Meet Jaime Mendez III

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jaime Mendez III. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jaime below.

Jaime, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.

I love this one. As I have aged and become more experienced in life this area has been one of importance for me. What good is it to have and not to share and make others lives better? I probably first learned this from my grandmother Sofia. She was the kindest soul I’d ever met and would always feed and pray for anyone who came in her door. She was the antithesis of my grandfather, Jaime Sr. He was the tip of the spear while she was the person who made us all feel loved and special. I learned so much from her and was blessed to have her until just a few years ago. She is still my compass as it pertains to kindness and generosity towards others. I have been fortunate enough to meet other like minded people in my life who have strengthened this belief in me and I see each one of them as a gift. Now I try to honor Sofia Mendez and all the others who have shown me generosity, kindness and grace by paying it forward into the world as best I can.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am the son of Jaime and Carmen Mendez Jr. They both came to the mainland from Puerto Rico as children and created a family of three boys which I am the oldest of. Both of them instilled hardwork and discipline into me and it has stayed with me my entire life. My story has taken many turns in the 53 years I’ve been on this Earth. As a young man I had a very successful collegiate and not so successful professional career in American football. Needless to say, when I ended up giving it up after 3 years and getting a divorce from my college sweetheart I was devastated and had to look internally and figure out the next piece of my life. It took some years for me to stop feeling sorry for myself but when the smoke cleared I found myself as a landlord in Los Angeles. I recruited my family to assist me in this endeavor. They all moved to LA and helped me build and maintain that business for 10 years but once again the world had other plans for us and when the housing crisis hit we had to dissolve the business and move on. Now in my mid thirties, I was extremely disappointed in what happened and how I felt I let my parents and brothers down. Yet, I picked myself back up. Sold the remaining assets we retained in our portfolio and started my next business in the credit card processing space. I also remarried during this time and had a son. Unfortunately, once again I ended up divorced. Yet the beautiful life she and I created in my son Varro Blair Mendez has been the biggest blessing I have ever had. He is why I continue to strive to be a better person. I still have ownership of the credit card processing company today and it along with my home have afforded me the ability to move into the martial arts academy ownership space. Martial Arts has always been a passion of mine but it wasn’t until 2015 that I began thinking I could make a career of it. At the time I was training and teaching at 5 Star Martial Arts which I rebranded to Renzo Gracie Los Angeles when I purchased it with some friends in 2019. It has truly turned into another love of mine. We now have 3 locations and are looking for more. The first one, Renzo Gracie Los Angeles is in Hollywood, The second, Renzo Gracie East LA is in Commerce and the newest addition to our family of schools is Renzo Gracie Evolution located in Chatsworth. Our goal is simple. We want to create the best, safest family oriented academies not only in LA but in the country. We want to serve the community and help in any philanthropic pursuits we deem worthy. When it’s all said and done and I am to old to run the schools I want to hand them over to worthy individuals who will continue to help people feel better about themselves and be leaders in their communities

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I would say the three qualities that have helped me the most are my grit, positive attitude and my faith in God. These three attributes have enabled me to weather a number of severe storms in my life. I would also probably add that I am not afraid to fail. This fear is what stops so many people from pursuing their dreams. Anyone successful I have ever spent time with has failed more times than they can count. It is the secret ingredient to success. You must fail, learn from those failures, move forward and make better mistakes until you finally find a level of success that can sustain you. Yet, even then we must continue to try and move forward where we will inevitably fail again. Being able to pick yourself up from each mistake and learn a valuable lesson which you can use in future decision making is the key to success in my opinion. Fail often, fail forward and most importantly get up and hold fast to your beliefs and dreams.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

When I feel overwhelmed I try to calm myself, pray and work on the things I have control of. I really tru to let worry and confusion pass through me and not spend significant time entertaining my inner critic. I often tell it to go away with a lot of colorful language if you know what I mean. I know when I fell this way it can be the beginning of a negative spiral. I try to get ahead of these feelings as early as possible in order to keep my mind clear and ready to support all those who count on me.

Contact Info:

• Website: Renzogracielosangeles.com. Renzogracieeastla.com Renzogracieevolution.com
• Instagram: Renzogracielosangeles Renzogracieleastlosangeles. Renzogracieevolution. jjmendez3
• Facebook: Renzo Gracie Los Angeles. Renzo Gracie East Los Angeles. Renzo Gracie Evolution. Jaime Mendez III

Image Credits

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