EVERY SPOKEN WORD
70 min read · 14,255 words- 0:00 – 1:04
Founders Are the Best Storytellers
- DSDavid Senra
[typewriter sounds] I was telling you, dude, I watch your press conferences. I was telling, I was, uh, having dinner with a founder of a $150 billion company, like, a couple days ago, and they're like, "Hey, can you help us hire or find somebody to be, like, a chief storyteller?" It's like, "No, that's the founder's job." And they asked, like, "Do you have any good examples?" I go, "Watch Dana White's press conferences after the fights."
- SPSpeaker
Uh-huh.
- DSDavid Senra
It's a perfect example. It's like he's the biggest fan of his own product. Is that how you would describe the way you approach the company you've built?
- SPSpeaker
100%. A-and I grew up, uh, you know, i-i-in the '70s and '80s, where I used to see, uh, CEOs reading canned statements from lawyers and things like that, and just fake, phony bullshit that I was never into. Um, so yeah, I've been pretty... And I'm a huge fan, huge fan, uh, still today, not only of, you know, the UFC, but now I've been a boxing fan my whole life too, and now I actually get to make the fights that I want to see.
- 1:04 – 2:51
Buying the UFC for $2M
- DSDavid Senra
The UFC was close to bankruptcy. You bought it for, like, $2 million with your partners. W- I want to talk about, you know, the fact that you guys went... Everybody's like, oh, a $2 million company into maybe a $20 billion company. It's like, yeah, you missed the part where they went in the hole by tens of millions, so I want to go talk about that. But you, you brought up something, like, we bought it. We had never done live events. We didn't do production. We didn't do anything. And then I heard you say, like, "But we were just fans. We were just trying to build the fights that we want to see in the way that we want to see them."
- SPSpeaker
Exactly right. Um, w-we were huge fans. We bought the company, and I can't remember, ballpark-ish, we had, like, two and a half, three weeks to put on an event. And, uh, you know, never knew anything about production, but knew what I wanted to see. And the production people that were in place, uh, I didn't get along well with, uh, so I ended up wiping them all out and bringing in a whole new crew and, and, uh, you know, just, just started building. And, and you learn as you go.
- DSDavid Senra
Talk about, like, the first few events, because how many events do you guys put on a year now? Like-
- SPSpeaker
We do, uh, like, 43, 44 events a year. When we bought the company, we were doing five.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Which seemed like a lot. [chuckles]
- DSDavid Senra
The fact that you were doing less means that you were learning slower too? Or you just, there was just no way you could do more than five this-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. We, we needed those gaps in between, especially after our first event, to really start to dial it in. And, and, you know, we made a lot of, uh... it's trial and error. We made a lot of mistakes, things that we... You know, we did some goofy WWE shit for a minute there and, you know, fireworks and pyro and all that stuff. And then, uh, then we ended up finding that perfect sweet spot, which is where we are now. Now it's all about, uh, technology. When new technology comes out, we always try to be first or one of the first to use it, but the, the show is dialed
- 2:51 – 7:58
Excellence Is the Capacity to Take Pain
- SPSpeaker
now.
- DSDavid Senra
So one of my favorite maxims from the history of entrepreneurship is that excellence is the capacity to take pain. I want to talk about your, when you bought the, after you bought the UFC, but before, I think it takes you, what, five, six years before you guys get back in the black and you're actually making money.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
Take us through, like, that, that, like, trough.
- SPSpeaker
We bought the company for $2 million. We're doing five events a year. You know, in the beginning, the, the, the events are way more expensive. We don't have all the proper equipment. We don't know what the hell we're doing. So events are costing us upward of $2 million bucks a pop, times five, you know, times five years. It, it, it gets expensive. Uh, and we started building the roster of fighters, signing more guys, paying them more money. It got to the point where one night I was driving home and Lorenzo says, "I can't keep doing this. I can't keep putting this kind of money in, me and my brother."
- DSDavid Senra
So they put up the $2 million.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
I think you got, like, 10 or 20% of the company, and then your job is to run it, right?
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
Now it sounds like they're investing a couple more million every year.
- SPSpeaker
Well, this is, like, four years in, I would say. He says-
- DSDavid Senra
What's the revenue back then?
- SPSpeaker
"... get out there and see what you can sell it for."
- DSDavid Senra
Was it making $10 million a year in revenue, and you guys would spend another 10? Like-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. In that ballpark. And, uh, but just the, you know... The other thing was we didn't own the rights to the merchandise, the library, the video games, uh, DVDs, which were big at that time. So all we bought when we bought the company was those three letters, UFC, an old wooden octagon, and some contracts that we ha- that we had obligations to. Um, and maybe it was eight or nine. That's it, eight or nine contracts. We have almost 1,000 guys under contract now. All the ancillary stuff was sold off to Lionsgate because the old owner was trying to stay alive. So to, to show you, people can't wrap their head around this now, how much people didn't believe in the UFC. We went back to Lionsgate, and we bought the rights back for, like, I don't remember what it was, but it was, like, $2.5, $3 million bucks. We bought all those rights back.
- DSDavid Senra
So anything you could put a UFC logo on.
- SPSpeaker
Right. And, you know, we, we, we talk about it now, me and Lorenzo, and we're thinking those guys were probably laughing at us when we left. Like, like-
- DSDavid Senra
I would... Lionsgate's probably, "These idiots just gave us a couple million dollars for nothing."
- SPSpeaker
You, you got these, uh, you know, these finance guys that are like, "This will look good on the books over the next, you know, two, three years." And we got all our rights back and, you know. If you look at the... Imagine if Lionsgate still owned all those rights. It's crazy. I, I'm friends with Shannon Lee, right, Bruce Lee's daughter.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
You know, she's been trying to buy the rights back to, to the Bruce Lee films and all. They would never sell, you know? Even though Bruce Lee, you know, died in the early '70s-
- DSDavid Senra
He's still a huge ticket, yeah
- SPSpeaker
... his movies are still relevant, and people will watch them, and people care, and they're great movies. But they sold us all the rights back. Cheap, too.
- DSDavid Senra
What do you think happened overnight from Lorenzo calls you, he's like, "Man, I'm burning... We're, we're just dumping all this money. Try to see if you can find a buyer." Calls you back the next day.
- SPSpeaker
Well, I called him back and said, "I think we could sell it six, seven, maybe eight million, in that ballpark."He says, "All right, I'll call you tomorrow." I'm literally driving to work the next day, and he calls me, and I'm like, "Hmm, here we go." He's like, "Fuck it." That's exactly what he said, "Fuck it. Let's keep going." And he always says it's, it's pretty amazing what a, what a good night's sleep can do for you. [laughs] You know what I mean? So, uh, they hung in there. Our goal is to get on TV. And again, for people that, that, that don't understand because, you know, several generations have grown up with the UFC, and it's normal now, but a- a- at that time, it wasn't allowed on pay-per-view. You as a grown adult didn't have the right to purchase it on pay-per-view. Porn was on pay-per-view.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Okay? But the UFC was not allowed on pay-per-view. Think about that.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- 7:58 – 10:53
One Good Night's Sleep and "Fuck It, Let's Keep Going"
- SPSpeaker
So The Contender comes out, and it's the most expensive, uh, show ever. But what they did wrong and where they fucked up was they were editing the fights. So they would, if they had a fight, and you know, they got, uh, you know, back in the edit and they're like, "This is boring," or whatever, but, but that's the difference between being a hardcore fan and not. I'm like, "Man, you don't ever edit a fight." You let the fight play out.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
And the fans determine whether the fight is good or bad, and you can't control that. You, you... I call it the bells and whistles. We do all the bells and whistles, then the fighters, we hand the torch off to them, and they go in and they have to, they have to deliver.
- DSDavid Senra
Let me pause you there. This is why I tell founders of, like, tech companies to watch your, your press conferences, though, because the authenticity, I think this is why you have this, like, cult-like following and people really try, like, the people like you really try to root for you, right? And it's like you'll say at the end of it, like, "That fight sucked. We thought it was gonna be X, and it turned out to be Y." It's like, yeah, that, I, I have eyes. I'm not gonna lie to you.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, that fight sucks. Just like if for, uh, uh, founders, you're like, "Yeah, we fucked that up. Like, that was a bad experience. I wouldn't like that happen eith- either." Like, they, don't try to lie or paper over it.
- SPSpeaker
I saw that, too, growing up with bo- with promoters that would tell you you just saw a great fight when you know you didn't just see a great fight.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Um, a, but as a fan, if the fight is good, boring, you know, different people like different things. You could take half of the fan base who thinks the fight is boring, and the other half will think it's great because they like grappling more than the striking or whatever it may be. But you don't judge that. You let the fans judge-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... whether the fight is good or bad. Like, we'll, we'll, we'll build a card and, and people start talking online, "This fight sucks." Shut the fuck up.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
You don't know if the fight sucks until it happens, right? You might not like the two people that are fighting.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
But you can't judge a fight until the fight is over.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
If it's over and it sucks, then we'll both probably agree that it sucked.
- DSDavid Senra
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- 10:53 – 13:12
The Ultimate Fighter: A $10M Bet-It-All Moment
- DSDavid Senra
How many different networks did you have to pitch till you got one to say yes to the show? And how did you get them to say yes?
- SPSpeaker
Well, we were pitching everybody. Um, and at the time, I mean, everything in life is about timing. Or I think it was the Nashville network had switched over to Spike TV, which was labeling itself as the network for men.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
And we're like, "Man, if we don't fit here, where do we fit," right? So we go in, we pitch these guys. They're not really interested. You know, what it's gonna cost them. So we said, "Well, we'll pay for the whole thing. We'll pay for it. You just put it on your air." They liked that idea better.
- DSDavid Senra
So they said no or not interested, and then you come back and say, "We're gonna pay for production."
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- DSDavid Senra
So at that point they're just distribution. D- What's, what's their-
- SPSpeaker
100%. There's no downside for them.
- DSDavid Senra
You, you, you took the risk away from them.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. They had spent a shitload of money on a bunch of content that didn't work.
- DSDavid Senra
But that means you own the show, right? Okay.
- SPSpeaker
So at the time, it's the last $10 million investment we're gonna make in the UFC.
- DSDavid Senra
Whoa!
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
So if it didn't work out...
- SPSpeaker
That's it. It's a wrap. If The Ultimate Fighter didn't work, it's over. So the last $10 million investment, which sucks at the time. We're, we're investing another 10 million. But what doesn't suck is exactly what you just said. The thing is a runaway hit.The numbers just keep going like this, and then the finale, when we were at the finale, when Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin fought, when the fight was over and everybody in the place was stomping their feet saying, "One more round," and that, you know, we go up, we give them both contracts. I was like, "I don't give a shit what happens. This is end it, this is gonna end up somewhere." And Spike TV execs took us out in the alley of the arena, and we did a deal on a napkin.
- DSDavid Senra
That's insane.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy.
- DSDavid Senra
So the fight ends, you go out in the alley, and they're like, "No, no, no, we wanna renew with you guys."
- SPSpeaker
We want, we wanna get a deal done now. We wanna shake hands on a, you know... We didn't fill out a contract.
- DSDavid Senra
Of course.
- SPSpeaker
But here's some bullet points for the deal. We all agreed and shook hands and, and there we were. But if they would have paid for it, we wouldn't have been in the position that we were in, where we own 100% of everything. So while it sucked at the time to put up the next $10 million, it ended up being the greatest thing to ever happen to
- 13:12 – 22:00
The Napkin Deal With Spike TV
- SPSpeaker
us.
- DSDavid Senra
When you had this fight with, with, uh, Forrest Griffin, what venue were you in?
- SPSpeaker
So the Thomas & Mack is, uh, UNLV's, uh, stadium. We were at the small venue right next door to it. Uh, it was called the Cox Pavilion.
- DSDavid Senra
A couple hundred people?
- SPSpeaker
3,500, 4,000, something like that.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
3 to 5,000.
- DSDavid Senra
But still compare, think about the growth in your company from that to now paying-
- SPSpeaker
100%
- DSDavid Senra
... you, you can pay the best-
- SPSpeaker
Our first fight that we did when we bought the company was at the Trump Taj Mahal. We sold 3,500 tickets, and with comps, we had 5,000 people there.
- DSDavid Senra
That's incredible. Okay. So you do this deal with Spike TV. Now, this is, we're in, like, early 2000s. There's, like, no, barely any, there's almost no iPhones, right? There's no social media.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
There's none of... Like, you, you've done a really good job of, in my opinion, when I studied the history of U- um, UFC, is, like, riding these technological waves. Like, you adopt them early, and then you use them as these giant tailwinds. You don't really resist. Like, you see something working, like-
- SPSpeaker
Technology's been great to us.
- DSDavid Senra
I remember you telling the story of, like, Joe Rogan, uh, asking you to be on his podcast, and then he described it as like, "It's kind of like the radio, but we put it online." And you said-
- SPSpeaker
"Oh, God. Yeah, that sounds huge. That sounds like that's gonna be real fucking big. Good for you." [laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
And now by the, then you've embraced them.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
So the, was the TV the m- the vast majority of the revenue of the business at, w- when you did this deal with Spike?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. So, so, so television was huge. A- and The Ultimate Fighter literally did everything that we hoped it would do. It built a f- a, a, a, a larger fan base. Um, it introduced a lot of people not only to the sport and the brand, but to the fighters. I mean, coming off that show, Forrest Griffin became a massive pa- pay-per-view star for us. Chuck Liddell, who was one of the coaches and, you know, it, it did what it was designed to do. When I launch businesses, like I launched Power Slap, I did the same thing. I launched, uh, uh, UFC BJJ, did the same thing. So Power Slap's, uh, reality show is at, like, 50 million views on YouTube, so it's, it's still a home run. The format is, is, is incredible.
- DSDavid Senra
You guys tell, start telling the stories really, really early. So it's like before these people are competing on the reality show, you get to know who they are, what's important to them. They have var- more varied backgrounds than, like, boxing. Boxing tried to do that, but, like, there was... I love what you said. It's like when has there ever been trillions of dollars made and nothing's there at the end-
- SPSpeaker
Right
- DSDavid Senra
... like in boxing? [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Trillions of dollars in revenue-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... and nothing exists at the end of the day.
- DSDavid Senra
You guys start telling the story on the show even before they're signed, and then you keep w- once they get to the UFC, then they're on the prelims, you keep telling the story over and over again-
- SPSpeaker
Yep
- DSDavid Senra
... over many, many years.
- 22:00 – 28:24
Leaving Spike TV and the Phil Duman Story
- SPSpeaker
and then he, he tells us that he built the UFC, and if we don't like the offer he's making, he'll just build another one. That's literally what he said. And we left that meeting. I was like, "That fucking... He built the UFC, huh? Okay. Okay, Phil Duman. We'll see." So we end up leaving Spike TV and going to Fox, and just everything happens for a reason. And, uh, yeah, that guy ended up being one of the biggest brand killers of all time, ol' Phil Duman. Uh, MTV, fucking, you know, think about all the Viacom legendary networks they had that this guy had sucked the life out of and killed.
- DSDavid Senra
As you know, I'm obsessed with studying and speaking to the most focused and intense founders, living or dead. Dana White is a great example of that. And if you watch the episode I put out last week with Adam, the founder of AppLovin, you'll see the same kind of intensity and dedication to excellence. Adam is one of the most focused and intense founders I've ever met, and Adam is driven to build a great product that serves his customers, relentlessly improve that product over time, and to win. And that is exactly what Adam and his team have done with their advertising platform, Axon. Axon connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. Axon allows you to capture undivided attention. Axon ads are full-screen video ads that are watched for an average of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. You can launch on Axon in minutes. You set the goal, and Axon achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and Axon scales quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day, and increased their revenue by millions. So you wanna get started quickly before all your competitors are on Axon, and you can do that by going to axon.ai/senra. That is axon.ai/senra. That's a great story. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
I love that story. Your high risk tolerance, though. Do you guys do any work with... W- I was asking, uh, the team before. Do you know who Todd Graves is, the founder of Raising Cane's?
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
First of all, he should sponsor UFC.
- SPSpeaker
Well, we've met.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah. We've met.
- DSDavid Senra
He's just like you, 'cause you get off on being told-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
... "Dana, you can't do it."
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
Right? We... He did, he did this show a few months ago, and he was just like, "They told me..." A 23-year-old kid, he starts Raising Cane's. His original idea was like, "I'm gonna sell fucking chicken fingers to drunk LSU students." And he couldn't-
- SPSpeaker
A- and high school kids. My, my kids-
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, no, no. Now-
- SPSpeaker
... literally, that's all my kids ate when they were in high school.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.And so now, obviously it's different, but like back then he was 23 years old, had no money. He literally risked his life on a fucking fishing boat in Alaska, and then maxed out his credit cards. That's how he funded the first Raising Cane's, which he built with his own hands. We went to the first one in Baton Rouge. It's crazy he built this with his own hands, but there's so much similarities between you two. Uh, 'cause he said on the show, he's like, "Entrepreneurs are not taking enough risk. They're too scared of risk."
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
"They need to take more risk. If you truly believe in it, and you know this..." 'Cause he believes that God put him on this earth to be good at chicken fingers.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- DSDavid Senra
Literally. And, and now he owns over 90% of the company.
- SPSpeaker
It-
- DSDavid Senra
It's like worth s- $20 billion selling fucking chicken fingers.
- SPSpeaker
It's funny you say that, 'cause Lorenzo Fertitta always used to say to me, "You were put on this earth to do this."
- DSDavid Senra
There's nobody else in the world that loves it... We, we were just talking that we, we have a mutual friend in, in Jared. You were just on the phone with him before. His brother, Josh, has a great quote where he's like, you know, "If you wanna pick somebody, if you're gonna back somebody, y- and you could choose the most experienced, the best, the person that has the most money, or the person that wants it the most," he's like, "you always pick the person that wants it the most." It's very obvious that... You even said, I think y- you, when you moved back to Vegas, you're like, "I could... I was a bellman. Guess what? I'm gonna take a risk, 'cause I could be a bellman at 35, I could be a bellman at 50, but I can only do this and take the risk r- when I'm young and, like, have nothing to lose."
- SPSpeaker
Dead on. It's so true. Everybody, um, that has an idea or a dream or how- however you wanna look at it, they're all afraid to take that dive off and, you know... I'm, I'm, I'm 19 years old, and the problem is some people a- are cool with just being comfortable, right? You're 19, you make cash every day, and you get a paycheck, you got a 501 [k] , dental, medical, you know, check all the boxes there, and, and some people are just comfortable with that, you know? And there's other people, too, that just want, "Hey, listen, I just wanna make a good living. Uh, I want Fridays and s- uh, Saturdays and Sundays off, and I want every holiday off, and I'll..." And then there's guys that are like, "Yeah, fuck this shit. I, I, I, I can do more than this." And even now, I mean, I'm 56 years old and I'm dumping more and more and more on my plate because I believe in it and, and, and, and I know we can do it. And, uh, you know, I s- back in '17, '18, I'm on, I'm on Instagram and the, and these guys are slapping the shit out of each other o- on social media, and it's coming out of Russia and Poland. And, and things with me are by gut. Now, I'm watching this stuff and I'm like, "This is crazy." But what I noticed was I would stay till the end to see who won, and I'm the most jaded dude in the world when it comes to fighting. So I was like, "Shit, if I'm interested in this and I'm staying, and what if I did this the right way?" And the same shit we'd said about the UFC. So I called the Fertitta brothers and I said, "Hey, have you seen this slapping stuff? I'm into it," and da, and they said, "How much money you want?"
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
I said, "I need a million dollars from both of you. I need a million."
- DSDavid Senra
A million, that's it?
- 28:24 – 32:30
First Event Profitable: What He Does Differently Now
- SPSpeaker
First event.
- DSDavid Senra
It's been profitable since the first event?
- SPSpeaker
First event.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay. Explain what you did differently.
- SPSpeaker
Well, I knew everything to do. First of all, the reason the UFC became as big as it did as fast as it did, two reasons: we traveled the thing all around the United States and the world, and we built a live event that when you come to the live event, very few people get really good live event experiences. I mean, even as big as the NFL is, and the NFL is just fucking massive, right? And there's nothing better than football season, right? When football season starts, every Sunday you're on the couch and you watch. But I don't like the live experience.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
I'm not a big fan of NFL's live experience. Now, the NBA, right? Sit home and try to watch a full NBA game on TV. All you gotta watch is the last five minutes. Go to an NBA game live. It's way better live than it is on TV. The UFC is an incredible television product, and it's even better live. So you get a great experience with both.
- DSDavid Senra
Everybody complains, I've heard this so much from people online, they're like, "Dana has the best seats in the house. Why is he looking at it on a little tiny screen?" Can you explain why?
- SPSpeaker
100%. So to finish what I was just saying again, uh, nobody walks out of a live UFC event and goes, "Yeah, I don't ever wanna come to one of these again." So not only do you become a bigger fan when you see it live, then you bring in five, six, seven, eight, 10 people, you know, and, and you make them f- fans, too, meaning the people who left. Um, and then people always do say that, "Why?" You know, "He's got the best seat." I'm not sitting there to watch the fucking fights. I'm, I'm making sure that... I can't control what's happening in the octagon, but I can control what you're seeing on television, and I have a phone there that goes directly to the truck. So what I care about is the live in-house experience.
- DSDavid Senra
Tailored to what you want, you as a single individual.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You're not running this through committee. You're not like, "Oh, let's talk about should we change these graphics or anything?" It's your taste.
- SPSpeaker
There is no committee here. There is no [laughs] whatever. This is a dictatorship. [laughs] Uh, 100% a dictatorship. And I'm listening to how loud the music is, if it's loud enough, if it's not, and things that are happening in-house, and I'm watching what's happening on TV. All of that I can control. I can't control the fight and what's going on in there.
- DSDavid Senra
What happens when you see something you don't like?
- SPSpeaker
I pick up the phone. There's a phone that goes right to the truck, and I say, "What the fuck was that?"Let's never do that again. Let's do this. And I am so connected with my team. They know what I want. They know what I expect. M- but my guy Zach, who's the producer, he'll throw some shit around, try some new stuff, and I'll pick up the phone and say, "That was cool. That wasn't cool. Let's keep that. Let's never do that again."
- DSDavid Senra
And you have this in common with all of history's greatest entrepreneurs, 'cause they're always... You hear from business school, they're like, "Oh, you should build up a team." Yeah, you're gonna have to have a good team, and then you just delegate. I heard this story of you kicking through a fucking door. What was that?
- SPSpeaker
The production team.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, explain this.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Those were the guys that I told you at the beginning of the interview that I fired them all.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay, so e- explain what happened.
- SPSpeaker
So we had just bought the company, and, uh, [clears throat] Phil Baroni, who's a maniac, was fighting, um, , fuck, who was he fi- anyway, and Phil Baroni snapped in the middle of the interview. Like, started freaking out on the fucking interviewer, and I told the, the guys, I said, "I want this. I want this to be the interview when he fucking snaps." And, and they're like, "You can't do that." You know, you know. And these guys were all tradit- these guys all worked for Showtime at the time.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
And I fucking thought that Showtime was the most dog shit production ever in boxing. Um, and I used to say it publicly all the time. Well, these guys were all Showtime guys who were working on the side on the UFC. So I told them, I, "This is how I want this interview played out." So we're sitting in the arena, and Lorenzo, I said, "Watch this fucking interview." And they didn't do it. They did what they wanted to fucking
- 32:30 – 34:07
Why Dana Sits Ringside Watching a Screen
- SPSpeaker
do. I literally got up from my seat and went back there and kicked the fucking truck door open. I said, "You motherfuckers, if you ever fucking do that again, I'll fire every fucking one of you." And you know, this whole thing, which I ended up firing all of them.
- DSDavid Senra
So how long does it take you to get your... Because now you essentially have a team that thinks very similar to you, where you have to make very few changes. They understand and have adapted to your taste. How long does it, that, that process take to go from, "You guys don't know what the hell you're doing," to, "I almost have, like, a bunch of clones of myse-" MrBeast calls it, like, cloning himself, and, like, his editors, his thumbnail designers. He used to do all that stuff, and then he works with them for so long, they kind of can read his mind.
- SPSpeaker
That's my whole production team right now. Literally my whole production team. So now we'll go into, we have a, we have a screening room over here, and, and, uh, they'll set up meetings with me. We gotta go through screening stuff. Very rarely do I have to change one fucking thing. My guys are so talented and so good and so on point with everything that they do. It's just once you build, once you build this trust, confidence, whatever you wanna call it, with your team, and you have to have a bunch of sick animals that are just wired the way you are and, and, and incredibly talented, and I literally have a whole campus full of those kind of people right now, from the art department, to the production team, to PR, to, I mean, you name it. That, that's an animal over there.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Seriously. Fucking animal. Animal.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, I've heard you shout her out on a few of your podcasts too.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah. She's a fucking animal.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. How many years did it take you to do that? How many people did you have to turn over? Like, what was that process like?
- 34:07 – 45:10
Building a Team That Can Read His Mind
- SPSpeaker
Hmm. I don't know the exact answer to that, but, um, not a lot of turnover in my, in my, on my production side. These guys have been with me forever, including, you know, the rock star head of production, Craig Borsari. But, um, there's been, like, one guy that I absolutely loved that was on our production team, and he left to go, um, you know, what we talked about. Uh, you know, go make it on his own. And he actually came to me about a year ago and said, "Listen, I have this whole concept. I think this could be big," and everything else, and we helped him do it. We helped him build this thing, and he's, he's, he's doing it right now. So I've always had great relationships with, with my team and, and, uh, there hasn't been much turnover. Not in the key positions anyway.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
The positions that work directly with me, not a lot of turnover.
- DSDavid Senra
So when I listen to all your stuff, one thing I'm curious about, uh, and I wanna ask you selfishly is, like, without a doubt, you're one of the biggest fight fans in the world.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Senra
You love fighting. But I almost feel-
- SPSpeaker
I've watched over, like, 10,000 fights in the last twenty-five years, not including fights that I've watched that weren't mine.
- DSDavid Senra
That's incredible.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
I almost feel like you're starting to, or maybe you have a love... I, I almost feel like you love entrepreneurship as much, and maybe even slightly more than you love fighting.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, there's no doubt about it.
- DSDavid Senra
Really?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. If you look at what I'm doing, right, first of all, what I've done has never been done, and lots of people have tried to do it. Uh, really wealthy people, really smart entrepreneurs in, in other spaces have all tried to do this. Now, built this incredible business. Then we just went public with TKO. Now I'm gonna try to rebuild boxing, right? And we just launched a jujitsu league, and we launched SLAP. So every way that you can kick somebody's ass, [laughs] you know, uh, I am in that business. We're gonna build the biggest combat sports company to ever exist, and that will probably ever exist. That's my goal in the next ten years.
- DSDavid Senra
It's not just that you're gonna build the biggest combat organization. You already have, but it's gonna be much bigger, right? But people don't understand that, like, entrepreneurs come and, like, seek out your advice. You're on the fucking board of Meta, for God's sake.
- SPSpeaker
So right here, normally you guys rip my fucking room apart here, but-
- DSDavid Senra
Well, tell them what you see, 'cause they, this is not a normal podcast.
- SPSpeaker
So, yeah, I said this looks like fucking CBS or Fox or something.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
So when you come in, my office is connected right here. This is my bar. So this is where I have most of my meetings, and usually there's four chairs here.Every day, multiple times a day, entrepreneurs come in here and pitch me something like fucking Shark Tank. And I give lots of people advice. I connect people with other people that I think they could do business with, or I, uh, I get involved myself.
- DSDavid Senra
Why do you like talking to entrepreneurs so much?
- SPSpeaker
I love, uh, I love hearing different people's ideas. Um, I love young people that are willing to take a shot and, and aren't afraid to do it. And, and literally, I mean, I, I, I should have my assistant figure out how many of these I do a year, but it's multiple times a day every fucking day, and even on Saturdays and Sundays. So I sit in this room and, and listen to people's pitches all the time about the businesses that, that, that they wanna build and, and, uh, and their ideas. And usually you have these guys that will connect people to people, and they want to be paid or a piece. I've connected more fucking people, you know, uh, that have done things together and been successful, not looking for anything other than I hope they all win.
- DSDavid Senra
Deel is how the best founders turn the world into their talent pool. I've been studying how history's greatest founders operate for a decade, and one thing they all have in common is they understand that recruiting and hiring the very best talent is your most important priority. A players recognize other A players, which is why top companies like Ramp, Shopify, 11 Labs, Uber, and DoorDash all use Deel. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deel after using their product, and what they discovered is that Deel is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deel will help your business hire, pay, and manage any worker anywhere in the world so you can retain the best talent anywhere and spend the rest of your time focusing on what you do best, delivering value to your customers. The founder of 11 Labs has a great description of the value Deel can give your company. He said, "We built 11 Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deel enabling us to hire and support exceptional talent anywhere, we can accelerate our innovation and bring more voices, stories, and ideas to every corner of the world." Deel is trusted by over forty thousand companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deel.com/senra. That is deel.com/senra. I'm curious the difference in quality of entrepreneur and when you started, because I've heard you say, like, uh, on a few other podcasts that y- like some of these people are just so soft. Like some of these younger entrepreneurs don't understand how hard and difficult... You, you literally had to dr- Like the UFC would have died if it wasn't for you. Like, can you say a little bit about the difference in like the, the mentality that you, you see?
- SPSpeaker
The greatest line of all time is, "You know, I wanna start my own thing 'cause I wanna set my own hours, and I wanna, you know, take days off, and I wanna..." Oh, Jesus Christ. Y- you should just stay where you're at and keep working for somebody else 'cause that is not how it works. You know, I've been doing this shit forever. I could've retired, you know, ten years ago. Every day when you get up and you're an entrepreneur, you, you go to war literally every day. Somebody's trying to fuck you. Somebody's trying to take what you have. Um, you know, somebody's trying to tear down your business literally every day. Then you have the problems that pop up, you know, uh, especially, and I know this sounds insensitive, but it's, but it is what it is. When your product is human beings, and you have almost a thousand of them, not even including your employees, they have personal problems. They have injuries. They have things going on. There's always something wrong and always something that needs to be fixed every minute of every day.
- DSDavid Senra
Especially your employ- [chuckles] your, your, the people you have, they're fighters.
- SPSpeaker
That's what I'm saying.
- DSDavid Senra
They choose to get into essentially their underwear in front of millions of people and fight, you know, beat the shit out of each other. You think you can control them? It's impossible.
- SPSpeaker
They are the most unique human beings on planet Earth. They, they, they, they are not like all of us. They are wired differently, which is what makes them special.
- DSDavid Senra
You have this r- unique, um, combination of almost like, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, like micromanager, but also, like, give a lot of freedom to the people.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- DSDavid Senra
So, like, you don't even try to... There's two, there's two things that come to mind, right? Where it's like, you know, "Oh, John Jones is in the club in, in Vegas. What are you gonna do?" And you're like, "He's a fighter. Like there's nothing I can do about it." But also, what, what, what I thought you were really smart on, and ties to what we were talking about earlier, is like you always adopt new technology early. You understood the power of like these TikTokers, these YouTubers, some podcasters, and you essentially just... I've heard from them, "Dana just gives us access to events and no gu-" Like, you know how to build an audience. You know how to make content. What the hell am I gonna tell you? You just say, "Come to the events as much as you want and then make whatever you want."
- 45:10 – 51:55
"Who the Fuck Are You and What Have You Done?"
- SPSpeaker
covering it. It's fascinating to me that anybody listens to any of these people.
- DSDavid Senra
I heard you say one time that you always laugh when people start talking about, like, the business of UFC-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- DSDavid Senra
... 'cause they don't know anything about it.
- SPSpeaker
Mm-hmm.
- DSDavid Senra
Can you say more about that?
- SPSpeaker
First of all, everything that we've done over the last 25 years has never been done before, and we continue to do things that have never been done before. There's a vision for this business, and literally none of them know it. They have no idea. They can look at, oh, this company and these guys did this, and somebody did this in the past. We're doing none of that shit. We're doing the exact opposite. So for you to criticize, I guess everybody can criticize and say, "Oh, this won't work." What have we done in the last 25 years that hasn't worked? Now, fucking Lorenzo's done. He's out. He doesn't wanna do this anymore, so he puts the business up for sale.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
We sell for $4.025-
- DSDavid Senra
This is 2016.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Okay.
- SPSpeaker
We sell for $4.025 billion, right? No TV deal. We're, we're coming up to the end of our Fox deal. We have no TV deal. Nothing. Every-fucking-body out there: "They overpaid. The UFC has peaked. The UFC is this, the UFC is that." All the same fucking guys that are talking shit right now, that's what they said, okay? Spike, $35 million deal. Fox, $100 million deal. ESPN, $3 billion deal. And now here we are, 7.7 for seven years. Everybody. They, they, they, "Fucked Paramount. They... Paramount overpaid." Just all the same fucking shit from the same fucking losers. It's just, it's crazy. It's just like you have to block all this noise out. These people are fucking zeros. Everybody that talks about this business and, and, and, and, and has an opinion on it are zeros. They've never done anything in their fucking life except talk. And it's always the same shit, 'cause these are all people that have no vision, no clue, no whatever. You, you know, they were all talking this shit in, in, in 2016, and look where we are 10 years later. Wait and see where we are in 10 more fucking years.
- DSDavid Senra
Dude, I, I was gonna say, the numbers are only gonna keep going up. Look at the streaming. It's just, like, streaming services are just gonna all be sports. [laughs] The subscriber count has scaled so high, the demand is going to be insatiable for things, like, essentially that you make.
- SPSpeaker
I was surprised that it took Netflix so long to get into sports. I was saying it way before they did. The thing is, is that streaming's great. Right now I'm like... I, I don't watch a lot of TV.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. Well, you seem to be a little busy.
- SPSpeaker
Almost none.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Right? Something's really gotta get me to... And I was saying this before the Paramount deal.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Way before. So much so that people are like, "Paramount did the deal with him just 'cause of how much he talks about Landman and Mob Land."
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Landman is one of the greatest television shows-
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah. I love that show
- SPSpeaker
... that I've ever watched, ever. And Mob Land, uh, you know, classic Guy Ritchie. Unbelievable.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm-hmm.
- SPSpeaker
So when you think about those two shows, I can go watch the whole season tonight or I can watch it three years from now. It's always gonna be there. Sports, live sports is a destination. You have to watch it-
- DSDavid Senra
Now.
- SPSpeaker
Yep, exactly.
- DSDavid Senra
Now.
- 51:55 – 57:32
Selling the UFC for $4+ Billion
- SPSpeaker
out in front of MGM, and all these Brazilians and all. Do they think that we really had all those fucking people out there [laughs] and that, that we really did that?
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
No, that, that isn't the way it worked, and that was way before AI. Whatever the new technology is, we're on it.
- DSDavid Senra
I wanna go back to the fact that you love entrepreneurship as much as fighting, or maybe even more. One thing, the reason that we started the show, people are a little confused what we're doing, is just like this is a love letter to capitalism. I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant. My dad was literally born in Cuba. His, his, my grandfather fled Castro. That one decision changed the trajectory of my entire life, just him deciding not to stay in this fucked up place and come to America, and then me being born, you know, 30 years later or whatever the case was. I've heard you a few times, and I think you called them dummies, about these young kids that seem to be attracted to, you know, hating billionaires or being anti-capitalistic. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Um, it, it's funny because if you look at the situation that California's in right now, right? And all these billionaires are trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there. Billionaires are very important [laughs] to the ecosystem of the United States, you know what I mean? [laughs] The amount of money these guys pay in taxes, how do you think everything stays afloat? How do you think the state, uh, comes up with the money to fix the roads and build the highways and, you know, uh, infrastructure? In every city in America comes from billionaires, millionaires, the middle class, and people who work their asses off and pay their taxes. That's where all the money comes from. I was just doing an interview, I won't, I won't say who, but two days ago, and they were walking around looking at my office and looking at the gym, and the woman was like, "You know, there's hard times right now. Some people are going through it, and don't you think if they're gonna see this and be like..." Uh, well, if they're gonna see this and be like, you know, "Oh, f- this is terrible that this guy ha-ha..." You're, you're not it. And you're never gonna be it. You, you, you got the victim mentality, and you're never gonna be that person. What you should look at what I have and say, "That guy barely graduated high school, right? And, uh, believed in something, did all the right things. If that guy can do it, I can do it." That's how you should think. And, and I know that there are many different types of people out there. Like I said, there's the nine-to-five guy that, you know, he wants... And, and there's nothing wrong with it. You wanna work nine to five, you want Saturday, Sunday off and every holiday, 'cause that's the life you wanna live, good for you. And then you have the guy who's gonna come in and, uh, grind in the business and, and, and, and run a department and, you know, do very well for himself and, uh, is a part of building something like this. And then you got the guy that's like, "Yeah, I'm not working for anybody. I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it happen for myself." And, you know, if you look at somebody, I've looked at many people, and never ever have I looked at somebody who's had incredible wealth, built unbelievable businesses and said, "Yeah, fuck that guy." I've always said, "Wow." You know? And you can learn lots of different things from lots of different people in different industries and, and, and, uh, what they built and how they built it and, you know, um, and you can look at other guys and say, "I don't ever wanna make that mistake. I don't think that's right."
- DSDavid Senra
Give me some examples of people that you thought of as cautionary tales.
- SPSpeaker
That don't value their employees. People that don't value their employees. I've seen a lot of that.
- DSDavid Senra
I, I don't, I don't think people understand what you were willing to do during COVID, how wrong you thought it was that everybody was laying everybody off.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
You offered to give up all of your compensation.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- DSDavid Senra
Why?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, so my thing was this, you know, I was in a situation where I wasn't gonna lose any of my money during COVID. You had these people who come in here every fucking day and grind with me, and there were a lot of people that were gonna get laid off, and a lot of people whose salaries were gonna be cut, bonuses, and all these other things. And I said, "Yeah, fuck that shit. We're going through COVID." The, I, I'm not a brick-and-mortar business, right? All I gotta do is find a place where I can go put on a fight and beam, beam it to, uh, ESPN. That's all I had to do. And, uh, [sighs] you know, my, my team was all ready to fucking storm the beach with me, man. No- nobody was saying, "No, we're not gonna work during COVID. Too dangerous, and we're sc- we're, we're scared." I'm not saying people weren't scared. Everybody was willing to go. Men, women, everybody.
- DSDavid Senra
Brian Halligan founded HubSpot 20 years ago, and he has this line about AI that I keep thinking about. He said, "Most companies are using AI to make their teams more productive, but the companies that will thrive make the company itself the intelligence." And that is exactly what HubSpot does. HubSpot gives you AI that works, AI that actually knows your customers and your business. Your AI needs to know what you know, your actual customer conversations, your sales history, what worked last quarter and what didn't. HubSpot connects AI to your real customer data, so when it writes an email, it knows this customer asked about pricing three weeks ago, it knows what campaign brought them in, and it knows that they already contacted support twice this month, and that's when you start seeing actual results. Visit hubspot.com to learn more. That's hubspot.com. I remember when the, um, the NBA canceled their season. That was probably an oh shit moment for you. How long from that moment until you get... You did the thing with Abu Dhabi. How long did it take you to find a place to, in the world to
- 57:32 – 1:03:30
Not Cutting a Single Employee During COVID
- DSDavid Senra
go?
- SPSpeaker
Couple weeks. So I'm fucking going. We're going no matter what. Now, I have the, um, Khabib versus Tony Ferguson fight.
- DSDavid Senra
Which time, though? [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
It's fucking crazy you know that.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
That's crazy you know that. The last time. It's at Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Arena, and I'm telling these guys, "Don't fucking pull this on me. Don't pull this fucking fight. We're gonna go. I don't care if there's no fans, whatever." Brooklyn calls and says, "Yeah, we're not gonna do it." I said, "I'll never, ever fucking come to your arena again, just so you know that." You know, 'cause we were doing MSG and Brooklyn. I said, "I will never hold another fucking fight in your arena ever again. Cool? Cool." They fucking pull it. So, um, I got my fucking lawyer calling every place in America 'cause once it all started to shut down, it was all going quick, so quick that I would be here in the office, we'd get something done. I live 20 minutes from here. By the time I got home, my lawyer would call me and go, "They just fucking bailed." I'm like, "What?" Anyway, so th- this is my, my thought process during this time. I don't know how fucking long this COVID shit's gonna go on and how long the country's gonna be shut down, but here's what I do know. At ESPN, which is a sports network, the bean counters are eventually gonna sit down, and they're gonna go, "Okay, let's see what we got here. We got the NFL, we got Major League Baseball, we got the NBA, we got the NHL, we got the UFC, and we got the guys who throw the fucking beanbags into the fucking holes, okay? Who we cutting first?"
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
Fucking UFC is gonna be the first fucking money that's gonna get cut. So I'm gonna figure out how to go through COVID. All my employees are gonna stay intact and all this shit. Iger says, "I'll pay you every fucking dime, no matter how much COVID lasts, whether you do no events or you put on all 44."
- DSDavid Senra
Oh, wow.
- SPSpeaker
That we were getting paid no matter what. So I coulda just said, "Fuck it. Let's all stay home and see how long COVID fucking lasts," but nah, we fucking... We went out, and we pulled killer fucking numbers for ESPN 'cause we were the only thing-
- DSDavid Senra
Your only game in town
- SPSpeaker
... and our business grew. It just fucking blew up and went through the roof.
- DSDavid Senra
How fast do you do a deal with Abu Dhabi? 'Cause people don't understand Sheikh Tahnoon is also... Like, these guys are obsessed with jujitsu. He's a black belt in jujitsu.
- SPSpeaker
Right, and they've been incredible partners to us since, since the day we met them. So yeah, we end up talking to them. We go to Yas Island, and we built the only real bubble that existed during COVID. Like, the people who moved into Yas Island from, um, UAE lived there for months and never went home and saw their families, so they were all clean. We made sure that all of our athletes and everybody that went over to work was, they were tested multiple times. We chartered o- our own planes. We flew over there. It was the only true bubble that existed in sports at that time. All the other ones were bullshit.
- DSDavid Senra
And i- and dealing with them, they can call the shots. I heard, uh, y- you on a podcast, and you were saying, like, you were trying to do some deals with these people and they're like, they, you had a meeting and then they called you, like, a day later and they mention, like, "Hey, we spoke to our board." And you're like, "Nope, we're not doing a deal. Like, I'm not... It doesn't matter. If you have to go and ask permission to somebody else, like, we are fundamentally incompatible."
- SPSpeaker
Very fucking true. So, um, [sighs] sponsors during this time, you know?We had great relationships w- with all of our sponsors, but like any relationship in life, you don't know who's who until the shit hits the fan. Friends, girlfriends, husbands, work, all these people, you know, when things are good, everything's good, but who's around and who's really real and there and, you know, a real partner, you don't know that until shit gets really bad. And, uh, we had this partner that was a good partner all through good times, and then as soon as fucking any... The whole, not only COVID, but that whole crazy woke era that happened when people were getting canceled and all that other shit, we had a company that literally was calling here every fucking five minutes, man. And, uh, it started with, I posted a, a video supporting Trump on my social media, and they called and they said, "You need to take that down." And I said, "Are you out of your fucking mind? Who the fuck are you to call me and tell me who to vote for? It's not coming down, and don't ever fucking call me and tell me who to vote for again." Then they called again. Then they called again. Then they called again. And then basically when our deal was up, one of the guys who worked there, who was sort of my, my day-to-day that I would talk to, and I like him still today, now our deal's up and we're shopping, and he calls me and says, "Hey, I'm in town. Can I come by and see you?" I'm like, "Yeah." So he comes in my office and he says, uh, "Hey, man, I got to let you know, my board of directors is losing their patience with you." And I go, "You guys got some fucking balls, man. I'll give you that. Have a seat." We fucking sit down in my office, and I went through the whole thing. And, uh, he
- 1:03:30 – 1:07:45
Firing a Sponsor Who Told Him How to Vote
- SPSpeaker
says, "Dana, this is, uh," you know, says the number of the deal. And I said, "No, I understand, and here's what you can do. Get on back on your plane, take that number, roll it up into a tiny little ball, and shove it up your board's ass." And then coming out of COVID and that whole woke era, I was like, "I'm only gonna be in b- in business with people that I'm aligned with." So I didn't end up doing another deal with them.
- DSDavid Senra
One of the keys to, I think, your longevity, and this is some of the best advice I've heard you give other entrepreneurs, is the fact, like the first thing you have to do before anything else, like you have to know yourself, right?
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- DSDavid Senra
Figure out who the hell you are. You clearly know who you are. The second thing is then you got to know what you actually want to do. And if you know who you are and what you want to do, then you just wake up and you just get after that goal every single day. The perfect example, uh, illustration of this is where I think, I, I don't doubt anything you said, uh, when I heard somebody ask you, "Hey," let's say Lorenzo doesn't call you back after that and says you are, you are done. You have to sell the company for seven or eight million. And your response was like, "I'd get up the next day and figure it out, but I was gonna going to be in this business. I'm not... There's no fucking plan B. I'm going to do this." And I think that, knowing who you are, what you want to do, and you just do it every day, like that's the key to being, like to having the longevity that, that you've had.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I've never thought about, um, if something doesn't work out, like, "Oh, no, I'm gonna..." I don't even think like that. Never even crosses my mind that something's not gonna work. I just keep going until it does work.
- DSDavid Senra
This is what all, all, all entrepreneurs think. There was this viral moment between another podcaster and Jensen Huang of, uh, of NVIDIA, and he was asked like a, a question, and he's like, "That's a loser premise. Like, I don't think like that," assuming like, "I'm gonna lose this market or not, or not be able to beat these competitors." Like of course he thinks like that. He's running a four... He founded a $4 trillion company that he's been running for thirty-three years. You think he wakes up thinking he's gonna lose?
- SPSpeaker
No, true. There's this Bruce Lee quote where he talks about, um, never say negative things about yourself or what you're working on or what you're doing, even if you're joking, 'cause your body doesn't know the difference. It's like this whole thing about, um... And I saw Rogan talking about this thing when he was talking to some psychologist about, um, if you just sit around and talk about your fucking problems all the time, you know-
- DSDavid Senra
I saw that clip too
- SPSpeaker
... you never, you know-
- DSDavid Senra
It actually makes it worse.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Which makes sense.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's like, um, I never take in any negativity. I literally block, I call it noise, and I block all that noise out. Like, like we're talking about like these guys who report on what we're doing that have no clue what we're doing. Why would I wanna hear any of the, anything they would have to say? They're zeroes. They've literally never done anything-
- DSDavid Senra
Right
- SPSpeaker
... in their life, especially in this business. Why would I listen to anything that they have to say?
- DSDavid Senra
But you, you said something earlier to, like it's really important. This is all intuition. This is your gut. This is your instinct. This is like you're the born entrepreneur. I just did this, uh, episode on my other podcast where I read Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote two autobiographies. Wrote one when he was seventy-six. That's interesting. The more interesting one is the one he published in 1977 when he was thirty years old, okay? It's called Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder. But what recently popped in my mind, he literally talked about that. There was thirty bodybuilders in the entire country when he started to be, become a bodybuilder in Austria. His parents think he's a fucking weirdo. His friends think he's a weirdo.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- DSDavid Senra
He says, "Once you said something negative, he'd cut you out." He would cut his parents out of his life. That was the neg... He's like, "I don't want to hear any fucking negativity."
- SPSpeaker
That's crazy.
- DSDavid Senra
Then what he'd do, he literally would write letters, right, say, "Arnold," like, uh, "you're gonna be the best bodybuilder in the world." You're... Like he, positive affirmations, and he'd hang them up everywhere, and he'd brainwash himself into this positive thinking that you were just talking about.
- SPSpeaker
I cut negative, negative people out of my life so fucking fast, and it don't matter who you are.
- DSDavid Senra
Listen, after this, you got to get connected to Todd Graves and just spend... First of all, he should be sponsoring the UFC. He's got plenty of money to spend, so he could be a big partner for you. He's spending money everywhere. But-He started that company, he was 23. He used to live in a shitty apartment, right, behind the Raising Cane's. He'd work all day, then go home, try to rest for a little bit, look out the window.
- 1:07:45 – 1:09:00
There Is No Plan B
- DSDavid Senra
When the drive-thru got backed up, he'd run b- back out. This is some shit you would do. But then he... When he's rich now, he buys the fucking apartment building, and then he redoes his apartment just the s- exactly the way it was when he was 23 years old, but the entire fucking wall, he had printed out positive affirmations. And he says stuff like, "A man of passion rides a mad horse." That fucking sounds like you. "Nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically." He was literally brainwashing himself as an early 20s that this will work. This has to work. There is no plan B.
- SPSpeaker
So I'll walk... I'll sort of walk you through what you're saying. I mean, Lenay, right? I mean, my office, the ba- the gym, the... It's all the same shit that you just said as we go this way in the building. It's exactly what I do, too. I literally have all this shit on the walls every day that speaks to me and-
- DSDavid Senra
Dude, thank you very much for doing this. If you don't mind, I might harass you every, like, six to 12 months if you wanna run this back, and really just talk about entrepreneurship, talk about building the business.
- SPSpeaker
Love it.
- DSDavid Senra
Like, you have so much genius sh- I've been following you for a decade. 2016 is when I found the UFC because of Rogan's podcast. He wouldn't shut up about it.
- SPSpeaker
Let me just tell you a quick Rogan story, and I've told some of this before, but think about this. So we buy the company. The company's based in New York. I gotta fly to New York, go in the offices, and
- 1:09:00 – 1:12:37
Joe Rogan: Doing the First 12 Fights for Free
- SPSpeaker
go through, me, alone, go through every fucking document, videotape, and everything in there to figure out what's coming to Vegas and what I'm gonna throw away. So they lit- the whole walls are fucking covered with tapes. I have a VHS, and I'm literally popping tape after tape after tape after tape. And then, uh, Ivory Kean and Wayans had, had a talk show, and he's got Joe Rogan on. And Joe Rogan starts talking about UFC and fighting. And at the time, he's doing Fear Factor, which is a massive show on television. And it just fucking clicked with me. I go, "This is the fucking guy I need right here. I need him to do commentary. He's educated on martial arts. He's not afraid to talk about, uh, controversial shit. This is my guy." So I reach out to Rogan, and we hit it off immediately. And, um, you know, in Rogan's rise, you know, he's gone through some shit personally, too. You know, where I've had people call and say, "Hey," you know, whether it's sponsors or whoever, you know, "You gotta do this to Rogan." And I'm like, [laughs] like the, "Look, don't ever fucking call me. Who the fuck are you to call me and tell me who I'm gonna fire or, or, or do whatever to?" Um, first of all, Joe Rogan did the first 12 fights for us for free.
- DSDavid Senra
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
Right? Then when you talk about technology, at the time, I flew all over the country, and I met with every sports editor at every newspaper, because when we bought this company, newspaper was the king. And these guys were all 60, 65 years old, ball and stick sports, and every once in a while, boxing will get a space in the paper. There wasn't enough room, and these guys didn't get it and never got it. And I'm like, "Well, in the next five or six years, these guys will all be gone, and there'll be younger guys that come in who will get it more." But what we had to do is radio was still very relevant. So, you know, you drop into these markets from the East Coast all the way through the Midwest into the West Coast during drive time, and then do the same thing going home. So what we learned really early is that fighters are bad radio, okay? They don't show up on time.
- DSDavid Senra
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
They sound like they're still fucking sleeping. The list goes on and on. The only two that were really good at doing radio were me and Joe Rogan, right? The problem with me is nobody knew who the fuck I was. So what we would do is we would switch. I'd do UFC 30. Rogan would do UFC 31. I'd do UFC 32. Rogan would do 33. And you'd have to get up at 3:00 in the morning. We both lived on the West Coast. We'd have to get up at 3:00 in the morning. They'd drop us into the markets on the East Coast from 6:00 to whatever, and we would literally go all around the country doing the same interviews over and over and over. And Rogan and I did this for years. To actually explain to people how much Rogan has dedicated... I mean, you said you heard about it on his podcast. Ha- has, has been a key instrumental part of this company and for anybody. I don't give a fuck how much money you, you, you have, uh, sponsored or whatever. Yeah, no. Nothing's happening to Joe Rogan.
- 1:12:37 – 1:13:06
Loyalty Is the Most Important Thing
- DSDavid Senra
Loyalty.
- SPSpeaker
Yes, which is the most important-
- DSDavid Senra
Dana, thanks for doing this
- SPSpeaker
... thing in the world to me.
- DSDavid Senra
That was awesome, man. Appreciate that.
- SPSpeaker
No, pleasure. Thank you.
- DSDavid Senra
Yeah, man. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders. [electronic music]
Episode duration: 1:13:07
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