Today we’d like to introduce you to Kent Lloyd.
Hi Kent, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’ve been a stunt coordinator for coming up on 17 years. I wanted to get into better and cooler stunts, and whereas my contemporary dance career that took me on tour internationally with BYU’s Contemporary Dance Theatre for 3 years developed my flexibility, performing ability, strength, and my eye for directing for video; post graduating in Advertising, I threw myself into the world of Krav Maga for the down and dirty nature of it, and Tae Kwon Do for the big flashy kicks.
Somewhere along the way I fell in love with Krav Maga and what it had to offer to people outside of the world of stunts. So as I was on the journey to getting both my black belts in Krav and Tae Kwon Do, I opened Utah Valley Self Defense. I saw that there was a severe lack of significant Krav Maga training between Sandy and Santaquin, so we decided to pop up shop in Lindon, right between the two.
4 years, 2 black belts, and 1 Muay Thai fight later, we’ve added the Brown Boys Boxing program to our school, a Muay Thai instructor with 9 fights under his belt, and the Spearhead Stunts class (which is the only stunts school in the state of Utah). We are incredibly happy with all of our programs performances and the the fights that our students take.
We’ve had 4 people from our school take fights in Muay Thai, and Boxing. The Spearhead Stunts program made a short film last year that has won awards from all over the globe.
We can’t wait to see what our students and staff will do next!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
We had significant bumps along the way in terms of our landlords changing and our lease terms screwing over all of the tenants of our building complex. After the building was sold, our CAM rates went from $50,000/year for the whole building to over $75,000/year. The landlords of the Connie Quarre Trust (Connie Moses as the beneficient) failed to tell us about the increase in CAM for over 1 year, and then raised the costs again. This meant for our business that we went from paying $860/month in CAM rates to over $1,800/CAM over night.
Our whole building united together and stopped paying our CAM rates to force the conversation between ourselves and the Connie Quarre Trust Manager, Mark Thomas. He promised in front of me and Officer Erik Tryon to remove some of the costs on the bill because he said “there are some costs on there that look a little high.” Since he promised to lower the bill for the next year, we all started paying our CAM again, only to find out the next year that they increased the CAM again by another couple hundred dollars per month.
I engaged Mr Thomas by phone and text to try and see what could be done about these costs, and why he went back on his promise. He told me that he took a look at the bill and then let it ride without ever talking to the managing company, LB Hunt, who have been absolutely horrendous to work with. I let Mr. Thomas know that I was extremely disappointed in his reaction and failure to follow through on a promise just because we as a collective had started to pay again. I also let him know that it was unethical to charge us for work that not only was outside the walls of the building such as leveling sidewalks, but that had never been performed.
Since then, one tenant has left, and his space has never been filled for over a year now, and one tenant was forced to sign an NDA so that they couldn’t talk to fellow tenants about lease terms in effort to silence our group complaints.
In total, I am shocked and appalled by a group like the Connie Quarre Trust, Mr Mark Thomas, and LB Hunt that not only manages out building, but many more throughout the state, making it harder and harder for small business owners to make a profit and feel like they can realistically predict their expenses from year to year.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My specialty when it comes to teaching actually comes from my background in contemporary dance. I always felt like I was at a disadvantage as a man dancing with all these women who had been dancing since the age of three, and I hadn’t started dancing until the age of 13, and I didn’t start contemporary dance until the age of 16. But Professor Kate Monson was really great at connecting with me in my technique classes using kinesiology, the study of the mechanics of body movement. I progressed faster under her instruction faster than any other professor because she focused on helping me understand exactly which muscle should be firing at what exact times.
When I started my own gym, I started teaching beginners how to fight the exact way that Professor Monson had taught me. I fully believe that every student that comes in through my door is not weak. If they feel weak, it’s probably because they are only using 1-2 muscles when they strike. If they can learn how to use 5-7 muscles in the same motion, then even a small person can cause harm to a person who is a threat!
Outside of that, since we have the only stunts class in all of Utah, many directors have come to us to under go the pre-production process as they develop their films. Many times in Utah, directors will ask stunt coordinators to show up on the day of the shoot and figure out how the action should play out right before they start filming. Because we have a team and a rehearsal space, we can actually afford to take time before a shoot and act like a 2nd unit director from Hollywood who not only can help design the action, but also help directors lock in the camera angles and help tell the visual story in ways that only people who specialize in action are intimately familiar with.
We did just this with our own production of “Waterlogged” a story of a detective who develops hearing problems because of her two criminal informants as they start to waterboard her. The pre-visualization process led us to significantly shorter filming days, and awards at film festivals from around the world such as Best Stunts, Best Director, Best Sound Design, Best Micro Short, Best Action Crime Film, Best Film Noir, and more.
How do you think about happiness?
I gave up a life in advertising where I was helping develop companies from making $1 Million a year to $2-10 Million a year to teaching people how to de-escalate and fight when necessary, and honestly, I’ve never been happier. What makes me happy is seeing that I’m making a clear difference in my students lives.
I get many people who walk in through our doors dealing with low self esteem, PTSD, or SA repercussions. When they allow themselves time to work on the skill sets that we teach, I’ve seen some of the most quiet people you’ve ever met turn into loud, proud, and confident individuals who won’t back down from confrontation. Knowing that I can help people re-write their past trauma by giving them the skill sets to never become a victim again to the same circumstances is incredibly heart warming for me. You find that when you build a community like that, everyone starts to become a family with each other.
Pricing:
- $119/month for a Single Fighting Style
- $140/month for an All-Inclusive Membership
- $160/10 class Punch Card
- 20% off tuition for First Responders
- Family Pricing is full price for the first 3 people. People’s 4-6 have free tuition, as long as they are in the same household.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://UVSelfDefense.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uvselfdefense/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UVSelfDefense
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kent-lloyd/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@spearheadstunts
