It’s difficult deciding the most staggering thing there is to know about Matt Fiddes. That he became such an entrepreneurial success after leaving school with only the remarks of naysayers ringing in his ears rather than qualifications, that being picked on as a child made him the man he is today or that Michael Jackson lit his path into the world of franchising. “I’ve led a bizarre life,” Fiddes laughs. Today, he can smile and appreciate where he’s gotten as he looks back on his early years, which saw him take up taekwondo at the age of seven, but it wasn’t the easiest childhood. “I was being bullied really badly at school,” Fiddes says on what drew him to the Korean martial art. However, it was this very problem that changed his life.
With his self-defence lessons underway, rather than looking for revenge like the ultimate Hollywood underdog movie from the eighties, Fiddes turned the other cheek. “The first thing my instructor taught me was to recognise danger and stay away from bullies.” That was his approach for years but his peers eventually realised he wasn’t to be messed with. “It was only when I [was] 13 and started bodybuilding and really training hard that I would go into PE and everyone [saw] I could lift more weights than [them]. And when it came to stretching, I could sit in the splits with ease and all the other lads were like ‘Jeez, I ain’t getting near him’,” he recalls. Winning British championships gave Fiddes even more freedom as he found himself in the local press, confirming he was no longer easy prey.
Nevertheless, his rise in popularity didn’t make study any more enjoyable as he simply had no interest in what he was being taught. Fiddes believed then, and now, that teaching needs to be updated. “Even with maths and looking at equations, they’ve got flipping calculators now,” he claims. “I learnt that at a young age and I felt [I wasn’t going to use anything I was] being taught” -“I’m just wasting my life away’.” Fittingly, the only subject he cared for was PE, which led him to believe English, maths, history and so on were all unnecessary. “All I wanted to do was be a martial arts or fitness instructor,” he adds. “My careers day was the most soul-destroying day of my life. A careers adviser came around and I said ‘Nothing here is for me, I want to be a martial arts instructor’ and she said ‘Don’t be so stupid Matthew, you can’t do that, there’s no such career – you can never make any money out of that’.” But that snub only lit a fire in his belly to prove her wrong.
Despite little appetite for the school curriculum, Fiddes set about educating himself as a teenager by reading a series of self-help books from the likes of entrepreneurial authors Tony Robbins and Jim Roman in a bid to chart his roadmap to success. At 16 he moved from his childhood home of Swindon to Croyde in North Devon with his parents and it was in the seaside village that the young martial artist would start shaping his business. “It’s a back of beyond place really,” says Fiddes of Croyde. Deciding to start his own class, he found that this was easier said than done. “Initially it didn’t work,” he admits. “I just couldn’t get people through the door, they would quit quickly.”
In addition to a more convenient way for consumers to pay and a resultant sustainable income for the business, rather than just teach children how to punch and kick, it was more about helping them build life skills. “Kids would get homework at the end of each lesson, so that would be brushing teeth, to be well-mannered at school and home,” he says. “And if they weren’t they wouldn’t be able to progress to their next martial arts grade.” This was enforceable with a form that needed signatures from parents and teachers, which proved to be a big hit. Drawing upon his own experiences as a student to shape the approach to his classes, Fiddes explains: “You can’t keep kids interested when they’re doing the same kick for half an hour and a punch for another half hour then they’re told to go home. [In my day] it was very hardcore, breaking bricks and all this type of stuff, so I wanted to develop family martial arts.”
Winning over parents was half the battle and once that happened the classes picked up steam. “They saw me as a respectful young adult and wanted kids to become like me – respectful, ambitious and so on,” Fiddes details. “And it grew and grew.” With the class running out of a nearby town called Braunton in a school hall, which cost him just £15 a night to rent, he was making up to £5,000 a month for teaching just twice a week. The rest of his time was spent training and sunbathing – when the British weather would allow for the latter. But with all of his friends working more conventional hours, the freedom became a lonely experience so Fiddes visited a doctor and the outcome shocked him. “It got so bad with boredom he prescribed me antidepressants,” he reveals. “I was thinking ‘what on earth am I on antidepressants for? I’m on this kind of money teaching three hours twice a week on a Wednesday night and Sunday night’.” Although a cushy gig from an outsider’s perspective, it clearly wasn’t the case for Fiddes. But that sense of loneliness is what gave him the drive to expand.
Fiddes wanted to make a permanent home for his brand, drawing further on lessons from his time in the US. “I tried to think about having this full-time centre like they do in the States,” he says. The location for this was in Barnstaple and although the landlord was sceptical, he knew Fiddes’ mother from her local work as a lawyer and that was good enough for him. “We had six months rent-free and just about enough money to decorate the place – six months later it was the biggest martial arts school in the UK with 700 members,” says Fiddes. This resulted in his face being plastered across magazines and newspapers nationally with headlines such as “Wonder Boy” and “Broke schoolboy becomes millionaire”, while he also appeared on TV alongside the likes of Trisha, Kilroy and Chris Evans.
