31-year-old Louis Levy is vice president of The Levy Group, his family’s 80-year-old fashion conglomerate. He is also a BJJ black belt under Fabio Clemente and teaches the morning class 2 times a week in the academy in Manhattan’s East 12th Street.
“Without Jiu-Jitsu,” he says. “I can’t do what I do for a living.”
After an injury forced him out of his college football career, he discovered Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu:
I remember walking onto the mat and looking at all of the practitioners, most of whom had a quarter of my size and athletic ability, and I thought to myself, ‘I got this.’ And boy was I mistaken. That day was a humbling experience that I would never forget. I fell in love with the sport. I realized that this something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Levy credits Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for helping be a better businessman:
“You evolve as a person through the relationships you develop, you evolve as a person because you really test yourself. Because the only way to really succeed in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is to lose. A black belt is a successful failure. And that’s what successful people are, really—they’re people who have been able to experience failure and take a step back and improve themselves and never, ever stop.”
