#91 with Ben Askren - The UFC Star Turned Crypto Investor
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 love this stuff. So we were pumped. You can probably hear it in our voice during the interview. We were pumped for this one. You know, I got up early, I did some research, I showered. 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 talk a little bit about dealing with fear. I mean, these guys, they walk out in their underwear to fight another person who they've been talking trash to for the last 2 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 an 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 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 going to jump on that opportunity. So this is no different. Enjoy this episode with Ben Askren.
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 going to give background here. So I— so Ben, Ben, you went to the Olympics, right?
Yep, 2008.
So Ben was an Olympic wrestler. 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.
Yeah.
Like ONE Championships, I think Bellator as well.
Yeah. Yeah, so I fought mainly— well, I fought my first 3 fights in small promotions, then I fought in Bellator for 4 years, and then I fought in ONE Championship for 4 years. I retired at the end of my run with ONE Championship, and then I unretired when I got traded to the UFC.
Yeah, so he came to the UFC about 2 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, a big deal in like stoicism. He's just kind of like a weird, interesting person. And I met Ben about 6 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. And yes, we 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.
Yeah. So yeah, 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 5 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 late. I took zero business classes, but obviously when I decided to start a business in 2011 with AWA, I got more interested. Now it's became like a fascination to me, 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. And now it's, it's kind of the opposite. I like this obsession over business and finance because 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.
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. Yes, 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— it was, yeah, last November. So yeah, less than a year.
Less than a year. Where do you say you're at on the business side of things?
Well, so we, we started our business 2011, my brother and I did, with our high school wrestling coach. Uh, 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. Um, there is a good MMA gym here called Rupa Sport, and so I decided to move back In the summer of 2011, so that was like 3 or 4 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 2 in 2013 and gym number 3 in 2017. And then we just obviously, this spring has been riddled by coronavirus, but we've essentially opened up gym 4 and gym 5, uh, this spring. Gym 5 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 kind of ventured into other aspects of business also. So, um, I don't know, we'll say purple belt, maybe blue belt, purple belt. I think, I think I'm learning.
Um, you're like a really good blue belt. It's just you got to put in that time to get the purple. Yeah, so absolutely. 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?
Um, yeah, I mean, for elite level wrestling or elite level mixed martial arts, for your traditional athletic abilities, you know, strength, speed, etc., etc., 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. Base. 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—
what is isometric?
That's like grip strength, like squeezing, holding.
Yes. I've seen a video of you, and I don't know if this was like— if it was a doctored— I don't know, it's a viral video, but there's a video 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 simultaneously, which is kind of insane. And Ben, most people can't do that. Most even, even most MMA wrestlers couldn't do that, correct?
They could, they can. No, I actually saw it. So what, there was a really good wrestler I mean, we're talking about— I think he's a 3-time national champion, and he did one. I think it was like 4th of July, it was somewhere around there. And so I saw him do one, I said, "Fuck that, I'm gonna go buy 2. I'm gonna do 2." And I did 2, and you know, I thought obviously I had the social media following, so you know, my video went quite viral. But yeah, I've done it a few other times since then when people have challenged me to back it up because they, you know, they thought I was lying or being fraudulent. So they'll bring a watermelon, say squeeze it, and I've popped it a few more times.
And just to give the listener even more perspective, Ben, you like, I, in the, in 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 listener? So you have what, maybe 2 million social followers?
Uh, no, 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 A million. Yeah, okay, so a million, that's fair. So I— but my, my Insta, my Twitter following is 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, the 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.
Right. Yeah, it's 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 right there with it. It's like, cool, Nate Diaz is a great fighter, would not make for a great podcast.
And so, well, we had, and we had Lance Armstrong on, and that he's not a fighter.
How'd he do?
Well, he's amazing. Yeah, he's wonderful.
He was very real. And I think for somebody like that, you know, we're going to 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, haha, this anymore. It's been 10 years or whatever. 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.
Yeah, it's all good. I did my Hale Wadi interview about it this morning.
Yeah, so I'll just put out a tweet. 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, 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 5 seconds, and it looked horrible. It looked awful.
I was like in tears when it happened. I was like, oh my God.
Sam was like crying.
I was just in shock.
I was devastated. 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 me about like—
and then I gave it back to Twitter. I own those trolls.
And you did. So, okay, so if you were gonna write— you had a very unique experience, right? Like, yeah, if you were gonna sort of write the book or give the playbook on dealing with, you know, your worst nightmare, your public humiliation, dealing with it. What are the, what are the different steps or different stages that you went through?
Well, so funny enough, so Sam, we talked about Sam encouraged me to do a course, my course that is coming out, and I taped it, well, last Monday. So we're doing a new website for me, and then we are, um, the editing stage of the videos. Um, but I, I've had this passionate interest in sports psychology for, for many years, and I always thought I would write a book. And so it's going to come in video format, which is probably, I think, more 2020 than writing a book, right? And I suck at writing, so it's gonna be much easier. You know, we— and I talk a lot about that failure, but if, 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 big deal, right? And that person and the person that are, you know, who he is now, which is— it's just not the same thing at all. And so I think with Lance, um, you know, he probably had all those years built up of having to kind of be inauthentic. And you could tell he's just like a dude that just wants to act normal. And I think, like, you know, obviously you watch the doc on ESPN 30 for 30, it's like that authenticity is just coming out and people appreciate it. And And I really thought, I love the Doc. I thought he did a great job of saying, listen, I fucked 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 love that. And so, you know, that's for me is just like, just be authentic. And one of the biggest things I talk about in the course coming up is that you don't want to tie your ego to the outcome. When that is the case, it leads to a whole bunch of bad things. But that's, my ego wasn't tied to the outcome. Whether I get knocked out in 5 seconds or whether I win, and then I fight for the title next, I'm the same dude as before that 5 seconds.
And how many MMA fights have you had?
I had— so I'm retired, obviously. I had 21, 19 wins, 2 losses.
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? Yeah, people watch that, your second to last fight.
Well, that went 100 billion. Yeah, I— so that, that, that is probably a watch. I mean, 100 billion is probably a low estimate of how many times that—
like impressions.
Yeah, 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 ONE Championship was sold out. And then obviously UFC has, has great crowds as well. So really, you know, my last 10, 11 fights were fought in front of sold-out arenas.
So 10 to 20,000 maybe, and then in the hundreds of thousands for pay-per-views. And then if you had illegal streamers, yeah, then we're talking a lot more than that.
And so, yes, a lot more.
So millions of views. Yes. 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 3 years and they did it. No idea. Like launching this course, it's not a big deal. And then other times I'm like, Ben or all these other guys like go and fight to the death potentially in front of millions of, like millions of people.
In your underwear. 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 ran track and field in college, I remember like 30 minutes before a race when you're just sitting down after you warm up, you're like, 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?
Yeah, uh, so I mean, I, I've been, I guess, like, I don't say 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 4 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 guess I, I talk about this in the course too, but finding what works best for you. And for me, I'm an overthinker, 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. And that's the biggest thing that helped me is I find my zone. I take my mind off of, you know, whatever task is ahead because, you know, that 30 minutes to an hour, nothing's gonna happen. You're not gonna make anything better or worse. You're not gonna figure out some magical thing in that period of time. So for me, it's just about staying relaxed and enjoying the moment and getting ready to compete as hard as I can compete.
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 did you try to do when in the back before the fights?
I always have people I enjoy with me in my corners. I mean, a little bit, 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 trying to say some fluff bullshit. Like, I fought what, 9 times in Asia? 8 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.
Your hype man, your Flavor Flav. Did you, uh, was there an element of fear? I mean, like, you're retired, you don't have to be that tough anymore.
You don't have to be tough anymore.
What was it like a, like, I don't want to fuck be here, I don't want to do it, because like I listen to other fighters and fail and Donald and the other guy, they're like, I'm gonna like— they throw up ahead of time, they're so fearful.
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, I'm not— I'm there, I'm not retired, I'm trying to be a tough guy. I genuinely enjoyed it, 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. Um, but if I could like relive that preparation and walk into the cage, like, or, you know, or walking to the NCAA Finals, Matt, 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 while 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, 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 guess I could probably have a deep conversation, you know, sports psychology-wise. I don't know, 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, what was the fear of that was causing those?
Well, I think it goes— I think that we all have a failure. 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, which 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. 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.
And did you have like rituals that you did beforehand? So you had your buddy come shoot the shit?
I think rituals are bad. Rituals are bad. I think they're very counterproductive, um, 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. Um, 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, what if 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. Um, 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. It becomes a weakness. Yeah. It becomes a weakness.
Yeah.
It's a vulnerability for sure.
Connor has this phrase, he says superstition is a code word for fear. I 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, uh, 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, um, and they try to simulate the feelings of that. I found that very interesting because, you know, if I'm going to give a big pitch to an investor, I'm going to go try to raise $15 million. These are things you don't get a lot of reps at, so 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?
No, I did— I didn't, but that doesn't have value. And so we'll go with that. Is that— I do think 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?
So separate skill, okay.
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. Uh, 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 myself. 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 1,000+ matches. And like I said, I was wrestling in front of 15,000 people at the Kohl's Center in Madison when I was in high school. I was competing as 20,000 people are in front of 20,000 people at the NCAA tournament every single year. Like, I got those big 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 boxing, someone with a boxing base is not going to have anywhere near that volume.
Or MMA. Yeah, MMA, no. Jiu-jitsu, no. Taekwondo, you know, all that's a no. You're just not going to, you're not going to 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. Um, when I want to start becoming a better speaker, when I started podcasting, and I tell people do this all the time, do Instagram Lives, do Facebook Lives. Why? Because listen, you don't have to do— you have to figure out you're going to fuck up and you just got to keep on rolling. You can't say No, cut it, cut it. No, you just got to keep going, right? So you have to figure out how to deal with it. And then also there's all these idiots on the thing saying like, 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. 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.
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 5 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?
Yeah, I mean, I— so again, I think, no, this is going to be like one of my psychology/sports psychology thoughts. I think being so— I just, I said, you know, wrestling is a skill. I think competition/performance, I think 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, um, You know, like 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 got— 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. 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 times. Points in time, right? There's all these things that are falling in 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 differently you might take in different businesses? Sure. But I think it's, um, roughly the same from one field to another. Being successful is a skill.
Uh, Sean, have you read the book Mastery by Robert Greene?
No, I read— no, but I read, uh, I loved 48 Laws of Power. That was, uh, I believe I read that on your recommendation. Yeah, it was outstanding.
This guy, his name's Robert Greene. He's almost a historian/philosopher, more so than author. And he's got this wonderful book that changed my life. It's called Mastery. He wrote 48 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.
Yeah, there's a, there's a great little story. It's a little bit long, but bear with me, it's good. So, um, so average person— here's what the average person does. Average person gets excited about racquetball, and this is stolen from, from Tony Robbins, but it's good. I remember it 5 years later because it was that good. So average person decides they're gonna play racquetball, go to the gym, check out the equipment, they start playing. This is a blast. They're smashing the ball against the wall, having a great time. They go home, uh, they're like, oh my God, I love racquetball. They start telling their friends how they play racquetball. They go online, they order all the gear because, you know, if you're going to do something, you better order 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. 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, 2 weeks 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. Uh, like, why not box? You know, why do I have to wear these goggles? This racquet is small, it's like a children's racquet. I'm gonna go play a real man's sport. I'm gonna go play tennis. I'm gonna get out of this spot. So they go to tennis, uh, 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. Um, why am I out here, you know, uh, you know, in the sun, uh, 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 initial sense. And he talks about— he's like, there's 3 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 kind of masochistic about the pain, and they're stressed the whole time. So he actually calls it a Stressor Achiever. And so they're stressed the whole time, they don't enjoy it. Um, and, 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, uh, the masters enjoy it. They know this is going to take a long time, which is what you said, Ben. Uh, they know that there's this initial hype curve and then the plateaus will come.
They always come.
Yeah. 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 plateau. So like for our podcast, we've grown this thing into millions of downloads in one year, but now it's plateaued actually, and we have to figure out— we can't be, uh, 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?
I, I think that— 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. And 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 sitting up here. But, um, you know, kind of what, what you're— I've never heard someone, um, term it the way you termed it, but it actually really made me think a lot about my, uh, man, it's still another sales pitch, my, my failure course. And I said, when you meet failure, there's, there's really 3 things that you can do, and I talk deeply about all of them. Um, 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 because it's relatively, um, easy, you know, it's not very hard. Number two, you could pivot and you could quit and do something else, which is what you talked about in the first part at Dablor, right? And, and so, well, some— but sometimes it is good to pivot, right? Um, you talk about— I actually I 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 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? And so like, I, I bring up a couple stories 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 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 3 tactics you can take when you see failure. And you know, obviously if you're gonna be good at something, there's gonna be kind of a combination of all 3. Sometimes you do one, sometimes you do the other, sometimes you do the third one. Um, right, you know, obviously pivoting can't happen too frequently or you never get anywhere.
So to get to the business stuff, you, uh, you told me your goal was to be like Tony Robbins but for this, uh, niche, like your sports Yeah, and Tony Robbins—
I don't know if I said that was my goal. I don't remember how I said it.
Don't take it verbatim.
Verbatim, sure. Tony Robbins is a freaking savage.
So Tony Robbins, I think, I bet you that cumulatively his business, or in sum, I bet you his businesses probably do $200 or $300 million a year in sales. Do you think so, Sean?
He says at the events that his businesses do over $500 million in sales. I don't personally believe that. Maybe that's like some enterprise value. 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 $100 million. No, no doubt. And he's the most— he's the Michael Jordan of that field of self-improvement.
So Ben, what, uh, what, what—
first of all, Oh, okay, can I clarify my statement, Sean? Yeah. Uh, Sam, or what I think I said. Um, I mean, you said 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, and, 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 first, I almost, I did, I wrote a book with, um, 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 going to get into this And 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. I just hadn't gotten there yet. And I think I have a lot of ideas that can help people. So yes, you gave me the kick in the butt. And I think, I think you said something like, you know, what, where would you take this? Or what are you going to 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 going to do it, I'm going to try to be the best, just like everything else 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 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 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 that is kind of like what I think I was thinking.
Yes, it was. I, it was an oversimplified thing. Um, 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 an MMA guy, like, is that a good living?
No, for me it was. For most people, no. I mean, right, 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 people enjoy 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's not a nobody. He's a pretty damn good fighter. He's a fairly big name, and this man's got $0 to his name and owes the government a whole bunch of money, right?
You know, so 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 $1 million a year, 7 figures a year?
Yeah, there are, there are some that can do that. And there's not a— not the number's not big. I will, you know, if I'm guessing, it's 20, maybe. I— that's just a guess off 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 what, it's kind of like a step function. Like you said, like once you get to a certain level, they're not probably not gonna 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 of the things, uh, again, I'm gonna go back to my course and talk about failure. It's like, listen, you're only gonna fight for so long. And one of the things I rage on these fighters, they have this like burn the boat mentality. It's like, listen, you dumbasses, 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 all sitting at 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 gonna do something else. You know, the guy I bring up that's on the bad side is BJ Penn. I loved BJ Penn. He's one of my best fighters. Sam, he went 1-9, uh, 1-8 in his last 9, and Dana literally said, bro, I'm not giving you another fight, right?
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?
No, heck no.
God, no.
Okay, it was more so like I'd be set for like 2 years or a year maybe.
No shit, only 2 years you think?
If I earn no other money whatsoever when I'm done? Yeah, yeah, yeah, a couple years. I mean, but you know, let's say I don't live ostentatiously, but I don't, I don't live like a peasant either, you know. I've, um, 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 wanted to buy like an RV and live out of RV, then sure, yeah, maybe I probably would have been set for life that way.
Uh, negotiating with the UFC seems damn near impossible because the 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, um, sure, you—
but hold on, guys, situation like 60% of those guys go bankrupt.
Well, they go bankrupt afterwards. We're talking about Mike Perry, not making any money, right?
But the ice— he made it, he just spent it all.
Well, I guess the thing is, like, you know, the, like, the top level, the top level fighters, like, you know, the Jon 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, yes, UFC fighters are independent contractors. They're not They're not employees or guaranteed. They have no guaranteed deal. 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.
You don't want to turn up fights.
You can't leave and go to another, uh, like league in most cases because they've signed you these like 7-fight deals. You got to finish your deal in order 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 same. I never got pay-per-view points ever.
But you had some leverage with the UFC because you were at least famous. People wanted to watch you fight. Yeah. And so even if you didn't get the points, whatever deal you did negotiate was better than like the— even the average—
yes, that's true—
19-0 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.
Yes, that's true.
And was that intentional or that just what happened?
Yeah, I mean, I always figured, hey, if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna 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, here's the deal. All you got to do is, 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 the UFC is 10 and 10. If you get in the, get in the UFC, you get $10,000 to show up You get $10,000 to win. Now that, that is not including anything, right? You pay your own insurance, you pay your coaches, you pay your manager, you pay everything else out of that, right? And so you did it. And so, and then you get 2 and 2 bump. That's a standard base UFC contract. So if you won all 3 of your fights your first year in UFC, you go 10 and 10, 12 and 12, 14 and 14. So you would make cumulatively, uh, $72,000 before paying insurance, uh, housing, um, you know, food, coaching, training costs. Yeah, all of that, which is And taxes, which some of these guys, some of them forget about taxes. So you would, yeah, you, you would do all of, uh, 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 $20,000 to $25,000. And, and listen, that's the guy who had some success. That's the guy who won his first 3 fights in the UFC. And the reason that number, that 10-10, will never go up by that much is like there's 1,000 other dudes, maybe more, who are just freaking waiting and praying that the UFC calls their phone and offers them that 10-10. So that 10-10 could never go up because it's a supply and demand, and the supply is, is so enormous that, that it's that base number. Unless there's some type of league, it's never going to go up.
So, uh, you have 5 gyms. What would be good revenue for one wrestling gym?
So let's see, we, um, can one gym do a million? Well, no, no, no, we can do— I think, I think a quarter million, I think, is going to be where we, where we would have hit this year without corona. And that would be kind of our first 2.
And that's, that's the top line revenue.
Yeah, yeah, that's the top line. Yeah. So I mean, the heart, obviously Yes, for one gym. So 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, that's it, you know. So we operate at nights and, you know, maybe on Sunday, obviously we do some classes. But yet it's going to be hard to go, you know, I think maybe a maximum is we could get around 300 $500,000 in sales per year, I think would kind of be like at the very high end of what we do per gym. And so for us, it's going to 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 going to be, you know, I mean, listen, I don't need $100 million, Sam. You know, I said—
I'm not judging you, brother. I'm just— I just love picking shit apart.
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.
Uh, crazy to me, but let me let you—
you could make more literally just public speaking fees.
You could literally just say Silicon Valley.
Well, you could just say, I'm going to go to Silicon Valley, or I'm going to go talk to Pepsi and Nabisco and JP Morgan. I'm going to 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 $10K, $20K a pop.
You think so? I don't—
I literally know people doing that.
Yeah, well, give me some gigs, bro.
I get $5K to talk.
I could get you to come talk at our company right now and get you $10K for that, you know.
I'm in! What am I— what am I coming?
No, literally, this— I, I have several friends who have this as their playbook, and, you know, they're clearing a lot of money. And then, 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. Yeah, 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, in your desktop, you know, every week for the next year if you pay an additional $20K or whatever.
Yeah, you might have to wear a shirt though, which—
no way, I'm, 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. Um, you know, uh, and I, and I kind of told you this, Sam, is like Um, 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.
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?
I feel like I've— maybe I've seen him on Twitter.
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.
I think I've watched this guy.
Yeah, government job.
You don't make a lot, you know, as a government official or whatever. So he worked at the FBI, but he became world-class at hostage negotiation. Yeah, life or death situations.
Was that the guy that you read the book, Sean?
Did he have a book?
I feel like I've read his book, Never Split the Difference. Never Split the Difference. Yes, I've read it.
I mean, that's like, uh, many business nerds, myself included, put that in the top book of the year in 2019.
And then he goes and he consults for companies, and he teaches at Harvard Business School and other places. And he just walks around, he basically says, hey, I was a world-class negotiator. I negotiated life-or-death situations, so I could 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. Yeah, basically no cost to that. Now you do have to go on the road a lot, which is kind of a pain in the ass. Yeah, but who knows about the kind of COVID after COVID what that's gonna look like. People are doing it via Zoom for now.
Yeah, Zoom. Um, yeah, I know, you know what, I looked 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.
Uh, the best one you read this year?
Oh, okay, let me bring up my list so I don't— I would say 48 Laws of Power is, is relatively up there, but I'm gonna get my list. It was— that was a very long read. So I would do, I think, 3 chapters a day or something like that, or 3 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. 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 at the end he made like $11 billion on a trade or something. Totally, totally insane. Um, 48 Laws of Power, and, uh, yeah, those are probably the best ones. Nice.
What, um, okay, so you, you're, you're gonna do this course, um, yes, 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 ROMWOD, Range of Motion Workout of the Day? And so it's an app that I bought, I pay $100 for it, and I just say I've got tight hips or tight back, and it helps me with my range of motion. They're bringing in something like $11 million in subscription sales.
I have not heard of that, but let's do a brainstorm.
All right, if I'm paying— I have a good one, I have a good one. I'm so ready to answer your question. Great 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 going to 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 Sports, he founded this company called Rockfin. That's why, how I connect 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 the duality of that gives you the option of earning a dollar, right? 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 cash out their tokens if they want for dollars. But if they say, hey, this Uber thing, I think this Uber thing is going to be something, I'm going to, I'm going to 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 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 onto something. And that was kind of, you know, I tried to connect him with Sam. 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 gonna be a huge business opportunity. And so I think, I think people— so I can kind of separate— I think there will be a lot of independent media people because so many 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—
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, uh, this guy, what was his name?
Martin? Martin Foriani.
Yes, Martin. He was a cool dude. He started this thing called Flow Sports. Yes, 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.
There's like 24, I think.
So like, non-mainstream sports that have passionate fan bases like track and wrestling and you pay $30 a month, pretty expensive.
And 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.
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 sports 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.
I have no idea. No, I think I would guess more actually.
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.
So they're building up like their, the, like their own TV station.
Yeah, I think it's definitely bigger. I think it's definitely bigger, Sam.
Oh, okay. Well, it could be, it could be. I know that they raised a lot of, uh, 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 off how much money they raised. I think they raised $100 million.
Um, I think so.
Like a very large amount. So you, you gotta have a billion-dollar company for that to be interesting to people who gave you $100 billion. Um, 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 FloSports. 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 slash 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—
it's gotta grow.
Yeah, I guess, I guess it looks like growth stopped, uh, in March when Corona happened.
Yeah. And then obviously the other thing there was they had a really 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 I— how the optionality of keeping the token or cashing out for a dollar, like, I think that's very important. I think, you know, think about the first 1,000 creators of YouTube, what their tokens would be worth if they got paid in tokens versus dollars.
Yeah, you know, a lot.
You would be insane. You would be insanely rich based on that. 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 saved 10 cents of it in the token value. If you were in one of those early companies, uh, 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.
Yeah, but I, I get it, and I think that that's actually quite interesting, but they need to get more freaking users.
I agree.
If I was to dumb down Rockfin, would you say that it's like OnlyFans but for non— like OnlyFans but for athletes?
I don't know OnlyFans exact—
you basically— I don't really know what the business— you pay money to— you pay $10 a month or however many dollars a month, but don't you Don't you just pay for that one person?
Yeah, to that person.
Yeah. Okay. So like Rockfin is, uh, 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, uh, if I have 10 people and you have 10 people and Sean has 10 people and we bundle our subscription, it will get 40 people, right?
And how's the payout?
What do you mean?
Good. Do they only pay you in tokens? Like, for if you want to be—
what are you saying? You can cash out? You can cash out your tokens if you want, or you can hold?
Yes, it literally takes 10 minutes, 5 minutes, right?
So this idea is either going to be like the greatest thing ever or total flop, and I, and I, I appreciate that.
So there's— so, so I got super interested in this about 3 years ago, not Rockfin specifically, but the same model, because, uh, the biggest companies in the world are all based on this network effect principle, right?
And huge.
It's extremely hard to compete with a network when they have network effects established, like a YouTube or Twitter or anywhere else. 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 effect? 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 tokens. So it incentivizes the early adoption 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 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 and you if you give $5 to your friend to invite them to PayPal, like growth exploded. They were like, that one mechanism was sort of what built the network out. And so, similarly here, the idea would be, can these tokens be used to build new networks? So then a bunch of people tried it. There was one that was like a Reddit style thing. It's actually pretty famous. I can't remember the name off the top of my head right now, but there's basically a Reddit one where every, 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? Yeah, and the early people get it. And it did okay. It didn't do great. Yeah.
Um, and then one of the things, one of the things Martin always talks about with that is like, their stocks are so— you know, if you give stock, people say, why don't you give stock? Or something like that. It's— that's, that's really— it's not forward-looking. I'm sorry, it is only forward-looking. And like 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.
Yeah, 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. I can nerd out about that, but the best example of this actually happened in New York. Somebody tried to take on Uber. I'm forgetting their name off the top of my head. Start with a J. Yeah, Juno or something like that.
Yeah, an Indian guy started it.
They did it 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 gonna get either shares in the company or you're gonna get some sort of disproportionate reward for being the first drivers on the network. Then 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.
Another company that did this when they launched was Jet.com. So when they launched— really? Yeah, the people who shared most, they got equity in the company, and the guy who shared most, uh, ended up making a couple million bucks in stock when they were acquired by, uh, Walmart.
Hmm.
Yeah, so it kind of worked out.
So Juno got acquired for $200 million. That's pretty good 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 Jerry's once, and Ben Jerry's, when they needed to raise money early on, they did 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. Really? Basically, they basically raised money from the local citizens, and then they became owners of that shop. And then, wow, they were incentivized to go buy ice cream from that shop because they owned— they were part—
customers were owners 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.
Sam Adams did it as well, and they put little stock certificates in their beer six-packs. They ended up raising $20 million in the '90s doing it this way.
Hmm.
Wow. Ben, have you heard of these athletes that are trying to tokenize their, like, contracts or their lifetime earnings?
I think it's fascinating. Yeah.
Would you have considered that or done that?
Uh, I would have to think more through it. 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 Dwindy. I think he's the one trying to do it. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's almost like buying an insurance policy on yourself, right? Right. Um, 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 think it's fascinating. 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 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? Is— 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 kind of allows you 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.
Who do you look— who do you look up to as a 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?
Nobody. I, I don't— I can't think of— I mean, like, I don't know. I mean, obviously there's people I like, but You know, like Magic Johnson. He crushed it. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think I would like to, you know, I don't really— I said I 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 and 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.
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 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? Yeah. And then they'll do it.
I actually pitched this on my— I have my Crypto Funky podcast, crypto. We talked— I was talking to this guy Jason, and, uh, he's a huge entrepreneur also. And one of the things I said was would be really fascinating was with these police shootings, you know, 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 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 have to make it reliable, because if it's not reliable, it's not fast, it's going to get thrown out the window right away. So if you make it fast, reliable, and some type of 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 lately. 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 work, you want to come back to your family. And it's a tough job. People are making it like there's a bunch of assholes. And listen, 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.
I don't know anything about that space other than—
Touch ID for the trigger, I like that.
Yes, 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.
It's a brand.
Yeah, it's a brand, uh, massive thing. I mean, billions and billions of dollars.
Um, Ben, can we do a quick speed round that's, uh, MMA, MMA related? All right, so rapid fire answers, then we can hop off. All right, so Who is your favorite UFC fighter to watch?
Oh gosh, uh, it's just gonna be just because of friendship, but I would say, uh, Tyron Woodley, which has been frustrating lately, or Daniel Cormier. All right.
What, uh, what percentage of UFC fighters do you believe are on PEDs?
Ooh, now I don't think it's that high. I would say 20 to 25, but Pre-USADA, I would have said 60 to 70.
Who wins a fight with you and Khabib at 170? You in your prime and Khabib in his prime.
My prime. Well, I think I win in my prime, but I'm far past that.
All right, I love it. Sam, you got any?
Besides DC and Tyron Woodley, favorite UFC guy?
Well, you know, I—
Besides your favorites.
Me and Sean are Nate Diaz fans.
I, you know, who doesn't enjoy the Diaz brothers? Um, so I coach 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 Meerschaert, and he's been— he's 6-3 or 6-4 at middleweight. So, um, but obviously those, again, those are personal relationships.
And could you and George Mosvidal be friends, you think, in a couple years?
I don't think so. I mean, like, if we say if we were in the same gym from when we were younger, we probably, you know, I got along with everyone, right? So probably probably would have been friends, but you know, we're not gonna have our paths cross.
Well, thank you, Ben. This is— I asked, what's the URL gonna be of your course? It's not gonna be live when this goes live, but no, it will not.
Correct, BenAskin.com. That site is getting updated right now, redirects to awwisconsin.com, but we will—
it will be updated probably within a week or So follow Ben on Twitter and, uh, you'll definitely see those launches.
Yes.
All right, cool, man.
Thanks for coming. That was a lot of fun. Thanks, guys.
Appreciate it.
See ya.