Charles W. Baker

I grew up in a family that taught karate. In 2007 we owned five martial arts schools, and they were performing well. Then the 2008 crash took nearly all of it. Foreclosure. Bankruptcy. What most people would call total and utter failure.

We held onto one location and just kept teaching, and we learned from every single thing that went wrong. When the pandemic closed most karate schools in the country, we adapted and stayed open. By 2022 we had built the largest kids karate program at a single martial arts school in the United States.

Resilience isn't just persevering in a storm, but navigating through it to better waters. I've lived that one. That's why I wrote the book, and that's why I coach.

For fifteen years I've watched students fall down and decide what happens next. I've watched a student fail his black belt fitness test seven times, then pass on the eighth attempt with two minutes to spare. Doctors had told his parents some things would be impossible for him. He graduated high school, got a job, and started looking at colleges.

You see, that story was never really about karate. Perseverance is like a muscle, the more you train it, the stronger it will become. That's true for a sales team, a group of senior leaders, or a company rebuilding after a bad year. My job is to train that muscle deliberately, the same way we train everything on the mat.

Everything I do comes down to one question: what do you and your team do when something goes wrong? I teach three skills for answering it, perseverance, resilience, and grit, using a five-step system called the Cycle of Learning. I wrote it all down in my book. However, the training is where you build the muscle.

I stand on the shoulders of teachers of my own: my mentor Amanda King, a CEO whose “dumbest person in every room I walk into” policy I've adopted, and the work of John Maxwell, Jim Rohn, and Angela Duckworth. I try to live by one motto: there is no room left for growth if you always think you are right.

Last updated August 29, 2026