#91 with Ben Askren - The UFC Star Turned Crypto Investor

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

• 0:01Shaan Puri?

  What's up everyone, uh, this is a special episode with Ben Askren. If you don't know who Ben Askren is, he is one of the most famous MMA fighters in the world. He was an Olympic wrestler, he was in the UFC, uh, he's got his own podcast, his own, doing a whole bunch of stuff. Launching a course, doing some cool stuff. He's one of the more interesting guys to talk to. He got famous because he was great in kind of his interviews during the UFC. And so me and Sam were big MMA and UFC nerds and we, we love this stuff. So we were, we were pumped, you can probably hear it in our voice during the interview. We were pumped for this one, you know, I, I got up early, I did some research, I, I showered. I, I was, I was excited for this. We've had billionaires on here, but I was way more excited to talk to Ben Askren. And so, hope you guys enjoy, we talked a little bit about dealing with fear.

• 0:46Shaan Puri?

  I mean, these guys, they walk out in their underwear to fight another person who they've been talking trash to for the last two months, with millions of dollars on the line, millions of people watching and a stadium full of people just watching them sort of hand-to-hand combat. So it's a, it's a incredibly intense pressure that very few people get to experience. So we asked Ben about how did he deal with fear? How did he get good at the act of competition? What is he doing post-career? Like what does an athlete do? How do they leverage their brand to build a business afterwards? And then he's also kind of active in the crypto space. So we talked a little bit about cryptocurrencies at the, at the very end. But I hope you guys enjoy this interview. Anytime we just get a cool guest on who is somebody who's, they're kind of world-class at whatever they do, we're gonna jump on that opportunity. So this is no different. Enjoy this episode with Ben Askren.

• 1:39Sam Parr?

  Guys, we have Ben Askren today. If you're a UFC fan, which Sean and I both are, and Abreu is as well, then you absolutely know who he is. But if you're not a fan, I'm gonna give background here. So I, so Ben, Ben, uh, you went to the, you went to the Olympics, right?

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Yep, 2008.

• 1:54Sam Parr?

  So Ben was an Olympic wrestler. Um, he was famous in my home state of Missouri as a wrestler. Even when I was in high school, everyone talked about the Askren family and them being wrestlers. And- He eventually went to a variety of different, I guess you could describe them to non UFC fans, leagues in Asia, championships, I think Bellator as well.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I fought mainly, well, I fought my first three fights in small promotions, then I fought in Bellator for four years, and then I fought in one championship for four years. I retired at the end of my run with one championship, and then I unretired when I got traded to UFC.

• 2:30Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so we came to the UFC about two years ago, and it was a big deal. Ben was on Joe Rogan, and everyone said that this was the guy that wasn't in the UFC, and he was the best guy that wasn't in the UFC, and why the hell isn't he in the UFC? And so he came to the UFC and caused a whole bunch of ruckus, which we'll get into. And he, he's also kind of like a big deal in the crypto space, and he's kind of like a big deal in like stoicism. He's just kind of like a weird, interesting person. And I met Ben about six or something months ago on Twitter. We just became buddies on Twitter, then we started talking. And Ben is thinking about launching a course, and I've just been giving him feedback.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:08Sam Parr?

  We've just been shooting the shit, and we just said, you know, Ben, come on the podcast. So that's kind of how we, how we kind of got to where we are.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so yeah, my, my life has been interesting. I've done a lot of things besides fighting. I have a lot going on right now, podcasting. My brother and I own five wrestling academies. We own a couple of the buildings. So I've got my hand in a wide variety of things. I'm really interested in, you know, social media, content creation, that type of thing. Really, really interests me a lot. And obviously, you know, I got interested in business land. I took zero business classes, but obviously when I decided to start a business in 2011 with AWA, I got more interested, and now it's became like a fascination to me. And you know, actually, I tell my wife, so when I was younger, I would literally work out like every single day. And if I went on vacation and I didn't have my workout, I'd start getting a little nutty. And she'd be like, bro, you need to go work out, like, you know, leave, go do something.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  And now it's, it's kind of the opposite. I have like this obsession over business and finance, because I, and I feel like I've... You know, 12 years, 15 years late to the party because I didn't do any of it in college. And so I feel like now I'm just trying to rapidly absorb as much as I can to understand more and more about business, finance, how and the ways the world really works.

• 4:18Shaan Puri?

  So if you were like black belt level, I know there's not black belt in wrestling, but if you were like black belt level at wrestling, which is essentially you're an Olympic wrestler, you kind of invented your own brand of wrestling, really.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:27Shaan Puri?

  You had mastery in that. Now with, you know, your post UFC career, I think you retired, was it just a year ago? Like it's not.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, last November. So yeah, less than a year.

• 4:36Shaan Puri?

  Less than a year. Where do you say you're at on the business side of things?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Well, so we, we started our business 2011, my brother and I did with our high school wrestling coach. At that point in time, I wasn't even, I didn't even have the intention of working there. I was actually living in Arizona when we decided to open the first one. There is a good MMA gym here called Rupus Sport. And so I decided to move back in the summer of 2011. So that was like three or four months after the gym opened. And you know what? It's just fun. It's fun to be there. I love coaching wrestling. I love working with the kids. And then on top of that, the business side, business side started being fun for me also. So we opened up gym number two in 2013 and gym number three in 2017. And then we just, obviously this spring has been ruled by coronavirus, but we've essentially opened up gym four and gym five.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  This spring, gym five is coming to come online in like a month or two, but you know, it's, it's getting there. It's been slowed down by Corona. So yeah, so the business side has been fun. And then obviously I've, I've kind of ventured into other aspects of business also. So, um, I don't know, we'll say purple belt, maybe, maybe blue belt, purple belt. I think, I think I'm learning.

• 5:43Shaan Puri?

  You're like a really good blue belt. It's just, you gotta put in that time to get to purple.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 5:48Shaan Puri?

  When you went into the UFC, now this is not a knock on you, but I would say you were probably the least athletic, great MMA fighter. Would you, would you agree with that?

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, I mean, for, for elite level wrestling. Or elite level mixed martial arts. For your traditional athletic abilities, you know, strength, speed, et cetera, et cetera. I think I would score very, very low compared to most of my peers. I do think I have some, one, some things that are kind of a little harder to see. You know, one of them that a lot of people don't talk about is proprioception, like understanding where your body is in space. And wrestling specifically, I think that is huge. And whether I came out of the womb like that, or whether I learned that from being on the mat just for many, many, many hours. That's one thing, but that's something. And then I have this really weird like isometric strength. And again, I think that's probably been developed through wrestling, but I can squeeze.

• 6:37Shaan Puri?

  What is isometric? That's like grip strength?

• 6:39Speaker 02

  Like squeezing, holding, yes.

• 6:41Shaan Puri?

  I've seen a video of you, and I don't know if this was like, if it was a doctor, I don't know if this is a viral video, but there's a video of you on the internet. It's, if you haven't seen this, you probably haven't, but go look it up if you're listening to this. Ben Askren, YouTube watermelons and just, he's squeezing a watermelon, like not with any like big buildup. You're just holding it and you start to squeeze and then you just crush two watermelons.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:03Shaan Puri?

  Uh, simultaneously, which is kind of insane.

• 7:05Sam Parr?

  And Ben.

• 7:06Shaan Puri?

  Most people can't do that. Most, even, even most MMA wrestlers couldn't do that, correct?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  They could, they could, no. I actually saw, so what, there was a really good wrestler. I mean, we're talking multi, I think he's a three time national champion and he did one. And I think it was like 4th of July or somewhere around there. And so I saw him do one and I said, F that, I'm, I'm gonna go buy two, I'm gonna do two. And I did two and you know, I thought, obviously I had the social media following. So you know, my, my video went, went quite viral. Uh, but yeah, I've done it a few other times since then when people have challenged me to back it up. Cause they, you know, they thought I was lying or being fraudulent. So they'll bring a watermelon, they'll squeeze it and I've, I've popped it a few more times.

• 7:41Sam Parr?

  And just to give the listener even more perspective, Ben, you like, I, I, in the, in Sean, the world that Sean and I, in the UFC world, you're a huge deal. So how can I give perspective to the, um, to the listeners? So you have what, maybe 2 million social followers?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  I know, man, you're way overrating me. I have, I'm at, I'm at 325 on Twitter and I'm like a little over 600 on Instagram, so. Yeah, okay, so a million, that's fair. So I, but my, my, my Twitter following is fairly, fairly rabid. I get quite a bit of interaction. I have a lot of fun. I love the Twitter medium. I don't really love Facebook or Instagram, or I don't do Snapchat at all. But I love like the wittiness. And you know that one thing I love about Twitter is egalitarian. Anyone can speak, anyone can get in a conversation. And for what it's worth, I think you can find out whether people are full of shit and whether they're smart, pretty damn quickly.

• 8:36Shaan Puri?

  Right. Yeah, it's better, better background check than anything else. Just go scroll through the timeline. And you know, I'm glad you're on the pod because there's a lot of great, like, let's say athletes, or especially UFC fighters that me and Sam would be big fans of. But I wouldn't necessarily want on the podcast, like, okay, I'd want Dana on, I'd want probably Conor McGregor on. But that's a short list. You're, you're right there with it. It's like, cool, Nate Diaz is a great fighter, would not make for a great podcast. And so.

• 9:01Sam Parr?

  Well, we had, and we had Lance Armstrong on, and that, he's not a fighter.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  How'd he do?

• 9:06Sam Parr?

  Well, he's amazing. Yeah, he's wonderful. He's.

• 9:10Shaan Puri?

  He was very real. And I think for somebody like that, you know, we're gonna talk a little bit about kind of your, one of the most infamous moments for you. But like, for Lance, he obviously has, you know, very polarizing personality. And I don't know if it's just because it's been many years, but he just sat down and just shot the shit with no filter. And people loved it. And I loved it because, and I don't know if he just is tired of giving a fuck. And he's like, okay, I don't need to like, PR this anymore. It's been 10 years or whatever. But, but, you know, that was really great. But I'm glad you're here because you can tell us about kind of like two different worlds, right? So there's the like, how to be a great athlete world, there's the business world. But there's another world, which is about a year ago today, and you know, sorry for bringing it up.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's all good. I did my Hellwate interview about it this morning.

• 9:53Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, so, so I'll just put out a tweet, I'll, I'll read your tweet about it, which was, imagine the most embarrassing moment of your life getting replayed incessantly on Twitter. So for those who don't know, about a year ago, you had a big fight. I was actually in the arena in Vegas, and. You were fighting this guy, you guys had talked a bunch of shit to each other.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:11Shaan Puri?

  And it was a huge buildup and then the fight starts and he sprints at you. You do what you do best, which is you go for a wrestling takedown. He does this crazy flying knee, knocks you out in five seconds and it looked horrible. It looked awful.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  I was like in tears when it happened. I was like, oh my god.

• 10:28Shaan Puri?

  Sam was like crying. I was just in shock.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  I was devastated.

• 10:32Shaan Puri?

  I was in the arena. And so then, of course, because you were a high-profile guy and because you talked a lot of shit beforehand, you know, Twitter tried to give it back to you. So tell, tell me about like...

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And then I, and then I gave it back to Twitter. I, I own those trolls.

• 10:46Shaan Puri?

  And you did. So, okay, so if you were gonna write, you had a very unique experience, right?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:51Shaan Puri?

  If you were gonna sort of write the book or give the playbook on dealing with, you know, your worst nightmare, your public, public humiliation, dealing with it, what are the, what are the different steps or different stages that you went through?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, so funny enough, so Sam, we talked about Sam encouraging me to do a course, my course that is coming out and I taped it, but last Monday. So we're, we're doing a new website for me and then we are the editing stage of the videos. But I, I've had this passion, interest in, in sports psychology for, for many years. And I always thought I would write a book and so it's gonna come in video format, which is probably I think more 2020 than, than writing a book.

• 11:27Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  And I suck at writing, so it's gonna be much easier. You know, we, and I talk a lot about that failure. But you know, we can kind of circle back to Lance and, and this is, I actually said this, I was really talking to Ariel about this this morning. I think it's one of the reasons that George is getting over so well. It's authenticity is highly valued and in 2020 where everything's on social media, man, it's pretty easy to figure out really quick if someone's being authentic or if they're being a fraud. And you know, Marty, the other guy who's fighting for the title at welterweight, I, I think, you know, I knew him before he was kind of a, a big deal.

• 12:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  And that person and the person that are, you know, who he is now is just, it's just not, not the same thing at all. And so I think with Lance, you know, he probably had all those years built up of having to kind of be inauthentic and, and you could tell he's just like a dude that just wants to act normal. And I think like, you know, obviously you watched a doc on ESPN 30 for 30. It's like that authenticity is just coming out and people appreciate it and... I really thought, I love the doc, I thought he did a great job of saying, listen, I effed up, I was bad to this person, I was bad to that person, and it just felt like he was just saying it like it was, and people, people love that, and so, you know, that, that's for me, is just like, just be authentic, and a, and one of the biggest things I talk about in, uh, in the course coming up is that,

• 12:43Speaker 02

  you, you don't want to tell your ego to the outcome, i- i- when that is the case, um, it lea- it leads to a whole bunch of bad things, but tha- and that's, my ego wasn't tied to the outcome, whether I get knocked down five seconds, or whether I win, and then I fight for the title next, I'm, I'm the same dude, uh, as, as before that five seconds.

• 12:59Sam Parr?

  And how many, um, MMA fights have you had?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  I had tw- so I, I'm retired, obviously, I had 21, 19 wins, 2 losses.

• 13:07Sam Parr?

  What was the most amount of live people at one of your fights? And what was the most amount of viewers, or, and is there any numbers?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:14Sam Parr?

  People watched that? Your second to last fight?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Well, that went on- A hu- a hundred billion?

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, so that, that, that is probably watch, uh, I mean, a hundred billion is probably a low estimate of how many times that F and D-

• 13:28Sam Parr?

  Like impressions, yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Impressions, yeah. So I would say, you know, One Championship did a great job of selling out arenas. So Bellator, my, my last fight in Bellator, they were starting to do larger arenas, it was in Mexico, I think it was 6,000 seats, it was sold out. Um, One Championship, every fight I fought in at One Championship was sold out, and then obviously UFC has, has great crowds as well, so, you know, my last 10, 11 fights were fought in front of sold out arenas.

• 13:52Sam Parr?

  So 10 to 20,000 maybe, and then-

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:55Sam Parr?

  Um, and the hundreds of thousands for pay-per-views, uh-

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:59Sam Parr?

  And then if you add in illegal streamers-

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:02Sam Parr?

  -on, uh, then we're talking, uh, a lot more than that, and so-

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yes, a lot more.

• 14:06Sam Parr?

  So millions of views, um-

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:09Sam Parr?

  And when we talk about business a lot, I, we always say, or I always say that launching and building shit- Intellectually, it's not that hard, but emotionally, it's quite challenging to overcome like fear. And I remember the hustle, we launched this ideation bootcamp and I was texting, I think you the day before, I was like, oh my God, I'm so fucking afraid, like I'm so nervous about this. And sometimes I think like, I'm like, well, Lewis and Clark just traveled the country where they didn't even know where they were going for three years and they did it.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  No idea.

• 14:39Sam Parr?

  Like launching this course, it's not a big deal. And, and then other times I'm like Ben or all these other guys like go and, and fight to the death potentially in front of millions of, like millions of people.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  In your underwear.

• 14:51Sam Parr?

  In your underwear. And I'm like, I can launch this stupid freaking thing. Like I'm sitting at my desk and I like complain about my back hurts because I get to sit down all the time. What's that feel like when you are preparing for something? And what's it feel like, like when I was, I ran track and field in college, I remember like 30 minutes before a race, when you're just sitting down after you warmed up, you're like, oh, I don't want to fucking do this. God, this sucks. What am I doing? I'm quitting. This is my last time. What like, what, what's that like 30 minutes? In the backstage when you're just waiting?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, I, I've been, I guess, like, I was fighting, but wrestling, you know, with the Wisconsin high school state tournament is 15,000 fans sold out. So I mean, I was doing that as a 14 year old. The NCAA tournament, which I made the finals all four years in, that's 20,000 fans sold out every, every single year. And so, you know, I don't want to say it's normal to me, but it, but it kind of is at the same time. I'm doing it for all of my adult life. And, you know, I, I guess I talk about this in the course too, but fi- finding what works best for you. And for me, I'm an over thinker and I learned that at a really early age and I had a coach that was, you know, kind of gave me some insight into that because he, he was a similar way.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  And that, that's the biggest thing that helped me is, is I, I find my zone. I, I take my mind off of, uh, you know, whatever task is, is ahead because you know that. That 30 minutes to an hour that nothing's gonna happen. You're not gonna make anything better or worse. You're not gonna figure out something magical thing in that, in that period of time. So for me, it's just about staying relaxed and enjoying the moment and getting, getting ready to compete as hard as I can compete.

• 16:26Shaan Puri?

  So practically, how do you do that? Like, what did you, did you listen to music? Did you watch a TV show? Did you just sleep? What, what did you try to do in the back before the fights?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  I always have, I always have people I enjoy with me in my corners. I mean, I tell kids this because I'm like, listen dude, I put my money where my mouth is. I'm not just telling you this and I'm trying to say some fluff bullshit. Like, I fought, what, nine times in Asia? Eight times? I don't know, a bunch of times in Asia. I would fly someone there that was just my buddy to just bullshit with me in the locker room because I value my mental preparation so much. It's like, I'm not just telling you like, this is what you should do. Like, I spent my money, I put my money where my mouth is to fly someone to Asia who was just my buddy, who wasn't necessarily there as a coach, but that would just, you know, get me in the right frame of mind to compete.

• 17:10Sam Parr?

  Your hype, man. Your flavor, Flav. Did you, was there an element of fear? I mean, like, you're retired, you don't have to be that tough anymore.

• 17:20Shaan Puri?

  You don't have to be tough anymore.

• 17:21Sam Parr?

  What, what, was it like a, like, I don't want to fuck be here. I don't want to do, because like, I, I listen to other fighters and, and Hale and Donald and they're like, I'm gonna, like, they throw up ahead of time. They're so fearful.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  I don't know. I've never had those feelings. I, you know, when I listen to people talk like that, I actually think like, I can't really relate to you right now. Like, I, I'm telling you guys, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not retired, I'm trying to be a tough guy. I genuinely enjoyed it. I, I really did. I mean, like, you know, people say, what do you miss? It's like, there's a lot of shit I don't miss. Like, I don't miss training. But if I could, like, relive that preparation and walk into the cage, like, or, you know, or walking to the NCAA finals, Matt, some big moments like that, like, dude, that's feelings that you, you only get a few times in life, you know? Like, if I could wake up and every morning when I went down to my podcast in the morning, there was fucking 20,000 people cheering, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna get it. You know, it'd be,

• 18:17Speaker 02

  it would be exciting. So for me, I always felt that way about it. Like, I always felt really positively. I always enjoyed that. I never had those negative feelings. And I, you know what? I, I guess I could probably have a deep conversation, you know, sports psychology wise, I don't know.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  I don't know necessarily what they were fearing, what, you know, was it fear of being injured? Was it fear of failure? Like, what was the fear of that was causing those?

• 18:44Sam Parr?

  Well, I think it goes, I think that we all have.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Fear of failure.

• 18:47Sam Parr?

  Yeah, the same thing. It's more failure and then secondary in your sport is getting hurt. I mean, I mean, I think it's a fear of, I remember when I, this is a smaller scale, when I used to race in university for track and field, I was like, I have just set my hopes and dreams on this outcome. And if I don't break this time, I am going to be so disappointed in myself.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:12Sam Parr?

  Same thing with business. It's like, I want to, I want to be great. I want to be rich. I want to prove to everyone I have what it takes. And it's like, if this doesn't work, I'm fucked.

• 19:21Shaan Puri?

  And did you have like rituals that you did beforehand? So you had your buddy come shoot the shit?

• 19:26Speaker 02

  I think rituals are bad. I think they're, I think they're very counterproductive. Because they don't really provide a purpose. The one purpose they would somehow provide is to get yourself mentally prepared to do whatever it is that you need to do.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  But then what if it doesn't happen, right? What if you saw it needs you to come pee? What if something, you know, what if there's some way that you can't, whatever your ritual is, whether there's some way that you can't execute it? Does that mean you can't actually compete? And the answer is no, that's dumb. Obviously you can go compete, but some people build those rituals up or those good luck charms up so much that it actually hurts them when they're going, yeah. And so it's like, you know, generally speaking, I know, I know where I want to be mentally. Like, so it's like, I want to have, you know, someone that I'm just going to shoot the shit with. But having like a very specific ritual or a pair of socks or, you know, something like that, or a specific song or something, I just think, I think those things are dangerous.

• 20:17Shaan Puri?

  It becomes a weakness.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  It becomes a weakness. Yeah, it's a vulnerability for sure.

• 20:21Shaan Puri?

  Connor has this phrase, he says superstition is a code word for fear. I had never heard anybody knocking superstitions. You're the second person I've ever heard sort of knocking those for that same reason. He also did something that I don't know if you've ever done. It sounds like you didn't really put too much practice into this, but I know before the fight with Floyd. They did several like simulation days where they would simulate fight day like at the same time we're gonna arrive at the arena, your hands wrapped, sit in the back, do nothing, come out, there's a ref who you don't know, and there's an opponent on the other side that you don't like. And they tried to simulate the feelings of that. I found that very interesting because, you know, if I'm gonna give a big pitch to an investor, I'm gonna go try to raise fifteen million dollars. These are things you don't get a lot of reps at, so

• 21:04Shaan Puri?

  you kind of have to fake those reps as best as you can and under pressure, because if you just do the pitch in your head, looking at your slide deck while you're sitting in your boxers in your bedroom, it's not the same as like as that. So, did you ever try to mimic competition in that way?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  No, I, I, I didn't, but that doesn't have value. And so we'll go with that as a, I do thi- so I think competing is a skill, competing in and of itself, right? So wrestling is a skill, fighting is a skill, but competing is a skill, right?

• 21:31Shaan Puri?

  A separate skill, okay.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  It's a separate skill in and of itself. What do you want to call it, competing or performing? Kind of, you know, same genre. It's a skill. And so it's like, you know, finding out that I compete best when relaxed. Like, that's the important thing to find out about yourself. Now, one of the things, you know, wrestlers are the most successful people in mixed martial arts, without a shadow of a doubt. And, you know, part of that, I think, is obviously the technical part where we can control where the fight happens. But the other thing is that most wrestlers, by the time they get out of college, from their childhood up, they'll probably have a thousand plus matches. And like I said, I, I was wrestling in front of fifteen thousand people at the Cole Center in Madison when I was in high school. I was competing as twenty thousand people, or in front of twenty thousand people at the NCAA tournament every single year. Like, I got those big

• 22:14Speaker 02

  moments. I got a lot of them, right? And so before I ever fought, before I ever stepped in the cage, I had, I had thousands of competitions, and I had, we'll say, hundreds of very big matches. And so-

• 22:26Shaan Puri?

  Where boxing, a box- someone with a boxing base is not gonna have anywhere near that volume of-

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Or MMA, yeah. MMA, no. Jiu-Jitsu, no. Taekwondo, you know, all those, no, you're just not going to, you're not gonna get that volume. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you're totally right. It's like, you need to figure out how you compete or how you perform well, you know, you know, like a speech. Yeah, you need to put yourself in as many of those high-pressure moments. And one thing I would, I would do, I still, I still do sometimes- But I would think I'm actually relatively good at it now. When I want to start becoming a better speaker, when I started podcasting, and I tell people to do this all the time. Do Instagram lives, do Facebook lives. Why? Because listen, you have to figure out, you're gonna F up and you just gotta keep on rolling. You can't say, "No, cut it, cut it." No, you just gotta keep going, right?

• 23:11Speaker 02

  So you have to figure out a deal with, and then also there's all the idiots on the thing saying like,

• 23:17Sam Parr?

  "Hey Ben, you suck," you know, heckling you. So you have to deal, you have to process all of that while you're going live.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  And I think it's a really, really good tactic for people to learn how to speak just kind of on the spot and roll with things.

• 23:31Sam Parr?

  How have you translated that? So, like I said, I messaged you before we were launching something. I was like, "Oh, fuck. This is scary." How, and this is my world, right? Building businesses, how has this, those reps of wrestling and fighting translated into your ability to deal with this stuff? For launching businesses, so you have five, you have five gyms, you're a real estate guy, now you're launching digital stuff. How has that fear or that ability to handle that translated into business?

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so again, I think, now this is gonna be like one of my psychology slash sports psychology thoughts. I think being so, I said, you know, wrestling is a skill. I think competition slash performance, that's a skill in itself. The other thing that I think is a skill is being successful, like literally understanding how to be good at something. I think that is a skill. And, you know, I always joke with my kids about like, "What do you think? I just teach you a single leg and you're good at one time?" You know, like you have to do it many, many, many times. And so, you know, there's all these tactics that go into being successful at something. And so like when you start wrestling, like I know I'm gonna have to put a lot of time in, period.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  There's, I'm not gonna go be good at real estate or content creation without putting time in. I will have to in fact, put time in, right? I will have to overcome adversity. I will have to be creative at points in time, right? There's all these things that are falling place to me being successful. I think you can use a blueprint, essentially a blueprint, and kind of cross it over. Now, are there certain tactics that you might take in different businesses? Sure, but I think it's roughly the same from one field to another. Being successful is a skill.

• 25:15Sam Parr?

  Sean, have you read the book Mastery by Robert Greene?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 25:19Sam Parr?

  Have you been?

• 25:20Speaker 02

  No, but I read, I love Forty Eight Laws of Power. That was, I believe I read that on your recommendation.

• 25:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  It was outstanding.

• 25:27Sam Parr?

  This guy, his name's Robert Greene. He's almost a historian slash philosopher, more so than author. And he's got this wonderful book that changed my life. It's called Mastery. He wrote Forty Eight Laws of Power, which is like a modern version of Art of War. And he has this book called Mastery, and it changed my life. And it was just about that same thing of like, you have to get reps in, and you have to master a skill set. Because if you master a skill set, you're not mastering that skill set. You're mastering being great.

• 25:56Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. There's a, there's a great little story. It's a little bit long, but bear with me. It's good. So, so, average person, here's what the average person does. Average person gets excited about racquetball. And this is stolen from, from Tony Robbins' thing, but it's good. I remember it five years later because it was that good. So, average person decides they're gonna play racquetball, go to the gym, check out the, the equipment, they start playing. This is a blast. They're smashing the ball against the wall, having a great time. They go home. They're like, oh my God, I love racquetball. They start telling their friends how they, they play racquetball. They go online, they order all the gear, because you know, if you're gonna do something, you better order all, all the best gear right away. And they go back the next day and they start doing it. But they start playing against somebody who actually knows how to play racquetball.

• 26:36Shaan Puri?

  And all of a sudden, they're not smashing the ball against the wall anymore. This person's placing the ball in spots that they can't hit sometimes. And this person starts getting frustrated. And so, a week goes by, two weeks go, go by, and they're just getting, they're not, they're not beating this person. And so, they're like, you know what? Racquetball, this is a stupid fucking sport. Like, why my box? You know, why do I have to wear these goggles? This racket is small. It's like a children's racket. I'm gonna go play a real man's sport. I'm gonna go play tennis. I'm gonna get out of this box. So, they go to tennis. Same pattern happens. First week is awesome. They're having a blast. They order all the gear. They look like Roger Federer. They start playing with somebody who knows how to play tennis. And all of a sudden, you know, they're sweating, they're sliding, they're hitting into the net. They can't get over it. And then they're like, you know what? This is a stupid sport.

• 27:17Shaan Puri?

  Why am I out here, you know, you know, in, in the sun, baking around this thing? And the stupid net is in my way. I need a free range sport. And they go to play golf. And the first day they play golf. They just say fuck. Golf doesn't even give you that that initial sense. And he talks about, he's like, there's three people in this world. There's a dabbler. And a dabbler is going to do exactly that. They're just going to go into each thing and they're going to get 20% of the way in. And then they're going to give up when they hit adversity. And then there's the achiever grinder. And this is where a lot of people land, which is they're used to being successful. And so they just try to grit their teeth and grind through everything and they try to get through the pain at all times. And they sort of become a kind of masochistic about the pain and they're stressed the whole time.

• 28:01Shaan Puri?

  So he actually calls it a stressor achiever. And so they're stressed the whole time. They don't enjoy it. And that's where most people, even successful people land, but they have no fulfillment, but they do have success. And then the last group, which are the masters, the masters enjoy it. They know this is going to take a long time, which is what you said, Ben. They know that there's this initial hype curve and then the plateaus will come. They always come. And when the plateau comes, they are not surprised. They're not offended. They meet the plateau like an old friend and they're like, ah, it's you. I expected to see you soon. Here you are. Okay. Now I know how to deal with plateaus. And one of the big things is like dealing with plateaus. So like for our podcast, we've grown this thing into millions of downloads in one year, but now it's plateaued actually.

• 28:43Shaan Puri?

  And we have to figure out, we can't be surprised or upset. We got to figure out how to deal with those plateaus. So has that applied to you in your life about dealing with those plateaus?

• 28:54Speaker 02

  I think, I think the success is always like a step function, right? It's not like everyone wants it to be like this. They do one thing here and they get one thing here, one thing here. You know what? It's a regular slope line, but it's more like you do a whole bunch of work and you get nothing. And then all of a sudden, when they boom, you're up here. You do a whole bunch of work, you do nothing, boom, then you're all sudden you're up here. But you know, kind of what year, I've never heard someone term it the way you termed it. But it actually really made me think a lot about my, uh, sales pitch, my failure course. And I said, when you meet failure, there's really three things that you can do. And I talked deeply about all of them. Number one is dig in, right? So you dig in and you work harder. And then like you said, that is the option that most people choose

• 29:38Speaker 02

  because it's relatively easy. You know, it's not very hard.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Number two, you could pivot and you could quit and do something else, which is what you talked about in the first part. Yeah. At Dabbler, right? And, and, and so what's up, but sometimes it is good to pivot, right? Um, you know, talk about, I, I actually bring up the Netflix blockbuster story in my thing and like Netflix pivoted to, uh, digital streaming at the perfect time. Not too late, not too early, just at the right time. And then the third thing you, you could do is innovate. Um, and you know, innovate and pivot can kind of be confused, like there's some gray area there, but for me, innovation, it doesn't mean creating something new, which, you know, I did in wrestling, right? So innovation could mean creating something new, but it could also just mean doing something new for you. Right?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  And so like I, I bring up a couple of stories in, in the, in the course and that's like, okay, one of the times I had to create some new, new shit, right? And I, and I did, right? Uh, but another time it was just like, there was just this one really basic skill that I wasn't doing. And I was just missing it. And so for me, innovating was bringing that basic skill and figuring out how to do it really, really well. Innovating who I was as a wrestler. And so, yeah, I think that's kind of like the three tactics you can take when you see failure. And you know, obviously if you're going to be good at something, there's going to be kind of a combination of all three. Sometimes you're going to do one, sometimes you do the other, sometimes you do the third one. Right. You know, obviously pivoting can't happen too frequently or you, you never get anywhere.

• 31:06Sam Parr?

  So to get to the, the business stuff, you, uh, you told me your goal was to be like Tony Robbins, but for this, uh, niche, like your sports.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:17Sam Parr?

  And Tony Robbins.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  I don't know if I, I don't know if I said that was my goal. I, I don't remember how I, I don't remember how I said it. He might have put words in my mouth.

• 31:24Sam Parr?

  Don't take it verbatim.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Verbatim, sure.

• 31:25Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Tony Robbins is this freaking savage.

• 31:28Sam Parr?

  So Tony Robbins, I think, I bet you that cumulatively his business or in sum, I bet you his businesses probably do two or $300 million a year in sales. Do you think so, Sean?

• 31:39Shaan Puri?

  He says at the events that he, his businesses do over 500 million in sales. I, I don't personally believe that.

• 31:45Sam Parr?

  Maybe that's like some enterprise value.

• 31:48Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, exactly. But like, uh, clearly his, his core thing, which is like the workshops and then his either books or audio tapes back in the day. Um, those have clearly grossed over a hundred million dollars. No, no doubt. And he's the most, he's the Michael Jordan of that field of self-improvement.

• 32:05Sam Parr?

  So Ben, what, uh, what, what, first of all,

• 32:09Speaker 02

  Okay, can I clarify my statement? Statement, Sean.

• 32:12Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Uh, Sam, or what I think I, what I think I said. Um, I mean, you see, we were talking about, you know, uh, getting into this and, uh, you know, me doing this course, which is, you know, I don't want to say you pushed me, but you pushed me in a good way. Like, I need, I needed the kick in the ass to go do it. And I, you know, I've been, I, I first, I almost, I, well, I did. I wrote a book with a PhD in sports psych in 2007. It just wasn't very good. So, right, this is kind of a long time coming. I always thought I was gonna get into this. And I, I have all these thoughts on, you know, success and sports psych and kind of how they tie together. And I always want to do something in this field. And I just hadn't gotten there yet. And I think I have a lot of ideas that could help people. So, yes, you gave me the kick in the butt. And I think, I think you said something like, you know, where, where would you take this?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Or what are you gonna do? And it's like, well, I'm not sure. But, but, you know, like, if I want to do something, I want to be the best at it. If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna try to be the best, just like everything else I've, I've done in my life, you know? I tried to be the best wrestler. I got pretty far. I tried to be the best MMA fighter. I got pretty far. You know, I'm trying to have the best wrestling academy system in, in America. We're probably not all that far off being number one yet, you know, right now. So, it's like, when I attack something, I, I attack it all the way in. And I want to be the best. And, uh, you know, for, I don't know what you call it, the life coaching, performance coaching, like, Tony Robbins, he is freaking outstanding. So, I, that's kind of like what I think I was thinking, Sam.

• 33:32Sam Parr?

  Yes. It was, I, it was an oversimplified thing.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  [laughing]

• 33:36Sam Parr?

  And so, I, I want to ask you, like, what interests you right now in the space? But before that, even that, I want to set the stage, which is, as a, an MMA guy, like, is that a good living?

• 33:48Speaker 02

  No, for me, it was. For, for most people, no. I mean, right, I, I got lucky. I won 19 fights. I don't want to say I got lucky. Um, I was good. And I, you know, sure, some breaks came my way. And I, I was 19. I didn't lose for 10 years, right? And so, I, and, and people enjoyed my personality. So, I got to end up making quite a bit of money. And there's a handful of people who make quite a bit of money. But you see someone like Mike Perry, who is, he, he's not a nobody. He's a pretty damn good fighter. He's a fairly big name. And this man's got zero dollars to his name and owes the government a whole bunch of money. Right.

• 34:18Sam Parr?

  Well, like a guy like you, so let's say you're in the top 1%, well, you are in the top 1%, I don't know how many, maybe dozens or a dozen people at your level. Can guys in UFC like you, can you net pre-tax a million dollars a year, seven figures a year?

• 34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are, there are some that can do that. And there's not a, not a, the number's not big. I, well, you know, if I'm guessing, 20, may, maybe, I, that's, that is a guess off the top of my head. And obviously you can only, you know, can only compete for so long and it does take you a while to build up. And usually, you know, it's kind of like a step function. Like you said, like, once you get to a certain level, they're not, probably not going to drop you back down. Even like, uh, you know, it was gross, but Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, when they fought this year, I think they made $400,000 or something, even though they're both old and terrible now. And that was, it was a shame to watch them still fighting. But, you know, uh, one, one of the things, uh, again, I'm going to go back to my course and talk about failures. Like, listen, you're only going to fight for so long. And one of the things I rage on these

• 35:20Speaker 02

  fighters, they have this like burn the boat mentality. It's like, listen, you dumb asses, if you get to 35 and you want to retire and you have nothing to do, literally you have no other skills, you have nothing built up. Dude, you're going to end up back in the cage. You're going to run out of money. You're going to get used to a certain standard of living. You're also going to have almost zero income and you're going to end up back in the cage. So that pivot move, when you decide to retire fighting, you have to pivot into something. You can't pivot into nothing, right? You have to at some point decide, hey, I'm done with this. I'm going to do something else. You know, the guy I bring up that's on the, on the bad side is BJ Penn. I loved BJ Penn. He's one of my best fighters. See, I'm, he went 1 and 9, uh, 1 and 8 in his last 9. And Dana literally said, bro, I'm not giving you another fight. Right?

• 36:04Sam Parr?

  So a guy like, well, let's use you for example. I mean, were you able to earn enough from fighting that you're like, uh, I'm set for life?

• 36:12Speaker 02

  No, heck, no, God, no.

• 36:14Sam Parr?

  Okay, it was more so like-

• 36:15Speaker 02

  I'd be set for like 2 years or a year maybe.

• 36:18Sam Parr?

  No shit? Only 2 years, you think?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  If I earn no other money whatsoever when I'm done?

• 36:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, a couple of years. I mean, but you know, let's say, I, I don't live ostentatiously, but I don't, I don't live like a peasant either, you know? I've, uh, I live in a nice house, but I, you know, I don't say buy like designer clothes, right? I would say I have, uh, I live at a fairly high standard. I mean, if I, if I wanted to buy like an RV and live out of RV, then- Yeah, maybe I probably would have been separate life that way.

• 36:48Shaan Puri?

  Negotiating with the UFC seems damn near impossible because fighters have pretty much no leverage. So to give people a sense, because most people are like, I thought athletes are rich. It's like, yeah, if you're in the NBA or the NFL even, sure, you.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  But hold on, guys, hold on. Like 60% of those guys go bankrupt.

• 37:05Shaan Puri?

  Well, they go bankrupt afterwards. We're talking about Mike Perry who's active not making any money, right?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  He spent it all. He made it. He just spent it all.

• 37:13Shaan Puri?

  I guess the thing is like, you know, the like the top level, the top level fighters, like, you know, the John Jones and the Connors. They'll make in the millions and then the the sort of the middle class is way lower than the middle class of any other league. And the reason why it's like structural, right? So first, UFC fighters are independent contractors. They're not, they're not employees or guaranteed, they have no guaranteed deals. They only get paid if they fight and you can get hurt. The UFC can offer you shitty fights that you want to turn down and they'll say, hey, no problem. Great. I offered you my fight. I did my contractual obligation.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  You don't want to turn up fights.

• 37:45Shaan Puri?

  You can't leave and go to another like league in most cases because they've signed you these like seven, seven fight deals. You got to finish your deal in order to to leave. So you have basically no leverage against the UFC unless you're such a big name that you draw pay per views, which I think you built yourself into, right? You did the smart thing.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  I never got pay per view points ever.

• 38:05Shaan Puri?

  But but you had some leverage with UFC because you were at least famous. People wanted to watch you fight.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:10Shaan Puri?

  And so even if you didn't get the points, whatever deal you did negotiate was better than like the even the average.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true.

• 38:16Shaan Puri?

  19 and O fighter, whatever that means, like even the average great fighter won't make the type of money you made because you built a personal brand.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true.

• 38:24Shaan Puri?

  And was that intentional or that just what happened?

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I always figured, hey, if I'm, if I'm going to do this, I might as well make some money doing it. But, you know, Mike Perry would be, and so so obviously the reason that bottom of the barrel is like. To be a pro MMA fighter, both you guys could do it. Here's the deal. All you gotta do is be willing to get paid to get your ass kicked, right? And so we're talking the bottom of the barrel, the baseline salary in UFC is 10 and 10. If you get in the UFC, you get 10,000 to show up, you get 10,000 to win. Now, that is not including anything, right? You pay your insurance, you pay your coaches, you pay your manager, you pay everything else out of that, right? And so you did it. And so then you get a 2 and 2 bump. That's a standard base UFC contract. So if you want all three of your fights your first year in UFC, you go 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 14 and 14. So you would make cumulatively $72,000, the

• 39:10Speaker 02

  forepaying, insurance, housing, you know, food, coaches. Training costs. Yeah, all of that stuff, which is, and taxes, which some of these guys, some of them forget about taxes. So you would, yeah, you would do all of, you'd do all those things, you know? And so, like, that's not a good living. Think about that. I mean, well, just taxes alone in some states are only 50% of that 72,000. And then you talk about, you know, all the other stuff. I mean, we're talking that guy is probably clearing 20, $25,000. And listen, that's a guy who had some success. That's a guy who won his first three fights in the UFC. And the reason that number, that 10 and 10, will never go up by that much is like, there's a thousand other dudes, maybe more, who are just freaking

• 39:55Speaker 02

  waiting and praying that the UFC calls their phone and offers them that 10 and 10. So that 10 and 10 could never go up because it's a supply and demand. And the supply is, is so enormous that, that is, that base number, unless there's some type of league, it's never gonna go up.

• 40:11Sam Parr?

  So you have five gyms. What would be good revenue for one wrestling gym?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  So let's see, we, um...

• 40:20Sam Parr?

  Can one gym do a million?

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Well, no, no, no, no. We can do, I think, I think a quarter million, I think, is gonna be where we, where we would have hit this year without Corona. And that would be kind of our first two. And that's... That's the top line revenue? Yeah, that's the top line. Yeah. So I mean, the hard, obviously... Yes, for one gym. The hard part about wrestling, the wrestling gym and just kind of youth athletic spaces, well, they're in school all day. So really, we're very limited by what we could do. It's, you know, it's 5:30 to 9 o'clock at night and that's it, you know, so we operate at nights and you know, maybe on a Sunday, obviously we do some classes, but yeah, it's gonna be hard to go, you know, I think maybe a maximum is we could get around 300,000 Satan sales per year.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  I think would kind of be like at the very high end of what we do per gym. And so for us, it's gonna be more of like, you know, we need to open up a handful of gyms and buy the buildings and kind of own the whole space. And that's gonna be, you know, I mean, listen, I don't need a hundred million dollars, Sam. You know, is that I-

• 41:22Sam Parr?

  Well, I'm not judging you, brother. I'm just, I just-

• 41:24Speaker 02

  No, I know.

• 41:25Sam Parr?

  I love picking shit apart.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't live ostentatiously. No, if I wanted to make a lot of money, if I want to be really rich, I would probably move to New York City and try to do some type of finance.

• 41:36Sam Parr?

  Uh, crazy to me, but let me, let-

• 41:39Shaan Puri?

  But you could make more literally just with public speaking fees. You could literally just say-

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Silicon Valley.

• 41:45Shaan Puri?

  Well, you could just say, I'm gonna go to Silicon Valley, or I'm gonna go talk to Pepsi and Nabisco and JP Morgan. I'm gonna give inspirational talks. I'm Ben Askren, I'm an Olympian, I'm a UFC fighter. I'll teach you about dealing with fear and I'll teach you that ego is the enemy. And you could be getting paid 10, 20K a pop.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  You think so? I don't-

• 42:01Shaan Puri?

  I literally know people doing that, yeah.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  Well, give me some gigs, bro.

• 42:05Sam Parr?

  And I get 5K to talk.

• 42:06Shaan Puri?

  I could get you to come talk at our company right now and I could get you 10K for that.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  I'm in. What am I, what am I coming?

• 42:13Shaan Puri?

  No, literally, I have several friends who have this as their playbook. And, you know, they're clearing a lot of money. And then on top of that, they say, by the way, I have this course because hey, this was great. This is a great session, but obviously I'm Ben Askren. I can't be here all the time. But if you guys want to do this leadership training that's all about blah, blah, blah, then, you know, you buy the package that's the, you know, you get Ben in your desktop, you know. Every week for the next year, if you're paying additional 20K or whatever.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:40Sam Parr?

  You might have to wear a shirt, though, which.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  No way. I'm always me. I'm not, you know, I'm gonna wear flip flops and I'm gonna wear a tank top if it's warm enough. You know, and I kind of told you this, Sam is like, and maybe it's short sighted on my side, but you know, I never really thought about going to the public speaking. I always thought like, I would need to have some business success first.

• 43:05Shaan Puri?

  You hit world-class level at something, that's enough to be, to go on the circuit, basically. So like a guy to look at is Chris Voss. I don't know, have you ever heard of him?

• 43:13Speaker 02

  I feel like I maybe I've seen him on Twitter.

• 43:16Shaan Puri?

  So you can check him out on YouTube or whatever. So this guy's story, he's a, he teaches negotiation. So he's like, he worked for the FBI.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  I think I've watched this guy. Yeah.

• 43:24Shaan Puri?

  Government job. You don't make a lot, you know, as a government official or whatever. So he worked at the FBI, but he's, he became world-class at hostage negotiation.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:32Shaan Puri?

  Life or death situations.

• 43:33Sam Parr?

  Was that the guy in the book, Sean?

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Did he have a book? I feel like I've read his book.

• 43:37Sam Parr?

  Never Split the Difference?

• 43:39Shaan Puri?

  Never Split the Difference.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  I've read his book.

• 43:40Sam Parr?

  I mean, that's like, uh, many business nerds, myself included, put that in the top book of the year in 2019.

• 43:46Shaan Puri?

  And then he goes and he consults for companies and he teaches at Harvard Business School and other places. Uh, and he just walks around, he basically says, hey, I was a world-class negotiator. I negotiated life or death situations. So I can teach you how to negotiate as a real estate agent. He'll go teach you, he'll go consult for real estate agencies and make, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars just doing that. And he doesn't have to have any physical infrastructure or anything.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:09Shaan Puri?

  At least no cost to that. Now you do have to go on the road a lot, which is kind of a pain in the ass.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a pain in the butt.

• 44:13Shaan Puri?

  Who, who knows about the kind of COVID, after COVID, what that's gonna look like. People are doing it via Zoom for now.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, Zoom. Um, yeah, I know. You know what? I looked at this book. I, I, I talked to someone about it and I think I've watched some videos of this guy, but I've never read the book. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it on my list now. I actually had a goal of reading 25 books this year. I'm already at 22. So I'm gonna get way past 25.

• 44:34Shaan Puri?

  What's the best one you read this year?

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Let me bring up my list. So I don't, I would say 40 laws of power is, is relatively half there, but I'm, I'm gonna get my list.

• 44:43Sam Parr?

  Hard to read.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  It was, that was a very long read, so I would do, I think, three chapters a day or something like that. Or three, three laws per day. Let's see. You know what's a good one? What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz. I mean, that's, he's probably a famous guy in your guys' community.

• 44:58Shaan Puri?

  Yep.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  That was a pretty outstanding book. I read, uh, let's see, The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. I think that that was a really interesting book and they have a handful of books together that are, that are all relatively good. The Greatest Trade Ever, that was a lot of fun. That was about the guy who bet against the housing bubble and then he made like, I remember 11 billion dollars on a trade or something totally, totally insane. Forty Laws of Power. And, uh, yeah, those are probably the best ones.

• 45:27Sam Parr?

  Nice. What, um, okay, so you, you're, you're gonna do this course.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Um, yes.

• 45:33Sam Parr?

  You're dabbling with the ideas that Sean and I are discussing. What else, uh, where else is there opportunity in the world? By the way, guys, have you heard of this thing, Ben and Sean? Have you heard of this thing called, um, Ramwa, Range of Motion Workout of the Day? And so it's an app that I bought, I pay a hundred dollars for it and it, and I just say I've got tight, tight hips or tight back and it helps me with my range of motion. They're bringing in something like, uh, 11 million in subscription sales.

• 46:03Shaan Puri?

  No, I have not heard of that, but let's do a brainstorm. All right, if I'm Ben Asher.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  I have a good one. I have a good one. I'm so ready to answer your question. So, and this is, this is actually why I originally called you, I will, I remember you connected with me and then this is why I connected with you. Is that I, I think there's gonna be like this independent media thing just that comes out like in the next 10 years where everyone's kind of just their own media person. And so my buddy who founded Full of Sports, he founded this company called Rockfin. That's why, how I connected with Sam. And essentially there's this payment algorithm on the blockchain where you get paid in tokens. And so obviously you can cash those tokens in the day you get them for a US dollar, right, on exchange? Or you can keep them. And, and the duality of that gives you the option of earning a dollar, right?

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Or you can keep them and you can grow with the value of the company. So like, you know, and so he has a bunch of patents on this process. But think about Uber, right? If the first Uber drivers were paid in tokens, not in dollars, right? That day they can, they can cash out their tokens if they want for dollars. But if they say, hey, this Uber thing, I think this Uber thing's gonna be something. I'm gonna, I'm gonna save 20% of all my tokens. Because in any digital network, the first people in the network provides way more value than the millionth person in the network. So those first, and you could do this with YouTube, you could do this with a whole bunch of things, right? Airbnb, whatever, you name it. Pretty much anything has a digital network. And so those first drivers in Uber that maybe stored

• 47:30Speaker 02

  their tokens. Now, when Uber is worth many billions of billions of dollars, the value of their network is now boom, way up, right? So now these, these original drivers who, they were a very big part, they were a very integral part of the value of the network. Now they have these tokens that are worth, you know, $5 million instead of having that $500 that they would have originally gotten. So I think my buddy Martin is really, really on to something. And that was kind of, you know, I tried to connect him with Sam, but I thought there might be some interest from Sam. And, you know, Sam's just kind of doing other things. So it didn't really fit at that point in time. But I think that's going to be a huge business opportunity. And so I think, I think people, so I could kind of separately, I think there will be a lot of independent media people because so many

• 48:12Speaker 02

  people are so beholden to the sponsors of the shows. And I think regular legacy media is going down and independent, non-traditional media will be going up in the next five.

• 48:22Sam Parr?

  Let me, uh, let me get background on this, Ben, because you're, you're, you're an insider and so many people aren't. So this guy, what was his name? Martin?

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Martin Foriani, yes.

• 48:31Sam Parr?

  Martin, he was a cool dude. He started this thing called Flow Sports.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:35Sam Parr?

  Flow Sports is crazy fascinating. I never thought it would have worked. And I actually think the verdict is still out if it's going to be huge or if it's just going to be mildly big. And Flow Sports owns something that I was a subscriber to called Flow Track. They own Flow Wrestling. I think they own Flow Gymnastics.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  There's like 24, I think.

• 48:50Sam Parr?

  So like non-mainstream sports that have passionate fanbases like track and wrestling. And you pay $30 a month, pretty expensive.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  It's actually what they do. Now they only have a yearly package. It's $150 a year. That's the only package you can buy.

• 49:03Sam Parr?

  Okay. So $150 a year. And they send these guys out to like high school state championships events, which again, sports nerds like me and Ben who like these niche sports and totally pay for it. It's pretty great. I don't know how big that business got. If I had to guess, I would say 30 million in recurring revenue.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  I have no idea. No, I think I would guess more, actually. I had seen I had seen numbers that were bigger. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I would guess it's bigger, but that and that is just totally a guess. I don't know.

• 49:31Sam Parr?

  So they're building up like their like their own TV station.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's definitely bigger. I think it's definitely bigger, Sam.

• 49:37Sam Parr?

  Oh, okay. Well, it could be. It could be. I know that they raised a lot of VC and eventually private equity. So much of so I don't know. But my issue is I don't know if it can be big based on how much money they raised. I think they raised a hundred million dollars.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 49:52Sam Parr?

  Like a very large amount. So you got to have a billion dollar company for that to be interesting to people who gave you a hundred billion dollars. I think it maybe could be, but the verdict's still out. And so but and so Rockfin, R O K F I N. It was started by the co-founder of Flow Sports. But here's my issue with that, Ben, is Rockfin, they only have 3,500 subscribers and it hasn't fucking grown. The cool thing about Rockfin is rockfin.com/dashboard. You could see all their numbers. They had like pretty good growth when they first started. In order to make this whole damn thing work, they gotta.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  It's gotta grow. Yeah.

• 50:27Sam Parr?

  I guess I guess it looks like growth stopped in March when Corona happened.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then obviously, the other thing there was they had a really a large wrestling base because that was, you know, kind of Martin's first connections. But they have picked up a few good people lately. But you know what? You know, I told you how the optionality of keeping the token or cashing up for a dollar, like, I think that's very important. I think, you know, think about the first thousand creators of YouTube, what their tokens would be worth if they got paid in tokens versus dollars.

• 50:55Sam Parr?

  Yeah, a lot.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  You would be insane. You would be insanely rich based on the I mean, the value of YouTube is so valuable that Google won't even put out the numbers on it. They've gotten a few really good contributors lately, but most people can't yet see the issue with not getting paid in the tokens, right? It's such a new concept that most people really struggle with that. And they see that as a negative, not a positive. So, yeah, I mean, obviously, Rockfin has some hurdles to overcome. But I think I think when people wrap their head around, when you like really get it, you're like, oh, my God. Like, when you talk about like Uber or YouTube, you're like, oh. Wait, yeah, that makes so much more sense. Even if, say, every, every, every dollar you got paid, you save 10 cents of it in the token value. If you were in one of those early companies,

• 51:41Speaker 02

  or you were early in one of those companies, you would be insanely rich. And so people don't yet understand the value of the token versus the dollar.

• 51:49Sam Parr?

  Yeah, but I get it. And I think that that's actually quite interesting. But they need to get more freaking users.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 51:55Sam Parr?

  If I was the dumbed-down Rockfin, would you say that it's like OnlyFans, but for non, like OnlyFans, but for athletes?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  I don't know OnlyFans exact.

• 52:07Sam Parr?

  You basically pay money to get this. You pay money to, you pay $10 a month, or however many dollars a month.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  But don't you, don't you just pay for that one person?

• 52:16Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, direct to that person, yeah.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Okay, so like Rockfin is, it's a bundle, right? So when you pay the $10, you, you get everybody, everybody that's on the network, which is, you know, so then the network effect is huge too, right? It's, it's if, if Sam and Sean and I have, if I have 10 people and you have 10 people and Sean has 10 people and we bundle our subscription, we'll get 40 people, right?

• 52:37Sam Parr?

  And how's the payout?

• 52:39Speaker 02

  What do you mean? Go ahead.

• 52:40Sam Parr?

  Do they only pay you in tokens? Like for, if you wanted to?

• 52:44Shaan Puri?

  What are you saying? You can cash out? You can cash out your tokens if you want, or you can hold?

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Yes, it literally takes 10 minutes, 5 minutes, right?

• 52:50Sam Parr?

  So this idea is either going to be like the greatest thing ever, or a total flop? And I, and I appreciate that.

• 52:56Shaan Puri?

  So there's, so, so I got super interested in this about three years ago, not Rockfin specifically, but the same model, because the biggest companies in the world are all based on this network effect principle, right?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 53:06Shaan Puri?

  And it's extremely hard to compete with a network when they have network effects established, like a YouTube or Twitter or anywhere else.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:14Shaan Puri?

  And so for us on the outside that are the sort of insurgent, you know, startup entrepreneurs that are trying to break in, you were always thinking about, how can I bootstrap the network? Like, how can I create a system of incentives so that people want to join this new platform and not be on that old platform? And so, you know, one way to do that was this idea of, well, what if we gave the earliest people tokens? And if you come a little later, you get a little less token. So it incentivizes the early adoption of, of our platform. And the tokens are used to do things like buy ads in each other's streams, or whatever it is, depending on what, what platform you're trying to build. So I got super excited. I was like, holy shit, this could be the new bootstrapping mechanism. And if you can think of a good bootstrapping mechanism, that's like worth its weight in gold. It's like when PayPal realized, hey, when we do this thing where you get, you know, you get $5

• 53:59Shaan Puri?

  and you, if you give $5 to your friend to invite them to PayPal, like growth exploded. They were like, that one mechanism was, was sort of what built the network out. And so, um, so similarly here, the idea would be, um, can this, can these tokens be used to build new networks? So then a couple, bunch of people tried it. There was one that was like a Reddit, um, a Reddit style thing. It's actually pretty famous. I can't remember the name off the top of my head right now. Um, but there's, there's basically a Reddit one where every, uh, as you post, you earn tokens. If your post gets upvoted, you earn more tokens. And it's sort of like, hey, what if Reddit lets you earn for putting out good content? And the early people get it and it, it did okay. It didn't do great.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, and then So one of the things, one of the things Martin always talks about with that is like there, the stocks are so, so, you know, if you just stock, people say, well, why don't you give stock or something like that? It, that's, that's really, it's not forward looking. Uh, I'm sorry. It is only forward looking. And like the, the blockchain, like, I don't really think this token thing could have been done 10 years ago because blockchain didn't exist. And it actually lets, you know, you have some type of protocol which calculates the value of each person on your network and then reward them appropriately.

• 55:10Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. And so like Ethereum is the biggest example of this, right? Ethereum basically gave you tokens for, for putting compute power on the network and, uh, whatever, all I can nerd out about that. But the, the best example of this actually happened in New York. Somebody tried to take on Uber. I'm, I'm forgetting their name off the top of my head.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Jay.

• 55:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. Juno or something like that.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's an Indian guy started it.

• 55:32Shaan Puri?

  They did it not, not with tokens, but they just did it the same way where they said, hey, come on here. You're the earliest drivers. You're going to get either shares in the company or, um, you're going to get some sort of disproportionate reward for being the first drivers in the network. The second drivers get a little bit less, third gets a little bit less. And then by the time it's big, you don't really earn any more share or tokens. And they actually got pretty big. I want to see what they exited for.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Another company that did this when they launched was jet.com. So when they launched.

• 55:57Shaan Puri?

  Really?

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. The people who shared most, they got equity in the company. And the guy who shared most, uh, ended up making a couple of million bucks in stock when they were acquired by, uh, Walmart. Hmm.

• 56:09Sam Parr?

  Yeah, so it kind of worked out.

• 56:10Shaan Puri?

  So, so Juno got acquired for $200 million.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Wow, that's, that's pretty good.

• 56:15Shaan Puri?

  At one point in time, that's a great, that was, that's the biggest success story of people trying to do this exact thing. Although this is like an old principle, like, um, I met the guys from Ben and Jerry's once, and Ben and Jerry's, when they needed to raise money early on, they did a, a local IPO or some shit like that, it's called a direct offering or something, where they offered only to other people in Vermont, like, local people.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Really?

• 56:37Shaan Puri?

  Basically, they basically raised money from the local, um, citizens, and then they became owners of that shop, and then, they, they were incentivized to go buy ice cream from that shop, because they own, they were part, customers were owners of the, of the shop. And so this is the same idea where, what if the users were owners of the platform? That's kind of the core idea.

• 56:53Sam Parr?

  Sam Adams did it as well. Sam Adams did it as well, and they put little stock certificates in their beer six packs. They end up raising $20 million in the 90s doing it this way.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 57:05Shaan Puri?

  Wow. Ben, have you heard of these athletes that are trying to tokenize their, like, contracts or their lifetime earnings?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  I, I think it's fascinating, yeah.

• 57:13Shaan Puri?

  Would you have considered that or done that?

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Uh, I, I would have to think more through it. I, I, you know, I haven't took a deep dive into it, but, uh, I know, I think there's, what's his name, Spencer DeWendy?

• 57:24Shaan Puri?

  Dinwiddie.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Dinwiddie, I think he's the one trying to do it. Yeah, I, I mean, I think, I think it's almost like buying an insurance policy on yourself, right?

• 57:32Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Um, you, you're giving away some of the potential upside, um, but then you, you're also, um, you know, capturing some rewards right away. So, yeah, I, I, I think it's fascinating. Um, I'd have to think more about it if I want, if I did want to give away the upside, or if I did not want to. And then, you know, the other interesting thing is like, their athletic career is going to end, so at some point that token value is going to go like this, right? Or, or, or can you, you know, is it set up so you can capture their post, uh, career stuff, right? Say they get into commentating or something to that effect, can you capture that also? So, yeah, I think there's actually, um... I think there's gonna be a lot of interesting stuff with blockchain that that kind of allows you

• 58:15Speaker 02

  to do things that that um that you weren't able to do 10 years ago about, you know, when you're talking about calculating the value of networks.

• 58:23Shaan Puri?

  Who do you look, who do you look up to as a post, post athlete career that's like that guy crushed it or that girl crushed it, you know, that's what, that's the best case scenario for a post athlete career.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Nobody, I don't, I can't really figure, I mean, I don't know, I mean, obviously there's people I like, but you know.

• 58:39Sam Parr?

  Fucking Magic Johnson.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Shaq. He crushed it. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think I would like to, you know, I don't really, I said, do the podcasting, I don't know, I've thought about doing the commentating, but I don't know, I think it's just kind of limiting myself in spending time where I'm not gonna really gain a huge amount of value. I mean, I, I think I'm gonna do the business thing. I really enjoy that and, you know, I'm gonna do my podcasting, I enjoy that and probably just continue, you know, honestly, like, politics fascinates me, finance fascinates me. I don't yet feel educated enough to really speak too deeply on those topics. Um, but you know, that's something like I would really enjoy to, uh, talking about also.

• 59:19Sam Parr?

  Any other businesses, Ben, that fascinate you or problems that you're seeing out there that, uh, we wouldn't know about, like even in the wrestling world or?

• 59:28Shaan Puri?

  You can also put out a call to action. There's a bunch of entrepreneurs, engineers who listen to this and you're like, dude, you know, a problem I need solved and then they'll do it.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  I actually pitched this on my, I have my Crypto Funky podcast, which I'm crypto, we talked, I was talking to this guy, Jason, and he's a huge entrepreneur also. And one of the things I said was, would be really fascinating was with, with these police shootings, you know, people, people are kind of dumbing down because they're, they're, they're making the difficulty of the police way less than it really is. And the thing with the police, I've talked to them about hand to hand combat and that type of thing before. And it's like, you can't let someone get to you because they get your gun. If they get your gun, they can shoot you, right? So it's like, you can't exchange a punch for a punch. You can't really grapple with them because they could get your gun. And so I always thought if there was some

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  way to make a biometric, either holster or biometric gun, where, you know, it, you, the cop could not worry about that because the gun is literally not going to fire unless it's them, right? Obviously, you have to make it fast and you'd make it reliable because if it's not reliable, it's not fast. It's gonna get thrown out the window right away. So you make a fast, reliable, and some of the biometric data where it knows it's them. And, you know, that's not my field. I'm not an engineer. I don't know how to do that stuff. But that would be interesting because I think that would solve a lot of issues because it would alleviate a lot of the worries from cops. Because, listen, the last thing, cops have a tough, people, people are really shitting on cops, like, they have a tough job. And the last thing you want to do is go to work as a cop and get shot. Like, you want to, you want to come home to your family every single day when you go to

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  work. You want to come back to your family. And it's a tough job. People are making it like there's as much assholes in it. Listen, I'm sure, I'm sure there's some really terrible cops, but there's probably a lot of really great ones, too. And it's a tough job. So I think if that invention was made, uh, it would number one, make a lot of money. And number two, it would uh, make their jobs a lot easier.

• 1:01:19Sam Parr?

  I don't know anything about that space, other than uh-

• 1:01:21Shaan Puri?

  Touch ID for the trigger. I like that.

• 1:01:23Sam Parr?

  Yeah. There's a, what's the, uh, you see, did you know that, you guys know that Taser is a business? Like, Taser, it's like the word Kleenex. It's like its own thing.

• 1:01:33Shaan Puri?

  Hmm, it's a brand, yeah.

• 1:01:34Sam Parr?

  It's a brand, uh, massive thing. I mean, billions and billions of dollars, um-

• 1:01:40Shaan Puri?

  Ben, can we do a quick speed round? That's uh, MMA, MMA related. Alright, so rapid fire answers, then we can hop off. Alright, so, uh, who is your favorite UFC fighter to watch?

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh. Uh, it's just gonna be just because of friendship, but I would say, uh, Tyron, which has been frustrating lately, or Daniel Cormier.

• 1:02:01Shaan Puri?

  Alright. What, uh, what percentage of UFC fighters do you believe are on PEDs?

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Ooh, now, I don't think it's that high. I would say two, 20, 25. But pre Usada, I would've said 60 to, 60 to 70.

• 1:02:17Shaan Puri?

  Who wins a fight with you and Khabib at 170? You in your prime and Khabib in his prime?

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  My prime. Uh, well, I think I win in my prime, but I'm, I'm far past that.

• 1:02:26Sam Parr?

  All right, I love it. Sam, you got any? Besides DC and Tyron Woodley, favorite UFC guy?

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Well, um, you know,

• 1:02:36Sam Parr?

  Me and, me and Sean are Nate Diaz fans.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I, you know, who doesn't enjoy the Diaz brothers? Um, so I coached Macy, so obviously I'm cheering for her every time. And then I, you know, another guy I was really close with because he was kind of helped me with a lot of my training was Gerald Mearshart. And he's been, I think he's six and three or six and four at middleweight. So, um, but obviously again, those are personal relationships and

• 1:02:58Sam Parr?

  Could you and George Masvidal be friends, you think, in a couple of years?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  I don't think so. I mean, like, if we say if we're in the same gym from when we were younger, we probably, you know, I got along with everyone, right? So we probably would have been friends, but you know, we're not going to have our paths crossed.

• 1:03:14Sam Parr?

  I love it. Well, thank you, Ben. This is What's the URL going to be of your course? It's not going to be live when this goes live, but

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  No, it will not.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Correct. Benasker.com. And that site is getting updated. Uh, right now it redirects to awwisconsin.com, but we will, um, it will, it will be updated probably within a week or so.

• 1:03:35Sam Parr?

  So follow Ben on Twitter and you'll definitely see those launches. Yes. Cool, man. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  That was a lot of fun. Thanks, guys.

• 1:03:41Sam Parr?

  We appreciate it.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  See you.