How I Built My Small Business

Johnny Rickard - Train for Life: Martial Arts Wisdom from THE REFINERY NZ

• Season 2 • Episode 29

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Johnny Rickard calls in from Raglan, New Zealand, where he has built a full-time martial arts dojo on his family’s ancestral land.

Johnny was a dedicated schoolteacher for 15 years when life circumstances gave him a nudge (or perhaps a calling) to change paths.

With over 30 years of experience in martial arts and personal training, Johnny is the founder of THE REFINERY, a community space that’s far more than a training ground. It’s a sacred place for healing, connection, and rediscovering who you are. He was raised by a fifth-dan black belt father, mentored by his whānau, and is deeply grounded in Māori values of stewardship and unity.

In this episode, Johnny shares his story and the deeper meaning of martial arts,  beyond the punches and kicks.

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Anne McGinty:

Welcome to how I Built my Small Business. I'm Anne McGinty, your host. On the show today we have Johnny Ricard calling in from Raglan, new Zealand, where he has built a full-time martial arts dojo on his family's ancestral land. Johnny was a dedicated school teacher for 15 years when life circumstances gave him a nudge, or perhaps a calling, to change paths. With over 30 years of experience in martial arts and personal training, he became the founder of the Refinery, a community space that's far more than a training ground. It's a sacred place for healing, connection and rediscovering who you are. It's a sacred place for healing, connection and rediscovering who you are. He was raised by a fifth dan black belt father, mentored by his whanau, and is deeply grounded in Maori values of stewardship and unity. In this episode, johnny shares his story and the deeper meaning of martial arts, beyond the punches and kicks.

Johnny Rickard:

So when I was born I was sort of only two, three pounds. So I was severely premature. Right from the start I kind of had a bit of a rough beginning and then obviously as I grew I was quite a small child. So when I went to school eventually I had a tough time there. I was getting bullied quite a bit and pushed around and it wasn't a space where I could sort of be me and express myself. And so I used to go home to my mom and dad and be crying and had my lunch taken and getting beaten up and pushed around. So school wasn't a very comfortable place for me.

Johnny Rickard:

So my parents took the bull by the horns and sort of said hey, you got to go do some kind of martial arts or some kind of something to learn how to kind of defend yourself or look after yourself, you know. So that's where the journey with the martial arts started with me. It helped me build bridges with my environment at school. It helped me to build bridges with the people around me. It helped me with my self-confidence and with my growth and it helped me find happiness in moving through the younger part of my life.

Anne McGinty:

When did you decide to make it a part of your adult life and open the refinery and the dojo?

Johnny Rickard:

I was a schoolteacher here in Raglan for maybe 15 years.

Johnny Rickard:

I kind of was becoming a little bit disillusioned with teaching, and teaching for me was about working with people and helping people grow and, once again, you know, building bridges, helping people to connect, and teaching was starting to become about data and hitting targets, and I felt it was taking me away from those core things that I was talking about connection, working with people.

Johnny Rickard:

In 2019, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, so there were a few turning points in my life where I kind of had that instance of okay, maybe this is a sign or this is a pointer towards where I have to be going or what I have to be doing. One of our kaumatua's for karate, one of the shihans he passed away and me and my dad went to his funeral. I remember driving home with my father. We had talked about the fact that I, you know, was going through cancer remission and I wasn't happy with teaching anymore and needed to change, and he sort of suggested to me hey, why don't you do martial arts full time? Why don't you do martial arts full-time? Why don't you just give up your job, give up teaching and pick up this thing that you love so much this thing. That's been part of your life and we actually had a huge argument about it.

Anne McGinty:

Like.

Johnny Rickard:

I can't. Are you crazy, dude, like I can't just quit my job? And then, so you know, it did get me thinking. I went home and quite emotionally sat there and thought to myself, okay, there was the sort of trauma of having to recover. So I had one of my testicles removed and then I was going through the whole thing of should I be doing chemo or shouldn't I be doing chemo or should like questioning my own mortality as well. You know, I'd always thought that I was immortal and that nothing could get me. And then all of a sudden I was staring down the tube of kind of maybe not being able to do the things I wanted to do, or maybe not having any more time here.

Johnny Rickard:

I woke up one morning and then I just thought to myself just you know what, I'm going to quit my job, I'm going to quit. So I basically went to the school and I handed him my notice and I told him I was going to quit at the end of the term and my whole sort of existence financially was built around the stability of this job. I handed him my notice and I quit, cold stick, right there. You know, the dojo had been running, we'd been teaching karate. We'd been teaching martial arts, obviously a few boxing lessons here and there, but then I had to make the move between doing it recreationally and doing it as a passion to bam. Okay, now I've got to do this as a job. I actually went to at the end of that term when I quit, zero, nothing, absolutely zip, zilch. You know, I had to, yeah, have rice and noodles and fish cakes for the first, you know, eight months to a year. So financially it was tough, it was a huge challenge.

Anne McGinty:

You're not the only person I've talked with who had a serious health issue that ended up being kind of like a blessing in disguise, like hard when you're going through it and in the beginning and obviously dealing with the chemo decisions and everything. But how are you now like emotionally, mentally, spiritually, how are you with the type of work that you're doing today versus how you were when you were teaching?

Johnny Rickard:

probably after that health scare and going through those life challenges and choosing to make that change consciously and then trust in the process and follow through with that wholeheartedly, I think at the end of it I can hand on heart say that I am probably the best version of myself that I've ever been. I'm probably fitter and healthier. I'm more positive and forthcoming with my emotions around how I see the world and how I see the way that I aspirationally like things in the world to be and how I can possibly try and use my energy and my vibes and my knowledge to help try and foster that inside people. The refinery is about. To me, it's about refining yourself. It's about refining yourself. If you think about a refinery, things come into a refinery, and they either have things removed or they have things added and they leave again.

Johnny Rickard:

Whatever comes into a refinery leaves as something different. That's a process, it's a continuum, it's longitudinal, it keeps happening. If you as a person can keep that awareness alive in yourself as to what you need in your life at that given point in time to be the best version of yourself, then that is a huge positive. It's a huge beneficial mindset that you can have in order to not only make your relationship with yourself better, but your relationship with everyone else better. And then in amongst that, everything flourishes. You flourish physically, you flourish socially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Those are all things that we try and hold as our core concepts of operation at the refinery. I can 100% say I'm the happiest I have ever been in my entire life.

Anne McGinty:

What an incredible journey you had mentioned at the beginning for the first eight or 12 months. Even that it was really tight. Like you, you were barely making any money. How long did it take for you to get to a point where you were financially stable and comfortable with your business and the way that it was running?

Johnny Rickard:

I mean I've got a. I've got a lot of thanks and gratitude for the people of this community. They were very, very, very supportive of me. You know a lot of the people that trained with me were very loyal and very aware of the fact that, yeah, possibly I was struggling and they kept coming along, they kept training, they kept sending their children down and not to be egotistical, but I think it had a little bit to do with the fact that I had a good, strong sense of standing within the community leading up to this, because I was a school teacher, because I was a karate teacher and you know my family had been here for generations. That's also another huge thing that I have to sort of make mention of is that I'm very fortunate to have the space where the dojo is, because it's a very unique and special, amazing place. Obviously, if you can see on the website, it's right next to the water. It's on the same land where my ancestors used to live. There was a big village back there at the end of the 1800s where you know my, you know 30 or 40 families used to live there, which you know 300, 400 people. My ancestors used to live in the exact location where the dojo is, and there's a long story that goes with that.

Johnny Rickard:

Around the land struggles that my grandmother was involved in getting the land back from the government in the 70s and 80s. She was actually arrested and charged with things through getting the land back and the land down there where our family lived. In the 1940s, when the war was on, the land was taken under the War Emergency Act and then all of our families were relocated and then the land was supposed to come back when the war ended and so they used that land as an emergency landing strip. When the war ended the land was supposed to come back and then, when the war ended, the land was then leased to the county council and then the council gave it to a golf club and then they put a golf club on the land. And so in the 70s my grandmother along with 17 other people they had a protest on the 16th of February 1978, which was the same year that I was born and they were actually arrested, charged with disturbing the peace, public misconduct, all that kind of stuff. They were put in jail, charged, and then that started ultimately the struggle for the land to be returned and then my grandmother and the people that were arrested took the government to court for seven years, I think it was, and then eventually, in 1984 or 1985, I can't remember the exact date, so don't quote me on this information but the land came back and then my father brought us to the land, when the land was returned, to our family, and so my father still lives on the land where the dojo is right up until this day Now he's approaching his 79th birthday in November.

Johnny Rickard:

So you know, I'm very fortunate and very blessed I have this space to have the dojo and to share with people and to share with everyone that amazing space. So, with all of those things, branching out and making that space available to everybody was a huge factor. I think most people, when you drive past a marae or you drive past a space where there's carvings and there's po and there's whare and there's all those kind of things, I think it can be quite intimidating. You kind of drive past and you go, oh, wow, here's those Māori over there, and for some people it's a bit of a detriment. They don't want to come and engage, they don't want to look over the fence and go oh, what's happening over there? Or they don't want to come and say hello, you know.

Johnny Rickard:

So I've made it a goal of mine to have my arms open and extended for everyone and anyone who wants to come and engage with that space, you know, and I feel that that's an obligation, almost, you know, because that space isn't my space, it's not our family space, it's a space that we, as kaitiaki, we're the ones who look after that space, and it's our obligation to share that with people, as long as and there is a but they need to be respectful, they need to respect the sea, respect the land, respect each other and adhere to the kaupapa of togetherness and oneness, helping each other, supporting each other, and then they're always welcome.

Johnny Rickard:

But if you can't do that, then maybe the whenua or maybe that space might not be a space for you, and so I think the success is attributed to not only me but my family, welcoming people with open arms to that space so they can become familiar with it, so they can engage with it, so they can put their feet on the land, put their hands in the sea, engage with each other, you know, be present and feel the energy of the land and its integrity and take what they will from that or refine themselves in a way that they need to and then go and then come back in and then do it all again. But yeah, it took a good two to three years before it was successful enough for me to not stress out about paying the bills. I think the last probably six months has been the first time where I've actually been like right, I don't need to stress about financial stability. Yeah.

Anne McGinty:

That's incredible. I mean, two to three years is pretty typical for a business to get to a point where it's feeling sustainable. But I mean also that you had access to this beautiful land, which was so special, but were also willing to share it with the community, Like you're a steward of the land. You're the caretaker, the one assigned to it. So what is a typical day like there?

Johnny Rickard:

So the first classes they start at 6am this morning we had maybe 15, 20 people there training, doing a morning class, and then between early morning and the mid morning, say like after today's class, I had a PT class of six private people who came in and trained as a group. Then I had a PT class which is one person training singularly. Most days I'll have school groups come in, maybe about 10 or 11. So that's anywhere between 20 to 30 young children coming in and running around doing activities and then usually I take the middle of most days off, so I kind of have 11 o'clock maybe till say three where it's downtime. So like I'll go home, I'll take a nap, I'll chill out and relax and then I'll usually go back to the dojo at say four where we'll have like a karate class, so that might be another 20 or 30 children. We'll have another adults karate class, like last night for example, which would be another five to 10 people, and then we have a senior kickboxing class in the evening, which I think last night there was maybe 20, 25 people, and then I'll take off and so I'll get out of there, maybe at about 7.30, 8, 8.30 at night most nights.

Johnny Rickard:

But like I said, I get to have the middle of the day off, so I go home, I eat, I'll go for a surf. Most days I nap, so I've become a serial napper since I've been running the dojo. That's basically your average day, and then in between then, you know, there's all sorts of things happen in a sporadic nature. So we might have a group of surfers come into town and then they might come down and we might train them. Or we might have a cultural group who rolls into town and, oh, we're looking for a space to do xyz, and then I'll go down and open up for them and, once again, constantly building bridges for people to be able to engage and to participate, and watching people laugh watching people have fun watching people connect.

Johnny Rickard:

It really is a dream come true in terms of that availability of being able to connect with people. I'm not stressed out.

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, I was wondering, like, beyond the physical part of martial arts, what else are you teaching there at the dojo?

Johnny Rickard:

Well, I think that the world sometimes for people is not an accommodating place for a whole bunch of reasons. There's a lot of people out there who struggle. They struggle physically. Mental health is a huge thing these days. People struggle socially, spiritually, emotionally. People struggle socially, spiritually, emotionally. There's all those challenges that people encounter on an everyday basis. Sometimes those challenges are damning for people.

Johnny Rickard:

It can pull you down, it can make your life a huge struggle, and so my family's ethos, or their way of operation in terms of martial arts is it's not really about the punches and kicks, it's it's about bringing people together. It's about the relationships, it's about the social aspects of that. For many, many years I was a karate champion in two different weight classes. I was a kickboxing champion in new zealand. Here I've traveled overseas fighting. You know I spent most of my life in combat and throwing punches and kicks. But but it's not. As you move through life you realize that it's not really about the wins or the losses. It's not about the punches and the kicks. It's the relationships that you take and carry through your life, that you have made in those situations. That's the thing that you remember, that's the thing that you cherish, that's the thing that helps you more than anything else. It's the relationships, and so it's the relationships, and so it's not mainstream. You know, if you look nowadays, it's all, it's all UFC and it's all MMA, and everyone wants to be a fighter. You know, they're doing fights in backyards for fifty thousand dollars and this and that, and that is, in my opinion, so far away from what the core of martial arts is about. You know, martial arts is about working on yourself. It's about becoming the best version of yourself that you can be. You know, we often say that victory in life lies not in conquering others, it lies in conquering yourself, and I think there's a lot of wisdom to be taken from that. You know, if you can look squarely in the mirror every morning and say you know, what do I need to be a better version of myself or what do I honestly and being honest is the core thing as well you can plaster over the cracks or you can fool yourself into this false sense of hey, I'm sweet, I'm all good, but that in the long run doesn't help, in my opinion. Once again, so I try to make sure that everybody that knows they come to the dojo. It's about togetherness. It's about helping each other out supporting one another. It's not about the punches and kicks. It never has been In my eyes, it never will be. And if you want to make it about the punches and kicks, then this place or this dojo is probably not a place for you. You need to go, basically train somewhere else, and sure enough. If kids want to come and they want to jump into fights like I've done, yeah, that's fine. But that's only one part of it. That's 0.005%.

Johnny Rickard:

What it's about the martial arts is a vehicle. That sense of connectiveness comes through. You know all the surfing kids. They come into training and some of them martial arts was something they never would have thought about. Oh, I don't know about that. You know they're all coming into the dojo now and they're frothing and so it's just. It's that sense of family, I suppose, and everything that we do. And then, once again, that spills out. It's not only at the dojo, I think. It spills out into our community here in Raglan, it spills out into the surf here in Raglan and ultimately that's what we want, right. We want a secure net of stable people around us that can help us with those challenges as we encounter them.

Anne McGinty:

When did you become so attuned to the fact that like community is what will ultimately bring us happiness?

Johnny Rickard:

I've been aware of that my whole life, but I never thought I would be somebody who could have the skills to build bridges for others.

Johnny Rickard:

It wasn't until the cancer thing, I think, or it wasn't until I was confronted with the need to make a change in my life that I actually kind of figured out. Actually, hang on a minute, maybe I could be someone that facilitates this for people. Maybe I can be someone that might be able to bring people together or get something going that will foster that sense of community or foster that sense of connection, or to reciprocate that to others. If I can be positive and if I can be happy and if I can walk down the street and say hello to everyone, if I can shake as many hands as I could possibly shake, if I can be positive in the face of the things that I've gone through, then maybe you could set an example for others, regardless of the challenges or the situations, to be able to do that too, and I see that as self-perpetuating, I see that as goodness going out into the world, or an example going out into the world, and then hopefully that grows.

Anne McGinty:

Well, it sounds like you had some really wonderful role models in your family. If you could go back and talk with yourself when you were, say, in your young twenties or so, if you could sit down and have a conversation, go out for a coffee or tea, what would you say to yourself?

Johnny Rickard:

I think it's just believe in yourself, believe in yourself, believe in yourself. I had always felt on the inside that I might be capable of doing other things with my life or being more than I was Like. I never thought I could be the New Zealand Crater Champion, but I was the New Zealand Crater Champion two, three times. I never thought I would ever kickbox. I thought, oh man, there's no way I'm going to kickbox. No way Can't do that. But I did eventually go kickboxing. I didn't think I was going to ever be a school teacher. I was like, oh, I don't want to do teaching, I don't think I'll be capable of that. But then I ended up being a school teacher for 15 years.

Johnny Rickard:

I never thought I would, you know, open a business, but I ended up doing that and I did it okay, like I learned how to surf at 45. I never, ever, ever learned, thought about surfing ever. I lived my entire life and looked at people out on the water, thinking, oh man, I wish. On the inside I wasn't being honest. I was thinking, saying to myself, man, I wish I could do that. But I was too afraid, too scared, didn't want to put myself in the position of being a beginner anymore, because I was proficient at most other things, didn't want to take a step down. I didn't believe on the inside that at 45 I could get out there and surf. So if I had the chance to go back and talk to a 25-year-old version of me, I think he said like I would probably tell myself to get my butt in gear and those things that I was sitting on the feet with, pick it up and run with it. There is no failure in picking something up and running with it. I think we're always scared to fail. I was scared to jump in the ring. I was scared to put myself out there and go to university and fail. I was scared to jump on a surfboard. I was scared to open a business.

Johnny Rickard:

That is the key thing. Don't be afraid. Get out there, give it a nudge. You can't go wrong. You're only going to maybe not get things as right as you would possibly want them to be. But that's the learn. Pick that up, learn from that, hit it from another angle, tackle it again and then it might send you in another, total, different direction. But then trust in the process. It's not a stone wall, dead end If you don't get the outcome you're looking for instantaneously, which is a huge thing these days, that that's the be all and the end all of whatever path you're on.

Johnny Rickard:

There's more than one way to get to a destination, entirely coupled with left turns, right turns, downhills, uphills, full stops. Okay, what now? And then we go again, and so I guess, just having self-belief, staying positive and believing in your skills and those things that make you who you are, if you wholeheartedly and honestly pursue what it is you're looking to achieve and acquire, then anything's doable and it might not be instantaneous. You know, I think I started the refinery in 2019 and we're what? 2025 now. It's taken a good four or five years of struggle and hard work and networking and mentoring and getting advice and all those kinds of things to get where I am. So believe in yourself, pick it up.

Anne McGinty:

That's a phrase that I've always had in my mind too. I mean, it's one that my my mother whispered to me at bedtime every night when I was a child, and it when you're told to believe in yourself, but then when you actually do believe in yourself, you can make things happen. I I also think that it's it's unbelievable how often fear really will hold people back, and I think it's not that we have fear of failure itself, but it's more that we have fear of other people seeing us fail. So if nobody saw us fail, then you know you wouldn't feel the same. So we have to learn how to move through it and be willing to fail and to stop caring about other people witnessing that process, because it doesn't matter, right.

Johnny Rickard:

Yep, one hundred percent. I couldn't have said it any better.

Anne McGinty:

When you were saying you learned to surf at 45, I was feeling inspired because I learned how to surf. You know as an adult as well. Surf you know as an adult as well. And I still have fear. When I sit there and I watch people who I believe are better than me they're clearly better than I am, or the surf is more advanced than I worry about looking like a fool, and so sometimes I sit it out because I'm like, no, I'll wait for it, I'll wait for the conditions to be more appropriate for my skill level. But you know what, like who cares. How are you going to get better?

Johnny Rickard:

Exactly.

Anne McGinty:

So if you could give some life wisdom to some young people here about how they can get healthy with their minds and how they can be positive and how they can go down the best path that they can for themselves, like, what kind of life wisdom would you give?

Johnny Rickard:

In my experience and it's just in my experience there's a lot of young people out there who feel in some capacity that they're on their own. There's a lot of young people out there who feel like life is sort of insular, secluded, that they are an island unto themselves. They are an island unto themselves when life throws challenges or when you come into some adverse circumstances or things become difficult, then that's when those downslides happen. There's a prevalent rate of depression. Teenage suicide is huge these days. I mean, it is fair to say that everyone out there is doing their own thing. Everyone's running here, they're running there, they're doing this, they're doing that. People are worrying about their jobs, their mortgages, like just plain old life in general, the challenges that that throws at everyone. So many challenges. And I think the way to become equipped to meet some of those challenges is to reach out to people, and I'm not talking about reaching out in a way of saying you know hey, I need help, or I've reached the end of where I can reach.

Johnny Rickard:

What I'm sort of trying to say more of is go and see people regularly. Go and hang out with people regularly. Go and see your whanau, go and see your family Play some sport. Go hang out down the park. Go hang out in spaces that are healthy, where there's good interactions happening, where you're going to have people who are supportive of you as a person, as an individual. Once again, when the challenges hit, then you have the support of these people at a dojo or in the surf or in a community or in a group. For me, I think that's the key.

Johnny Rickard:

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't reach out when you do hit a crisis point. That's not what I was trying to say. What I was trying to say is, before that happens, or before you hit that point of feeling like you're at rock bottom, try and get out there and then try and interact with as much people as you can. Reach out, be human. We are human beings. We're too tied up with the challenges of life and spending our time in front of screens and scrolling and putting our minds in spaces where, it's my opinion, we're not designed to be. In those spaces we're not designed to be in. And then on top of that is the building blocks thing.

Johnny Rickard:

Get lots of healthy food in you. Get lots of sleep when you can get out in the environment. Calm your nervous system down, chill out, relax. Go sit on a beach and do nothing. Feel the sand underneath your butt, cheeks, feel your toes hit the water, watch the birds and the trees, go and look at the bugs crawling across the grass. I know it sounds a bit wayward, but if you want to help your mind, help your body, help that sense of peace, that sense of calmness, get out there in nature. That's the space we're supposed to be in. We're supposed to be out there in nature. That's a gimmick. I have a lot of empathy for people these days, especially teenagers and young people. There's so much pressure, that societal pressure, to conform, to look a certain way, to be a certain way, to say certain things, to fit into certain boxes. My mind boggles at how it must be to be shaping as a young person in today's environment.

Johnny Rickard:

It must be extremely, hugely challenging, yeah that's my advice Reach out to people, reach out to the environment and take care of yourself as much as you can and hopefully, with all those in check, the risks, hopefully, should fall into place.

Anne McGinty:

I feel like that's real, real wisdom. Today's key takeaways. In a world where technology and artificial intelligence increasingly dominate our attention, the need for human connection and connection to nature has never been more urgent. If you're thinking about building a business, consider this. Can it bring people together? Can it help them feel more grounded, more whole, more human? With the current obsession with screens and speed, there's a huge opportunity in building what brings people back to each other and to the earth. I'm excited to see what comes up in this space because I think there's a tremendous opportunity.

Anne McGinty:

Trust the nudge you may feel in your life If life keeps whispering something to you listen. Courage often first feels like fear, but remember there's no failure in trying. The only failure is never beginning. You'll rarely feel qualified before you start. So just start where you are and use what you have and let the path shape you. Take care of your body, but don't forget your spirit. Eat real food, move every day, rest, but also listen, reflect. Be still A strong body without a connected spirit is still a form of disconnection. It's never too late to become a beginner again. You can be 45 and pick up a surfboard. You can be 50 and start a new business. You can be any age and start again, so remember that beginner's mind is a gift and not a weakness.

Anne McGinty:

Victory isn't about conquering others. Real strength lies in mastering your own mind, emotions and choices. Let yourself be refined and keep refining. We're all carrying stories and habits that no longer serve us, so shed what's outdated and add what you need. See your personal growth as something that's constantly evolving. It's not a single destination. Build your support network before you need it. Spend time with people as much as you can. Find your community and show up for them, and then let them show up for you. Get outside. Nature resets us. You weren't made to stare at screens all day, and your nervous system needs trees, sun and silence. And, last but not least, believe in yourself. It may be advice that you've heard repeatedly, but it's truly the beginning of everything. That's it for today. I release episodes once a week, so come back and check it out. Have a great day.

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