This is a blog about my experiences as a father, husband, military professional, and martial artist to help others learn and grow from my lessons learned.
About Doc
I’m Anthony “Doc” Clas — husband, father, retired Army officer, educator, martial artist, Realtor, real estate investor and lifelong student of leadership.
For 20 years, I served on active duty in the U.S. Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 2024. My military career took me from Iraq to assignments throughout Europe, the Republic of Korea and across the United States. Along the way, I worked extensively in mass communications and leadership, learning how organizations tell their stories, how leaders communicate through uncertainty and, perhaps most importantly, how people come together around a shared purpose.
The Army also gave me something I never expected when I first raised my right hand in 2004: an opportunity to pursue an education far beyond what I had originally imagined.
While serving on active duty, I earned a bachelor’s degree from Saint Xavier University in Chicago; two master’s degrees, from Tiffin University in Ohio and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College; and a Doctor of Education in Organizational Leadership from Argosy University in Phoenix.
Those degrees hang on a wall somewhere, but their real value has always been in application. Leadership, communication, organizational behavior and lifelong learning continue to influence how I approach business, real estate, coaching, martial arts and fatherhood.
And somewhere during those 20 years, I learned the most important leadership lesson of all:
The most important team I will ever lead is my family.
My wife, Claudia, and I are raising our two children, Dominic and Brianna, while figuring out this next chapter together. We’re building businesses, investing in real estate, traveling, training martial arts, putting down roots and occasionally making things considerably more complicated than they need to be.
That’s life with Team Clas.
From the Army to Real Estate
Retirement didn’t mean I was particularly interested in sitting still.
Real estate became one of the ways I could take two decades of planning, leadership and problem-solving and apply them toward building something tangible for our family.
I’m a licensed Realtor in Illinois and Indiana with LPT Realty, serving clients throughout the Chicago Southland and Northwest Indiana. I’m also an active real estate investor whose experience includes residential sales, long-term rentals, short-term rentals, property management and rehabilitation projects.
Our investments have gradually expanded beyond Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana, including our family’s property in Comerío, Puerto Rico.
For me, real estate isn’t simply about accumulating doors.
It’s about building options.
It’s creating income, experiences and assets that can provide our children with choices. It’s taking calculated risks, occasionally discovering that the calculation was wildly optimistic, learning the lesson and continuing forward.
You’ll read about all of it here — including the expensive lessons.
The Martial Arts
Martial arts provide another thread running through our family’s story.
I’m a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt and instructor with The Fighter’s Union, as well as a former U.S. Army Tactical Combatives instructor, with additional training in Krav Maga and other combative systems.
But after years on the mats, I’ve discovered that martial arts aren’t really about learning how to fight.
They’re about learning how to struggle.
You get uncomfortable. You fail. You adjust. You help the person beside you improve. Then you come back tomorrow and do it again.
Those are lessons I want Dominic and Brianna to carry long after they’ve forgotten individual techniques.
Why Zen Warrior Class?
I originally created Zen Warrior Class to write about my experiences as a father, husband, Soldier and martial artist.
Then the Soldier retired.
The kids got bigger.
And the story kept going.
Today, Zen Warrior Class has evolved into something much more personal: a living chronicle of the Clas family journey.
These pages document what we’re building, where we’re going, what we’re learning and the people we meet along the way. You’ll find stories about marriage and fatherhood, martial arts, travel, entrepreneurship, real estate, faith, leadership, failure, friendship and whatever other adventures Team Clas manages to wander into.
I’m not writing because I’ve figured life out.
Quite the opposite.
I’m writing because someday I want Dominic and Brianna — and maybe their children — to be able to look back through these pages and understand who we were, where we came from, what we believed, what we struggled with and why we kept moving forward.
If something we’ve learned along the way helps somebody else on their journey, even better.
Welcome to the Clas Clan Chronicles.
One Team. One Family. A lifetime in the making.
Fortitudine Vincemus.
~Doc
