#179 - How the UFC Became a Multi-Billion Dollar Brand, No-loss Lotteries Explained & How to Save on Your Taxes
If you're already doubting, having doubts or imposter syndrome, that's you doing self-talk in your head that you're not the best, that you're not good enough, that you're not whatever. Well, then maybe you should replace that with something that says, I am the best, right? So that's where I got over the like, ah, is this kind of just like, you know, cheesy voodoo shit? And I was like, well, no, because there is self-talk happening no matter what. It's either going to be negative or it's going to be positive. I might as well actively make it positive.
Yeah, I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back.
Hey, what's going on, everyone? We've got a good episode, but before we get to it, we've been releasing these new episodes called Greatest Hits. They're actually not new to the world, but they might be new to you. But basically, before we started doing the podcast as it is now, it was just Sean interviewing a bunch of people. And we got like 20 or 30 in, or he did, and they were really good, but they were about 2 years ago when we launched them. And a lot of the people have done some really interesting things since, uh, or in that last 2 years. And so we've actually been re-releasing them where I give an intro and there's also Shawn's intro where I'll give an update on the folks. But anyway, give it a listen. And when you do, uh, make sure you click subscribe if you're on iTunes. So if you're listening to this on the podcast app, click subscribe. And then if you're on on Spotify, click that follow button. And the reason why is we're doing a bunch of these greatest hit episodes, but I'm actually the one going in the back and finding all these old episodes and I'm trying to find all these interesting stuff. So in the next couple of weeks, we're going to be releasing this series where we look at some of the, the greatest predictions that we've made, as well as some of the worst predictions that we've made, but we're not releasing them entirely on a regular cadence because I got to go and find all of them. So make sure you click subscribe because A, you can be notified when that new episode comes out and B, it actually is going to help us go in the rankings. And right now we're ranked like number 20, I think 20 or seen in Spotify in the business category. And the higher we go up in rankings, the more content we can do because the more listeners we have. And well, you get the idea. So just please, please, please leave us a review. And, uh, Sean, what are we talking about in today's episode?
Okay, we talk about— we're going to talk about the UFC, the business of it, as well as a pretty cool moment that happened in the, the recent UFC fight. Um, and we talk a little bit about self-talk, which is us It's something that we do, both of us do, that we don't usually talk to other—
we don't—
you don't usually admit to doing this. And it's something that a lot of UFC fighters do, self-talk before you have to go perform, before you go and do your thing. And so we talk about the UFC, the business of the UFC, we talk about self-talk, and then we jump into some new— some ideas. Sam had a great idea, uh, or met a guy who was doing a really cool idea around saving money on property taxes. And this is a general class of ideas called money savers. And then we have another, uh, another idea called the no loss lottery that we want to talk about. So that's what today's episode is. Uh, I think you guys will like it. Um, especially the part about self-talk. I think that's going to be the most popular part.
And we did have a few technical difficulties in this episode. Sean's internet is not working. So hopefully, uh, you won't notice too much, but if you do, sorry, it's not going to happen again.
To the editors, I'm sorry, you're going to have to salvage like 5 restarts. Uh, to the listeners, hopefully it's not too bad.
Uh, we're finishing a conversation we are having about what we have to do. Um, yeah, we gotta select a new— I've got 89 drawings or art clips that we've got to select. And then, uh, I'm having a Brayu interview. Did we announce on the podcast about a Brayu?
No, we didn't.
Um, Brayu's leaving, unfortunately. Um, this was kind of part of the plan, but it sucks.
So anyway, we've got 50 people that we've got to Sam, have you had this before at The Hustle where people want to leave to go do their own startup specifically? Not like, I got another job, but—
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most people, yes. Yeah, I have. I always tell them, I'm like, and I think Abreu is different because he wasn't a full-time employee, but I'm like, just so you know, like, this feels like a startup now and it is a startup, but just so you know, like, don't even, even the nice shit that we have at the moment, don't expect any of that for a little while. And I'm like, I always try to get them used to it. I'm like, just so you know, it's going to be really bad for a little while.
This shithole is shitty. Wait till you start your own thing.
Yeah. So yeah, that's happened a lot. Although Abreu, I think, actually understands that he's been saving money. He's been living at home and stashing money or living somewhere where he has cheap rent. So yeah, I think he'll, I think he'll do good.
We, there's this thing called that Reid Hoffman wrote his book called The Alliance. He talks about this, like back in the day, people used to expect an employee to like kind of stay with you for 20 years. Like that was like people used to do that. It used to be at a company from start to retirement. And then that became less and less common. And now I think in tech, the average tenure of an employee is like 2 years or something like even less maybe.
I actually am very curious. I want to know about this, the alliance, people leaving, whatever.
Yeah. So I haven't read this book, but—
Oh, great, great, great way to start off.
Well, I know of the book. I understood the premise. I don't know. 90% of books that I'm a fan of, I haven't actually read. And this is one of them. So what he says is basically you need to have like an understanding with the person who's working for you or working with you that they're going to be there as long as this is mutually beneficial. And the expectation is that after X number of years, 2, 3, 4, whatever that number is, probably not much more than that, that they may leave and they may go do their own thing. And that when that time comes, you're going to support them. And then The way he talks about it is like he's a big believer of networks and network effects. He's like, that person, when they leave your company, they're not just like sort of dead to your company. They are now, you know, they should be your champion and your advocate outside your company. And you'll cross paths again. You'll either invest in their company, you know, they may come back and work for you later. They may refer somebody in. So he describes how to like thrive given the constraint that people are going to leave early on or in tech, this high, high turnover rate of 1 to 2 years of people hopping jobs. Uh, which is not what Arrey was doing, but it just reminded me of that.
Yeah. And I still like the problem that I'm going to solve for whenever I start a company again, and even now, but I, at least when I start from scratch, I could, I could hopefully do this early on, which is basically how, like, how do you build a company where someone wants to work there for 10 years? And I still, even, even in this world where, you know, the average person only works somewhere 2 or 4 years, I think it's quite possible though.
See, my problem is that I like working with and try to recruit and get the best results from recruiting entrepreneurial type of people. That's who I get along with. That's who thinks like me. That's who works really, really hard in these bursts. But those are the worst people for retention because they want to go start their own company. That's why they're entrepreneurial type of people. They're not going to be long-term employees by definition. And so I've always sucked at the retention side of things in that sense. But I'm cool with it. I think I can just continually recruit more people that want that experience.
So before we get into some ideas for this episode, can I tell you something that I saw recently? And we're going to bring kind of this topic up. We're going to talk about UFC, but did you watch the Rose Namajunas? Is it Rose Namajunas? Yep. So there's a UFC fighter named Thug Rose. She is like darling, not like just like in terms of like physical, like what she looks like and her attitude, like darling is like the best word I can describe her. Although she can like kill you.
Yeah. So the story of this is interesting, right? She's, she's really, I don't know, she's 5'3", she's very petite. She used to like, have you seen her with long hair?
Yeah, she was like beautiful.
She's beautiful looking girl. And at the beginning, the UFC was marketing their female fighters like with their kind of like sex appeal basically.
Yeah. Right. And they made her wear like a, like a bikini at weigh-in, which is just so stupid. Right.
And some, some girls leaned into it like Paige VanZant. She got like a boob job and she's like, She kind of sucks as a fighter. She's like very mediocre, but she's famous and gets paid well because she has good like sex appeal. People want to watch her. People are fans of her. There's a karate fighter called Karate Hottie, right? That's her nickname, the Karate Hottie, because again, she's like playing on that. Rose went the other way. She's a beautiful girl and they were like, oh, do you want to go to Dancing with the Stars? You want to like, we can make you into a star. And she's like, fuck that. Shaved her head and was like, I don't want this. The whole beauty thing is a distraction. I'm actually trying to be a martial artist.
And I thought that was badass. And that makes her great. And I think that there's like only a few sports in the world where the women are equally or more popular than the men.
I guess there's tennis, maybe, uh, maybe national soccer team. I think that's kind of the only other one that I can think of.
But in the UFC, if you look at the top 10 most popular pay-per-views of all time, it's like Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey make up like collectively like 8 of the top 10. And whenever we think of like an Amanda Nunes fight, I don't think like it's a great women's fight. I think this is just awesome. Like, I'm going to pay my— yeah, I'm going to— I'm just going to watch this. And anyway, so I think it's good that I hope— I think the whole bikini thing, I think that's fucking— that was offensive.
And by the way, Dana White was kind of famously— was once stopped by TMZ and they were like, Dana, when will we see women fighting in the UFC? And he was like, never, dude. We don't want to see— nobody wants to see girls fighting in a cage. And And then he like, you know, did a complete 180, like to his credit, changed his mind when he— when Ronda Rousey came around, was like, okay, she's a star, I can build this whole side of the sport around this woman. And he totally did. And now it's like, like, you and me both. You know, when there's a great women's fight, it's just as good, if not better, than the men's fights.
Yes. And so there was a fight, we didn't actually talk about it, but it was two weekends ago. And this woman named Rose Namajunas, she's awesome. And there's this clip that I'll share again so people can just go to my thing or somewhere to find it. But basically, she's in, like, first of all, going into a cage, like, you're in your underwear, you're getting watched by potentially million-plus people, and you're, like, kind of fighting to the death. Even if you do have someone's gonna, like, stop you, like, the likelihood that you can die is definitely— I mean, that exists. So, like, you're going in, like, a life-or-death situation in your underwear in front of all your friends and family in the world. That's like the most—
And if you fail, you sort of fall back to the bottom of the totem pole and you have to climb back up, which is fighting a bunch of monsters along the way. And it's like in a normal sport, you go in, I'm going to play a basketball game, I'm going to play a football game. It's like, I'm going to play the game. I hope I don't get hurt. In a fight, it's like, first of all, it's not even called playing. There's no play fighting. It's just fighting. It's actually, it's not a sport you play. And the second thing is you're definitely going to get hurt. Like that's just, it's not like an aberration. It's not like an unusual thing when you get damaged like you would in basketball. With fighting, you're for sure going to take hits, you're going to hurt yourself a little bit.
What the fighters say is like, you know, I left a piece of me in that ring. And what they really, what they really mean is like, in a hard fight, it's like, I know that I just took 6 months, like that's 6 months off my life. I just, I left that in that ring. So it's pretty amazing. And I mean, it's weird, it's odd, but I love it. And in this fight, The camera is that they're announced she's fighting Wei Li. Was it Wei Li?
I think her name is Zhang Wei Li.
Yeah. Yeah.
This woman from China who's just like a beast and she's like a Terminator, dude. She's like so strong, just unbelievably physically strong. And again, Rose doesn't look like that. She doesn't have bulging muscles. She says her neck is not like popping with veins. She looks like if you've ever watched Stranger Things, she looks like Eleven, the character. Exactly.
And then they— and Wei Li, I love that woman as well. She's great too. But This Thug Rose is her name. They zoom in on her face and she's saying, "I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best." And she's saying it over and over and over again. And in 2 minutes, she was the underdog. She was supposed to get her ass kicked. And I actually would have bet that she was gonna get her ass kicked. I would have bet she was gonna get knocked out. And within 2 minutes, she did a front leg kick, which is already kind of weird, and knocked Weili out. And the crowd goes wild. I remember watching it live. I was like, I was in tears. I was so happy.
I have chills right now just remembering it.
Rose kicks this woman in the head a minute and a half in, 2 minutes in, knocks her out. We all go crazy. And at the end, her husband is her trainer or part of the training team, and he gets down at her level, like, because he's like 6'5" and she's probably 5'6", 5'4". And he looks at her face, he goes, we've been saying it for years, you're the motherfucking best. No one can fuck with you. Who's the best? And she goes, I'm the best. And then in the interview with Joe Rogan, he goes, you kept saying I'm the best. And he puts the mic to her and she goes, because I am the best. And I get— I'm kind of getting emotional even remembering.
Chills right now just while you're talking, because I was watching it and it was a very— I don't think if you didn't watch it, if you don't— if you don't follow the UFC, you probably don't give a shit about this. If you didn't watch it, well, hard to relate. I think even if I just don't watch it, I don't think—
I think even if you don't watch the UFC, you should go and watch this clip because this woman, she's had emotional issues where she like has broken down from stress, which is understandable given that like she's fighting to the death. So like, fair.
It's just, it was so— I think the key part of this, by the way, is that there's a lot of UFC fighters who are like all bravado. Like they always talk about how they're the best. I'm going to win. I'm the best. Nobody can touch me. I'm on another level, blah, blah, blah. She's not one of those people. She's ultra quiet, humble. Like a lot of people perceive her to be like sort of mentally weak because she's a, had some issues before and b, like she doesn't come out with that bravado typically. So that's why it was very atypical to see this very sort of small, this gentle giant basically like standing in the cage facing her opponent and just muttering to herself, mouthing to herself. You could see she was just telling herself before the fight, I'm the best, I'm the best. And it's from her. It's not trash talk. It's not bravado. It was self-talk, which is a very different thing. She was trying to reinforce it to herself so she would go perform and then she performed like kind of a stunning knockout.
And the way that she delivered the "I'm the best" line, you could tell that her coach, or it must have been her coach who is her husband, was like, "Rose, you're the best. As a matter of fact, for the next year, when I ask you who's the best, you have to reply, 'I'm the best,' or I'm going to go make you do push-ups or run or whatever." Yeah. Or something like that. And it It, you could tell that that's how, like, she was like, you know, like when you're in high school and they make you carry a football all day or like a baseball, or like in my case, the running baton, if you drop it, like it's like a, it's like a discipline thing. That is what happened with her. You could tell that like if anyone said, who, you know, who's, they're pretty good, who's the best? And if she goes, she would have to say, I'm the best. Right. And it was interesting because as it brings back to business and launching stuff, you have that same doubt. Granted. You know, you might lose money and get embarrassed. Thankfully you're not going to get your ass kicked or killed, most likely, but you still need that self-talk. And that example, that minute and a half clip is like the best example of self-talk for normal people.
Do you do self-talk yourself?
Yeah, I, yeah, I definitely—
it's a trick question in a way because everybody has an internal monologue. Everybody's doing self-talk just in their head, but I'm asking more like, do you strategically 'Cause a lot of people think this is like cheesy, lame, like affirmations. Oh, go stand in the mirror and say, you're beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful, whatever.
No, dude, it's necessary because like whenever you're doing anything. Yeah. So like, um, whenever I'm launching anything or whenever I have fear, like for example, even when I bought my home, I, you know, I don't, I'm, I have a, I think I have a pretty unhealthy relationship with money. I don't like spending it cuz I was poor. I know what it's like to be broke. And I was like, no, this is normal. This is normal to feel this emotion. This is incredibly normal. Do it anyway. And then so yeah, I do that all the time, but I try to normalize it. I say this is normal. This is what I'm supposed to feel this way and I'm supposed to do it anyway. So I tell myself that all the time. Is that what you do?
I don't do that, but I do. I have two kind of routines that are like this that I've probably never told anybody about. All right. So these are— I would say this one is fairly new. I told you kind of like I had like this moment where I was like, all right, what do I care about? I've always been a self-improvement guy, right? I talk about Tony Robbins has been a big kind of like influence on me. So I have this thing on my wall and it's basically what I wrote. Like, like most people write goals, like what they want to achieve, what they want to have. I want to have a mansion or I want to hit this dollar amount. I want to get promoted. And for me, I have a thing that's called— I wrote on it, who am I becoming? And the way I do it is because I think about myself like a, every year it's like a software update, right? What's version, I'm 30, I just turned 33. What's version 33 of Sean look like, right? And I literally write this out beforehand. I write out the notes like, oh, I used to have this bug where I got jealous about people. That's fixed. You know, like, hey, I added this new feature. Now I can play the guitar, whatever, right? Like I treat myself like a whole new version upgrade. Anyway, so the, all those little bug fixes and features, they all add up to something. What am I trying to become? And it's like kind of like a root philosophy, which is life is not about what you achieve or what you have. It's about who you become. And so I said, all right, well, what do I want to become? And I sort of wrote these 4 things out, right? I said, I want to become a person who is, who is fit through healthy habits. I want to become a teacher, you know, the favorite teacher of millions of people. I want to be a great family man who lives in a house full of love. And I have like a last one, right? One more after that. So anyways, I have these 4 things that are like the things I want to become. And I do this thing in the morning when I like do my kind of morning routine, which is like my reminder for the day before I go and start just doing a bunch of work and a bunch of tasks and dealing with all the emails and shit that comes my way. I just walk in a circle in my office, which is a tiny, tiny office. I have like a I don't know, 8 by 8 foot office. And I just walk in a circle and every circle is— I'm basically, I'm basically talking like I'm, you know, talking to myself or my own coach about those, about those 4 things. So I'll say like, you know, you know, I'm becoming a teacher. I am, I am a teacher. I'm a teacher who millions of people love what I love, what I create. They learn from me. They're inspired by me. I'm a teacher. That means I got to learn every day so I have something to teach. I'm a great teacher, right? So I just say in the present tense, I am this, not I'm trying to become this. And then I'll say this, the next one, you know, I'm a great dad. You know, even when things are going off the rails, I'm patient. That's when I get even more patient. I'm poised. I'm a great dad. I'm always there for them. They know I got their back. I'm a great dad.
Yes. You sound like Muhammad Ali.
Exactly. You know, I said I was the greatest before I am. And so I do that. So I've been doing that now for like, I don't know, probably like a year and I love it. It's just kind of fun for me. So that's the first kind of self-talk I do. The second kind of self-talk I do is what I call revision, which is I fall off the horse a lot like most people, right? Like, I'm trying to eat healthy and then like, fuck, in the middle of the day, there's a bag of chips was there and I ate the bag of chips or like, you know, I I say I'm going to be a patient dad, but then like, oh, like I just lost it when, you know, she wouldn't let me change her diaper and then blah, blah, blah. And so obviously I'm not perfect. And so the other self-talk I do is revision at the end of the night. I just imagine that same scenario that happened. It only takes me 30 seconds. I just think back to that moment that I'm not proud of and I reimagine it in a way that I'm me acting in a way that I'm proud of. And that's it. I don't like. I don't like decide I'm gonna do things differently. I don't like write it down. I don't like pledge to myself, I'll never do this again. I just imagine it going the right way and then I just go to sleep. And that act of reimagining things the way you want to see it is a form of self-talk in my mind. It's just like Rose saying I'm the best and imagining herself, you know, knocking out the other girl. That's kind of what I do for, you know, I'm not a fighter. I just do it in my daily life.
And the takeaway I think should be if someone's crazy enough to look up to you, Sean, or look up to me, then at least now they know that someone they look up to has has like doubts and has to do that self-talk. The cool position that you and I are in is that we know people that are like some of them, at least in terms of financial success, which is a limited version of success, are some of the most financially successful people in the world. We talk to them and we know firsthand that they're like, ugh, I'm so depressed. I can't do X, Y, and Z. And then in our case, like we look up to, at least I do, a lot of these UFC fighters and seeing like this tough-ass lady, like, Thug Rose doing the same thing. So anyway, this isn't hokey pokey. This is actually, everyone has this and it's interesting. So look up that Thug Rose video. That's badass.
There's one other thing I'll put there, which is my trainer was big on this sort of like, not the talk so much, but the visualization, the imagination. He's always like, oh, you're too analytical. You're just being like, you're trying to think your way through everything. Just imagine it. Just don't worry about how it's going to happen. Think about what you want to have happen. And in my head I was always like, yeah, yeah. Like at the end of the day, somebody's gotta figure out how it's gonna happen. That's, it's gonna have to be me. So like just imagining it is not gonna do it. Right. So I was kind of resistant to it up front, but I came around when I realized one thing, which is everybody in their head is already imagining some outcome. So like if you're ever stressed or worried or doubt, what is that? That's your head imagining the thing not going right, not going well, failure, whatever. Right. So if we are willing, like, it sounds kind of hokey and cheesy to imagine things going well. It's like sort of like this hippie-dippie thing to do. But the other side, which is imagining things not going well, everybody's doing all day anyways. Anybody who's ever had stress or fear or doubts, if you just break down what that is, that's imagining things not going well. It's imagining a future where this doesn't work. And so if you're willing to, if you're already doing and willing to imagine things not going well, you might as well start imagining things going well also. And if you're already doubting, having doubts or imposter syndrome, that's you doing self-talk in your head that you're not the best, that you're not good enough, that you're not whatever. Well, then maybe you should replace that with something that says, I am the best, right? So that's where I got over the like, ah, is this kind of just like, you know, cheesy voodoo shit? And I was like, well, no, because there is self-talk happening no matter what. It's either going to be negative or it's going to be positive, I might as well actively make it positive.
And if it is cheesy, who gives a shit? Like, if that gives me just a slight edge, then I'll take it. If it was, I need everything I can get. All right, we should jump in really quick before we get into ideas. Michael Harris, you know who that is?
No, who is that?
Michael Harris. His name is— nickname is Michael O. I don't know what the O is from, but he founded Death Row Records, which he was the— he was a— Google it. So I don't want to like get this totally wrong, but I believe he was a cocaine dealer. And he went to prison, uh, particularly, uh, I think it was San Quentin for 25 years. But prior to prison, he, uh, made close to like $100 million from selling cocaine, and he funded Death Row Records, and he got it off the ground. He's a co-founder of Death Row Records, owned the, uh, all the originals or the masters of everything. Anyway, he's out of prison. My— he's a good friend of, uh, my good friend Chris. It's he— it's his good friend.
Did you go pick him up when he got out?
Well, he, he got— he got— he got picked up in a Bentley, which is pretty funny. Uh, but anyway, he wants to come on the pod. Amazing.
Yeah. And Death Row, who's Death Row? So Death Row was Tupac or Death Row, who was—
yeah, so it was Pac, it was Dre's early stuff, right? So yeah, it was Snoop. So basically this whole like the— a lot of modern rap originated because of Death Row Records, this whole like amazing, you know, fuck the, fuck the police gangster shit. They kind of like invented that.
Okay, great. That's It's going to be awesome.
All right. You want to talk about UFC again or do you want to talk about something else?
Let's talk about UFC, but this time we're going to talk about the business of UFC real quick. So the parent company that owns the UFC is called Endeavor, and Endeavor went public. And anytime something goes public, you know, you can go and you can sort of see the financials and you can read the prospectus because they have to do that in order to file for going public. So this is the first time that the UFC's financials kind of like saw the light of day, really., and they've been sort of shrouded by mystery. Uh, you know, fighters were always wanting to know the numbers because they want to get paid more. They feel like they're super underpaid. Um, you know, Dana kind of talks about numbers, but like nobody could ever verify, is that how many pay-per-view buys there were and whatnot. So I thought it was kind of interesting. So I want to talk a little bit about Endeavor and see what you think about this.
I was just gonna say the two guys who are like in charge of it, I believe, is Ari Emanuel And I think this guy Patrick Whitesell and Ari is, if you ever watch Entourage, the character Ari Gold is based off of Ari Emanuel. And so he's kind of like a power player in Hollywood. He, you know, they had their own talent agency, then that sort of took over WME and then they took, so they have 3 parts of their business. One is agencies like WME and others. So managing Hollywood talent, musical talent, whatever. Then they have sports businesses where they own sports assets. Notably, they bought the UFC, but they also own some other things. They own EuroLeague basketball. They own PBR, like bull racing. They own a bunch of bull riding. Bull riding. Sorry. Yuppie bull sitting. Okay, so they own a couple of sports assets. And then they have like kind of like a third, you know, arm to the business, which is their events business. So they have the Miss Universe pageant, they have New York Fashion Week, they have— they basically bought the company that hosts the event of the Super Bowl on location. So they have all these events. So they have these three arms of the business.
They also do publishing. They do all types of shit. Like, frankly, how that company even operates, I don't understand because there is some cohesiveness, but there's also a lot of not cohesiveness. And it's incredibly confusing, really.
I think it's really like a roll-up of one theme, which is sports and media entertainment. So they roll in all these companies together and they have like, yeah, they have like a brand licensing thing where they have the brand for Harvard and the NFL and they'll go like license it out and give revenue back to Harvard and the NFL. So they went public. It's worth $18 billion now.
And yeah, as of right now, it's $21.3 billion.
Right. So it went up just in the time of my research here. I should have bought. They do about $4 to $5 billion a year. And specifically with the UFC, I thought this was kind of interesting. So I didn't know how much revenue the UFC does, and I was a little bit surprised to learn that.
Can I guess?
Yeah. I don't know if you've seen it or not.
No, I haven't. I would say $800 billion in revenue and $200 billion in profit.
All right. Very close. Very close on the revenue side. So Here's their 2018, 2019, 2020. So $700 million, $875 million, and then $900 million last year. Wow. So very close on revenue, but their margins are a lot better than you think. So you were saying $200 million. Yeah. So, so their margins are about 36%. So they have 30% EBITDA on their product, which is very good. Fighters only get 20% of revenue. Every other major sport, NFL, NBA, it's closer to 50-50. I think it is 50-50 split. And so the fighters are sort of right when they say that they're underpaid. And so their business is interesting because they have media rights. So guess how much the media rights sold for? So it used to be on Fox and now it moved to ESPN. Guess how much ESPN paid for it?
I think it was a billion over 6 years, right?
I don't know how many years it is, but it's $300 million a year. So I think it's actually more than a billion. So they make—
so the Fox deal, I think it was 1.5, 1.5 over 5 years, I think.
Wow. So yeah, so it's the Fox deal was $168 million a year and then the ESPN deal was $300 million a year. And that actually paid off pretty big because of their $900 million in revenue, $300 million comes from the media rights. The rest comes from merchandise, events, pay-per-view, sorry, ticket sales, all that good stuff. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. Pretty good business overall, much more profitable than I would have expected given, you know, all the different moving pieces that go into it. And overall, like kind of an incredible business because they bought the UFC for $2 million, like, I don't know, 20-something, 25 years ago or something. So they bought it, they bought it out of— it was going bankrupt. And Dana White, who's the president of the UFC, convinced his two kind of childhood friends who were basically the Fertitta brothers, are these like mafia family guys who own— they own a casino. So they own Red Rock Casino in Vegas.
I think Fertitta's son He, they, or one of the Fertitta kids, or he's our age, uh, listens to the podcast. I don't think he would like that if you said they were mafia.
It's public. It's like, uh, it's like public. It's like well-known information. Uh, it's like been published everywhere. And I also think, by the way, when I say the mafia, I'm not judging. I think that's pretty fucking cool. And I think people in the mafia also think being in the mafia is pretty cool. So I hope they don't get offended by that. And if they do, um, you know, I live in Austin. You can go find me over there.
So, uh, yeah, right.
So anyways, uh, the Fertitta family is pretty interesting. They started casinos. They're the— Frank and Lorenzo were the ones who Dana convinced, hey, let's go buy the UFC. So they bought it for $2 million, and now— and then they ended up selling it for $4 to $5 billion.
When they bought it, they pretty much just got the cage, which is probably a $20,000 piece of equipment, right? And they got the name. Yes, the UFC. They were like, we just loved that name, it was such a great name. And they go, we paid $2 million, but we didn't really get anything, right? And for some reason we did it.
They had to pour in way more money after that. So it's kind of the easy story is bought it for $2 million, sold it for $5 billion, which is obviously amazing. No, but there was like multiple years of just pouring money in and losing money before this thing turned around because they couldn't get regulated in a bunch of places. Like John McCain called it human cockfighting. And, you know, they couldn't, they couldn't get licensed. They couldn't. The business model wasn't there. They wouldn't get put on TV, that sort of thing. And, um, so they put it— I think they— something million.
Yeah, I was gonna say $65 million. They said in the documentary, he was like, we put a lot into it and it failed and failed and failed. And by like year 6, they convinced Spike TV, which I don't even know that's a thing anymore, to air The Last Fighter or The Ultimate Fighter. Yep. And there was— it was Forrest Griffin and I forget the other guy's name, um, and they had this big fight. And I remember as a kid watching that. Yeah, I remember that fight as a kid. These guys were going at it. They looked like it was the first time that like we thought, wow, they're like athletes. They're not like these guys are. They like, they are not necessarily like thugs or like meatheads. Like these guys are athletes who are fighting. And I remember watching it and right when that episode aired, their ratings went up and they go, boom, we just saved the whole company from that one fight.
The thing with that show is they show them in a house. It's like a reality show, right? They're showing them living in a house and then training and then competing. So it wasn't just the brutal fighting part. It was like You got to know the guys, you see their backstory, you see them lying in their bed looking at a picture of their family right before their training session, being like, all right, this is who I'm doing it for, blah, blah, blah. So people got emotionally invested. So it's similar, you know, like the Kardashians also, like they use reality TV to build the brand that ends up being a commercial brand, right? Because you form an emotional connection of, you know, them and their sort of reality, you know, although it's quite edited. And then, you know, then you're more likely to be a buyer in the future. So, so yeah, they ended up turning this thing around. Kind of an amazing outcome for them. Just a super cool business. And I would say if you don't follow the UFC, there is one kind of like cool business lesson to learn from it, which is Dana White. Dana White is the most unorthodox president of a company that I think I've ever seen. Like, people think Elon is kind of like out there and he'll tweet random stuff. He's kind of unafraid, pretty bold. Dana makes Elon, you know, look like a, like a, you know, like an honor roll student. Dana will like— so he's been involved with the business from the beginning, but he will go in the Instagram comments where somebody's, you know, hating on something and he'll just be like, go fuck yourself, you know, like, in the press conferences, he is as much a character as any of the fighters. And the same way that Vince McMahon did that in WWE, but that's fake. That's scripted. Dana does it in the unscripted format. And I had an investor tell me once, we were talking about esports. And a lot of people think esports is a really interesting space because the viewership is really high, but the business is kind of nascent still. And people are wondering, is there a UFC-like opportunity there? Because you buy something today for $2 million, that's going to end up being worth $4 or $5 billion. And what this investor told me, I think is so spot on. He goes, esports needs its Dana White. It needs its person who's going to take this sport from just the underground and brick by brick build it into a mainstream brand and like take no prisoners and like organize the whole fucking thing along the way.
Let me ask you this. Dana White, when the deal— when he sold the company, he made $400 million, I think. I think that was public. He owned 4% of the company or 10%. 10%. Okay. It's 10%. So for 4, he made $400 million. Then he probably made like— probably he was probably getting paid $10 million a year.
He's like more than that. $50 million at least.
That's my guess. Before the sale. Before the sale.
Oh, sorry. Before the sale.
Yeah. Yeah. So he was wealthy ahead of time and he made money in a thousand. Who cares? So let's just be like conservative and say that he's worth $600 to $700 million. That's conservative, I think. And like all the celebrities are one, like they like, like the people who we think are cool, they're the ones who think Dana's cool. Like everyone thinks Dana's cool. You know what I mean? Like the famous people. Dana's famous to the famous people. So he's got power. He's got people want to people think he's cool, yadda yadda yadda, he's got money. Would you trade spots with him?
No, his lifestyle is brutal. It's brutal. Absolutely brutal.
I would never do that. Dude, it looks horrible. He looks like he's still like kind of looks fit, but he looks exhausted.
His face is red and like he's got like 150 pounds since starting this thing. Now it's kind of like muscle fat, but because he takes steroids and stuff. But no, he's— dude, he's on it. Like they do an event every weekend basically. And he has to like do— he has to manage headquarters, plus he goes to the event, he does the press conferences, he's watching ringside, then he goes and talks to the fighters afterwards, and he deals with the weigh-ins and the, oh, this guy can't make it, this guy got hurt, we got to find a replacement. He does that 52 weeks out of the year. And like, there's a reason that Dana's not like, you know, happily married at home with kids and a great dad and, you know, unstressed. There's a reason that Dana's got bags under his eyes because he chose that life and he nailed it. I would not choose that life.
It's not for me. Yeah, yeah. Not a chance. I wouldn't either.
But I respect the hell out of it.
I'm happy. What do I always say? Cornrows and neck tattoos. I'm happy they exist. I don't want them. All right. You want to do— you want to go and try another one? Oh, I didn't even see— I didn't scroll down. You had the revenue down here the whole time. I never saw it. Yeah. Oh, sorry, did you want to wrap up with this or no?
No, that's it. I, I just think it was kind of interesting. I mean, uh, I don't really agree. A major point on like, oh, good business, bad business. I think as somebody who's a fan of the sport, the business side of it is just as interesting as, uh, as the actual sport itself.
Yeah, I think that like, I think that UFC is mainstream popular now. I can't exactly tell because the people who like, like, it's my sport, like, that's like my, it's my Monday Night Football, so I, I follow it just as much as a hardcore football fan follows all that. And I make my wife watch it with me now. She is actually finally into it because she understands the story behind it because it's basically just WWE wrestling, right? It's just like, it's like fake drama, which I love. So anyway, we watch it and I, but I think it's beyond just our crew now. I think it's like mainstream almost like everyone knows who Conor is. So a couple episodes back we talked about business models that save you money and they just take a percentage of savings and how that's like the biggest no-brainer of all time. We said taxes was good, like income taxes. We said, um, software savings, car savings. We said a bunch of stuff. That was kind of an interesting episode. I hung out with this guy who is, uh, he just lives a few doors down from me. He started this company called Student Loan Hero. You know Student Loan Hero?
Never heard of it.
I, I don't even know what it does. It basically helps you consolidate debt, I think. So like if you have student debt, you go to their website and you purchase some— I don't know. I haven't had a lot of debt.
I think what it does is it— I've seen models like this. I haven't looked up their website, but I've— Common Bond is another one of these. They basically just refinance your debt at a lower rate, so they save you money, and then they basically make money because the new lender will pay them a fee for the loan they originated for them.
Exactly. I just haven't had to do that, so I'm not exactly sure how it works. Anyway, he sold that company, bootstrapped it, sold it for $60 million. His new company is called, what's it called? ProperLot, properlot.com. And his goal, I went, me and Sarah went to his house the other day for breakfast and the guy just, he like, I took a picture of like my, like just me in front of my house. I don't remember what I was doing. I posted online. He's like, I don't want to be creepy or anything, but I think I live like 5 doors down from you. Do you want to hang out? And I went to his house and we hung out and he's got this new company called ProperLot. And they're doing this but with property taxes. And what's— there's a few interesting things about this. The first thing is that he's trying to make this— he has this theory where he thinks he can make it— makes it— he thinks he can make it relatively big, like millions of dollars in revenue with him being the only employee. So that's what he's doing. That's interesting in itself.
Second, how do they save you money on property taxes? Is there a simple explanation or no?
Yeah. So second is the actual business. So in where I now live in Austin, your property value goes up every year or every 2 years, and then you're taxed 2% of your property value because there's no income tax. That's how they get their money. So I bought my house for about $1 million. It's currently— it went up crazy, very oddly. Like, it's like, ah, but it sucks for me that it went up like 20% in the first 60 days of owning it. And now I owe 2% of like $1.2 million a year in taxes. So let's just say that that's 20, $22,000 or something a year in taxes that I owe. And what ProperLot does is you tell them your address. They look at the assessed value of your neighbors and they tell you to the government, "Hey, this actually isn't fair that you charged us $1.2 million. Our value actually should be $1.1 million." And it, all in all, it saves me about $1,000 a year and they take $300. Of that fee. And there's a few companies in the space, but a lot of them are older, like old school. One's called, I think it's called PO, the URL is poconner.com. They do about $100 million a year in revenue with 200 people. And then another one is called FiveStone, which is local to Austin. They filed 24,000 protests last year and made like $4 million. The way the company works is, what the numbers are, the average revenue per customer is about $50 to $300. And it usually saves customers 2 to 5% of an appraised value. It lowers your appraised value by 2 to 5%. And they have a 70% success rate. So for 70% of the users who sign up, they reduce you by 2 to 5%. Kind of an interesting business model. And I had— I don't know if you had heard of it, but I think it's great.
That's pretty cool. I like that a lot. I wonder, like, you know, How do they need your permission to do it? So for example, do you have to sign up as a customer and request it, or can they just be like proactively doing it and then leave a flyer at your door? Hey, we, you know, we did this for you. Would you like these— this much savings? You know, it's ready for you. Just claim your account. Like, that would be a crazy growth hack if they could do it.
Yeah. No, you have to sign up, but that actually would be a great marketing scheme.
Gotcha. Okay, cool. I like this idea a lot. Did you have anything you wanted? Is there a riff of it?
No, I just thought it was cool.
No, I think that's cool.
The other day, one of our listeners, Jordan, told me that he goes, I listen to you guys just because you tell me cool shit I'd never heard of.
So that was one of them. Okay. Speaking of, I have a cool thing that I don't know if you've heard of. Have you heard the term no-loss lotteries?
No.
Okay. So this is pretty cool. So I met this guy, Layton, who is behind this thing called PoolTogether. So if you go to pooltogether.com, You can see what it is. What PoolTogether is, is it's a savings account, and this is in the crypto world, but this exists everywhere. It's a savings account where instead of just getting like, you know, if you go to a bank today, you go get a savings account, you're going to get 0.00 whatever, 1% interest. It's like nothing, right? So what they said instead was, well, what if we pooled together everybody's 0.01% and then we give all that money away to one person as a lottery winning? So, so it's a lottery where you don't have to buy tickets and you put nothing up at risk, but you can win very, very large. And so this has existed, the same model, this prize-based savings is what it's called, has existed, you know, for a while. It's in the US, it's very popular in the UK. So there I think they call it premium bonds. So in the UK there's something like 20 million people do this. They, they save in premium bonds and there's like a total of $100 billion saved in these prize-based saving accounts. And the way they work is exactly how I described. Put your money in every week. There's a drawing or every month there's a drawing, something, you know, something like that. And you can win like $25 or ranging up to $1 million. And, and they, they give it— they give that out every, every so often. And so, so it's a pretty cool model. It's a way to encourage people to save because right now the incentive to save is so small. Thing. So the more savings you do, the more like sort of tickets you have in the raffle. So it's a pretty cool model. Now these guys ported this concept to crypto. And there's a thing in the doc, check it out. It's called usage numbers. One great thing about crypto is that everything's on the blockchain. So every app, it's like you can see their Google Analytics. You know, like, it's all open. So I can go see that these guys have shit, they have $200 million in assets under management. They have about 9,000, 10,000 users, like active users who participate in the thing, which is a small number of users. But for crypto, 10,000 active users is like, you know, you're one of the top, like, you know, decentralized applications, you know, if you're doing that much, like if you have that many users. Most of these are very, very small, but it's amazing how much money they have down there. And so the way that the thing works is they actually, they give, so let's say they have $200 million in assets under management. That means their lotto is going to be of X size. You know, I don't know exactly how much it is every week, but it's pretty big. And then what they do is they roll over some of those savings into the next week's jackpot. So they, they ensure that every week they always have, you know, a bigger and bigger jackpot by rolling over a percent of this, of this week into the next.
So you'll have to— what can someone Google to look at this? Because these stats, like The growth rate is just like crazy.
Yeah, so they could just— so the website I use to see how these crypto apps' usage is, it's called Dune Analytics. So duneanalytics.com. And then you can basically— we can put the whole URL there, but it's, you know, slash whatever, slash pull together.
Okay, so I'm trying to get out of this like, oh, this is stupid when I hear right here Ethereum, like I'm trying not to, like, even though I'm only like 30, I'm trying not to act like a grumpy old man whenever I hear the shit. I'm trying, I'm so, I'm gonna try and work hard to default to optimism here. But my question to you is this, when you see this stuff, like when you're explaining me to this, I'm like, is this a gimmick or is this real? And I'm not gonna call it stupid. But when you're explaining this, I think to myself, is this a gimmick or is this like something that has longevity and can work? I mean, that's like,— all these crypto things, many of them, there's no doubt they're cool, but are they cool like the app YO is cool, or are they cool like, "This is a thing that I could see lasting for 10+ years"?
So I think that this can last. This one can last for a while.
Is that a fair assessment?
I think it's totally the right question to ask when it comes to crypto stuff versus like, is there any value to this beyond speculation, right? That's always the first question with a crypto app. And then it's like, okay, if there is value, is this lasting value or is this a quick fad? People are going to get tired of the gimmick. And in this case, what I think is interesting is that there's this whole— what's happening in crypto, there's a whole parallel financial system being built. So I have my wallet, I have my real bank account, and then I have my Coinbase account. I have my wallet in my pocket with credit cards in it, and then I have my crypto wallet and I have my MetaMask and I have whatever. And so I now have two— I now participate in two financial systems in the same way that social networking split it up, right? I had my real-life friends nearby in my neighborhood and whatever, a school, and then I had like my online friends and I had like my online way to go chat with people, of which there's some overlap. So the same things happen now with finance. So what does that mean? That means that there's a whole bunch of people out there, millions of people who have— who are participating in crypto, and crypto keeps going up in price. So now they have like substantial holdings. And when you have substantial holdings, you have two choices. Are you just gonna hold it and like earn nothing off of it? Are you going to sell it so that you can cash some of it out? Or are you going to put it to work for you? Are you going to reinvest it? And what's happening is that all the people who have won in the first couple waves of crypto now have those choices, and they're all choosing to reinvest. Why would I sell? I'm even more bullish on crypto, right? Because I kind of believed before, now I made a bunch of money. Well, now I think this is the greatest thing ever. You know, why would I sell? I wouldn't take a big tax hit for selling and be out of the game. No, I think there's still room to go up. So they're not going to sell. They're not going to hold and just do nothing with it because that seems kind of irresponsible too, right? Let's say you have 6 figures, 7 figures, 8 figures worth of crypto. Why don't you earn 5% a year on that money? You can through crypto lending products and things like that. The point, the point I'm trying to get to is when you have all this money, people need something to do with it. Savings accounts is one, lending is another, reinvesting into other projects is another. And so that's what you're going to see. You're going to see all the existing financial infrastructure get rebuilt over here in crypto land, and then some new shit that didn't exist in the real world that you can do in crypto land will get built. So I think for that reason, I think that if it works in the UK and 20 million people do it, then I think there's a good shot that this is going to exist in the crypto world.
It's just so hard for me to understand.
Would you do it? Let's say you have Ethereum or whatever, you have Bitcoin, would you put it in a savings account here and like potentially win the lottery? Play one of these no-loss lotteries?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes. And it's just a set it and forget it thing. You don't have to like actively do anything once you decide that once.
Yes, I would do that. And like to all the stuff that like I would call silly, I would also do that stuff as well. Like when I buy an NFT that costs a grand, Yeah, but not more than a grand. Like, right, I would— like, to me, it's like spending a grand on that is just— is the same fun as going to play blackjack for a grand. Like, I can totally have $1,000 worth of fun over 5 hours, right? Uh, but yes, I would use this.
Okay, I have one other idea I want to throw through at you. Did you see this thing that was posted on Wait But Why, the blog Wait But Why, called, uh, where he's talked about his wife's startup? No. Okay, you should check this out. So the guy who, Tim Urban, who writes Wait But Why, posted this blog post and he says, "Introducing the land bee." That's his wife? Yes. Have you seen that?
I was looking at it after you put it on this doc. It looks awesome.
So you should go to his blog post. I want you to go there for two reasons. One is I think the idea is kind of interesting. We could talk about that. But the second is the way he tells the story and lays out the the case for this product, for this startup is so good. It's better than 99% of startup pitches you and I hear because this guy is like a master storyteller. And if you want to like think about how I should explain my startup or explain, pitch my business, go read this blog post.
All right. I shout out everyone who subscribes to the podcast and sends me proof. And if you send me proof, you can send it to MFN@GrahamCooper.com. @thehustle.co. So that's like my first million, MFM, @thehustle.co. Send me proof. So ready? Let's get to some shoutouts. And by the way, everyone makes fun of me because I don't know how to pronounce, or I can't pronounce stuff that well, but I promise you I'm trying really hard. So apologies. Also, I'm like reading people's Twitter handles and some of you guys have really silly handles. So, and I don't think many people could pronounce it. So give a shoutout to, oh my God, just this first one was challenging. Job Habraken. Give a shout out to Johnny JZV, Cunning_Druger, Claude Laudier, Hardly Box, Dave Falski, Jack Washburn, Lunatic Fringe, Everest Brady, Thad Warren, D Munga, Roy Britz, Jordan Vanderhoof. Oh, Jordan Vanderhoof, I think I know that guy. Uh, Preston Holland, John Haggerty, Tex8down, David Piazza, Wade for Wireless, and The Podcastition. We'll do a couple more. General Com, uh, Kyle Nydrik, Loft Marcus, Adil Mitha, and I think that's all. Oh my gosh, am I just Am I the worst? These are really hard to pronounce. Am I right? All right. Someone asked me to give a shout out to genuine, uh, Genuinely Interested Podcast. That's what it's called. Genuinely Interested Podcast. So shout out to them. Shout out to this guy's awesome. Everest Brady has a power washing business called Everest Power Washing. Dude, if he's in Austin, I'm gonna use him, uh, cuz I need that actually now. Um, OneRail App, uh, is a startup that we are changing logistics and supply chain and democratizing an Amazon-style logistics and delivery experience to retailers and distributors. Shout out to my YouTube channel called One Man Startup. That actually sounds pretty good. Check out One Man Startup. Shout out to Contemporary Idiot. It's a Substack called Contemporary Idiot. That's a pretty good name. And then shout out to broccoli. I think they say they're big fans of broccoli and they wanted me to shout out broccoli. All right. If you want to give a— if you want me to give you a shout out, can you please subscribe to the podcast? So go to Spotify or iTunes, whatever you use. Click that blue button that says follow or that purple button on iTunes that says subscribe. Click that, take a screenshot and email it to me. mfm@thehustle.co. Send me that, please, and I will give you a shout out. Talk soon. Uh-huh.
Yeah, I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.