Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Robbins.
Hi Jeremy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve always had two strong interests in both athletics and entrepreneurship. I studied management science in college and knew early on that I eventually wanted to build and lead a business. What I didn’t know was that personal protection and safety would become the work I would build it around.
My interest in self-defense started with a pretty simple realization. I knew I would be willing to defend myself if I ever needed to, but willingness and capability are two very different things. I wanted to develop a real skill set.
That became more personal after someone I knew in college found himself in a situation where he needed to defend himself and didn’t know how. He was ultimately shot. Thankfully, he survived, but seeing the impact of that experience stayed with me and reinforced the importance of being prepared before you ever need to be.
My relationship with Krav Maga Maryland actually started years before I ever imagined working there. I first came in looking to train and continued coming back to it at different points over the years while pursuing other professional opportunities.
Eventually, an opportunity came up to join the team at Krav Maga Maryland. It wasn’t the direction I had originally expected to take professionally, but I saw something worth exploring and decided to give it a shot.
My perspective changed almost immediately.
Within my first week, I had the opportunity to work with two people who had experienced significant trauma in their pasts. I watched what happened as they started training. They were learning how to physically protect themselves, but there was something bigger happening at the same time. They were becoming more confident and empowered. Seeing that transformation made me realize the impact this work could have well beyond teaching someone how to fight.
Over the next several years, I took on increasing responsibility within the company, but the journey was anything but a straight line. In 2019, a gas explosion significantly disrupted our facility and operations. We worked through other periods of uncertainty, and then COVID hit. Each challenge forced us to adapt and question assumptions about what our business was and what it could become.
COVID, in particular, changed my perspective.
We had people training with us virtually who later found themselves in real-world situations where the lessons they had learned through a computer screen helped them stay safe. That was powerful. It reinforced for me that the real value of what we were teaching wasn’t tied to a building, a mat, or even a particular technique. It was about giving people the awareness, judgment, confidence, and practical skills to respond when circumstances became uncertain.
In 2021, I had an important decision to make about my future with the company. There were certainly other directions I could have gone, but I believed in what Krav Maga Maryland could become and, more importantly, why the work mattered. I chose to stay, stepped into the CEO role, and took on greater responsibility for the direction of the organization.
At its core, the reason was simple. I believed we could make a positive impact in our community by equipping people with the skills to give them a better chance of getting home safely.
The challenges we had experienced also caused me to rethink the way our industry approaches self-defense. Too often, people look for one answer to personal safety. Learn to fight. Carry a firearm. Buy a security product. Take an awareness class. Those can all be valuable tools, but none of them by itself is the complete answer.
A physical confrontation is only one point on a much larger timeline.
That thinking ultimately led us to broaden and restructure Krav Maga Maryland’s approach. Today, our work goes beyond traditional self-defense training and includes firearms education, less-lethal options, home defense and personal protection, and corporate safety. We work with individuals, businesses, community organizations, and government agencies.
Our approach is holistic by design. It starts before an incident ever occurs with awareness, avoidance, preparation, and good decision-making. If prevention fails, people need practical options to protect themselves. And preparation shouldn’t end when the immediate threat is over. What happens afterward matters too.
That evolution has also changed how I think about my own role. Today, I see myself as an entrepreneur, forward thinker, and personal protection professional who is invested in making people, organizations, and communities safer and more resilient. Teaching and developing others will always be part of who I am, but my responsibility today is much broader: building solutions, developing people, and helping organizations think differently about safety and preparedness.
That entrepreneurial mindset is also leading me to build Emperium Solutions Group, a broader platform focused on developing solutions across business, performance, and wellness. It creates an opportunity to apply what I’ve learned while continuing to explore new ideas and challenges across different industries.
What continues to make the work meaningful is the human side of it.
Competence creates confidence. When someone has worked through difficult situations in training and proven to themselves that they can respond, they tend to carry themselves differently. They don’t need to become the best fighter in the room. They need enough awareness, judgment, and capability to recognize a problem, make good decisions, and give themselves the best opportunity to get home safely.
Every person we train is somebody’s spouse, parent, child, sibling, friend, or coworker. When you look at the work through that lens, the responsibility becomes much bigger than teaching techniques.
As Krav Maga Maryland continues to grow, I want that growth to deepen our impact. I want us to continue becoming a pillar in the community and a trusted resource for individuals and organizations that want to be more prepared, more resilient, and safer. Ultimately, it’s about how many people we can positively impact and how we serve the communities that trust us with their safety.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It certainly hasn’t been a smooth road. We’ve navigated a gas explosion that disrupted our facility, a global pandemic, the normal ebbs and flows of running a business, and the challenge of evolving an organization while the market doesn’t always fully understand the scope of what we do. As we expanded into new areas, we also had to build credibility beyond what we had traditionally been known for, develop new partnerships, and restructure parts of the company to support where we were going.
As the organization has grown and evolved, there have also been difficult decisions along the way. Building a strong team, resetting culture, and balancing the needs of our people with the long-term health and direction of the business have all been part of that process.
Those experiences have taught me to be adaptable and comfortable making difficult decisions without always having perfect information. More than anything, they’ve reinforced that resilience isn’t just getting through challenges. It’s learning from them and using them to build something stronger.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Krav Maga Maryland is a personal protection and corporate safety company based in Columbia, Maryland. We consult, educate, and train individuals and organizations to help them become more prepared, capable, and confident in managing real-world safety challenges.
We take a holistic approach to personal protection and safety. Our work includes self-defense and defensive tactics, firearms education, licensing and permit training, less-lethal options, home defense and personal protection, and corporate safety. We work with individuals and families as well as businesses, community organizations, and government agencies.
What sets us apart is that we don’t look at safety as a single technique, product, or training course. We look at the entire timeline of an incident, from awareness, preparation, and avoidance to practical response options and what happens afterward. The goal isn’t to make everyone a professional fighter. It’s to teach people how to think about safety, give them practical options, and develop the judgment to make good decisions when they need to.
That same philosophy shapes our corporate work. Every organization has different people, environments, policies, and risks, so we spend time understanding the situations its people may realistically encounter and build training around those realities.
The team and culture behind that work have been an important part of our evolution. Our COO, Morgan Robbins, has played an important role in our growth and in building the operational foundation that allows us to deliver consistently as we continue to grow. We also have a committed team of professionals who understand the responsibility that comes with this work. As the organization has evolved, we’ve become much more intentional about building a culture around service, integrity, courage, and excellence.
The trust people and organizations place in us means a great deal. At the end of the day, our mission is to develop the mindset, judgment, and practical skills that empower people to take ownership of their safety and protect themselves and their community. We want to help build stronger teams and safer communities.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Over the next five to ten years, I think personal protection and corporate safety will become much more integrated into everyday life and organizational culture.
For businesses, I see safety becoming less of a reaction to an incident or an annual requirement and more of an ongoing investment in people. There’s a human element to that. When an organization invests in someone’s safety, it sends a message that they value that person beyond what they contribute to the bottom line. The knowledge and skills they gain can benefit them at work, at home, and in their community.
I think we’ll see a similar shift with individuals. Personal protection will increasingly be viewed less as something reserved for people with a particular interest in self-defense and more as a practical part of everyday preparedness.
Ultimately, I see the industry becoming more proactive, integrated, and focused on developing resilient people and organizations. Safety shouldn’t be something we only think about after something goes wrong.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kravmd.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kravmagamd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kravmagamaryland/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-robbins-248449338
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kravmagamd
- Other: https://www.emperiumsolutions.com
