I sent this to my training group and I figured I’d share with you guys too. Were you lucky enough to get one of these burners? Beautiful finish and amazing incense to use before during and after training, even while meditating. Shout out to the Budo Brothers, Red Spade FMA, and SMP Arnis! Anyone else get the incense burner too? Who else got one of these OG-BB patches 😎 let’s see where you put your incense burner in the comments 🤙🏽

Congratulations @Nick Neveu! You just won the first-ever Budo Brothers Talisman made from Santos Rosewood with a real Stingray leather backing. We cannot wait to bring these out! We're still about 5-6 weeks away, but it's going to be worth the wait as we finally landed on a DOPE chain that almost looks like a rope. Can't wait to show you all. They look INSANE! 🔥

This was INSANELY stressful, but we managed to offload a 3,000-lb CNC machine that will unlock a dozen new product lines for us. Instead of hiring a rigging team to offload it, I figured I could just rent a forklift for the day and save $2000... I mean, how hard could it be!? Well, I had exactly 15minutes to learn how to use this thing and hope that I don't drop a $150,000 piece of equipment that's not insured against idiocy. Luckily, this story has a happy ending, and we touched down without issue. But boy was I sweating bullets... This CNC machine is massive! It has a 5' x 8' working area with a 4th axis as well, so we are now limited only by our creativity. What is the first product we should make!?

On our journey through Japan, we had the opportunity to visit Nippon Genshosha in Kyotango, Kyoto, with Shogo-san from Let’s Ask Shogo and see firsthand how traditional Japanese swords are made. This was something we had wanted to experience for years. We met with one of the young swordsmiths at Nippon Genshosha, who walked us through the traditional process of making a Japanese sword, from working with tamahagane steel to forging, shaping, heat treating, polishing, and finishing the blade. We also got the chance to step into the forge ourselves and help hammer the tamahagane.

Whoa… it’s been a while. But we’re back. The Budo Brothers Podcast has been reinvented and rebranded as Underneath the Kimono. This time around, we’re stripping things down, taking ourselves a little less seriously, and giving you more of a behind-the-scenes look at what’s actually going on in our world—what we’re building, what we’re thinking about, what’s challenging us, and what’s inspiring us. This is a place for us to connect and catch up. We’ll talk entrepreneurship, martial arts, creativity, innovation, new ideas, the ups and downs of building Budo Brothers, and, of course, plenty of jiu-jitsu. We don’t know exactly what the cadence of the podcast will be yet—and that’s kind of the point. We want to keep it loose, genuine, and fun. In this first episode back, we catch you up on what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years, where Budo Brothers is headed, some of the new products we’re working on, and the concept of Sutemi—full commitment with no turning back.