story of how martial arts helped him escape a life of poverty and go on to shape an industry.
Giovanni’s Story;
“Like many kids growing up in poverty, throughout my childhood I lacked stability and often found myself vulnerable to poor life choices. As I often say, when you’re suffering from hunger because – despite both working – your parents can’t put food on the table, or when you’re freezing cold because the emergency on the electric needs topping up before the gas which has now run out, you don’t focus on learning the Cello or aspire to read Plato.
All too often the failures of our society are reflected as the failures of an individual, despite for so many their life circumstances in which they are born into playing the greatest part in their story.
I was born in the South West of England in the early 90’s. My father worked hard to provide for us, but all of his efforts were in ‘unskilled’ roles which often came with little to no security and poor pay.
Our family unit broke up when I was twelve when my parents’ marriage ended. Throughout my childhood, alcohol misuse within the family unit was a key factor. I vividly recall being an angry teenager. I wasn’t a ‘bad kid’ by any stretch of the imagination. I worked hard in school, tried my best to ‘do well’, but I was associating with friends who had begun to pick up criminal records and I was certainly being led down a dark path feeling more disenfranchised as the months and years rolled on, with numerous ‘near misses’ that could have resulted in serious harm and a criminal record. I think sometimes you sleepwalk into it. When you feel the system is setup against you, growing up working class, poor, disenfranchised – its easy to reject the systems and instrument of government, whether that be school or the law.
I had initially practiced Karate as a young man and progressed through until eventually achieving my Black Belt. albeit it with a small break around aged 7. This had always been an immensely positive experience, grounding me in my body, instilling respect and most importantly as I would go on to learn – giving me access to the human body’s near endless reserves of resilience and grit. A real show of cause and effect; you practice hard enough, it’ll happen. Perhaps most importantly (although not something I realised at the time) it was a very affordable way to access life lessons around discipline, self-respect, resilience and for the first time in my life – being good at something which money couldn’t buy a head start in, and being respected for who I was in the Dojo, not what I did or did not have outside of it.
As I entered my teenage years, with thanks to my then best friend, I was introduced to Muay Thai Boxing at a back-street ‘off the radar’ gym. The gym was on the first floor of an old farmer’s barn and featured everything you’d today find in a cliché boxing film. Splinters in the floorboards, punchbags taped up with duct tape, a sweat and blood stained boxing ring and a large room with no luxuries, strip-lighting and zero temperature control (making it roasting in the summer and freezing in the winter). I fell immediately in love. That sort of environment and the intense training that takes place inside was the most captivating thing I had ever seen. It cut through the noise like no other sport or youth service had ever managed to before. I was hooked.
What made it really special was the owner. A brillianty talented, passionate Thai Boxer. He allowed me to become a ‘keyholder’ and that allowed use of this brilliant space 24/7, allowing me to ‘escape’ life on a daily basis and train constantly. In hindsight, safeguarding wasn’t a thing (it was the early 00’s) and whilst the adults there meant well and were all good men (there was no female coaches in this particular gym) I was exposed to stuff that by today’s standard would be unacceptable, but it did give me exposure to grappling, BJJ, Taekwondo, other styles of Karate, and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) – including competitive sparring – on a level I simply wouldn’t have got not having parents with money or means to pay for memberships to ‘offical’ clubs.
“I was built in that gym.”
As an impressionable and somewhat drifting teenager and looking back, I was clearly vulnerable. Whilst safeguarding training was a term never heard at this particular gym (a consequence of the era, rather than an indictment on this specific dojo) the coaches and trainers were genuinely decent martial artists who had grown up in the same impoverished community. They understood the pressures we faced, and they wanted to help. They’re one of the reasons I believe so strongly now in bringing everyone along in the Safeguarding Ethos, because even for the clubs who tell us emphatically they’re not a risk to children, we say the same thing – you may not be, but there’s no way of the outside world knowing and you open yourself up to risk by not doing things right.
I learnt more about myself in the most positive ways imaginable in the coming years at that gym, studying Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Mixed Martial Arts and Boxing on a near daily basis. Led by a superb instructor who accepted no money from those of us who could not afford it (I did insist on paying the 50p fee!) I was immediately and immeasurably inspired. I saw – for probably the first time in my life clearly – that people can be inherently good and, without realising it, I aligned to a positive male figure and role model at a time in my life where I had crucially not had this, and been drifting off path without even realising it.
I had starting working at the age of 13, unloading pallets of fruit and veg before school and working in a greengrocers after school and on the weekends to ‘pay my way’. That often meant helping cover shortfalls on rent, or topping up food in the fridge. Every month, despite the protests of my coach, I would pay my £20 ‘dues’ to hold a key to enter that gym 24/7, 365 days a year. This wasn’t just an incredible sense of ownership bestowed upon me, but also a refuge in which I would learn resilience, stickability, strength, humility and discipline that unquestionably came back to support me in my later years.
I was built in that Gym and, session by session, hour by hour, I grew. As many of the peers I initially surrounded myself with slowly drifted off to a life of drink, drugs and crime, I remained firmly grounded. Supported by the only consistency I had ever really known, I found a safe place to learn and train, socialising with others and coming to the realisation that there is always something to learn and always someone capable of beating you unless you worked harder.
As a martial artists, the opportunity to learn from so many cross-style fighters in a time long before what we’d now term ‘MMA’ was a thing (it was still called ‘Cage Fighting’ back then!) was huge for me personally, and blending traditional practice from Japanese styles with the escoteric of Chinese Martial Arts, with ‘new’ (age old, but ‘new’ in the sense of the UK scene at the time) of MMA and Muay Thai gave me a respect for traditional and ‘modern’ styles which influenced BMABA heavily in terms of ensuring we can support all styles, regardless of lineage.
“Resilience and hard work, stemming from immense self-discipline and a vision. That has been my key to success and I owe it all to martial arts.”
My training and personal growth led me to the very quick realisation that I had to, as Bon Jovi put it, “grow up, get old or hit the road” and so I moved on immediately after leaving school. Initially trying out for a career in the military, ultimately it wasn’t for me. Looking back on it, I was born an entrepreneur but the society and community in which I grew up never championed this or even presented it as a possibility. I was taught to ‘get a job so you don’t starve’, never to be ambitious and take risks or to believe in creating something new. Had it not been for martial arts, I would never have been able to summon the strength to follow my heart and go into social business.
In 2012, aged 20 and with just £20 of start-up capital, I bought a domain name and created BMABA. We formally launched that September to little fan-fair. I relied on martial arts on a daily basis in my twenties. Starting a business of this magnitude in a saturated and age-dominated market without any funding was, as I was told numerous times, “completely impossible” and “a great waste of time”. Some even went so far as to assure me I would spend “the rest of my life stacking shelves in a petrol station, if I was lucky” (not that there is anything wrong with this for so many and I did spend some time working nights in a petrol station, to pay for upgrades to the boxing gym I came to own!).
No doubt the single biggest attribute, I believe, that has allowed me to flourish into a now multi-award winning social entrepreneur and ‘Men’s Health Coach Of The Year’ is resilience and hard work. I taught myself web design, systems infrastructure, legal principles, accounting, marketing, copyrighting, graphics, policy, safeguarding and so much more in the early days because there was nobody else to do it for me. I can’t recount how many times then – and sometimes still now – I will work through to 2am to finish on a deadline, only to rise at 5am to spend time with my children before heading off to the offices.
Resilience and hard work, stemming from immense self-discipline and a vision. That has been my key to success and I owe it all to martial arts.
It took many long, hard years to get BMABA to where it is today. We had to start from quite literally 0. Year one saw 12 new members, and for the first 6 years it was largely myself, working one or two day jobs and then trying to run everything else around it. Waking early, sleeping late. We had a small voluntary committee helping behind the scenes, but we had no extra capital for anything so we ‘bootstrapped’ our way up.
In 2018, inspired by my baby girl (my first born) and whilst walking through town on a mundane trip to the shops, I spotted a ‘to let’ sign on a local office. It led me to come home and have one of those wonderful conversations you have with someone you love, who supports you and knows you. That might be a parent, a friend – for me it was my wife, Kirsty. We were only 26 at the time so when I suggested it was time to quit the stable day job as an insurance broker, to open an office, find investment and hire a team to light BMABA up, despite having a new-born, the logical answer would be no. She didn’t say no. She backed me, and I promised I’d continue to work as hard as I had until this point to make BMABA a success, so I could provide for my daughter a life my parents couldn’t for me.
We spent the next few years scaling a team in our first offices, learning hard and fast the job of running a ‘real company’ – and BMABA as you see it today began to take shape.
COVID crushed sports, and martial arts in particular. No funding or help from Sport England, DCMS or any other sporting body came. No support from outside investors. We put it all on the line, sold our house and put it all into keeping payroll moving, the system live and the association open. We backed clubs, moved mountains and proved to the sector that we took our responsibilities seriously.
As difficult as it was, it forged us in the fire and launched BMABA into the stratosphere. From there, we’ve continued to rapidly expand and grow, maturing our team and systems and reaching new heights.
At the age of 33, I was diagnosed with Autism. Whilst perhaps not all-that surprising to those who knew me closest, it was something that caused me to reflect on many of my childhood an teenage experiences, and my belief that martial arts saved my life remains ever more resolute, and I consider it a duty to pass that opportunity onto future generations.
Now in my mid-thirties, I’m blessed to have a great growing team of fourteen people in the core team and a growing supporting team around that. I have three beautiful children and am supported in the day to day running of BMABA by Kirsty, who heads up Social Impact, including founding the Fighting Chance Baby Bank which is run from our headquarters.
As we approach the 2030’s, BMABA’s level of maturity, depth of systems and governance, and continued innovation in martial arts is well known but I remain grounded in the very vivid memory of what it was like to grow up poor, working class, and very much forgotten by society.
I also remember navigating ‘becoming a coach’ for the first time, back when I was eighteen. I remember associations not making much sense, demanding huge sums of money, not being clear themselves on what insurance did or did not cover, or providing much real-world support. That experience, trying to give back as a coach to the arts I loved but feeling exploited, rather than supported, by the associations I paid money to be a part of, was and remains still one of the biggest focuses of my life’s work; to make martial arts more accessible to those who want to do things right, make an impact, learn and give back.
We decided upon BMABA’s slogan; “To High Places By Narrow Roads” in honour of the martial art’s journey. One which can’t be shortcut properly with money or wealth or status. Everyone starts at zero, every has to commit and learn and work hard.
We carry this forward as a team, and I remain unbelievably grateful for the opportunity I have to lead BMABA and to give back on a national scale to the arts and coaches that saved my life.
