Ep29 Kim Couture—She Built the Gym That Changed MMA, Ran 8 Companies at Once, and Is Now Teaching Inmates to Rewire Their Brains

Kim Couture  0:00  
Everybody can do this. There's nothing special about me or anybody else. It's just your focus, and it's just your determination, and you've got to remove all resistance, right? People put their own resistance. We're our own worst enemies,

Scott Groves  0:12  
100%

Kim Couture  0:13  
So, people put their own resistance up, and they limit themselves. The sides on the box that you're in are that big. You would step out at any time, you Time.

Scott Groves  0:23  
Welcome to Henderson HQ. This is the podcast where you get all the stories behind the businesses that make our community tick. Don't forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Hey, thanks for joining Henderson HQ. This is Scott Groves with the Henderson HQ podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter at Henderson hq.com forward slash subscribe. We are actually here for those of you that aren't watching on YouTube, and you're listening. We're here with my new friend Kim Couture, who's coming out with a book here right when this episode is dropping, called Caged Clarity. I'm interested to hear about her MMA journey. She's a local here to Henderson and has built gyms and fought and done bodybuilding and done all the things, a lot of lot of mental work in what you do, and so I want to, I want to dig into all of that, but we haven't met before, so why don't you give me the Reader's Digest background of your story,

Kim Couture  1:13  
my story.

Scott Groves  1:14  
Yeah, that could be the whole hour, I don't know,

Kim Couture  1:16  
right? Right. Well, I moved here in 99 from Colorado, I worked at the Sheriff's Department in Colorado, and I moved out here, got an offer to come and open up Mandalay Bay before it was done, so I think we, I think we opened that, what, March of 2000 I think maybe it was 99 so we

Scott Groves  1:36  
sheriff's department to working at a casino,

Kim Couture  1:38  
I know it's weird, I came out here to visit an aunt. She's a school teacher. She was a dean out here, and I met all the guys that were opening up Mandalay Bay, and we went to a UNLV men's basketball game. So, we're, you know, BS, and through the whole game, and they go, you know, what, you're gonna come work for us. And I go, I don't even live here. They go, we can fix that.

Scott Groves  1:55  
Okay,

Kim Couture  1:56  
so they made me an offer, paid my moving expenses, and.. and I'm looking, and I go, you know, I'm looking at their jobs, like, what am I going to do for you? I've never worked in a casino before. They go, we're gonna find something, so I'm thinking, like, security, you know, somebody like that, surveillance, and they're like, no, no, we want you front of the house. I'm like, we can't even know what that means. Um, they picked for me, they're like, we want you running, you know, food and beverage, and which, so I managed all the bartenders and cocktail waitresses,

Scott Groves  2:21  
okay,

Kim Couture  2:21  
and they go, we just need somebody strong that can handle like 280 employees,

Scott Groves  2:26  
okay? And were you fighting at the time, or training, or boxing, or jiu jitsu, or any of that stuff? You're, you're just doing law enforcement somehow luck box into this crazy job at a giant casino, yeah. Okay, that's random, but well,

Kim Couture  2:39  
I worked in the casinos for about seven years. I did one year at Mandalay Bay, and then Steve one stole me. I went to Bellagio, I did food and beverage there, and then he took me into marketing, taught me everything about the credit department. I got promoted to executive, and then I used to write all the high limit credit lines for him.

Scott Groves  2:55  
This is like the weirdest career path, maybe ever,

Kim Couture  2:58  
ever.

Scott Groves  2:58  
Okay, and so then when do you get into this like cage clarity,

Kim Couture  3:02  
so I started training with John Lewis. He owned JSEC, you know, he's former UFC, and he had the only little small gym that I had heard of back in the day, and they had jiu jitsu and boxing there. So I boxed with Ron Frazier, Skipper Kelp, and just started doing conditioning just to stay in shape, I never even imagined fighting. I was an executive at Wynn at the time. Okay, and John Lewis, when he retired from the UFC, was club promoting, so that's how I met him. So he was promoting in the clubs. I met Randy as he came down, he was shooting the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, so he was down here filming, and I knew Dana and the Fertittas from being in the casino business,

Scott Groves  3:42  
so for those people that don't know, which Randy are you referring to?

Kim Couture  3:44  
Randy Couture,

Scott Groves  3:45  
okay? Okay, your ex-husband,

Kim Couture  3:46  
yeah, ex-husband,

Scott Groves  3:47  
also MMA superstar, right? Okay,

Kim Couture  3:50  
so you know he was going through a divorce at the time, and we just kept bumping into each other all over town, and so he's like, "You want to go to lunch? I'm like, "Sure, and it lasted, not all three or four hours, and we were pretty inseparable after that, and so he decided to move here, and then, you know, I was supposed to go to Macau, China, and open up Win over there, and it got closer to that time, and he didn't want me to leave, so that's when he proposed and said, you know, I want you going to China,

Scott Groves  4:19  
I want you to get punched in the face for fun, and MNA, instead.

Kim Couture  4:22  
No, the fighting wasn't even his idea, so I stayed here, and he wanted me to travel with him, but I can't just follow somebody around like a puppy dog. So I'm right, you know, if I'm gonna quit my, my whole career, I got to do something, and you know, back in the day, all the fighters were one dimensional, it was the boxer versus the wrestler, you know, and, and everybody went to their dojo, right? So we would go all over town to get boxing here, wrestling here, strength and conditioning over here. We'd spend all day driving all over town. I'm like, you know what, I got an idea, I'm just going to build our own gym, and we're going to have all five disciplines under one roof, and so it. Actually changed the sport, because once they started training with us and had access to all the different disciplines, the best coaches in the world, that's when people started to become more well-rounded. So now they were training in five disciplines in one place, instead of the wrestler versus the boxer. So it really changed the sport, and it was nice just not having to drive around town anymore.

Scott Groves  5:24  
And what year was this that you guys open? Was it that dream couture way back when?

Kim Couture  5:27  
Extreme couture,

Scott Groves  5:28  
so that's been around for almost 20 years now.

Kim Couture  5:30  
Yeah. Oh man, oh seven.

Scott Groves  5:32  
Yeah, I've been over to you guys, open Matt several times on Saturday. One of your instructors, Richie, is a really good friend of mine. So another connection, and yeah, it's, it's a, it's a special gym, because you walk in, first of all, it's huge, and second, it's a, there's everything, like you said, there's, there's everything, from the housewife, cardio kickboxing, right, to strength and conditioning, to jiu jitsu, to MMA, there's like always somebody in there just beating the, oh yeah, the dog judo out of somebody else, I'm trying to keep it safe for the podcast,

Kim Couture  5:59  
and the kids, the kids' classes are packed, yeah, and they're getting so good. Like, our kids are just kicking butt, you know? They're, they're so fun to watch.

Scott Groves  6:07  
Can you talk a little bit of that evolution? Because I'm sure when you guys started this in oh seven, of like, okay, we're going to be a premier MMA gym for people that don't want to have to drive to their Muay Thai place and their jiu jitsu place and whatnot. To now it is so mainstream, I'm guessing your busiest class is probably the kids' class. Yeah, can you talk about that 20 year evolution of what you've seen, like growing this gym, because that's like that's kind of like a founder's story for MMA to like where we are today with sport jiu jitsu being so popular.

Kim Couture  6:34  
Well, just imagine back then when, when girls were just getting into this, it was not socially acceptable, you know, when Randy was shooting the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, and the first season was on Spike, that's what kind of took UFC from, like, a closet sport that nobody talked about, you know, they used to call it human cock fighting,

Scott Groves  6:52  
right?

Kim Couture  6:52  
You know, John McCain was totally against it,

Scott Groves  6:54  
yeah,

Kim Couture  6:55  
that took it mainstream, and all of a sudden it became socially acceptable to watch the UFC, you know, it wasn't so violent. They realized that there was rules, and so then, you know, Gina Carano started at our gym, and you know, we trained every day, and I managed her for a while, and we were best friends, and, and getting in there and rolling around, and people were like, still not accepting, like, girls are getting punched in the face, nobody wants to see a girl get bloody. Oh,

Scott Groves  7:22  
seven. This is probably still when Dana was saying, no way, no how will women ever fight in the UFC.

Kim Couture  7:26  
Absolutely, it'll never happen,

Scott Groves  7:28  
right. Whoops, whoops.

Kim Couture  7:30  
And so, me and Gina, we fought for Strikeforce, we fought for Scott Coker, and you know, several other organizations that would have us on, but I took a lot of flack because, you know, every time I'd fight, it was televised, my first smoker at our gym, headgear, shin guards. This was very amateur, first time ever Mark Cuban put it on HD net and did a show, a whole hour show on my smoker on my so from day one on everything that I did was televised, and so I didn't get to learn and go through the bumps and bruises of just being green and like not knowing what I was doing without a camera on me, I wanted to do a jiu jitsu tournament, so I'm like, I can't do it in town, because I'll, you know, I'll get too much attention. So I go to Indiana, and all the local news, there's.. I walked in, there's cameras everywhere, I'm like, oh my gosh, like they knew I was gonna do it. So it was always a lot of pressure, and I'm like, I'm new guys, you know? Like, I don't know if they had..

Scott Groves  8:23  
how long you been training at this point?

Kim Couture  8:25  
Well, I was training six months,

Scott Groves  8:27  
okay,

Kim Couture  8:27  
with John Lewis before I ever met Randy.

Scott Groves  8:29  
Okay.

Kim Couture  8:30  
And then, so by time I took my first fight, I only had two amateur fights. I did the smoker at my gym, and I did one in the Pacific Northwest for Chill Sana, and had an amateur,

Scott Groves  8:42  
yeah,

Kim Couture  8:42  
show, and so I fought up there, and for

Scott Groves  8:45  
women, there had to be probably no amateur circuit, right? Like, or very little,

Kim Couture  8:49  
very little. Nobody wanted to see it. It was not acceptable. Nobody wanted to see women bloody, and so after that first amateur show, and just how much attention I was like, you know what, if I'm gonna do, this I might as well get paid for it, you know. I'm gonna, if I'm gonna take some damage, I'm gonna get paid for this. So, but the first pro fight that I had was my show, so I had my own fight promotion too. It was called Night of Combat, and I put it on at the Thompson Mac, and I partnered with Artie Palulo from Banner Promotions, but he, that's a boxing promoter. So, we did the first half, it was ESPN fight night, and

Scott Groves  9:23  
the good old days,

Kim Couture  9:24  
good old days, and he did five boxing events, and he had some, some former Olympic boxers on his card, that was ESPN, and then I ran the second half of the show, we had about 11,000 in attendance for a night of combat, and the second half was all MMA, and you know, is my extreme couture guys, and these were epic fights, and I was co-made event on my own show, so to put the show together,

Scott Groves  9:47  
no stress,

Kim Couture  9:47  
no stress, put the whole show together, did the matchmaking, and you know, I'm putting things in the locker room, I'm running around taking care of everybody, and then I had to go do my own warm up, you know, and I ended up break. My jaw in that fight, so 11,000 people got to see my jaw break in half, and then afterwards, you know, I couldn't go to the hospital until I cut everybody a check, paid the performers, you know, we had halftime entertainment, the ring card girls, I'm taking care of everything, and then I'm getting myself to UMC, so going to emergency room, because I had my jaw split in half in the middle, and then up here the whole piece was completely disconnected, and

Scott Groves  10:26  
we look good. So, at least didn't give it very good doctors, you know. I have I have two friends who have had their jaw broken in MMA fights, and it was at that moment they're like, yeah, not for me, you know. You seem pretty smart, they're pretty smart, they're like, I think I can make a living another way other than fighting, because you had 17 pro fights somewhere around there,

Kim Couture  10:46  
around four, around 1414, profiles. I thought four months later, after breaking it,

Scott Groves  10:50  
yeah. What, what, what inside of you was like, yeah, you know what, I think I'll, I think I'll come back and try this again, because I think most people, not women, most people would have been like, yeah, I'm pretty smart. I think I'm going to try something else, like what? What was driving you to do that again? For

Kim Couture  11:05  
me, it was, it was losing that fight. I was like, you know what, I should have won that. I could have won that. You know, boxing was not going to be my strong point, because my equilibrium was off. Lost the hearing in my right ear just at that time from breaking the jaw, so I couldn't hear. And so when she was moving at me, it just looked like a blob that was like this way, and so I was like, man, and I would go back to the corner, I told Randy, I go, I feel like I knocked some teeth out, and he goes, nope, they're still there, and I go, no, I was pushing my tongue out, and I'm like, I'm pushing my tongue out, there's no, they're not hitting teeth, my tongue's not hitting teeth, and I'm looking on the mat, and I go, I swear, I lost my teeth, he goes, I'm looking at you, and you got all your teeth, and I couldn't figure it out. I'm like, I lay on my teeth, and I'm sticking my tongue all the way through. Then I go, and I start the fight, and I feel this whole piece moving around. I'm like, oh, I broke it all out. And so, second round, I go back to the corner, and he goes, you're losing a lot of blood, they're they're gonna stop this fight. He's like, "Do you think you can finish her? He goes, "You gotta move quick. He goes, "They're gonna stop this fight. There's too much blood. The mat looked like a murder scene, you know. Oh, and so I start swallowing my.. I don't want them to stop the fight, so I start swallowing, swallowing my butt. That's probably too nasty for your shout. This is

Scott Groves  12:18  
great. This is the stuff we want, but I was like, I know the taste of blood is just, oh, it's just brutal,

Kim Couture  12:23  
you know? When you're, when your adrenaline is pumping that yarn,

Scott Groves  12:25  
feel anything, you

Kim Couture  12:26  
don't feel anything, you don't taste nothing, you don't even hear the crowd, you don't see anything but the person in front of you. And so, except you're just sideways, so I'm like, you know, I was training with Carl Parisian at the time, he was Olympic judo, and so thank God I was working on some nice throws, so I was like, I just got to get my hands on her. Soon as I get my hands on her, I could throw. I have like five nice throws in that in that fight, and then work for some missions. So that's the beautiful thing about MMA - it's if you lose one, you know, discipline, it's okay, you got four others you could work with. So just that determination, and I lost the decision, because obviously it looked like I took more damage, because I did. I did, so you know, lessons learned. You know, she didn't overhand, right, which is what my.. you know, when you're a rookie, I didn't know what I was doing yet. It's like a car accident, right now. So I didn't.. I wasn't biting down on my mouth guard, that's what you wear them for, right? Learn that lesson real quick. So my mouth was open, she came with that overhand right, and just popped it really quick. First punch of the fight, but we were lobbying to get the girls' rules changed, because girls used to fight three three minute rounds, right? So, my, my fight, and Gina Carno had one that was three five minute rounds, so I'm like, well, I'll be damned if I'm not gonna fight for 15 minutes,

Scott Groves  13:37  
right?

Kim Couture  13:37  
You know, jaw hanging off, I don't care, you know, it was my show number one, and they just changed the rules, so I'm not going out in the first round, so yeah, stuck it out.

Scott Groves  13:48  
Hey guys, just a quick ad from our sponsors here that make this podcast and our newsletter possible. Want to give a shout out to Ethereal Med Spa, a gym for your skin, so doesn't matter whether you're doing anything proactive all the way up to spot removal, all the way up to beautification, right, or vanity, ethereal med spa. They got you covered, Scott Wright over at Wright Autobody. Love them. So, anything from a scratch and dent to a big insurance job all the way up to a custom rebuild of a classic car, they got you covered. And shout out to my buddy Casey Halstead, owner of 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu, which now has three locations. They just opened a new location on the west side, so they got our Henderson location, they got a mid city location, and they've got a west side location. So anywhere in the valley where you're looking to train jiu jitsu, check out 10th Planet Las Vegas. Now back to the show. Okay, so you come back, and then what does the rest of your fight career look like? And are you, are you still, are you still working? Are you just working full time, building the gym? Like, what did, what did career, you know, daytime this, nighttime this? What did it look like for you? It was full-time

Kim Couture  14:51  
businesses, so you know, I opened the gym, but people don't realize this. I opened a second gym in Vancouver, Washington at the same time, because. Randy had custody, joint custody with his son, and he was little at the time, so he would go up there every two weeks. So I'm like, well, you know, we can get some tax write-offs. I'll bring another gym up here. Got us a condo. We were up there every two weeks, so I had that one, and then I franchised him. Then I started the clothing line, all the merchandising, clothing, clothing line, suit line, supplement line, action figures, and I had a management company, so I had like 26 UFC fighters, and then my fight promotion, and then I was fighting on top of that. So, it was a.. when

Scott Groves  15:29  
did you sleep?

Kim Couture  15:30  
I really didn't. I'm like a five hour a night girl, I don't need much sleep.

Scott Groves  15:35  
Oh my goodness,

Kim Couture  15:36  
but it was a lot of work, and you know, my office was there at the gym, so I would go in and get my strength and conditioning read, you know, done right away. I go in my office and work, then I'd go, I'd have another midday session. I was training six hours a day, broken up into two hour sessions, and then in my office, just taking care of business. But yeah, I had eight companies, and

Scott Groves  15:58  
out of all the craziness that's going out at the time, right, like the fandom of the UFC is going through the roof. You guys obviously have one of the most premier gyms in the country. You're fighting, you're running all these additional business lines. What was most fulfilling? Like, if you look back on that time, like, what are you most like proud of?

Kim Couture  16:15  
I think blossoming in business. I think you know, I really studied Steve Wynn, and I really enjoyed that whole experience in the casinos and just customer service, and then when I built the gym, you know, I was so particular about things had to be a certain way, and everybody's like, nobody cares, it's a gym, I'm like, yeah, but it's going to be the best gym in the world, I'm like, you'll see, you'll understand, because when I think, you know about building stuff? I think big, I don't think small. I'm like, we're gonna change the sport, you know? I'm gonna make all inclusive everything that a fighter would ever need. We had recovery, I had the management, I got sponsors, I had a guy in house that did all of our graphics, he built websites for these guys, I built their own their signature T-shirt. Eventually we did action figures. I did signature cards, photo shoots. Like, I'm like, you're never going to need to go anywhere else. This is going to be the home of MMA, and every fighter in the world is going to want to come here and train out of here. And it was, and still is that. So,

Scott Groves  17:17  
yeah, I'm interested. Like, a business lesson there, you know, I was talking to Casey Halstead, who's our jujitsu coach, and he was telling me, he's like, you know, the crazy thing is, once you're out of fighting, you know, Casey was on promotions every weekend with some top-notch fighter, he's like, you know, I'm focused on my kids now, his daughter is a like top five golfer in the world for her age class, she's killing it, and he's like, you know, I've only been out out of the game for a couple years. Nobody has any clue who I am. He's like, post-COVID, the fan base of the UFC almost doubled, because they were like the only sport on TV. You know, there's guys that are layer super fans now that have no idea who Randy Couture or Matt Hughes or any of these guys are. So, how do you keep the relevance of the business going once you and or Randy don't have the name of like actively fighting, because I think that's a great business lesson of like people grow businesses and they're like a flash in the pan real fast, but they don't have the business acumen to keep it going when that initial popularity surge ends. So, like, can you talk a little bit about how you guys have like transitioned the business, kept the momentum going, because when I'm in there, I know how many members you have. It's a very successful gym, as far as gyms go. So, how was that a plan, or how did you guys evolve?

Kim Couture  18:28  
Well, he actually gave the business to his son, Ryan, right around Covid, because he was focused on movies, and he was traveling so much, he just could never be around consistently, and I actually moved on when we got divorced and did other things, and then I came back a couple of years ago just to stay coaching out of there, you know. I do other things too. I teach in the jail system, I teach substance abuse and anger management, which led into my own research and study, and ended up turning into books, and so I've been focused on writing books.

Scott Groves  19:04  
You're like, you're like the, the female version of the Dos Equis man, like world's most interesting person. Like, I think I was just being, I think I was being author and write four or five books. That's not normally what people do.

Kim Couture  19:13  
Well, what's.. you know what's weird about me is that I, I don't ever put any limits on anything. You know, if I think of something and I want to do it, I just do it. I have, like, I don't think I was born with fear, I have zero fear. So, in, and when I dream, when I dream about something, it's like I dream bigger than you could ever imagine. So I'm like, oh, I'm gonna write a book. Well, actually, the guys in jail were like, I write my own curriculum, you know, the stuff that they were teaching me, and what teach these guys. Well, I go in here for substance abuse. They don't want to hear about drugs. It's going to make them think about drugs, right? They don't want them thinking about drugs. I, you know, in anger management, I'm like, I'm going to start rewiring these guys' brains. You know, I'm not here to lecture at them, I'm not here to talk down to them. I'm going to teach them most of these guys. You people don't know what they don't know,

Scott Groves  20:01  
right?

Kim Couture  20:02  
I'm going to teach them how to regulate their emotions, how to align themselves, how to think bigger themselves, get themselves out of the box that they've been born into, and that they've kept themselves in. Yeah, if

Scott Groves  20:12  
they're in prison, they know what they did wrong,

Kim Couture  20:13  
they know what they did wrong, but they're out of alignment. You know, if you're, if your heart's going this way and your brain's going that way, you know, I always tell them this. Let's, for say, for an example, your heart's the mom, your brain is the dad. Okay, if they're not on the same page, your kid, your nervous system is the kid, okay? So, your nervous system controls everything. Mom's going this way, dad's going this way. What do you think the kid's doing? It doesn't know. Should I go with mom or should I go with dad? He's acting out of fear, he's acting out of, you know, anxiety. Doesn't know, so your heart and your brain have to be on the same page. Then the kid's happy, right? Just that alone changes them. I go, there's two states of your nervous system: there's primal and power. Okay, every bad emotion that you feel that you don't want to feel is primal. All the good emotions that you feel are power. People accidentally go back and forth between two states all day long without knowing anything about it. Anything good that you've ever accomplished in your life, you've been in your power state. If you feel bad, if you, if you're depressed, or you have anxiety, or you're nervous, or you're sad, or you're whatever, that's primal.

Scott Groves  21:19  
Anger is usually mine,

Kim Couture  21:20  
anger

Scott Groves  21:21  
for me.

Kim Couture  21:22  
Yeah, primal,

Scott Groves  21:23  
yeah.

Kim Couture  21:24  
So, there's there's ways, and there's drills, and there's things that you could do to force yourself back over to the power side. That's where creativity takes place, that's where you're inspired, that's where you're calm, you feel joy, you're confident. Who wouldn't want to be in that state,

Scott Groves  21:39  
right?

Kim Couture  21:39  
So, these guys, okay, most people on the planet have never been taught this stuff, so I teach it. These guys, they order from commissary, they ordered notebooks, they put my name on it. They're like, so excited, they're like, they go, if we feel like you're a college professor. These guys didn't go to college, they're excited about it, right? They're like, nobody ever taught us this stuff. I'm like, nobody ever taught anybody this stuff,

Scott Groves  22:00  
right?

Kim Couture  22:00  
But I'm here to teach you, and once I teach you how to control yourself, you know how to operate this sophisticated machine that you're in. You know your life's going to change. You're never going to want to do drugs again, because it's like a new toy. You know, if the military gave you a tank, this is what I tell them all the time: military gave you a tank, $2 billion tank, right. It's very sophisticated in there. You're not going to know how to run and operate that thing. You're going to drop in there, and you'll be like, oh gosh, this is great. This is so much fun. You're pushing buttons, you're

Scott Groves  22:33  
blowing yourself up.

Kim Couture  22:34  
You can't figure out how to shoot the guns, you can't get it to move, turn around, and then you're like, okay, this isn't fun, nothing's working. So you go to get out. They close the hatch, that even that's sophisticated to open. You're pulling everything, you don't, you can't even get out now. What happens to you? You're panicking, right? You're nervous, you're panicking, you get anxiety. Now you're starting to freak out, right. Well, that's how most people feel in their bodies, in their minds all the time, because nobody ever gave them the operating manual, right. So, what I try to do is give them the operating manual for how this sophisticated machine that we've been given, and take for granted how it actually works. So, if you realize how to regulate your emotions, how to keep yourself in a power state, you already know what's right from wrong. Your nervous system is happy, now you're operating daily on a higher frequency. Okay, you're in control. You don't feel like you know you're torn internally. Things are clear, and you're feeling more inspired, creative, and you can go get things done, you know. And you've heard laser sharp focus, that means you're operating out of coherence. If you're not operating out of coherence, you've got like the shotgun effect, you got you only have so much life force,

Scott Groves  23:46  
been there,

Kim Couture  23:48  
and you're everybody has so much life force, that's your energy, if you've got, you know, 27 tabs open on your phone or your computer,

Scott Groves  23:54  
guilty,

Kim Couture  23:55  
and you're taking your life force and you're dropping in each of the buckets, nothing is getting complete attention. Nothing's getting done right. You got too many tabs open. So I tell people, close the tabs that are in the past, close the tabs that are in the future, and just today in person today, what tabs do you want open that you're willing to stick your energy in those buckets, right? And so it kind of clears stuff out of your head, close the tabs, and then I tell them to write stuff down. A lot of these guys have never written anything, and I'm like, you know, it's like a big fish bowl up here, and everything's swirling around, all your thoughts. Everybody has a million thoughts,

Scott Groves  24:31  
right?

Kim Couture  24:32  
When you take it and you write something down, it takes some of the stuff that's swirling in the fishbowl, it kind of empties it a little bit. You put it, it becomes matter. You put it on paper, so now it's matter. Now you can go back, you can refer back to it, you can look at it, put a date on it, start logging your stuff, and it just helps people organize their thoughts. So now, if they listen to me, their nervous system is regulated, they're operating out of coherence, right, they're in alignment. Things start to change, then I teach them how to actually make things happen. These guys feel like they're getting a business course 101 you know, they're very excited, and they, they're the ones that told me, you know, what, we like your curriculum, you should really write a book, and I'm like, never thought about that before, maybe I'll check it out.

Scott Groves  25:19  
So, how did you get into this? Because I would like everything that you're saying resonates with me at a super high level, and we haven't got to know each other, but I'm a sales coach by profession, so I coach sales people, and this was like one of the, one of the, in a different way, something that we're constantly talking about. I would think people, we'll just call them people, would be like, oh well, do you have a PhD in psychology, and do you have this certificate, and you have the end, and did you submit this curriculum to the state, and blah blah blah blah, and I would guess just your through line of life experience from law enforcement to fighting to business to etc, like it's clear you've crafted this kind of of your own life experience, but How did you get into this of saying, you know what, I really want to do, I want to, I want to volunteer with with criminals who need somebody like me to help them get their life back on track. How did this all come about?

Kim Couture  26:05  
Well, you know, I came from law enforcement before, right? So I always, before I moved to Vegas, I always thought that I was going to have a long career in law enforcement. I wanted to go do US Marshals, but you know, things changed, and I'm glad it did. It's been a cool journey, but I actually trained my boss, Maria, I've known her for years. I used to work in mental health too, and I knew her from back then. And then she came to me wanting to lose weight, and she wanted to start training with me. And then she lost one of her people, they moved, and she goes, I need to find another person. And I go, oh, okay, cool, I'll keep that in mind if I think of somebody. She goes, you know what, you would be really good at this. I was like, okay, you need help. I say yes to everything, that's why I do my

Scott Groves  26:46  
stuff. This is about you,

Kim Couture  26:47  
I just say yes, you know. If I had one thing to do, I'd probably procrastinate, but you give me 100 things to do, I'll get them all done. So I said yes, and she gave me some curriculum to kind of follow, and I was like, you know what, I could do better than this, so I started writing my own curriculum, and yeah, I just.. I take it seriously. I really want to change people's lives and get them to understand, because, like I said, people don't know what they don't know, and people limit themselves, and they haven't seen as much of the world as I have, and they haven't been on the level that I have, and I'm like, guys, everybody can do this. There's nothing special about me or anybody else. It's just your focus, and it's just your determination, and you've got to remove all resistance, right? People put their own resistance. We're our own worst enemies,

Scott Groves  27:34  
100%

Kim Couture  27:34  
So, people put their own resistance up, and they limit themselves. And you know, I'm like, the sides on the box that you're in are that big, you can step out at any time, but people go back to what's comfortable. It might not be what's best for them now. It's not good for their life, but they stay there just to be comfortable, you know. And some of these guys, you know, they're hardcore gang bangers. They don't want to do it anymore. They're tired of going to jail. They don't want to do illegal stuff. They're tired of looking over their shoulder. I'm like, guess what, you're the writer, you're the author of this book, you're the writer and director, you could do whatever you want, you're a grown up now, you can do whatever you want, and it's sometimes it's just it's just getting their wheels turning and getting them to critical think again. And then I build them up, I build them up, and I'm very positive with them, and I'm like, listen, it's a hard thing, you know, but you can do hard things. It's a scary thing, but what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of succeeding? Like, are you, are you afraid of failing? I failed a lot of things. I wasn't the greatest fighter, didn't slow me down, it was me versus me in there, and the things that fighting brought and changed in my life and helped in other areas of helping me regulate the thing that I write about

Scott Groves  28:46  
this book,

Kim Couture  28:48  
in case clarity, it's the psychology of MMA, and it talks about each of the disciplines and what it does to you mentally, you know, and and how it changes, you know, like jiu jitsu, we'll take, for example, since you love that,

Scott Groves  29:01  
I really love boxing, but my wife said stop getting punched in the head, so we can go with boxing or jiu jits. Well,

Kim Couture  29:07  
we'll touch on both.

Scott Groves  29:08  
Okay,

Kim Couture  29:08  
so boxing, they've actually came out in the Wall Street Journal. They did an article about what it does for rewiring damaged neural pathways, and so they've done a big study, and they came out, they're like, wow, boxing really does this, you know. You don't have to go fight, you don't have to spar, but just learning how to box, that coordinate, that coordination, and moving, you know, every part of your body, your feet, your head, your hands, all of your movement, your brain, if it hits a damaged neural pathway, it actually rewires it and quickly makes adjustments, and everything that that humans do is patterned, right? So, you got to break the pattern, you got to recognize the pattern. So, awareness is the most important thing, and then just train it over and over again. Say, for example, you're getting on the highway as a brand new driver, you just got your license.

Scott Groves  29:56  
Terrified,

Kim Couture  29:57  
how scary was that?

Scott Groves  29:58  
Terrified.

Kim Couture  29:59  
All these cars are worried. I'm,

Scott Groves  30:00  
yeah,

Kim Couture  30:01  
they're going so fast, and you're like, oh my gosh, can I do this right? But after time, repetition, the pattern, and the repetition, you do it more and more, it's no big deal. We're old now, it's no.. I think about

Scott Groves  30:13  
this, the horrible example I am when I drive for my kids, because I'm like, just scratch, distracted, I'm turning on a podcast, I'm like, now the car kind of drives itself and stays in its own lane, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna have to completely rewire my kids' brains when they start driving based on how they've observed me drive, but that, that's such a great example, right? Driving was terrifying, probably the first year or two that he did it, and now it's just, it's just, it's almost like auto memory or auto auto muscle function.

Kim Couture  30:38  
I don't know if pay attention, I was putting my makeup on on the way over here. Yeah, I guess you know, coffee in one hand and makeup in the other. And no, just kidding.

Scott Groves  30:47  
It's so funny, I can always tell when I'm talking to a fighter, especially some of that box, because when you started to talk about boxing, you obviously, you like immediately started doing feints with your neck, and I was like, I was like, I could always tell when I'm talking to somebody who used to fight. For those of you that are listening instead of watching, go back and you'll see her just slightly like faint her head from side to side, because it's like it's it's like a requirement of anybody that ever boxed.

Kim Couture  31:07  
So then jujitsu, right? You're on, and the hardest thing for me was to convert from I started with my wrestling over to jiu jitsu, because one, you're dominant, you're on top, you're in control, you're you're pushing forward jujitsu, you got to be calm and comfortable on your back, right? I hated it.

Scott Groves  31:25  
I don't.. I didn't like it for a long time, because I wrestled in high school, and the idea of just like laying on your back just makes no sense to me,

Kim Couture  31:31  
right? It takes a minute to get used to it.

Scott Groves  31:33  
Yeah,

Kim Couture  31:33  
so I talk about it in the book, and I, you know, I'm also claustrophobic.

Scott Groves  31:37  
Oh,

Kim Couture  31:38  
so you know, you have to get used to being in tight quarters and having all somebody else's weight and their sweat dripping on you and their weight on you and and getting in some pretty crazy positions, and you have to remain calm. So it teaches you again how to regulate your nervous system. Stay calm and think of a way out. You'll there's always an escape, right? So stay calm, relax, breathe and escape. Look for the opening, look for the escape, create space, right. So that's what this book gets into, is the psychology behind it. And I'm hoping that it, it brings, you know, more people into the gym, not just my gym, but find a gym and learn this stuff, because if you're someone that feels like your life is out of control, or you just now that you've heard it, can't get regulated, you know. You've got anxiety, you operate out of fear, you're nervous, your nervousness is always showing up when you don't want it to. You know, training in some of these sports, it changes that, it rewires you, and it's just really good. Instead of going to therapy, this is just another option. So,

Scott Groves  32:42  
funny, this is such a timely conversation. I got a random text message from one of my very first sales coaching clients, from like 11 years ago. He disappeared off the face of there. Haven't heard from him in years. He just texted me before you got here. He's like, 'Hey, man, can I pick your brain over the weekend? I've just been feeling super dysregulated in life. I'm thinking about either getting into judicial or MMA or boxing. I know you've kind of done all of those at, like, an, you know, just like a hobbyist level. Can you talk this weekend and give me some suggestions? And then we're talking about this, and I'm like, oh, this is the universe telling me, as soon as this book comes out, I need to buy him a copy. Yeah, because, like, he used the word dysregulated, like, I just feel dysregulated in my life, and I think I need, like, a physical activity, and he's a big UFC fan, if I remember correctly. So, yeah, it's funny. Are you hoping that non-practitioners read this book and understand the benefits, or is there something in here for the person that's already training?

Kim Couture  33:32  
For everybody.

Scott Groves  33:33  
Okay,

Kim Couture  33:33  
it's for everybody. And this is just the first one. I actually wrote a 17 book series.

Scott Groves  33:37  
Of course, you did. Why

Kim Couture  33:38  
not? Why not? It's a, it's a transformational ecosystem about self-awareness and the human conditioning, and so you know, my name being Kim, the inmates thought of this, you know, they're my business managers, guys, I'm always telling them to keep it moving, I'm like, you've got to keep it moving, because if you stop, idle hands, right, it's the devil's playground,

Scott Groves  33:59  
yes,

Kim Couture  33:59  
and I said, you sink in quicksand, and your mind wanders to things that you don't need to be wondering about, so keep it moving, and they go, well, maybe that's why your name's Kim, K I M, keep it moving, and I said, Boom, there's the name of my book series,

Scott Groves  34:14  
Cube It Moving, that's good,

Kim Couture  34:15  
so you know, it started off with one book, and then it's turned in, I actually have 25 books done, but there are 17 books in the series, and you know I've been going through a divorce this last year, and it was a, it was therapy for me. So, as I'm writing, doing my own research to help myself out and get through a hard time, I'm learning all this stuff, I'm like, everybody needs to know this stuff. So the series that starts like Keep It Moving Out of Trauma.

Scott Groves  34:40  
So, wait, How many? How many books have you written thus far that are published?

Kim Couture  34:44  
None. This will be

Scott Groves  34:44  
the best. Okay, this would be the first one. Okay,

Kim Couture  34:46  
they're all done, but this is the first one published.

Scott Groves  34:48  
Okay.

Kim Couture  34:49  
And, and I wouldn't be able to do that without my friend Kathy, because she teaches me how to format these lace.

Scott Groves  34:55  
Yeah,

Kim Couture  34:56  
so it's keeping moving out of trauma, out of addiction, out. Fear out of anger, get you a copy of that one.

Scott Groves  35:02  
Perfect. Yes, hopefully I'll have that solved by your release date in 2028 or the anger

Kim Couture  35:08  
one out of insecurity. And then it goes into, so then you keep it moving into happiness, into love, into mental mastery, into faith, into health, into destiny, into abundance and into service, and then for into our next generation, so it's parenting and advice, and there's a lot of good stuff in there. I put my heart and soul in each one of them, and you know it was a labor of love, and it just kept going, and it's so funny because I was never a big writer, and then once I started writing, you know, it just took off. And what I was doing for the last year, I was kind of managing a business and a building downtown for someone, but there was nothing going on. It was just me. I got to take my dog. There was nothing going on. It's like five, 6000 square feet, living rooms, kitchen, everything was cool building. I just started writing. I'd have six to eight hours a day of sitting down there, just writing every day. That's how I was able to get so many books done, because it was my full focus. And again, I teach this: if you're operating out of coherence, you're laser sharp focus. Nothing else pulls me. I don't have 27 tabs open. That was this was my focus. And so I was able to get.. let me

Scott Groves  36:19  
ask you, how do you do that, and compartmentalize, right? Because it's like you've got the gym going on, you're helping some other people run their brand. Are you still actively managing any fighters or anything like that? Okay, that's passed. But now you're writing, you got you have a lot going on. How do you compartmentalize? Like, okay, this is my writing time. I'm not going to think about family, or I'm not going to think about, you know, social plans, or I'm not going to think about the gym or the P and L or whatever, I'm just going to write, because I find myself and a lot of other business owners who tend to be ADHD, HD, AD, whatever it is these days, they're like, well, yeah, I'm working on this project, but my mind's kind of over here, and it's like, well, I know I should really be taking time with my family, but then you're with your family and you're like, oh man, did I finish that that paper that I was working on, so like, how have you been able to compartmentalize and be like, this is the, this is the task in front of me, because I think business owners, when they're wearing a lot of different hats, they are horrible at that.

Kim Couture  37:10  
You have to love what you're doing, number one, and what I tell people is, I wake up in the morning, you have to make your morning sacred, you cannot be one of these people that the alarm goes off, you hit snooze, and then you get up, and then you're rushing, you're rushing to get dressed, you're rushing, and you know, in traffic, you're hitting all the red lights, you're pissed off, you're, you know, your frequency is starting off the day low, right? Get up earlier, I don't care, get up early, if you get, if you have to go somewhere at sick, get up five, you have to go somewhere at five, get up at four, I don't care what it is, get up, have your coffee, whatever your routine is, and just sit there and think about your frequency. Okay, I've been able in my books through all my research, I've been able to connect dots from modern science and the modern verbiage that we have for neuroscience now through all of the years, all the greats, Carl Young, you know, Napoleon Hill, all of these guys to the Stoics, Stoics philosophy, you know, Marcus Aurelius, so this

Scott Groves  38:07  
shit still works, right? It,

Kim Couture  38:08  
it goes all the way back to Jesus and what he taught. If you take, take it out of religion, no dogma, no religion, and you just look at what Jesus said in the parables that he spoke in, okay, and you just look at it like a book of how to get through life for dummies, okay?

Scott Groves  38:25  
Yes,

Kim Couture  38:25  
you look at it like that, and then you look at the Stoics, then you look at all the greats, and all these people, and then there's some modern day guys that I follow now too, you know, people love Tony Robbins, I love David Bayer, he's great. You start connecting all of the dots, they're all saying the same thing, okay? So you start your day, and you set your frequency right. You don't reach for your phone, you don't hit snooze, you don't - you don't. If you turn on your TV, turn on the news, grab your phone, then the world sets your frequency for you.

Scott Groves  38:52  
It's all over.

Kim Couture  38:53  
You're sucked into the vortex already. So you have to, you have to wake up and set your moment of peace and serenity, and think about, I'm going to set my frequency, the highest one that you could get, which is what, what's the highest frequency? I

Scott Groves  39:07  
have no, yeah,

Kim Couture  39:08  
love, love is the highest frequency, so everything

Scott Groves  39:11  
like waking up my wife at 445 be like, "Hey, honey, I love you, you gotta wake up, it's

Speaker 1  39:16  
not that

Scott Groves  39:16  
you might worry, okay,

Kim Couture  39:17  
that's different, I mean, it's it's in there, but love is the highest frequency, so you have to love what you do. Of course, you love your family, but you just have to love yourself first and foremost. And so, if you love yourself, you're going to wake up and enjoy your peace and quiet first thing in the morning. You set your frequency to love, and then throughout the day, you put like a, like a barrier of protection around yourself. You're going to get to work on time, you're not rushing, you're not hitting red lights, nobody's cutting you off, even if they do, you're already set to love, you're, you're, you're in a position of understanding, because you're not rushing anymore, right? You feel calm and relaxed, then you can go look at your phone, catch up on emails, turn the news on, whatever,

Scott Groves  39:58  
right,

Kim Couture  39:59  
you know. But start off with that silent moment, so that you set your frequency with intention. You have to move with intention, and you have to move with love. So, if you love what you do, you compartmentalize by thinking, whatever is in front of me right now, I love this. I love that we're talking to each other right now. Then you're going to go, you know, take your kids out, you love your kids. They're going to get your undivided attention, you know. Whatever's in front of you, you love. If you look at it that way, makes a difference. You go to the coffee shop, you're gonna, you're gonna love that you're there. You're gonna love that they're making you coffee. You're gonna treat them with kindness, right? You, wherever you go, you're gonna get to work. You're going to, with love and kindness, say good morning, everybody. Because if you hit traffic signs and you hit your snooze button, and you were rushing, and you were late, you're not going to walk and work, and you're not going to want to talk to any of your employees. Anything that anybody says, you're gonna be like,

Scott Groves  40:55  
it's so funny you mentioned this. A friend of mine, Hal Elrod, wrote the book The Miracle Morning. He's had a ton of success with it, and he says he has a lot of opinions on the snooze button. He's like, if the first thing you do to start your day is you hit the snooze button, and you basically tell yourself consciously and subconsciously, I don't have a life worth living, I don't have a life worth getting up on time for. He's like, your whole day is done, you're, you're, you like, you're so far behind the eight ball before you even start, because your first action of the day was, I'm a failure, I don't have a life worth living, I'm not going to get up, I'm not going to start the day I said I was going to have on him, but the first time he said that, I was like, I will, I wasn't really a snooze button guy to begin with, but I'm like, I will never touch the snooze button again, like that is seared into my brain, that if I hit the snooze button, I'm just telling myself I don't have a life worth living. I'm like, such a good point. And there's so many mornings I've been sore and not want to get up at 445 to stretch and drink water before my old ass has to go to jiu jitsu, but I'm like, no, I just have to do it. Like, this is just part of my routine. And then you get there and you feel amazing.

Kim Couture  41:55  
And when you're a pro athlete, you already signed up to do something that you want to do so excuses don't even play a part. You're going to get up and you're going to do it no matter what, because you love what you do. Everything comes down to love. You love what you do. If you don't love what you're doing, then you need to find something else.

Scott Groves  42:11  
Yeah,

Kim Couture  42:12  
again, you are the writer, the author, and the director of your own life. Nobody else can do it for you. Nobody else can do the push-ups for you,

Scott Groves  42:19  
right?

Kim Couture  42:19  
So,

Scott Groves  42:20  
well, this goes back to the broken jaw, right? My friends, I decided it wasn't for them. They didn't love it enough to get past the broken jaw. You were like, "No, I need to fight four months later, which sounds insane to me, by the way. Did you win the fight four months later? I did. Jesus, I have to ask, because you brought it up when we're chatting on the way in here. After fighting, you then decided to get into fitness and bodybuilding. Like, what have you not

Kim Couture  42:41  
done? See, I have no fear. So, I like trying everything. I mean, we get to do this life once, right? So, it's like, bring it on. I want to try everything. Why not?

Scott Groves  42:49  
How long were you a professional bodybuilder?

Kim Couture  42:51  
I wasn't professional, I was just starting, but I did bikini competitions. I did five shows, and then I ran into some health issues. I would have had more fights, too, but it was health issues, you know. I'd break this and break that, broke my back, broke my jaw, tore my knee. You

Scott Groves  43:04  
broke your back.

Kim Couture  43:05  
You

Scott Groves  43:06  
are a very happy person for somebody that has been broken a few times,

Kim Couture  43:10  
been broken many times. I know people used to ask me, aren't you, weren't you worried about breaking your something in your face or messing your face up? I go, I've broken everything in this face twice. No, I'm not worried about that. I was, I grew up in the rodeo world. I grew up on a ranch, and so breaking horses was like our thing, and I had tons of injuries before I ever even got into fighting, you know. I had a ton of surgeries and great doctors, and you know, we ranch kids are just different.

Scott Groves  43:37  
That is a true statement. My wife's father owns a ranch in Gilroy, California. You know, they process waste and stuff for onions and all this garlic and stuff. And the kids that grow up on the ranch there, they are just a different breed. Yeah, you know, I take my kids out there and they're not nearly as tough as I think they are, because kids that grow up on a ranch are much, much different.

Kim Couture  43:58  
Oh, yeah, there's no excuses, you're not gonna cry, or we'll give you a reason to cry. You know, it's like you, you get up early and you finish when the lights go on, unless there's floodlights and you're still working, you know. And so you just, we are, we're just raised different, and and I'm just excited about life, you know. I just, I've had a lot of health issues over the years, you know. I had a couple bouts with cancer, and you know I've had a lot of stuff in this last year, you know, I'm not in shape right now, because I had a pretty big surgery, and then premenopausal stuff came on, and now I'm fighting hormones, and you know, I'm fighting in a different way, I'm fighting for all the time, I'm following hormones, I'm still fighting,

Scott Groves  44:37  
so what's the focus now, because I know you're still, you know, helping run the gym and focusing on training other people, and whatnot, but now you have this book coming out. Like, does everything shift to, like, you know, being on things like this, getting the message out of the book? Where do you hope to take this? Is this going to be its own training, or you just want this to go through the prison system and help people, you know, hopefully find success post prison with with MMA and cage fighting, or like what? What's what's the goal like? What's the what's the current path and mission for for Kim?

Kim Couture  45:05  
So I don't run the gym anymore. Ryan, Randy's son, and his wife run it. They do a great job. I still coach there, so I'm still training, usually a couple hours a day. The inmates inspired me to start writing this. Yes, I have all these books that we're launched by the end of summer. They'll all be out, all 25 The 17 book series is going to go

Scott Groves  45:24  
25 books at once,

Kim Couture  45:26  
not at once, no, but by the end of the summer they're done. Yeah,

Scott Groves  45:29  
it's effectively at once. We only got like three months, that's that's an insane schedule. Okay, keep going. Sorry,

Kim Couture  45:34  
yeah, the longest that it takes is the formatting, you know, that's what that's what you need, Kathy, for

Scott Groves  45:39  
Kathy, Kathy over there, smart

Kim Couture  45:41  
one.

Scott Groves  45:41  
Yeah, I wrote a book, and I sent it to an editor. She's like, I got good news or I got bad news, and I'm like, what's the good news? She's like, the good news is I could care less about your business or what you're teaching. And the book was actually pretty engaging. I'm like, oh, cool, that's a great compliment from somebody that edits books professionally. And I'm like, what's the bad news? She's like, you clearly went to Los Angeles Unified School District, because there's 35,000 words and about 30,000 grammatical errors I need to fix, so my rate just doubled, and I'm like, cool, I know I'm an idiot, great, you just do her thing. So, anyway, okay, sorry, I got off topic there. You're launching the books, and like, where does the focus go for Kim from here on out

Kim Couture  46:16  
again? I dream big, I want to get the books out there. Kathy also is writing books, and so she handles the little ones. She's been a kindergarten teacher for 26 years, and we're collaborating because the movement that I want to do is, you know, big picture, she's writing these books for these little kids, 456, years old. Let's teach them at a younger age how to regulate themselves, how to breeze through problems, how to think with critical thinking, how to eat healthy, how to play outside again. You know, be in the sun, learn about your body, learn about, you know, regulating yourself and breathing techniques, and calming yourself down, and you know, working through fear and traumas, and you know, she's gonna tackle the little ones, I'm gonna get the big ones, and let's, let's try to get to these kids, so that I don't end up seeing them in jail,

Scott Groves  47:09  
right?

Kim Couture  47:10  
Right. I think it's important, nobody's doing it. If you think about all the role models that are out there, they're not teaching anybody anything good, right?

Scott Groves  47:17  
Truth,

Kim Couture  47:18  
we need to tackle a serious problem. There's a serious problem in this country, people are sad, depressed, dysregulated. Everywhere I go, this is what I see. Most people that I interact with are dysregulated, and they don't know what they don't know. It's not their fault, but nobody's out there screaming from the rooftops that this is a situation, and we need to fix it. So we're going to push her books, she's going to help me push my books, and we're going to blow this thing up, and we're going to, you know, start helping some people, and that's my main goal,

Scott Groves  47:44  
you know. It's interesting, because you just have to turn on the news or social media for five minutes, and you'll see some crisis. You know, there's a happiness crisis, there's an economic crisis, there's a communist crisis, there's whatever. But it's like, I think what I'm hearing from you is really the root of so many of these problems, and hopefully the problems to solve with your book is like there's a dysregulation crisis, crisis like everybody's a mental

Kim Couture  48:06  
health crisis.

Scott Groves  48:07  
Yeah, everybody's just walking around in a heightened state or a lower state, like nobody's nobody's in tune with where maybe they could be or should be.

Kim Couture  48:13  
Everybody's pretty low frequency, you know, and low vibration, and they don't, they don't know what they don't know, so they don't know how to fix it, they don't know how to get their frequency higher, they don't know how to be happy, you know. And my book that I wrote, "Into Happiness" it's going to teach people you how to be happy.

Scott Groves  48:30  
Yeah,

Kim Couture  48:30  
we, we can talk ourselves out of a lot of things, but we don't talk ourselves into anything, and you can talk yourself into being happy, and I mean, that's why one book led to two books, led to three, you know, because I work with the inmates with this, and I'm like, you know, I realized how much they've never been taught, and I'm self-taught with all of this stuff, but you know, it really bothers me to know that people have not ever been given this information, so we need more people teaching this, you know, not just me, and there is people out there, but you know, if the people out there have their viewers, and you have your viewers, I have my viewers. Hopefully, we can get this stuff to really take off. And knowledge is power. People need the information, they need to know where they can get good, trustable information, and they need to share it. And you know, let's start creating, you know, a new trend where you know setting your frequency high and operating out of love, and people enjoying life again, and enjoying what they're doing, and learning how to communicate, you know, all the social media, and like you said, all the news. Think of this: humans were meant to be creators, your soul is not happy if you're not creating anything, whatever it is you need to be creating. You need to love what you do every day. If you don't, you need to make some changes. We're electrical, magnetic, biological beings. This is not my opinion, this is fact. Okay, so think of how many inputs that we're getting a day,

Scott Groves  49:59  
it's. It's

Kim Couture  50:00  
input overload,

Scott Groves  50:01  
overwhelming.

Kim Couture  50:02  
Our nervous system is still ancient. It never evolved over time. We've got the same nervous system that the cavemen were running from saber-tooth tigers with, right? It's very old school. So, we've got a million inputs, and if people don't have an output, what happens? What happens with the electrical box, right? You get a surge, you get a surge of all this electricity coming in, and no outlet. What happens? You're a pressure cooker, you're a ticking time bomb. You have to have an outlet, and I prefer it to be physical. Go run, go hike, go be in nature, go hit a heavy, go

Scott Groves  50:38  
choke someone,

Kim Couture  50:39  
go choke someone, go hit a heavy bag, go exert yourself and clear your mind, right? Think of, think of all of these inputs, new output, right? Especially for men, right? You get a lot of pressure, and you've got a lot of testosterone, and if you don't have that outlet, you're just building, building, building. This electrical surge is just building, waiting to explode, so you can't have a million inputs and one output, right? So it's just a different way. I like to teach people a different way of looking at things and getting them to understand their own biology, so that they can work with it. If they've never given been given the information, once you give it, the light bulb goes on. I'm working with these inmates, I see the light bulb go on, and they're like, "My gosh, I didn't know this. This totally makes sense. It resonates with people because it's the facts, right? And so you just give them simple tools like this, and then they can learn how to regulate themselves, and they can keep themselves in balance, and they understand. Oh, I got too many tabs open. You start closing out some tabs. My life force is going all over the place.

Scott Groves  51:47  
How rewarding is that for you when you see somebody who's serving time in prison for a crime, their life clearly did not go the way that they wanted it to go, and now all of a sudden you're like, oh, like I can see the I can see the light turning on, I can see that this guy has a chance when he gets out of here, like that's gonna be supremely rewarding, right?

Kim Couture  52:06  
I've done a lot of cool shit in my life, this is the most rewarding thing I've ever done, ever. And sometimes I'll drive home and I'm crying all the way home, because you know I'm an empath, and I feel it, I feel their pain, I feel their confusion, I feel all the dysregulate, they're all dysregulated, right? And so my heart hurts from them, but I get so excited when, when they all show up and they walk in with their all of them with their notebooks and their pens, I'm like, and I, I'm goofy with them, right? I'm like, you guys make me so happy, I'm so proud, you know, and and they're super sweet, these guys want to learn. I've maybe had one or two guys out of the last year and a half of doing this that they walk in, they're like this, I don't want to be here, you know. And by time I'm done talking, they're like this. And then the next time we come class, they got a notebook, like my work here

Scott Groves  53:00  
is done. There you go. You got them engaged. What did I forget to ask you here in the last couple of minutes about this journey that you're on with, with the books, with what you're gonna launch? Like, you got a very busy 90 days coming up. Yeah, what did I forget to ask you about this journey that you're on right now to get the caged clarity out there?

Kim Couture  53:17  
So that one will be out in the next few days. I'm this was just the proof that I got, and there were some changes I wanted to make, and some good, you know, good old-fashioned MMA stories that I want to add to there, you know. When I, when I wrote it, I was writing from my teacher hat, and little more clinical, and you know, I had to put the fighter hat back on, and go, oh man, I got some great stories I need to share through some of these chapters. So I'm adding those in, and then we'll get started on, I'm gonna release two books at a time in the series, like I said, there's 17 books, so we'll do two at a time. And then I wrote a little journal that goes with it, so people can journal, and and there's some cues in that journal to be like, you know, what frequency would you say you're on today? Did you get enough sleep last night? You know, just things to think about, so you start training yourself to ask yourself these questions. Is that what I tell everybody? You're the greatest project that you will ever work on. Can you think of a better one? People need to realize that they are, and that builds self-love, right? And reflection and awareness, and these inmates love it. They get excited about it. I'm like, and I look them in the eye directly at them, and you know what? Most of these people, they've never been loved before. They've no, nobody's ever believed in them, and they're in jail now. And some of the time, sometimes they're return offenders, and they don't feel love, right? And in every living, breathing thing on this planet, animals included. Everybody just wants love, so to make them feel seen and heard, and look them in the eyes, and tell them you are the greatest project you'll ever work on. And knowledge is power. So, get hungry for more knowledge. I'm going to teach you as much as I can for as long as I have you, but I want you to get excited about this, because you're. The greatest project that you will ever work on, master yourself, and everything else will fall into place. Everybody was born with different gifts and different powers in this lifetime as creators that we're supposed to be. That's the journey I tell them. If you're in a video game, nobody gets a video game and they're like, well, I just want to play level one. I'm not excited about any of the other levels. I don't want to know what's up there, you know. Just, just level one's cool. I just want to die over and over into this video game. No, you don't want to keep coming back to jail in level one. Okay, there's other levels to the game, that's why people play it. Okay, so you have to elevate your EQ, has to get up with your IQ, you're elevating your emotional intelligence, you're aligning yourself, you're gonna operate out of coherence, you're gonna get excited about life, you're gonna love yourself, you're gonna love everybody else around you, because we're all fighting a different battle. So, you've set your frequency, you don't let anything affect that, everything's just gonna bounce off of you through the day, because you're setting the example for everyone around you, whether it's your kids, your employees, guys on the mat, you're setting their example, and I'm like, man, that dude is so cool to be around, he's always got such a great vibe, right. Well, because you set it in the morning, so you know, I tell the inmates this, and they just get, they get revived like a new breath of fresh air for life, right? They're like, okay, I can do this, you know, and I got guys in there that are missing teeth, and they're homeless, and, and nobody's ever loved them, and they have nothing when they get out, they have nothing to return to. I go, okay, you just have to start walking in the direction that your heart's telling you to go, take your brain with you, your nervous system will be relaxed, and you've just got to keep it moving, you got to keep it moving, right? They, they love it. At the end of the day, I go, "You'll never forget me.

Kim Couture  56:44  
The end of the day, I'll say goodbye to all of them and stuff. They're like, "Hey, Kimmy, keep it moving. They like to say it, but they feel like they're a part of a movement, and I look them in the eyes, and I make them feel loved, and not in a romantic sense, right? I just make them feel seen and heard, and then I believe in them. Most people, nobody believes in them. It's important. This work is important. I wish more people were doing it. I want to teach everybody this stuff, so that everybody wants to do it. There's some of the inmates, they're like, I want to do what you're doing, I want to teach what you're teaching, I want to teach my family, and I want to practice on them, and I want to go do what you're doing, and that just makes my heart just bounce, because I'm like, this is cool. This is what it's about. This is what we're supposed to be doing as human beings, right? With everybody having different gifts instead of fighting each other, if anybody's fighting each other, you just bought into the propaganda, right? We are here with different gifts to shine a light in this very dark world. We're supposed to be working together and learning from each other. So that's the point. That's the mission. We're gonna get Kathy's books done, we're gonna get my books done, and we're gonna change this place.

Scott Groves  57:46  
That's that's the way to end the podcast, right? Right on cue, too. That's really good. When all the books are published, I want to have you back, so I can get them all, and we can review them, and we can, we can talk about what we can learn in each one. So, we're gonna do a follow-up episode on this in a couple months. All right. Well, congratulations on this success. Congratulations on finishing the books, and yeah, we're gonna keep in touch, so I can help spread the word. Awesome. Thank you,

Kim Couture  58:08  
thank you.

Scott Groves  58:11  
Hey, it's Scott Groves with the Henderson HQ podcast. I hope you got something out of that episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to the podcast, it really helps the show grow. And by the way, if you are a business owner, or you know a business owner who has an interesting product, service, or just an interesting backstory, please, please get in touch with us. Email us at the Henderson hq@gmail.com We would love to interview you, because that's what this show is all about. It's about building community, supporting local, individually owned businesses, and just making Henderson a great place to live. And don't forget, go to Henderson hq.com and make sure you sign up for our newsletter. We send out a once a week newsletter, no spam about the most interesting local businesses, hot spots, restaurants, community events. Thanks for watching the show. Really appreciate you. Bye.