Channeling Rage, Rolling Calls & Building an Entertainment Empire | Ari Emanuel, WME & TKO

Ari Emanuel is the co-founder of Endeavor, executive chair and CEO of TKO, executive chairman of WME Group, and founder of MARI. We talk about his $4.2 billion bet on the UFC, the ESPN deal that proved it right, lessons from Egon Durban and David Geffen, and how constantly making calls creates opportunities you can’t plan for. Ari also opens up about dyslexia, decades of insecurity, and learning to enjoy his life without losing the drive that built his businesses. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/ari-emanuel Made possible by Ramp: https://ramp.com AppLovin: https://applovin.com/senra Deel: https://deel.com/senra Chapters (00:00:00) The UFC negotiation that blew up (00:03:33) Meeting Egon Durban and buying IMG (00:07:30) Betting $4.2 billion on the UFC (00:15:16) Getting the ESPN deal done (00:22:58) Taking over William Morris (00:30:02) Starting Endeavor with a table and a phone (00:32:53) Why you won’t remember the extra $400 million (00:35:01) Stop telling yourself stories (00:39:21) David Geffen: Get in traffic and get hit (00:45:19) Why Ari rolls the calls (00:49:35) Building your own school of entrepreneurship (00:51:56) Learning from Elon Musk and betting on live events (00:53:58) Learning from Hollywood’s greatest agents (01:00:23) Outgrowing rage without losing ambition (01:10:10) Psychedelics, purpose, and letting go of legacy (01:18:18) How Entourage changed Ari’s life (01:22:32) Ari never had a plan B Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02David Senra?

  This is like a caged tiger.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  No, I thought it was like-

• 0:04David Senra?

  You were like, "We're having a conversation."

• 0:06Speaker 01

  We're either having a conversation, because I'd rather just have a conversation than like-

• 0:09David Senra?

  Okay, all right, go, tell the story.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  So Dana told you the story about Philippe Dumont, or Phil.

• 0:15David Senra?

  Let me back this up. We were just talking. The funniest story anybody's told on the podcast so far is Dana White, and he goes, "Let me tell you about this guy named Philippe Dumont." And he goes, "His name is Phil Dumont, he's from fucking Jersey." And then you're like, "That was a funny meeting."

• 0:28Speaker 01

  So the UFC has taken off on Spike, right? Our term is up. This is when we had the reality show, and we had some Fight Nights. And so, we call a meeting. I'm now representing them. It's Dana, Lorenzo Fatida, myself, the head of Spike at the time, and Phil, and I think one other person, his other co-CEO, whatever. And we're pitching that you gotta consider it a sport, it's not a reality show, etc. He goes, "I knew this was bad." He goes, "We made you. If you leave, you know, we'll get somebody else and we'll replace you."

• 1:13Speaker 01

  And Dana, you know, and Lorenzo, I just saw, like, knowing them at that point for about three years, they were just like, ready to explode. And it was really getting heated. And you don't insult somebody from what they created, as if you can just recreate Dana White. Impossible. And what Lorenzo put into it, their heart and soul that they put into it. So the meeting ends, and I call him like, "What are you doing?" Like, this is an easy ask we asked for. It was like, we're doubling it, it is a sport, it was like their highest rated thing. I represented WWE, we had moved it back to USA coming off of that. That's when the lawsuit happened with Barry Diller, when we moved it off USA.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  He didn't get mad, but he was boiling. And I know Dana, what he boils. It's like, "Oh, you wanna get competitive with me on a sport that I know and what we've done? You think somebody can replace me?" And that's what the offensive thing was. This guy had no idea what he was doing. He couldn't start anything. He destroyed that company. Destroyed it. He let everything go that was of value, and just bought bad stock and bought it back from, I think, $80, all the way down. He made a lot of money. So, yeah, we just moved, made the deal at Fox. Incredible deal at the time. The funny thing is, after we made the Fox deal, and that deal was coming up, and then the world, which is in the book, the world blew up. We thought Fox had to make the deal, just because they own these things, the RS and

• 2:43Speaker 01

  the local station group, and how much play the UFC had on it, and what it was doing for the network, they were gonna have to make it. Look, you know, Rupert then sells that business to Disney. There's no need economically. They're on pause until that deal goes through. President Trump slows down the AT&T deal, so that went away. Comcast didn't want it, they had all the sports they wanted.

• 3:09David Senra?

  You're talking about, now, this is after you bought UFC-

• 3:11Speaker 01

  This is like, four years after we moved the UFC.

• 3:14David Senra?

  Let's give some background. You signed Dana, but then, later on, you and Egon Durbin buy the UFC for $4.2 billion.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  The cheapest.

• 3:22David Senra?

  And everybody's telling you, it's like, "Oh, these guys, they're fucking idiots, they don't know what they're doing, they're overpaid." And then, in the book, you talk about the story of trying to sell the rights after the Fox thing.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  We buy IMG.

• 3:33David Senra?

  For $2.4 billion.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  $2.4 billion. And the thing about my life is, I love puzzles. And my phone is a way to kinda put the pieces in place. I'm gonna go way back, if you don't mind.

• 3:46David Senra?

  Let's go.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  So, I start this company, Rain, with Joe Ravitch and Jeff Sine, this merchant bank. I'm raising money for them, I fly to Abu Dhabi, I get $100 million out of my friends in UAE. I read this article from Marc Andreessen, this is gonna be way back. He comes to see me, we're just, you know, it's just creating serendipity, what you do in your life, and people that are successful, I think they do, they just have relationships, and they figure out how they fit into your life in a good way. I ask him, in that first meeting, I meet him, one, what he does, but two, I'd like him to put money into Rain. We're raising a fund in the merchant bank. He says, "I'll do it, I'll do it with this guy, Egon Durbin, and Nikesh, who was working at the time at Google." And Google, they're at-

• 4:31David Senra?

  He's now at Palo Alto. We're recording with Nikesh next month.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  He's fantastic.

• 4:35David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  And through that, I meet Egon Durbin. He buys a company that he sells to Microsoft for Skype, for, he buys it, I don't know, from whatever, and that was one of his first big deals, incredible. But in that conversation, he realized the value of content in a distribution platform. We were talking about creating animation, and he was really creative. Cut to lunches and dinners, Teddy Forceman, who at the time had bought IMG, he had Forceman Little, buys IMG, he had gotten sick and was dying, and passed away of a brain tumor horrible. Egon flies down, and says, "Can I have lunch with you?" And we had now a great relationship, because of the introduction that I made. And he goes, "I wanna buy a piece of you, and I wanna go after IMG."

• 5:21Speaker 01

  I was trying to raise money around him. Like, Batista flew down to Brazil, Martin Sorrell at WPP, I was trying to put the pieces together to raise the money, I thought it was gonna be about $2 billion. He says, "I wanna do this, and I wanna go after them." I said, "D R P for him." "No chance you're gonna be able to figure this out." He goes, "Give me your numbers, give me three weeks, I'll come back." And we now have William Morris, that's a whole nother story. So Patrick and I meet with him. He brings his team down, we explain our economics, TV packaging, everything we do. Three weeks later, he comes down, makes me an offer that we could've signed as his. We do the deal, after a little, I could not negotiate. It's in my nature.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  And we then go after IMG. So, we then got a global footprint, US, we got movies, television, music, theater, books, exactly what we wanted, and then we added events, sports, production, licensing. It was one-on-one. Egon's vision, incredible. And we had the idea too, we just were trying to figure out money, and the perfect partner. Long-term, cares about what you're doing, when he gets involved in the company, learns everything about the company, brings incredible ideas to it, he's an incredible investor, an incredible partner.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Once we had that, we came to him, with this guy Brent Richards, Marc Shapiro, myself, and we said, "This is the representation business. In addition to that, because we have all the pieces that you need, we negotiate with all the networks globally for sports rights and for movie and television rights, we should put a piece of ownership on top. Something we own in sports, because here's where the world's going, with Netflix, etc."

• 7:11David Senra?

  Where did you think the world was going?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Well, I knew they had a Nest Lab business, right? Where you buy a subscription to Netflix, Hulu had started, they're eventually gonna go to AVOT, which is advertising base, and one of the things that keeps people engaged was sports, so we needed to own, we needed to be in the sports space.

• 7:29David Senra?

  Okay.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  I don't know if it was a year or two later, they had danced with it, Frank and Lorenzo, about selling the business, about two years later, they came back and sold it. We're opening it up again. We heard about it, and so, we started getting into it.

• 7:44David Senra?

  This is where you call Lorenzo in the book, and you're like, "Just don't, just at least let me get a shot before he tells anybody." But you said he would not commit, he would not say-

• 7:51Speaker 01

  No, he would not. And listen, Lorenzo and Frank Fatida are incredible negotiators. Coolest customers of all time, tough.

• 8:00David Senra?

  But what you said to them, before you get there, "I love your line." You're like, "Okay," before you let him get off the phone, just like, "Close your eyes, and when your eyes are closed, just tell me what, this incredible number."

• 8:09Speaker 01

  What would make you happy?

• 8:10David Senra?

  What's the number that you see when your eyes are closed? And he's like, "It's a big fucking number, Ari, and it starts with a four."

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. Which is, I just needed the framing, right?

• 8:19David Senra?

  Were you shocked when he said it starts with a four?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  No, because I had been involved with the company for 20 years, I knew where the network business is, I knew how much Fox needed it, I didn't know what was gonna happen. And in my mind, I just did math about what the license fee would go to, I asked Egon if it gets to this, and we start doing our, you know, running our numbers, what we needed to get to. So, we're in that negotiation, and our biggest competitor was the Chinese, actually. I actually thought it was gonna be Warner Brothers and Jeff Bukas, and I think a lot of people at TNT wanted it. And Egon said, "No, it's Fox, because it's already on Fox, an easy transaction." I didn't think Fox, but I did think TNT was gonna possibly do it.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  But Jeff was, Bukas was downsizing to sell the business, so he didn't wanna do that right now. So, we got into it, and I think Dana, at one point, turns to them and says, "Please..." He had an unbelievable relationship with me for 20 years. "I wanna be with a guy that knows the business, that loves the business," and he knew I did. So we got it for a little cheaper than they did, but it was $4.2 billion at that point. But, pull back. The hardest thing for Egon, myself, at that point, and this is where I learned, I mean, he taught me everything here. We had Brexit happened, all the banking system fell apart. And the great thing about Egon is, he stayed, he stayed as steady as it could be, because

• 9:48Speaker 01

  he believed in where distribution was going, the value of sports. And we pieced it all together with Michael Dell doing the prefer, I mean, and I learned so much, and he took my hand and walked me through everything here. It was incredible. It was just brutal, right? Cut to, this is where I got sick, actually physically sick, because it was so much stress. We had put clients into it, we put all the chips in the middle of the table, $4.2 billion. People were saying it was the most expensive deal in the history of sports, we're crazy for doing this deal. Egon separately put money in KKR. Henry and George were incredible, from the founders of KKR, of backing Egon and me in this situation.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  The world blows up.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Rupert sells to Disney, AT&T again, and I thought I had a deal on the backside if they weren't going to pay what we want them to pay at Fox, that AT&T was going to make

• 10:46David Senra?

  Now, we're talking about television rights.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Television rights.

• 10:48David Senra?

  After the deal closes.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  After the deal closes. And there's no place to go. There's no place to sell to because Netflix wasn't in sports. Nobody else had really gotten to the level. We almost had a deal with Jeff Bezos and Jeff Blackburn.

• 11:03David Senra?

  And Amazon. That was like 260 million or something like that, and then they pulled it.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Well, we had negotiated for four months, and they said, oh, it's got to go to this committee, no big deal. I said, rubber stamp. This was on a Saturday. We had our fight in Boston. And by Monday, it comes in at like 1:40. I'm like, I'm going crazy.

• 11:25David Senra?

  Didn't you go to Jeff?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  No, Jeff was at one of our parties. Lawrence Hatcher's his wife now says, come meet Jeff. I said, he took money out of your pocket, man. You're not feeding your kids. Here's what happened. You know, it's a huge bet. He didn't know anything about it. Jeff Blackburn, this is my conclusion, I think I'm completely right. Like, they just made a bad estimate. The people beneath him were above the key. And even though he realized, Jeff Bezos, that, yes, all the facts we had told him were true, he wasn't going to override his team. And I understood that as a leader.

• 12:03David Senra?

  So what were they trying to do? They were just trying to save 120 million?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Well, they just didn't think we had the economy. They started doing math on our fight nights and our pay-per-views. I don't know what happened. We have nothing. We're pitching ESPN, Kevin Mayer's there, and John Skipper. And we're pitching. Fox has now official know, Mark Shapiro tells me, you're lying to yourself. You're not listening to him. They have passed, and I am pitching my heart out. So we pitched Disney. John Skipper was just shining us on because we had so many clients booked as broadcasters and rights we sold them from IMG, but he didn't like the UFC.

• 12:42David Senra?

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• 13:25David Senra?

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• 14:09David Senra?

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• 14:52David Senra?

  It's still crazy that people call like, they think it's like, you just said they didn't like it. They used to call it back when Dana and the Fertitta Brothers bought it, they called it human cockfighting.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Cockfighting.

• 15:02David Senra?

  But even to this day.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  That was John McCain.

• 15:04David Senra?

  Yeah, but that was like 16 years before we were in the story or so. And even this, ESPN's like, no, this is like a dirty business.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, John Skipper thought it was like, eh, you know. And he's shining us on. He gets in trouble. Let's not go into his trouble.

• 15:16David Senra?

  It's in the book.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  It's in the book. He gets in trouble. He's out. Kevin Mayer is in place. They're going direct to consumer. He calls us, we want the deal. The first offer was for shit. Mark and I work a weekend, and Kevin and I know each other for a long time. We work on a letter, we send him what we think it's worth, why we think it's worth. They then come up, not exactly where we want, and we're negotiating, right? Back and forth. He's saying stuff, we're giving him stuff, back and forth. We're still pitching other places.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  We go in to see Bob Bakish, who's at Viacom now, and we're pitching him. Let's reinvent Spike where we originally started, make it into a sports channel, exactly what AT&T wanted to do with TNT. That's what the conversation was with AT&T, if they could have closed that deal. As we're pitching, I'm here, Mark Shapiro's there, Bob Bakish is there. I get a WhatsApp from Kevin Mayer that says, the price we want, you have a deal.

• 16:27David Senra?

  300 million?

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I slide the phone over to Shapiro. He's pitching his heart out, I'm pitching my heart out. At this point, he was pitching. He looks down, he's still pitching. I'm like, meeting over. We got to go.

• 16:42David Senra?

  Why not show it to these guys? Like, do you want to match it or what?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  We get into the car, because I had the deal I wanted, which was an incredible deal. Like, it hit the number that was in our pro forma. We had four months left until it was going to be a nightmare. We get in the car, they're in the plane, Iger, Kevin, and we're negotiating. We're going back and forth, and over WhatsApp, we're negotiating deals. There was eight episodes on ESPN, the rest behind the wall on ESPN Plus, they were just launching ESPN Plus, et cetera. Cut to, we get back to the office, we call Dana. You know, we're all sweating bullets, you know, not healthy. And we say, it's eight episodes. Dana goes, no, I'm not doing that. I love him so much, and he has pushed me so hard and made me better, Dana.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I go, what are you talking about? He goes, I'm not doing it unless we have 10. And I said to him, we have nobody else right now. He goes, I don't care. I'm like, I don't care? What are you talking about? Cut to, I had no move. No move. I get Kevin on the phone, I go crazy on him.

• 17:47David Senra?

  This happens several times in the book, where you're like, okay, I have no move. I'm going to just go crazy. And so, explain to people that haven't read the book yet, what going crazy means.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Well, I said, you motherfucker, I need 10 fucking episodes. I can't do this. You got to break stars. You're going to launch stars. You need stars to put up behind the paywall so that people buy the paywall. You needed to be on ESPN so they understand the sport. And I just gave him this whole story, which was actually true. Slam! Shapiro, I think he turned as white as this chair, right? And I said, and he's like, we have nothing. What are you doing? Calm down. They're not going to blow this deal. They want the deal. We're making one move. If we can't get it, we'll call Dana, we'll figure it out.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Cut to Kevin, and to Bob Iger's credit, who was, you know, he started out in boxing. He actually loves combat sports, Bob Iger.

• 18:46David Senra?

  Was it ABC? What was he doing boxing at?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  It was ABC, yeah. Way back in the day. And unbeknownst to Mark and I at the time, Bob kind of told us later, he says, to Jimmy Patawa, yeah, Jimmy was on the plane, too. Just give them the 10, figure it out on the schedule. I didn't know that. Kevin calls back, we have the 10. Dana's happy, boom. We're off to the races. And, you know, luck has it, Skipper got in trouble, and then we go in.

• 19:17David Senra?

  Oh, yeah, I was saying, we're not off to the races yet. Because then you're like, what about these nice little pay-per-views I have?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  So then we go in for the celebration with Kevin and Bob, who was incredible partners, like fantastic. They have been incredible. ESPN is incredible partners. They're incredible.

• 19:32David Senra?

  Hold on, you go into the celebration, re-gifting.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Re-gifting, yeah. It's a Seinfeld episode, Larry David, the re-gifting, and we bring it in, it's 75 pounds or 100 pounds, and we're bringing the book in.

• 19:45David Senra?

  Hold on, the funniest part, so it's this book that commemorates the UFC that I think Dana gave you, and you guys are on the phone making sure with some poor.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I mean, it's like four by four.

• 19:53David Senra?

  Yes, with some poor assistant, like, make sure Dana did not say, love you all.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. Cut to, we're just sweating bullets as they're going through the book. It wasn't, in two seconds, the assistant did a good job. We're in the meeting. It's a great meeting and I go, "Fuck you guys." Right? What? You're gonna make Mark and I go pitch our pay-per-views when you're putting someone behind the wall? You guys are fucking assholes. Like that. Bob, who didn't know. Kevin, did you know we could buy the pay-per-views too? Habba, habba, habba. And Kevin's a really smart guy, but you know, we got like getting, getting everybody over the hump on one. He goes, "Bob, you're incredible."

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Goes, "We'll get back to you on Monday." Monday comes. They buy the pay-per-views. Incredible, seven-year deal. Incredible. They did incredible with it. We did incredible with it. It was, it was like a home run for both.

• 20:58David Senra?

  But this is why I wanted to start with the story because everybody says these guys are idiots. They're, they're paying, overpaying for buying UFC. This one deal valuation is almost, I think a seven-year deal, it was like almost $4 billion. Almost the purchase price of UFC.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:12David Senra?

  So the, the first deal, right?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't, it wasn't a kind of stamp of where direct-to-consumer was going.

• 21:22David Senra?

  It was or was not?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Was.

• 21:23David Senra?

  Was, okay.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Everything that Mark Shapiro, myself, Egon Durbin had thought through was happening, was happening. We just had to get through some consolidation and, and deal flow to get, get to it.

• 21:37David Senra?

  The second part of the deal where they buy the pay-per-views, that's over a few days. How long from the first time you approached them till the deal, the first deal is closed? Was that two years?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  No. So we were coming to the end. We were putting, we were putting Fox off because we thought they, they were definitely on the table. We just wanted to see what else was happening. And then to Iger's credit, he went after Fox, understandably for direct-to-consumer and what he wanted Disney Plus and Hulu to be. He comes over, we, Fox was there early, but then they sold.

• 22:07David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  And then it was about to beginning conversation to the end, three and a half months, I think, with, with Disney and ESPN.

• 22:18David Senra?

  Are most of the deals that you've done, like we can go back to when you were just an agent or we can talk about like, you know, buying all these businesses with, with Egon, like is that normal? Is it usually, there's some?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Well, no, like if you're making a writer deal in television, which I started my business with, and you're staffing a show, you're in, you know, from when, when it used to be upfronts and you'd go to New York and you'd be in upfronts on the May 28th-ish until staffing, it was like a three-week race to put as many writers on TV shows that have been picked up for the networks. The UFC deal and the ING deal were probably six months to a year, each one of them.

• 22:58David Senra?

  And then the merger, I'm, there's a

• 23:00Speaker 01

  A merger took, that was

• 23:01David Senra?

  Me and William Morris merger. Yes, the 2003, they're laughing at you like, "Are you gonna buy us?" That was one of my favorite parts of the book where you go to speak to the Harvard professor and they're like, "There's no such thing as a merger. This is a lie." There's one company

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Professor Nitten.

• 23:12David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Incredible. Actually, I think he's on the board with Josh Kushner at Thrive.

• 23:17David Senra?

  Yes.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  He's an advisor.

• 23:18David Senra?

  Thrive just reached out to me to see if I wanted to talk to him. Do you think that'd be, that'd be interesting to do?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:22David Senra?

  But I just love what he told you. He's like, "There's no such thing as a merger." Like it's, there's an alpha, there's a beta, there's a conqueror, there's a conquered. In fact, you, you met, you mentioned Egon Durbin. So, um, Michael Dell has been like a huge influence on me. He's like become a friend. I just had dinner with him like two weeks ago. I met at one of Dell's events, this guy named Hock Tan.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Hock Tan, yeah.

• 23:39David Senra?

  Yeah. The CEO.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Broadcom.

• 23:41David Senra?

  Broadcom. And he said the, the funny shit, because he's done a lot of acquisitions and he was giving advice to another tech founder there. And he goes, "Here's my most important piece of advice for you." He's like, "When you're acquiring something, uh, somebody, make sure they know on day one, you know, Hock Tan's an extreme fucking personality." And he goes, "Make sure you, they understand on a day one that you are the conqueror and they are the conquered."

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:59David Senra?

  And in your book, I love this scene you bring us to where it's like 2003, private dining room in a restaurant. They laugh in your face about, "You're gonna buy us? You like, we're, we're a hundred-year-old company, whatever the case is." And then that deal takes like four years.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  In that four years, Patrick and I were stealing clients, weakening them. We were stealing agents, weakening them and just listening to the street, like there was problems over there. A lot of dissension. And then the moment came, I mean, I screwed up the first meeting so badly and, and Patrick was perfect in the first meeting, whether we had, where I went crazy.

• 24:44David Senra?

  So going crazy doesn't always work.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  No. No. It pushed out the, the, the merger for four years. I played a horrible game of chess there, just horrible. I'm at a, you know, Jewish holiday at an event to kind of break the fast and one of their most important agents comes up to me and says, "It's time to kind of get back into this." And, um, I meet with him, I meet with this woman, Jennifer Walsh, who ran their book division, and we reignited. And then it moved pretty fast. It was about six months because they, we, we realized they needed it. And it was really a lot of disruption happening in there, a lot of dissent. And that dissent enabled Patrick and I to be the conquerors in that situation.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And then Egon coming into our company enabled Patrick and I to kind of economic incentivize everybody and then take control.

• 25:34David Senra?

  Before we go back to the Egon part though, I think this was very fascinating because I didn't understand what was going on in the book. And then you guys closed this and

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Closed the William Morris deal.

• 25:42David Senra?

  Yeah, we're talking about the, the merger, sorry. And you, at this point, you said you fucked up the first 2003 meeting and then you kind of

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Fucked up is be like, be gentle. That was, that was a gentle statement.

• 25:52David Senra?

  Okay. But you, you see that you learned a couple of years later because then I forgot the guy's name, but he's like, "Oh, I want to be, I want to be chairman. I want to be this," or "I want to pick"

• 25:59Speaker 01

  The Jim Wyatt.

• 26:00David Senra?

  Yeah. And you were just like, "Yeah, sure, sure, sure."

• 26:02Speaker 01

  So here's what happened.

• 26:03David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  The deal closes, meaning William Morris votes to say yes, Endeavor votes to say

• 26:08David Senra?

  It's supposed to be a merger.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:10David Senra?

  Which you know doesn't exist already.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Right. And we, Patrick and I had done, you know, constantly talked to it, Nitten, kind of helped us think through it. And even in them closing, a lot of their senior members that were equity holders were calling us and saying, "This is not gonna work." Cut to, the deals are approved, but were not closed. And we realized, okay, we cannot go forward, mainly their side. One, there's guys that make so much money. Peter Grosslight and their music department, one of the biggest divisions. Mark Gitkin and their non-scripted business, not on the board, not really paid attention to. We have to keep them to make the merger work.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  We go have, I go have separate meetings with both of them and let them into the plan because they hated leadership.

• 27:00David Senra?

  And you told them the plans.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Told them my plan.

• 27:02David Senra?

  You already knew this.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  We had brought them onto our, our side of the fence.

• 27:05David Senra?

  Okay. How long were you plotting before you executed this though?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  This is where Patrick was great, you know? I was so nervous about this, like this is gonna be a nightmare if he's sitting there. And he had sent a memo out. I have to be on all head of studio calls. I, I didn't even understand what that meant. Like I'm on a call with a studio head? I've been running this company with Patrick for X amount of years and you want to be on my call? Like, no. I realized, and Patrick said, when we're probably gonna enter in after 2003, it's four years later, we're really going for it. And I got really cold feet and Patrick just in the third floor conference room, not physically, but slapped me in my face, saying, "Whatever, you, you don't think you can take this guy out?" And so kind of woke me up, cold, cold water on the face. And we get to it.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And then everybody realizes on their side, Jim cannot be part of this. And we negotiated very clear terms of majorities, super majorities, what happens for the board. They had five votes, we had four and a quarter votes for each one of us. And Jennifer Walsh and Patrick go to Jim Wyatt's consigliere and says, "Not gonna work." It's 2008, 2009. The world is, we, we don't remember, but the world was coming to an end. My brother was in the White House, financial crisis, almost depression. And nobody thought at the time you were gonna write a check for 20, 24 million dollars.

• 28:38David Senra?

  To buy out one guy.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Buy out one guy.

• 28:39David Senra?

  You gotta buy out another one too.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he takes the deal. He takes the 24 million dollars. They convince him, he says yes, check written. Irv Wintrop thinks he's getting the job once Jimmy's off. And I call him up, Patrick's on the phone. I said, "You don't have the votes because you need, you need two-thirds and you don't have two-thirds. Board doesn't like you." That was a little bit of a tussle. I won't get into the details, but he finally realized, "No go." We write him a check for 20 million dollars. So we're out $44 million, oh nine. We lose a lawsuit on the building that they bought.

• 29:24David Senra?

  Because you're, you're, you're gonna have to be sharing, sharing a garage with your direct competitor.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  One, an agency, like, like right there.

• 29:31David Senra?

  Who the would do that?

• 29:32Speaker 01

  I don't know. That's

• 29:34David Senra?

  And then they were

• 29:34Speaker 01

  That's 35. So now, now we're at 75.

• 29:37David Senra?

  Yes.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  No, that's, uh, 80 million dollars. Then we have to pay out bonuses either between 20 and 40 million dollars. We were fucked. And, you know, getting a loan from a bank in the middle of oh eight, oh nine. And that's when Russell Goldsmith, who was part of City National

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Always had backed us when we needed a million dollars with no collateral.

• 30:01David Senra?

  When you let's, let's talk about that real quick. When you left and started.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  When we left ICM.

• 30:06David Senra?

  Yes.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  The four of us.

• 30:07David Senra?

  And you started Endeavor.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  So it was Tom Strickler, Rick Rosen, David Greenblatt, myself.

• 30:13David Senra?

  And your description of this startup company that now is worth a ton of money, right? I love it says four demons in a room rolling calls.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:21David Senra?

  You had.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 30:22David Senra?

  You had a table and a phone.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  And we didn't have, we couldn't collect the commission. We put it in escrow because we were getting sued by ICM. For whatever reason, they thought, they thought we had, we had created a horrible situation. Their whole press around us created even a bigger company than it really was.

• 30:39David Senra?

  And so this guy, the bank, which was named.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Russell Goldsmith.

• 30:41David Senra?

  Yeah, he's the one back in when you had nothing, a million.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  We had no money, none of us had money.

• 30:46David Senra?

  Yes.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  He was incredible. And then cut to, you know.

• 30:51David Senra?

  15 or 19 years later, whatever.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  And I said, listen, this dream is going to end if you don't. And he did. And what happened after that is, as I recall it, we buy IMG. And I said to him at the time, I don't know how we're going to repay you, but we'll repay you at some point. He's trying to sell Sydney National and do a deal with the Canadian company. And he said, can I have some of your bonds?

• 31:16David Senra?

  This is the 2.4 billion IMG deal?

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. Egon had, you know, he has his relationship, that was his thing. And I said to him, I tell him the story. And I said, I need, you know, 300 million dollars worth. To his credit, he figured it out and.

• 31:30David Senra?

  Egon did.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we gave Russell and we repaid him just on what he needed to kind of convince his deal that he was doing and yeah.

• 31:40David Senra?

  I like how you framed this because I was like, these guys are idiots. They spent 44 million dollars just on buyouts. You know, like, no, we spent 44 million dollars to essentially acquire a hundred year old.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Company.

• 31:50David Senra?

  Yeah, with a huge roster. It's like, we stole this from them.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was incredible. It was the greatest deal that Patrick and I ever did.

• 31:57David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  It's not even close. And you know, the great thing, when we did the IMG deal, it was very tense when we're doing the deal. This is what the great thing, you only learn this over time. As, and you know, I have young kids, young kids. I have two 30 year olds, a 27 year old and a 24 year old, a daughter and three boys. And you know, they're, they have ADHD like me and they're like, and I think all kids of, when you're young, you just want to get going. The only way you learn is through failure and success and you gotta, you gotta go through things. We're in the IMG deal, so we're trying to do it and it's us against Peter Chernin. Peter Chernin was bidding on it, we were bidding on it.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  And they didn't want us. They definitely didn't want I, us, me.

• 32:47David Senra?

  Why would they not?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  I don't know, I don't remember.

• 32:49David Senra?

  Yes, you do.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I know, I swear to God, what the fuck do I give a shit? And I learned a ton from this. I think Chernin's offer was 1.9 billion. We offered 2.3 or 2.4 billion and this was Egon's, right? Egon goes and says, you're not going to remember this 500 million dollars.

• 33:09David Senra?

  400.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  400 million dollars. You're never going to remember it. And let's make an offer that they can't like bid, keep on bidding us up. Let's just take it off the table in one foul swoop. Fucking genius, like incredible. I've not done these deals, he's done a million of them. We did it. We got the deal. Shapiro told me before, they don't want you. I said, the more zeros win. They can not want us, but, and this was Egon's play and it was perfect. We had a huge fight though. And this is what's also crazy about deals and you only learn afterwards. We thought we could not, this deal would not be successful.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Cause we were trying to secure the college guys running college, George Pine and the head of college. Because they had this whole college business inside of IMG at the time. American comp. And it was a, a pre-heated argument about if we don't get those executives, we can't do this deal because college is so important. Not that college went bankrupt, but college is worth like nothing inside the I, was worth nothing at the end inside the, the IMG business. Everything was the international business and everything we, we've done post that. And so, you know, again, that's why all the planning about what a deal does, who knew Fox was going to sell?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  You know, you, all this says, you just got to constantly be working that stuff. If you're not working and there's going to be huge mountains you gotta climb and huge failures. But if you believe in the strategy, you can get through it.

• 34:46David Senra?

  This is what you were saying, we had this incredible conversation before we started recording and I was like, we need to sit down and get some of this on tape. Cause this conversation is blowing my mind. You had mentioned earlier, the advice that you gave to like the CEO of one of your companies now. And it was very similar to this, because it's just like.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  So we.

• 35:00David Senra?

  You can only do what's in front of you, man.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, stop telling yourself a story. Brene Brown, stop, stop telling yourself a story, right? That in her books and one of the great things that she.

• 35:09David Senra?

  Who is this?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Brene Brown.

• 35:11David Senra?

  Okay.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  She's got great books, you know, we all do it. We tell ourselves stories in our heads that we then believe. And those are not real stories, those are just stories. They're, they're just not reality. And you know, in, in he, my CFO of this new company, we started this events business called Mari. Comes up to me and we're going through the, the raise we have to do.

• 35:34David Senra?

  The fundraiser.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  The fundraiser. And he's getting very traumatic, like we have, don't get it. And I said, stop. All we gotta do is just keep on making the calls. We're going to get to it. We have a really good product, a really good story. We're creating a great company. The world's on our way, the thesis is right. And he goes, you know, he takes a deep breath, I said, he goes, you're right. I said, just let's keep on making the calls and doing the thing and talking about our story. People will come to it. It's only getting better, this story. And you know, I try every day in my life. And one of the things I say in the book is not listening to that voice. We all have that voice, you know, we're guilty about stuff, we can't spend enough time with our kids. Is this right, you know? You know, it's not really worth it.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  That voice always wants to boot up negative or tell you something else.

• 36:21David Senra?

  That's one of the most interesting parts of the book, like really the transformation you see. Cause the very first word, the very, the first sentence in the book is one word and it's rage.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:30David Senra?

  And then you see this change, this profound change you go, and the book kind of ends in a very different way, which I want to get to. Before I get there, I want to go back to what Egon said, where he's like, you're not going to remember the 400 million.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:39David Senra?

  Which is one of the craziest lines in the book, winds up being true.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  What investment bank or, or PE fund would ever say that? That's why he's incredible. Nobody says that they, if that guy's bidding 1.9, let's bid 2. He sees a map that is so much different from everybody else in the game of where he wants to go.

• 36:57David Senra?

  But this is the important part is like, what I always say is like, learning is not memorizing information, learning is changing your behavior, right? You heard that, you didn't just memorize it, you change your behavior. Because I think it was the UFC, the UCF or UFC deal was another deal you're working on. And somebody internal on your own buy team was like, no, no, let's like lower this. I don't remember what deal it was.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:15David Senra?

  And you said, absolutely not, you quoted Egon and then you guys wind up getting the deal.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:20David Senra?

  Cause like, you're not going to remember saving whatever, let's say it's 2 million, I don't remember what it was.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  200 million dollars, 100 million dollars.

• 37:24David Senra?

  But you're going to remember, you said in the book.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Losing.

• 37:26David Senra?

  You're going to remember fucking, you didn't say losing, you said fucking up the deal.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, but let's keep a given, you're going to have to work really hard. Even if it's the best strategy, even if you're right about everything, there's going to be really bumpy roads. That's just called business.

• 37:41David Senra?

  Life.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Life. So if you give yourself, I'm going to work my ass off. I'm going to get through all the hardships. If you want the deal and you believe the strategy, you're right, the 100 million, the 200 million, the 150. No. That's, that's, that's not what the game is. The game is, we're going to have to really work hard. There's going to be some failures, there's going to be some things we think about that are not right. Things we think about that we didn't even realize that are even more right. Let's just get through it. And you know, I think when Disney was buying Cap Cities, I might be wrong about this story, but I think I'm right. I think they valued ESPN zero. It was the most valuable asset.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  When, when, when Tom Warner and his partner, which I gave to Joe Ravitch at Goldman, because they had done the yes deal for Yankees. Were buying the Red Sox. I think they, at the time, they had the cable portion of that deal in for 75 million dollars. It was the most important thing, not, not that the team now is good. At the time, that was the most important asset. So all these things that we think we know and we do all this work on, you don't want to go crazy, 2 billion dollars more than Nest versus. But you know, you're going to work hard, there's going to be things you project that are wrong and things you project that are wrong, but make it even better. And you're just going to have to work through it.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  That was a great lesson that Egon gave us.

• 39:11David Senra?

  I think something that I don't even think I understood about the book, even though it's in there. But I'm deeply understanding about you now, talking to you. It's just like this idea of like, I'm just going to stay flexible and play the game that's right in front of me.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  It's the David Geffen line he gave to me when we were trying to do William Morris. I should have listened to him way beforehand, David Geffen.

• 39:26David Senra?

  Talk about this.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  So David Geffen says to me.

• 39:28David Senra?

  You're. Hold on, let me set this up, because you're like freaking out. I love how in the book, so I, I have the audiobook version, which I highly recommend. I have this book, obviously the hardcover book and the Kindle book.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  All right.

• 39:41David Senra?

  People listen to this, you know, the bare minimum, order the audible right now.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Bob O'Durk's incredible.

• 39:46David Senra?

  I've never read a book like this, like.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 39:47David Senra?

  The amount of, just like, you're just unbelievably honest and you're just like, you, you share like, yes, I'm very successful and smart and driven. But I'm also, I got some fucked up shit too, like we all do. And I think we do a disservice where we try to pretend we're perfect. We're all imperfect communities. And you're just like, here's it is.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:03David Senra?

  Deal with it, you probably have this too.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  We're trying to.

• 40:05David Senra?

  David Geffen.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  We're trying to grow the business.

• 40:07David Senra?

  And you're terrified, because you have this thing, it's like, I don't feel safe because if Endeavor is not safe, I'm not safe.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Right, so you know, he was, he's been an incredible advisor to me and, and kind of mentor to me. And he says to me.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Just merge with William Morris, get in traffic and get hit. And ultimately, he was saying, believe in yourself, believe in your partners, you're gonna win that battle. And he was right.

• 40:37David Senra?

  And the way I interpreted it too is like, the worst thing you could do in a world of changing is stand still. He's like, don't stand still.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And that's like, that's when we were in the conference room and I was so nervous about merging in, Patrick slapped me in the face, not physically, but emotionally, like, you don't think we could win this battle with them? Like, people like us, our culture's better, we're gonna win. And it kind of just put a, you know, water in my, cold water in my face, and he was right. You know?

• 41:04David Senra?

  Deal 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 Deal. Many of the top founders I know have personally invested in Deal after using their product. And what they discovered is that Deal is the best company in the world at building infrastructure for global hiring. Deal 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.

• 41:46David Senra?

  The founder of 11 Labs has a great description of the value Deal can give your company. He said, "We built 11 Labs to break down language and communication barriers. With Deal 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." Deal is trusted by over 40,000 companies and growing fast. Learn how they can help your business by going to deal.com/cenra. That is deal.com/cenra. I want to go back to Geffen. So I just flew back, we have a mutual friend in Jimmy Iovine, right? And the crazy story is, I'm in England with Jimmy, we were doing this event together, and I was interviewing him on stage, and then he's like, hey, just fly back with me.

• 42:30David Senra?

  So I flew with him on his plane from England to LA. We're on the plane, we're sitting next to each other, he pulls out a book, I pull out a book, it's the same book. And so he, I was like, dude, what do you think? And I was like, do you know Ari? And he's telling me story after story about you.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  That's another guy, I just called out of the blue, I'd read about him. It's kind of like, my phrase that I like to do is creating serendipity. You know, you read about somebody, same thing I did with Michael Rapinoe, one of the great executives of all time. The company was worth $200 million, I read it in the Wall Street Journal, I'm on vacation, I get back, I hand it to my assistant, I said, get me this guy on the phone. This is 25 years ago, and we meet and we become fast friends, he puts me on the board.

• 43:08David Senra?

  We're gonna talk about this, because you call it, I think, the Ari, not Ari Gold, the Ari Emanuel, Rolling School of Entrepreneurship that you made for yourself, which I thought was one of the best ideas in the book. But I want to tell you what, there's two things that Jimmy told me and I got asked about. I go, is Ari really like this? He's like, if he needs something from me, he will call me 16 times in a row. I want to talk about if that actually works, because it's in there, which is shocking to me. But we talk about Geffen, because he says that David Geffen gave him some of the best advice ever. He's just like, hey, you know, me and you kind of do the same job, you just made $500 million, I'm doing the same thing, but I make a lot less, I'm thinking about starting my own record label. And he said, David goes, he was definitely do it. And Jimmy Iovine goes, why? He goes, because there's a lot more people dumber than you that own record companies.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Listen, he's one of the great consigliers of our business. He has a sobering look at the business and cuts through it like in one or two lines.

• 44:02David Senra?

  And Jimmy told me this, because he still goes to David for advice. He goes, David will tell you the fastest path from here to there. And Jimmy's point was just like,

• 44:10Speaker 01

  You can't always get there emotionally.

• 44:12David Senra?

  No, because it's your business, so you overcomplicate things in your head, so you go to David.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  The voice is going on.

• 44:17David Senra?

  Yes, and you're like, oh, I have this big problem, and he goes, ah, fire that guy, buy that company, marry that girl. And he's just like, there's just one thing, there's a lot of these eight, 10 things, it's like, that thing, and just do that. And he did it with you, he's like, just buy a fucking, merge with an agency, don't sit still.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  I don't know how he learned to do that, he doesn't listen to that voice in the head. He kind of just, he sees it, does it, and you can always call on him. You'll give him the situation, two seconds later, you're off the phone, and probably it took me years, but he was right, just get one of those companies. I think we got the right company, but he was right. You know, you just get in traffic, get hit, you're gonna work harder than anybody, there's gonna be goods, and he didn't say this, good and bad, but you'll survive, you're good. And that's kind of what he was saying.

• 45:05David Senra?

  So a lot of the guests that come on the show, then they ask me after, like, hey, can I help you get anybody? Like, who's on top of your list? And David Geffen is towards the top of my list, like, oh, that's never gonna happen, he's like, way too private.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  No, he'll do it.

• 45:15David Senra?

  Oh, then maybe I'll give you a task after.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  I'll call him right after, I'll give him one, yeah.

• 45:19David Senra?

  So I obviously knew who you were because of the entourage character. And then, but then when I heard you writing a book, I was like, roll the calls. I was like, I don't even know what that means. So explain why you named the book Roll the Calls.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  When I'm walking into the office, and I'm down the hallway, and my office is down there, I'll just start screaming, like, to my assistant, roll the calls. Like, you know, people have called me, I want people, and they just start hitting calls. My whole life, as I just said, how I met Marc Andreessen, that then led to Egon Durbin, that then led to, you know, this, that and the other thing, or it's a puzzle. And the way you get into the puzzle for me is on the phone, and then meeting people after. You read something, you call somebody, you meet somebody. And they, in a good way in my life, they have created serendipity, and I've created a world that way. And rolling the calls is how I do it. And when I get into my car, I'm on my phone, I call my office, roll the calls.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And we're just rolling calls.

• 46:18David Senra?

  I just heard you do this when you were in the bathroom.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, let's roll the calls. And I don't know where it's gonna lead. Hopefully, if I'm good at my job, and I think this is what's great about being an agent that's taught me in business, like, creating a TV show or a movie that you put together, that's creating a puzzle. And as great as Marty Scorsese is, or Jonah Hill, or Aaron Sorkin, or Seth MacFarlane, or Tyler Perry, my list of clients, they're incredible artists. The job as an agent in the entertainment business, you have to be an incredible, new idea businessman for them on their deals,

• 47:03Speaker 01

  and how to put a movie together and get through conflict, because there's always conflict. I've taken that skill set, and now through great teachers, Egon, Nitten, other people, and just witnessing people, I call people when I'm in situations, I can take that same skill set and apply it to our businesses. And that's how I live my life, rolling calls, doing my thing, David Geffen, getting in traffic, getting hit, and not being scared that, I was scared, I was emotionally scared.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  And partners have helped me through that, like, am I, because I'm dyslexic, am I smart enough to do this? I'm now, I don't have that fear anymore. And that I can get through these deals and be creative, and looking at what Egon does, looking at what Michael Dell does, they're incredible artists of how to run a company, how to build a company. And I think it is a great art form.

• 48:05David Senra?

  Michael Dell's worth, I don't know, like, quarter of a trillion dollars, and I'm telling you, he's so, still underrated. He's unbelievable, it's exactly, it's funny you use the word puzzles, because that's what I ask him about, is, and that's the way he looks at like, business, like a giant puzzle.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  He's incredible.

• 48:18David Senra?

  And it's just like, the guy started his company at 19 with a thousand dollars in his dorm room. He's in his 60s, look what he's doing today.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  And he's a monster.

• 48:24David Senra?

  But he's also like, unbelievably, he's got a very friendly UI. He's like, spent hours, well, I spent hours, like, there's no reason for him to spend hours with me, teaching me stuff, but he does.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I promise you, he's learning something though.

• 48:35David Senra?

  But he's a remarkable human being.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Those people that you, like Marc Andreessen, they're artists at what they do. And here's what I don't like in the world right now. For some reason, certain part of the population thinks that that is a horrible thing, what these great businessmen have done. Like, they think it's a no-no, that they've created great wealth for people, great wealth for the country, great, great. And that in some way, it's not good, and I love capitalism, I think it's an incredible.

• 49:05David Senra?

  I'm the son of a Cuban immigrant, like, I literally,

• 49:07Speaker 01

  I'm the son of an Israeli.

• 49:08David Senra?

  I tell the story over and over, like, it's not a joke, I grew up in South Florida, I literally, I remember being fucking nine years old and meeting people that came over here on rafts. And all, just like, okay, well, how many people go to the end of South Florida and put your, you have four kids? And when they were small, put them on a raft to Cuba, that's a one-way trip. It comes in this direction, why? Why is that happening? What's going on? Like, I knew instinctively, like, this is like a very, very special, like, very, very special place.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't get it.

• 49:35David Senra?

  And he's like, I want to learn from these people, so let me go to the next question I have for you. Explain this, like, Ari Emanuel, Rolling School of Entrepreneurship. When did you get the idea, and how long have you been doing it?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  It just started, like, one of the first ideas about this, my boss at this company in our town, this guy Bill Block, who was running it, he was a really curious guy, and he read this book called, and we talk all the time now, still.

• 49:57David Senra?

  Still sits there?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And he read this book back in the day, I think this was 92, Life After Television by George Gilder. I read the book, very short book, thank God, but he's dyslexic, and I called George. I don't know how this came about in my life, that I would just read an article, call the guy, people would pick up, but it just happens to me. And I, as you know, as you read the book, if they don't call me, I call them and call them and call them until they do call me. Sometimes people think it's stalking, if you can use some levity and some humor and some self-deprecation, you get away with it and don't get committed to a jail. And he started talking to me about the business.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  That little thing has led me to realizing, when we started the business in 95, there's gonna be more television, and it's about how distribution is gonna change, same amount of people making content, maybe some new content, which we now have podcasts, social media, et cetera, you know, micro dramas. And that content creators were going to be more valuable. That premise was all I needed to start the company with my three other partners had that who believed in the same thing. And that just continues my relationship with Michael Rapinoe, one of the great executives of all time, grew up $200 million company now to $40, $50 billion. I don't know what he's done. It's incredible.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Marc Andreessen, I mean, it's just my life. That's how I live my life and those are the puzzles I create. And I then, the great thing about it, I get to always tap into them and call them if something's coming up and take them to lunch and listen to them. You know, same thing. That's how I met Elon. He was, I read about him starting a car company. I didn't know the guy. I called him, we met and we have an incredible relationship, like most friendships. I don't agree with him all the time. I do agree with him. I learn a ton. I disagree a ton. Life.

• 51:56David Senra?

  What have you learned from Elon?

• 51:58Speaker 01

  He gave early on where AI was going. I mean, he, he, he was talking about AI in 2007, what it was going to be. And then he enabled one, sports was going to, live was going to be important. Definitely sports was going to be important. He talked about that. Sort of begun. And then he said, the only thing that is, can't be disintermediated by AI is live in the entertainment business. I mean, he didn't talk about it because I was asking about the entertainment. And that's what gave, you know, the, the idea behind Mari. And so we're now building a pretty big business in the life.

• 52:41David Senra?

  How is Mari related to TKO?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Separate company.

• 52:44David Senra?

  Separate companies, but they're, but they're doing similar things though.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, one's in sports, pure.

• 52:48David Senra?

  Yes.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  And one's in live events from art to car auctions, to holiday events, to tennis events. It's just the live events. Michael Rapinoe is just in music.

• 53:01David Senra?

  Okay.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  TKO is just in sports, right? It's a sports, you know, live business. And Mari is an events business. There's some sports assets. We have the Miami Open, the Madrid Open in tennis. We have participatory sports, Escape from Alcatraz. We have a collectible business in, in Freeze and Barrett Jackson and this thing called CollectCon, which is in the Pokemon space. And so it will be everything live events on a global basis.

• 53:29David Senra?

  How do you split your time? Is, are these the two main companies? You're spending almost 100% of your time on?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  These are the two companies.

• 53:34David Senra?

  Okay. And like, what's the split right now? Cause one is obviously huge and growing, but this one's brand new.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Well, time's a crazy thing. Like, you, I spend a lot of time on both, you know? And yeah, I just, I just work.

• 53:48David Senra?

  Okay.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  I have my clients, I still do my clients because it's important for TKO and everything else. I had been doing all the work around Mari, so it's what I've been doing anyway and TKO.

• 53:58David Senra?

  Okay. I want to go back to the very beginning of the book, the very beginning of your career. Basically, you start of your, your new life, right? That took you on the path to where you are today. It can be traced back to when you're 24 years old. You see this job listing, I'm going to be assistant to talent agent. You didn't even know what a talent agent was.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Well, I kind of did. This guy, Mike Mandelson, told me, like I landed in New York and I, friend of a friend and, and he says what William Morris is, you know, I'm from the Midwest. I didn't know. I had no idea what an agent, I didn't know they existed. And for whatever reason, it kind of like, that seems like I would be good at that. I could do that.

• 54:35David Senra?

  There's a handful of things that I took away from that section of the book that I think are really important that you kind of used your entire life and continue to develop was like, one, Robbie had the same kind of school of entrepreneurship, but he did it through like dictation and writing letters of the great minds and they, they carry on like this discourse, which is, and I was like, oh shit, Ari does that later on.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, differently.

• 54:54David Senra?

  Yeah, with his phone, right? The other thing that, that I thought was very interesting too, is you had somebody older, really successful, telling you, a young man, hey, I can't serve you anymore. You have insane talent and drive, move west and go build your own empire.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:10David Senra?

  And then one of the third things that most important is you got to listen in his calls.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:14David Senra?

  And this guy used to be at the top of his game, right? And then now you have this younger, this is a tale all this time, younger, hungrier kid that's coming for what you want and you're listening to his calls.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  And he was the king. Mike, Mike, even though he's younger and hungry.

• 55:27David Senra?

  Ovitz.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  He, Mike Ovitz. You know, there was Lou Wasserman on Mount Rushmore.

• 55:32David Senra?

  Yes.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And Mike Ovitz on Mount Rushmore. And Mike Ovitz created what nobody had created. He created the packaging business and the movie business, saw what all these other guys, and there was lots and lots of agencies, but he, four guys or five guys, I don't.

• 55:49David Senra?

  It's the same story as you 20 years later.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  And he had Ron Meyer and Bill Haber. It was Patrick and I. And Lou Wasserman had Jules Stein. And they had a vision for what the movie business and TV business could be. Remember, they made a fortune because of Bill Haber and the television business.

• 56:09David Senra?

  There's a parallel here to your own career because people are like, oh, this UFC thing is like dirty. It's like low class or whatever. It can't be a good business. You're like, you don't know what you're talking about. The CAA talked about, they were called like the TV guys.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:23David Senra?

  It was a pejorative.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Right. And they made the transfer.

• 56:26David Senra?

  Yes.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  But here's the one thing, I, I don't know if you, I gotta go back and listen to your episode with Mike. And this is my conclusion. I have no idea, would actually, I should call Mike about this. Like, he takes over the Coke business.

• 56:39David Senra?

  The advertising.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  The advertising business for Coke. Now, Mike Ovitz, in the world of business and entertainment, was at the echelon. I just didn't understand why Mike, at that point, because he could have raised any amount of money he wanted, like didn't go buy gray, gray advertising back then was a really big advertising. I don't know. I think they handled Coke. I would, I might be wrong. Maybe it was McCann. Like, that would have changed the, added a new leg to the stool. And I don't know if he just didn't think about it, because he thought about a lot of stuff, or he didn't want to do it, or he thought the economics were not going to be right for him.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  But that would have completely changed his business and then led to, as they again said, more traffic, that he, you never know what it would have led to. But that's why I always thought about that, like, why didn't he buy an advertising agency and do more clients unless he, I don't know. And that's for us, what Patrick and I did and Mark Shapiro and Ian, we realized, no, we want to own an asset.

• 57:46David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And that's, maybe it was in the back of our heads, looking at what he did, that he didn't do it. And I think there's 90 reasons why he didn't do it or something must have been, because he's too smart not to have done it. We, we concluded we should do it for where the world was going for us at that point in time.

• 58:05David Senra?

  Go back to, what were you hearing though? What was the difference? You're on the phone call.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  On Robbie Lanza's phone call?

• 58:10David Senra?

  You're listening to Ovitz, young and hungry, he's stealing like Pacino, he's stealing all these clients from your boss. What are you hearing in these phone calls, the difference between Robbie and Ovitz at this time?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Well, one, I never heard what he said to clients. Like, his salesmanship and Ron Meyer's salesmanship and Bill Haber's salesmanship was far superior and backed up by everything they did. Packaging movies, forcing studios to take them. Different day and age because he had the DVD business and, and all that. And he was selling, I can only conclude, because I wasn't on the calls or in signing meetings, that they were a packaging machine and it's going to be beneficial. Remember, if I'm right, I think I am, Jules Stein, when Lou Wasserman was there, they were signing people because they had a different, they figured out a tax loophole for clients

• 59:03Speaker 01

  to save them money and that's why they signed a lot of people. Mike had this pitch, again, I don't have all the facts, that his, his ability to package was unprecedented for movies and television. And it was true. That's his genius and Ron Meyer's genius. This whole packaging thing that they created and the production business for stars and creating projects for them that they don't, no longer have to be an actor, they can be a producer. And it was like, nobody had thought about that. And he did it. And he, and he actually had, he did it, you know? And so he recreated the business.

• 59:43David Senra?

  Yeah. The first time I met Marc Andreessen, I asked him, because you know, he's, he's open about, hey, I designed A16Z on CAA. And I go, what do you think Ovitz's superpower is? He goes, he's the world's greatest agent. And I go, what does that mean?

• 59:56Speaker 01

  He was and is.

• 59:57David Senra?

  I go, what does that mean? He goes, that means he's the world's greatest salesman.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00David Senra?

  And so even to this.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  He's incredible. I'll tell you right now.

• 1:00:03David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  He's like one of the greats as an agent. I mean, I worked directly for Bill Haber and, and Mike was there. But don't discount Ronnie Meyer. He was incredible. As smooth as it got.

• 1:00:18David Senra?

  Anytime you see somebody that's like world-class what to do, their team is going to be world-class too.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, their partner's incredible.

• 1:00:23David Senra?

  It's 100%. But I, I need to get to this crazy transformation because, you know, I was, I was seeking your advice. I'm obsessed with, you know, people that you have a few decades on me, so like you know where I'm going. And I asked, I was like, hey, what were you doing when you were my age?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Don't have the guilt that I had about not, not seeing your kids.

• 1:00:41David Senra?

  We're going to, we can talk about everything publicly. I'm fine with that. But my thing about you is like, you're like a more relaxed version than I even thought from the book. Definitely still, I heard you on the phone, so it's like, you know, but like you're, I thought, you know, I was going to get like another RE Gold or something like that. Book starts with rage, talks about bundle of anxiety, bundle of fear, not feeling safe, being angry, getting hit by a fucking car and almost dying and then realizing, hey, this isn't a dress rehearsal, which I think is most important part, one of the most important things to happen in your life. Like, when did you decide, hey, I, I got to make this change because like if I keep living life like this bundle of uncontrollable rage, like I'm actually going to have an unhappy life?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  You know, there's a character in there called Dr. Calm, which is my shrink. And he, he had this concept called the ego project, you know?

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  We all think we can control certain things. You know, you have this thing about your legacy. All these things that are bottled up in the ego. And he was trying to break it down and teach me. There's your plan and then there's somebody else's plan. And it started with the car, like it's the address rehearsal.

• 1:01:55David Senra?

  How old were you when you got by that car?

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  Thirty-two, right? And you know, when you're thirty-two, I'm like, career's going great. Life is great. I'm physically great, you know? And you just realized it could end like that. And that starts a chain of reactions in your brain like, you have to constantly remind yourself. Getting sick with the UFC, like, oh, no, you're not invincible. You're invincible, right? You're human and you know, you think you can control all this stuff. And if you play the chess match out in your head, you're gonna win. And when you don't, that's when you get angry. I just kept on working on it and realizing and wanting to get better and not enjoying the rage all the time, you know?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Just like you get older and you get tired of it.

• 1:02:43David Senra?

  At what age did you start to feel tired of the rage?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Well, here's what I realized. I want to be really successful. I realized that rage and anger and the way I was operating the business, you could never get to really big heights.

• 1:03:02David Senra?

  Why?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  I wasn't happy with how I was living my life. And you know, one of the things that the book does, it tells, like, there's JR who helped me write the book. Like, there's three weeks, I cannot book what he showed me early when we were doing this, like, this would happen in these three weeks. This was happening in this month. Like, I'm like, how the fuck did that happen? You know, like, all these things, you know, going to visit my daughter when she was in Montana Academy and in the mountains of Utah and then coming back. And then this thing, deal happened and then that deal happened. It's just like, it's insane. And that's not, I wasn't, I wasn't enjoying it, right? Even though I was getting through it, I wasn't enjoying it.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  And that just took a process. I saw the toll it took on my marriage, which is, you know, things get left behind. I didn't, I don't think, if you ask my kids, and I think my wife, my ex-wife and I scored a touchdown with four incredible kids. That was great, but I didn't think I could progress, which I wanted to. And the company could do what it do. And where I wanted to build it was possible in the state I was. And so then I just went on a path of like, meeting people, meeting people that were gonna help me realize how to get, become a better person. And that took shamans and, you know, other means to get there that were different from Dr. Kham.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  That enabled me to realize, you know, the world's been around for 3,000 years. I'm still competitive, but there's a different way to be competitive. I never realized like, going on a vacation could be better than not going on a vacation. I thought it was like, you know, so bad for you. Jeff Bezos says to me, I don't know, a lot of years ago, he says to me, you know, you just have to realize when you're on the field, be on the field. But it's okay to get off the field. And when you're off the field, get off the field. And don't play the chess match. Don't be scared of getting off the field. You know, it's not a bad thing, because it makes when you're on the field even,

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  you're more potent. And I never used to do get off the field.

• 1:05:21David Senra?

  So eyes open.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Constantly working. And that, that plus doing five MEO and other things, that helped me realize this whole thing about legacy, which is bullshit in my mind, or the ego project, or any of these other, however you want to box it.

• 1:05:40David Senra?

  The reason I've been telling all my friends about this book too, is just like how brutally honest you are, because like you're one of the most successful people in the world of what you're doing at the time. And yet in the book, at the same time, you're the most successful person in your field. You're also searching for like, trying to fix what's wrong with you, what you feel is wrong with you inside, to the point where you're like,

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Makes you better.

• 1:05:55David Senra?

  You do this meditation retreat, and I want to read this part of the book. You do this five-day meditation retreat in, I think, India. And this guy you name in the book as the leader. And this is, I'm just gonna read, you know, a few sentences.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Jennifer Walsh from, who helped get rid of Jim Wyatt, turned me on to this guy.

• 1:06:14David Senra?

  So after you shiv somebody in the back, you need to go on a five-day meditation retreat. But he says, you can't live in a world of war and anger. And also in a world of beauty, you must choose. Do you want to live in a beautiful state? And then the last thing, one of the last things he says to you, he says, do whatever you do for the joy, the artistry, or else don't do it. Then in serenity, move on.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Great line.

• 1:06:34David Senra?

  At that time that you heard that line though, were you in a place where you could actually accept that advice? Or did that take a while?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Well, day one, it was like going over my childhood, dyslexia, finding identity or the lack of identity, trying to get identity and what that means, fear of being found out, all what that caused. My mother was incredible, that she got me to read and, yeah, but you know, she had her own issues and about, from her parents. And we're incredible people because of my two parents, my brothers and I. And, but there's, like all of us, my kids are gonna have to go through therapy because of me, right? And this guy said, said to me, and Dr. Kham, still, while I was seeing him, said, you're really successful.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Stop worrying if you're gonna be found out and think that you're stupid. You're not. Dr. Kham said it in a different way. In the 50s, really successful people were really great businessmen, really smart people, considered businessmen, as opposed to people that can read. And I had this whole image because of how I brought up and education. The only smart people are people that can read. And I thought, there's all these people that are smarter than me because they had all these other things. And I just got calmer in this process of, you're not stupid. And you're, you don't have to worry. You're not gonna be found out that you're stupid. You're actually, what I do is an art form. And comfortable with what that is, as opposed to thinking I should be all these other things. Just be comfortable here. And that doesn't take away from any of my aggression,

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  any of my desire to be successful, any of that other stuff. And that took a long process.

• 1:08:13David Senra?

  The one thing, you did a lot of things to try to like alleviate this and try to figure like the inner world of yourself out.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Brene Brown also, reading that book, you know, about anxiety and fear of exposing yourself and kind of being vulnerable and being able to say what I'm saying.

• 1:08:31David Senra?

  Is this rooted in like insecurity?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33David Senra?

  Completely.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Remember, I came from a family, my father was an immigrant. My mother is the first generation. For my father's side, we're the first generation. Education and that was everything. I wasn't great at it. I couldn't read, right?

• 1:08:53David Senra?

  And you held it, I held on to that for decade after decade. Sometime it never leaves. And this is very common in like the top entrepreneurs. Somebody that's, you know, built over a hundred million dollar company from scratch, deck a billionaire himself, still go to the young. I remember like talking to him one time. And it was kind of obvious what his answer to this question I was about to ask him was. This is in private. And I was like, wait a minute, what's your inner monologue like? And he goes, why do I suck so much? And I was like, there's no, objectively, nobody on the planet thinks you're not talented.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Do you have brothers and sisters?

• 1:09:25David Senra?

  Yeah, I have an older brother and younger sister.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  And where are you in that mix?

• 1:09:28David Senra?

  I'm a middle child.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Okay, so if you've read about this, the oldest child has a point of view on stuff and how they act. The middle child has their point of view. The baby has their point of view. If you're a single child, there's a whole different psychology. And I believe all those things. And we all have those issues to battle through. And I was the baby. My brother, Zeke, my mom, smart one, Ram, who's very smart, the artist, and I was the other one. You know, and so that sits on you.

• 1:10:01David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  You know? And I say it all the time. I just want my mom to love me, you know, for one week more than she loves you guys.

• 1:10:10David Senra?

  Tell me about the use of psychedelics. I think you call it the toad in the book.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Five MEO.

• 1:10:16David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  That's the best psychedelic in the world.

• 1:10:19David Senra?

  Okay, but this is literally the.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  That's the turning point.

• 1:10:21David Senra?

  Okay, so talk about.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  So, a friend, again, guy I met, he had done this psychedelic with this guy in New Mexico. And he explained it to me, you know. And I said, okay. And most of the time when I do my health stuff, and I consider this a health thing, and a emotional thing, which is part of health, I always call my brother Zeke. And I asked him a very simple question. I said, can it kill me? And he said, no. So I said, okay, I'll do it. I'll try it. So I go to New Mexico with Stad, my wife. At the time, we weren't married.

• 1:11:01David Senra?

  What's going on in your life?

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  At this point?

• 1:11:03David Senra?

  Yeah, so you're divorced.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  I'm divorced at this point.

• 1:11:06David Senra?

  You're in a new relationship. Your business is, isn't it, is this COVID? Isn't your business fucked up or no?

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Twenty-two.

• 1:11:12David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Two thousand and twenty-two. And it was, you know, we're kind of coming out of it. Fight Island had already happened with the UFC, and we were just starting to come back a little bit. So with five MEO, which is toad or boof or whatever they call it. You smoke it, you read a poem, which is horrible. You have to read a fucking poem. I'm dyslexic. I'm like, what the fuck? I can't get away from this reading thing. And you have to read it out loud. Jesus. And so you go offline, offline. I don't know how to describe it other than, I got another way to describe it. For 10 minutes, and then you're tripping for about 30 minutes. And you realize how small we are in the world.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  And it's like, how meaningless in a weird way. Not in a bad way that you don't want to work or anything, that you're not aggressive or any of that stuff. You just realize, okay, I understand what it is. And you want a meaningful life and not a just, okay. And that, like, more than Dr. Calm, not in a bad way, just helped me with the ego project. Realizing legacy's bullshit. You just want to be here, be happy, do the best thing you can, and enjoy your life while working really hard and have a purpose. And that just started a process for me, experimenting a little bit. I think I'm calmer now. Not that I'm not, I mean, most people in my office would say that I'm not calm.

• 1:12:41David Senra?

  This is the part I need to understand, though, because Mark Andreessen, who you've mentioned a couple of times, he was on the show.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  He's incredible.

• 1:12:46David Senra?

  But one of the things that he talked about on the show was that he hates that everybody in Silicon Valley is trying to get everybody to use psychedelics because then the founders won't work as hard.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  That's not true. That's completely, that's, that's complete bullshit.

• 1:12:58David Senra?

  Okay, so this is what I didn't understand from the book.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  I have this argument with Mark.

• 1:13:02David Senra?

  Okay.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's all bullshit.

• 1:13:03David Senra?

  Okay, but tell me the difference. Okay, so the difference in your work. As a person, it made you more, maybe more content, more happy?

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I'm not sitting there right now worried about what my legacy will be. It's going to be what it's going to be. There's going to be good parts, there's going to be bad parts, as we talked about pre this tape. Who was the most important businessman, 1953? What company? What's the guy?

• 1:13:33David Senra?

  I named him, and then you're like, okay, you were not supposed to know that. You're the only person in the world that knows that.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Alfred Sloan of GM. No one, no one gives a shit. Right. And he was the god, right? Barely people know who Lou Wasserman was. So, that's okay. Presidents, some entertainment people, some singers, some authors, very few people are going to have, probably people that did bad things, bigger legacies, right? Really? That's what we're, that's what we're doing this for. I'm doing this because I love it. It brings purpose and meaning to me. Great. Nine months ago, a year ago, I created this company with Mark Shapiro and other people. Mari. We're going for it. We have a vision for it.

• 1:14:20David Senra?

  You're not half-assing things because you did DMT.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Zero half-assing things, right? There's still plenty of calls up at 5 o'clock this morning. Work out in the office, do another podcast. I got you. I'm going to Montecito for something. Working my tail off. The last three weeks have been incredible. Until the end of the year, as my wife said to me, she goes, what are you, you know? But I, if I didn't think it was meaningful to me and personally, and I enjoyed it, I wouldn't be doing it. As hard at times as it is.

• 1:14:55David Senra?

  Yeah, I don't think a guy like you can just sit on the beach. I think you'd be miserable.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  I think miserable. I think most people, one, I think this is stupid. They care how high their stack is of money. I never think about it. I have money.

• 1:15:11David Senra?

  Obviously.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  I'm not sitting there.

• 1:15:12David Senra?

  It's ridiculous.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  And I'm not like looking at that person, oh, he's got more. And I'm not, I don't do that.

• 1:15:21David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  I work really hard. It's going to be what it's going to be. I love the puzzle. That's what I love.

• 1:15:27David Senra?

  You have this great thing, a line where you quote Ben Franklin in the book. You're like, I don't think you have any tattoos. And you said, if I had any tattoos, I'd get across my knuckles. There is no little enemy, which is kind of a gangster line in the book, by the way. But that's not even my favorite Ben Franklin quote. My favorite Ben Franklin quote is, I'm going to paraphrase, it's like, like, it's just how you spend your time, because that's what life is made up of. Life is not made up of the money. Life is made up of time. And then what we talked about in the kitchen.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  You know when it's going to be, you know when it's going to be over? It could be over tomorrow.

• 1:15:52David Senra?

  No, you got hit by, you could have died 30 years ago.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55David Senra?

  Like, you know, if that guy was going a little faster, a different party, whatever.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  I just did, I just did this podcast with Kara Swisher. And I love Kara. I completely disagree with her. I love the fight. She's incredible. She was working for Rupert, I think it was. She had a stroke. Flying over in coach, didn't realize it. And that was liberating, as horrible as it was, when she was going to China or Hong Kong for a conference at first. Like, who fucking knew? She didn't know. Like, and something, she fixed it, and she's better, and she's incredible. And she's, I love arguing with her because I completely disagree with her on a lot of things, and I agree with her on some things. Had a stroke. Like, you're 50. Like, who knew?

• 1:16:42David Senra?

  This realization about like, how I want to spend my time, forget legacy, forget trying to have the biggest stack.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49David Senra?

  Forget trying to be, in Steve Jobs' word, the richest man in the cemetery, which makes no sense. This, this, this realization came after decades of therapy. You don't think it would have happened without doing the hallucinogenic.

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:00David Senra?

  And then after the fact, you're calmer internally. You can go back to the Bezos idea where it's like, Ari, you're on the field, you're on the, you need to be on the field, but you need to learn how to get off the field. So you're able to do that then.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11David Senra?

  But your work ethic doesn't go away.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  No, I work constantly. You know, still, on vacation, of course you work, because that whole concept that you're not working, you're working, but you're, you're also enjoying different things. You're, you're doing, I never, when I was growing up and starting the businesses, I never, I thought, I felt so bad when I took any time away from the work.

• 1:17:34David Senra?

  The problem is, you can be so obsessed with your work, which obviously you weren't.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  I'm obsessed.

• 1:17:36David Senra?

  You're scheduling a book. I, I literally thought, I was like, this guy's doing like 3D chess or 4D chess or something. Because when you go, I wake up, I do like 40 minutes of stretching, I do dynamic warmups, I do sauna, red light therapy. It's like this two-hour thing. I go, he's trying to get his competitors to waste two hours in the morning doing this bullshit while he's rolling calls.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  You know, can I tell you something? That whole, that morning routine, that is my drug. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do any of that. It makes me feel so good. And so I can go and be my best. Other people have other things. It kind of like, is the perfect start. One cup of coffee, ready to go.

• 1:18:18David Senra?

  Just one other thing I want to talk to you about. And this is, again, the impact, because you, you rep Mark Wahlberg, right? And then he's like, hey, Ari, I got this idea. Because he had this crew from the East Coast.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  He has this entourage.

• 1:18:31David Senra?

  His entourage.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  And I think, I think Mark came up with it. It was either Mark or his manager, longtime manager, Steve Levinson, who's E, came up. I don't remember which one of them came up with Entourage.

• 1:18:42David Senra?

  But it's the perfect name. And then you wind up selling it, right? And then you kind of forget about it, right?

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and at the time, yeah, before Cameron.

• 1:18:49David Senra?

  But you didn't think, you had, there was no, again, goes back to the fact that you like to say flexible every day because you can't predict a lot of things. You had no idea the cultural impact that was going to have.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  I thought it was going to be completely negative on my career, my life, et cetera. Mark Wahlberg and Steve Levinson, his manager said, you don't realize it. Because the show started getting hot.

• 1:19:08David Senra?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  And he goes, this is going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. And I completely didn't believe him. I thought it was horrible. My wife, my ex-wife, hated it. I would never watch it because it was Mrs. Ari, Sunday night, in bed. I mean, I didn't want to go through any of that. I just started watching it.

• 1:19:26David Senra?

  When?

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  I've gotten through two seasons.

• 1:19:29David Senra?

  Right now?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, right now. It's the first time. He's now just gotten fired or laid off, and he's started a new agency.

• 1:19:40David Senra?

  Okay, hold on. But there's a.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  I'm going to get to that for the rest of the season, the rest of the seasons.

• 1:19:45David Senra?

  I just watched this other, like, short interview you did, and they're like giving you lines of other people. And they're like, did you say it? Who said this line? And you read this, it's like, this sounds like something I said. And then it was actually a line from Ari Gold, but in the book, you said after a while, you couldn't.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  No, it was leading, I was following.

• 1:20:01David Senra?

  Talk about this.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you're sitting there, the show becomes a hit.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  People are saying things to you from the show, which I'm not watching. And you're like, did I say that? Right? And then your character of yourself as a person, you don't know, but it is opening doors. My brother's in the White House and a congressman also before that, a pretty big congressman. And it just kind of like the full kind of volcano happens. And, you know, it was bizarre that, and I think it happened to a bunch of Mark's friends too, that were characters. And it just was a bizarre event that people would come up and say, hug it out bitch. And I was like, what the fuck? You know, and then I would do it, you know?

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  It was great and horrible and funny and you're like, what weird?

• 1:20:56David Senra?

  But it had a material, like a huge financial impact to your business.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Because I could get anybody on the phone and I could, the puzzle pieces got easier because I could talk to anybody I wanted. They all picked up the phone. I could come up with stupid ideas. They would meet me. I didn't know what it was going to end up to, but it kind of helped in business. And it gave me people an impression, good, bad, or indifferent of me, mainly good, of who I was.

• 1:21:22David Senra?

  Podcasts, to some degree, obviously, really everything back to the thing I'm obsessed with, playing a similar role in like, when the guests come on in my show and some other friends.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  They think they know who you are.

• 1:21:31David Senra?

  No, no, no, to them. So obviously I would focus, hyper focus on entrepreneurship. So you're an investor, you're an entrepreneur, you're a founder, you're a CEO, something like that. And they'll come on and then I'll hear from them later on. They're like, every single meeting I go, he's like, there's no such thing as a cold meeting anymore.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:45David Senra?

  He's like, they've all saw this.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  That's a very good way to say it. There was no cold meeting.

• 1:21:49David Senra?

  And they're like, it's crazy impactful. And then in some extreme cases, like there's a guy named Brad Jacobs, who wrote this book called How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. He started eight separate billion dollar companies. Then that book was so successful, I did a book review of it on my other podcast. He wrote another book a year or two later, so called How to Make a Few More Billion. And in that book, he talks about the fact that two people didn't know who he was. I covered his book. He raised $750 million from two people in my audience. And he put it in, it's in writing, it's in his book. He's like, I had, because he had no idea of the impact like podcasts could have. It's just like, well, this guy seems interesting. Let me go investigate what he's working on. There's a bunch of deal makers in the audience. Oh, of course, that's going to lead to it.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:27David Senra?

  But like that idea was like, there's no such thing as a cold meeting anymore.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  For sure. I mean, actually, Jay Arsh says about it, you know, are you sure you want to go here and show all the fucking scabs?

• 1:22:40David Senra?

  The book?

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  In the book, I said, I don't know how to do it any other way. He goes, well, when you walk in a room, people are going to think they know you. And I said, that's fine. I don't mind. I had a little bit with Entourage and they, you know, but I'm okay with that. And now kids come up to me that are now, young kids, still watching Entourage and there's a whole new generation. And the good thing is, hopefully they get out of the book and Entourage, you have agency for yourself, you know, my own version of Art of War, and you go for it. I say this all the time, I never had a plan B. I don't know about you, in my life. It was, it was agency or die.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  And I think now, I'm going to be a social media, no, this is what I'm doing and I'm going for it. And with all the troubles, as you know, it's hard building a business. And that's hopefully what people get out of it.

• 1:23:35David Senra?

  Jeff Bezos has this great line where he's like, plan B should be to make plan A work.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That's a good line.

• 1:23:41David Senra?

  It's great. The book is awesome. Highly recommended. Everybody listening should buy the hardcover, the audible. I'm really glad you wrote the book. I'm glad the freaking we got to hang out. I'm glad we got to meet.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:23:49David Senra?

  This was awesome. Thanks for taking the time.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Thanks, everybody.

• 1:23:52David Senra?

  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 have 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.