Ariel Helwani Is Building His Own ESPN. He Already Has 1m+ Followers. He Tells Us How.
I knew he wanted me out. He wanted me out from before I even got there. Like, from the moment the news came out that I was signing, he was trying to get me to not even have day one at ESPN. And so, just being 100% honest, I'm a petty guy. There was a part of me that almost wanted to stay in spite of him. 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. We're live now, so we always hit recording right away. Oh wow, geez.
So hitting me with the, uh, the blindsided live. I like it.
Well, it said that's how the real pros do it, Ariel. I don't know how you guys do it on TV, but the real pros just go live abruptly in mid—
I love it. I love it. I'm always ready.
So we, um, do— we got introduced through a friend, my— our buddy John, who's apparently your closest buddy. And, um, I like— I don't know what you know about us, and we could tell you about it in a minute, but basically like we're pretty popular in the business world.
And let's start with that. Yeah, we're not— Pretty big deal is what's happening.
Anthony Pettis is a fan. I know that.
Yes. We're not nearly as big of a deal as you are in your world, but like, you know, we're on the cusp of being pretty big. And we've talked to a bunch of amazing people. We've talked to titans of industry. We've talked to billionaires. We've talked to people who have tens of thousands of employees, people who— products you use, whatever. I have never been as starstruck or as nervous to talk to someone as you now. Yeah, that is such nonsense. No, I swear to God, Ariel, I've been listening to you for maybe 10 years. I've never been this nervous.
Okay, and so for the audience at home, the only reason why Sam is saying this right now is because I think you recorded this after the explanation of what happened last time. We were supposed to actually do this a month ago, and he stood me up, so he's trying to butter me up 'cause he still feels bad. He was in some villa in Hawaii. I'm on the East Coast freezing my butt off here, and he didn't wake up in time. And now he's trying to tell me that he is starstruck in front of me?
Get outta here with this cap!
As the kids say, this is full cap right here, all right?
There's no cap on this cap. Sam doesn't know— He doesn't know cap. He doesn't know this sort of modern lingo.
Well, I'm being dead honest. Like we've talked to a lot of wonderful amazing people. I've never been this nervous because you don't take a lot of shit You call people out. You know, the whole thing with Brendan Schaub is amazing. The whole "Heelwani," the whole "Thug Nose." I know about it all. CEO PF Chang's.
That's amazing. That is incredible.
Well, like, every one of your guests takes their interviews from the phone while driving. I'm shocked you're not doing that.
I know. No, every time, like, they go to me, you know, like, "All right, now let's join so-and-so. Thank you for joining us, blah, blah, blah." And then they go to the shot and they're in the car. I'm like, ah, for fuck's sake, you're in the car. Really? Why did you tell me that this was a good time if you're in the car? I don't know. There's just something less intimate about the car. And maybe for other people it's more intimate, but I don't know. When you're at home, you're comfortable, you've got your little water bottle or coffee next to you. It just seems like you're going to get better stuff. But all that aside, thank you for having me. In fact, a very good friend of mine, not named John Beer, named Kevin Wang of Montreal. I'll give him a shout out. He currently lives in New York as well. I've known him for quite some time. When I think you sent out the initial tweet that I would be on, he within seconds sent me the screengrab and said, "This is my favorite podcast. I can't believe you're going to be on it. This is incredible. Tell me more." All this stuff and more. So a lot of people are apparently excited. I appreciate you guys having me. No hard feelings. It took me a couple days to get over being stood up. You know, I had to rearrange my whole schedule and cancel on some people and things like that. But with great pleasure, I return to do this for real.
Good. And we're going to do an intro ahead of this, so we don't need to talk too much about your credentials. But basically, for the people who aren't listening, Ariel, you've been in this game since 2000.
For the people who aren't listening? I don't think they care. Sorry.
See, I told you I'm nervous, Ariel. I told you I'm nervous. For the people who don't follow you, you're basically— you've been in the game since '06. You worked for Vox, you've worked for ESPN, you worked for a ton of different amazing publications, but you started as a reporter. At this point, I would say you're just as much of a character of the MMA scene, UFC scene, as Dana, as some of the fighters.
Don't tell Dana that.
Well, you're definitely— you're as much of the story sometimes as a lot of the stuff going on, which is awesome. And you've built this amazingly large and loyal audience. We're a business podcast, so we could talk a little bit about MMA, but what's interesting is that you've recently kind of gone semi-independent. So, you work with BT Sports, you work with Spotify, you work with Substack, although you don't work with them, but you know what I mean, you have a Substack. And what you're doing with journalism and an entrepreneur— in terms of entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur, is pretty amazing. So, you kind of like have this independent business where I think it's kind of interesting, and I think if you are a young person wanting to get into business journalism, business media, what you are doing and also what some of the other guys are doing, BizBing, Chael Sonnen, I think that is the, the perfect example of what you can become. So that's why we asked you to come on.
Well, I appreciate that, and I could tell you how I arrived to this point in my life if you'd like. I kind of feel like I'm an entrepreneur at heart, but I say that with the caveat that I'm a horrible business person. When I think of things like finances, stocks, uh, investments, like, it truly makes my head hurt. My older brother Mark is someone who's very good at this stuff. My dad is very good at this stuff. My brother works in the financial industry and all this. I was always more of the sports fan, the creative, the dreamer, that type of person. However, I consider myself an entrepreneur in the sense that I have always tried to do things solo, on my own, bet on myself. When I went to Syracuse University as a youngster, I was the only one of my friends who left Montreal to go study in the United States. In Canada, where I'm from, in Montreal, no one leaves. They all just go to either McGill or Concordia. And so I felt like I was kind of, you know, building my own thing then. When I got there, I, uh, I create, you know, I, I went to the, the traditional— so Syracuse University, in case you don't know, is the number one school for, at least in my opinion, to develop sports broadcasters. And they've developed the likes of, you know, the likes of Bob Costas went there, and Marv Albert, and Mike Tirico. I mean, the list is just incredible, the names of the people who, uh, you know, went to study at Syracuse over the years. And they all go to this one station, WAER, to hone their craft and develop a voice and all that stuff. And I went there and I noticed that everyone kind of wanted to be the same person. I never wanted to follow anyone, and so I left that station after one semester and I went to like the rinky-dink third-tier student station in the student center, and I did my own combat sports show every Saturday morning over there. And so again, I was kind of just doing things on my own and trying to build out my own thing. Fast forward a long time, I get to Spike TV, in 2007. I hate it after a week. I start my own website, and that's how I get into MMA journalism, um, and I start interviewing fighters, and I give myself 6 months to get noticed. I don't get paid for any of this. I was just kind of using this as an opportunity to show people what I can do. Fast forward to now, and in February I'm starting to, uh, realize that my time at ESPN is probably coming to an end, and I'm starting to think to myself, okay, what do I want to do? What would make me happy? What What's the future here? And what I came to realize was I can almost create this menu, this puzzle as I called it, where I'm doing this here, this here, this here, that here. And I call myself independent, helwani, independent helwani. And yes, I'm working with other people, but I feel very independent because I was able to go out and carve up my duties. Some of it's my own, my own YouTube channel, the Substack, things like that. And some of it is I consider partnering with other people. And it's been an incredible few months since I was able to leave. I was terrified of leaving it initially, 'cause ESPN was my dream. I actually had to talk to a therapist about that, and we can get into that as well, because I didn't feel, I felt like a failure if I left after 3 years, 'cause this was my dream, this was the mountaintop, but I was very unhappy, and I realized that I had to go back to that entrepreneurial spirit and start building out my own things and start doing what made me happy and be, around people who make me happy and people who support you and don't want to stab you in the back and all this stuff. And so yeah, I'm very, very happy now. Now I'm working with Vox, my old friends at Vox Media, with The Ringer, Spotify, with Substack, with BT Sport. I did a thing for Showtime recently, BetMGM, and, uh, it's great. I've never been busier, but I've never been happier as well.
And talk about that, that move. So you're at ESPN, the dream is realized because you're kind of like You're like me. I don't know if you remember, there was a show back in the day about becoming a SportsCenter anchor. Did you ever watch this show?
Oh, yeah.
It was like, it was like a reality show and it was only on for like 2 seasons or something like that. But it was great. I think anybody who grew up kind of with SportsCenter on loop, you know, there was something really aspirational about ESPN. You get there and was it that— so this can happen. This happens with all kinds of entrepreneurs. You'll sell your company and then you'll feel like kind of numb slash bored. Like, wait, was this it? This is the thing I was working for this whole time. So was it that the dream really wasn't a dream, or was it that, oh, it came to an end and I got to figure out where to from here? So what was the ESPN side like? Did the mountaintop feel like you thought it would feel, or what was that like?
Yeah, so that's a great question. I always wanted to work at ESPN. That was sort of the end goal. I remember being a young kid going on vacation to the United States with my family. We'd get to the hotel and my brothers and I would watch SportsCenter on loop. You remember in the mornings they would have like one episode that they would tape and they would just repeat it over and over again, and I would repeat it, and I was just so taken by the magic of sports television and the characters and the highlights and all this stuff. And I'll be honest, when I got there, right off the bat, I was disappointed. The first few months at ESPN were very hard for me because I had this vision in my mind of what it would be like and the resources and the commitment to, you know, excellent content and coverage and attention to detail and all this stuff, and it honestly, it just wasn't what I expected. Now, over time, we kind of found our groove and I got to do a lot of fun things, and I'll be honest, in the back of my mind, I was like, "I don't know how long I'm gonna last here," partly because of the fit but also partly because of the relationship with the UFC and not being able to cover the sport the way I want to cover the sport, and I tried to check off as many boxes as possible. And so hosting a radio show, I wanted to do that, I checked that off. Doing an E60 profile on my good friend Daniel Cormier, I checked that off. Doing NBA sidelines, I checked that off. OTL, Outside the Lines, checked it off. SportsCenter, checked it off. So I was trying to do as much as possible because I knew at some point this was not, I was not gonna be a 25-year lifer. I came to that conclusion pretty early on, one of those guys who stays at ESPN for all those years. And, you know, It was tough, you know, I'm going from doing a show in a beautiful studio that I helped design in New York City to a very small studio with not the same resources, to then going to Bristol, Connecticut twice a week, driving 4 hours back and forth Mondays and Wednesdays.
Wait, to Bristol, it's a 4-hour one way?
Back and forth, so 2 hours and 2 hours in the same day, twice a week. And, uh, you know, sometimes it's, you know, it's— you're exhausted. I'm doing a show that's 3, 4 hours long. I'm mentally tired after this show, and I have to get back in my car and drive 2 hours. Often in the winter, it's pitch black. Like, this wasn't very fun, um, and yet here I am, you know, it's the dream job, it's ESPN. And then on top of that, it's all the other drama that you have to deal with behind the scenes. So yeah, I mean, I came to the conclusion around a year ago— well, not a year ago now, like last summer Okay, you know, what do you want to do? What would make you happy? Would leaving be the right move? Would that make you happy? And you know, there was a part of, you know, I knew, honestly, I knew there were people that probably wanted me to leave. You know who I'm talking about? People in the UFC probably wanted me to leave.
I didn't— And if you're not listening, basically, you've had, and you just actually did a wonderful YouTube yesterday where you explain the background. But basically, you've had an issue— or Dana White, the president of UFC, has had an issue with you for a variety of reasons, whether he claims you're too negative, he says you've leaked some information. There's always been some tension there.
All of it's wrong. He couldn't be more wrong. But, you know, he has his business and his motives. And it would be great if we could meet in the middle like we once did. But, you know, uh, that's neither here nor there at this point. Um, so yes, I knew he wanted me out. He wanted me out from before I even got there. Like, from the moment the news came out that I was signing, he was trying to get me to not even have day one at ESPN. And so, just being 100% honest, I'm a petty guy. There was a part of me that almost wanted to stay in spite of him. And I didn't want them to win. I didn't want them to win because I knew that they would celebrate if I left. In fact, when I announced that I was leaving ESPN, I got a text message from an unknown number that's not on my phone saying, "I told you we'd get you out of ESPN, bye-bye." Now, I don't know who sent me that text message, I have my theories, but like, I— so I needed to go talk to someone to figure out how to get over that, to not stay at a job in spite of someone, which is absolutely ludicrous, to do what makes me happy, to have fulfillment in my heart, you know, to wake up and be excited, to be around people that make you, you know, happy and support you and all that stuff. I had to get over that in my brain, and thankfully I did. And so it took some time. I don't have any regrets.
Do you tell the therapist about Petty Helwani, about Healwani? Does the therapist support all these characters that you have in your arsenal?
Sometimes she's like, okay, what is the end goal here? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you bringing more stress? But she really helped me realize what is important and what makes me happy and not sticking around to stick it to people and things like that. As I said on my show on Wednesday, I don't know if I end up at this point if I don't talk to a therapist. And I was always someone who was afraid of talking to a therapist because I thought that it made me weak. I thought that it would be a sign of weakness that I was, you know, needing help and all this stuff. And honestly, I'm so happy and thankful that I got to that point. It was a weird way to get there, but you know, I'm happy that I was able to talk to someone who helped me figure things out.
Therapy's like exercise. I'm like, look, even if you look skinny, you should still exercise, you know? Even if you're like in an okay place, you should still go and do stuff. And particularly if you're fat, you should exercise. If you're in a bad mental spot, you should definitely go and do therapy. So I don't think you should—
Exercise, my Peloton bike helped me a lot. I got one of those. I mean, a lot of things helped me clear my head. And I don't have any regrets. I don't even have— one thing that I had to talk out was I didn't want to have ill feelings towards ESPN. I love sports. I was just watching my Knicks beat the Celtics in an incredible double overtime thriller last night on ESPN. I didn't want to be the guy who couldn't watch ESPN, who couldn't go on the app, who felt some sort of way about this company that meant so much to me, uh, and live with that animosity. And I was afraid that that would happen. Um, I don't have any of it. I don't have any animosity towards them, the people there. I don't have any animosity towards anyone there, to be honest, because they kept their word, they paid me till the very end, they stayed true to the contract. They even offered me a new contract, unlike what other people are trying to say about me being fired. I was never fired. They offered me a contract and I turned it down. And I met some legends, Mike Breen, Doris Burke, I met absolute legends of the TV business there. I will never forget my time and I'm very thankful for the time, but 3 years was enough. It was time to move on.
Can I ask you— I want to ask you two questions. The, the second one is actually going to be about Dana White, and, um, I want to ask you about what attributes do you think he, he has that have made UFC wonderful. And, and, and that's what I've asked people about you. I asked John, go, man, Ariel's amazing, what drives him? So it's always fun to ask other people about like the, the, the people they work with. But the first question is, the, the current setup right now with your business, what do you think is going to be the biggest revenue driver? Is Substack do you think gonna drive, you know, this paid newsletter business? Is that gonna drive a significant amount? Do you think it's most gonna come from BT Sport, from YouTube ads? How's your business set up and where's your head at in terms of where the opportunity is?
Right now, my biggest revenue driver, if you wanna put it in those terms, is Vox Media. They're paying me the most. And that was important to me because the MMA Hour was a show that I created and put a lot of time and effort and just, I mean, everything. I poured everything into that show from 2009 all the way to 2018 and it was heartbreaking to see it end. Even though I was going to my dream job, that show just meant so much to me and I think it meant a lot to a lot of people and so that's the biggest one.
YouTube and the podcast does very well. It's on Apple, it's on Spotify, it's on Google, it's on Stitcher, all those places as well.
And you own it?
I do not own it. No, I don't own it. They pay me to do that show. And so that's what's interesting about my situation is like some of the stuff I own, some of the stuff I don't own, but everyone's playing nicely together in this sandbox. And I'm very appreciative. It took some time to kind of figure out all the pieces. That was the most interesting part of this, like back in, in February or so when I came to the conclusion that I was going to go and leave ESPN and try to do things here and there. Obviously you have it, oh, I'd like to do this and that. Like some people call it a Chinese menu, you know, you kind of build your out your own thing, but then the actual dance of getting everyone to play nice and be on board with all these little different things that I'm doing was the most interesting part of the whole process. And I really lucked out and I found all these people, like people who are okay with me having my own YouTube channel that's completely mine and the Substack. But also doing something for The Ringer, Spotify, and also doing something for Vox. So, it's just been a really interesting exercise in, look, like my friend Pat McAfee, here I am dropping names, he's like, "Oh, well you're not totally independent, you don't own everything." I'm like, "Okay, fine, if you wanna get into that whole semantics game, fine, I don't own everything." But there's an independent spirit to all of this where at the end of the day I feel like I'm partnering with other people as opposed to being a full-time employee with anyone, I'm not, I have an LLC now. And I'm able to pick and choose what I want to do. And so that's, that's really important. But to answer your question, the biggest deal that I have at the moment is my deal with Vox Media.
Do you think long term that stays true? Or do you think— because some things are, some things pay off better immediately, and then some things you say, okay, if I build, I don't know, the newsletter, if I build the podcast or the Ringer stuff, if I build that up, 3 years from now, this picture might look a little different. Or do you, you You said you don't really think too much about business. Do you not even care about that? You just do your thing and see what happens?
Are you trying to get me to reveal my 5-year plan, my business plan right here?
Are you— that's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm looking for 2030 Ariel. Where's 2030 Ariel doing?
Like the, the, what, what, who's the guy who started the Ringer? What's his name again?
Yeah. Like, you know, he was in a similar position as you sold the Ringer, probably netted $150, $200 million when he did that. I mean, is that gonna happen to, to to you?
Uh, that would be nice. Um, I don't know, you know, right now, um, obviously I'm, I'm very happy with the situation. I'm really excited, and it's kind of the thing that's flying under the radar at the moment, which I'm totally okay with that. Uh, what I'm doing on my own YouTube channel is giving me, uh, as I like to say, a lot of nachas. Nachas is a Yiddish word which means kind of like fulfillment and joy in my heart. Because every week for now, every Thursday, I am posting an interview with someone outside of the MMA world because I have been itching for a very long time, and that was part of the reason why I went to ESPN, to show people that I'm more than just an MMA guy, that I can interview other athletes, authors, musicians, comedians, anyone. It doesn't matter if you're in the sports world, if you're an actor, if you're a Holocaust survivor. If you're interesting, I wanna talk to you because the thing that I derive the most enjoyment from are the interviews. I love talking to people. I could do a hun— I mean, I do a 4-hour show twice a week now, and I feel like I could do it every day. It's just a lot of fun for me. And so I started that around a month and a half or so ago, and it's just my own little thing. It's me and 2 producers, an audio guy, a video guy, and we're posting these interviews. And I don't honestly care at this moment if a million people watch these interviews or 3 people watch the interviews. For me, now I'm doing them to, you know, fulfill, you know, this little, you know, passion of mine to talk to other people, to scratch that itch, but also to eventually show people, the right kind of people, that I could do this, that I could be much more than just an MMA guy. And it's actually the exact exact same thought process that I had when I got into all this back in 2007. In fact, uh, this past Tuesday, October 19th, marked the 14-year anniversary of me launching my own site, jerrypark.com. It's still up. I was at Spike TV in September of 2007. I got a job working at Spike TV, and Spike TV was the home of the UFC, and I was working in TV production. I thought, okay, this is the best place for me. TV production, UFC. They're the home of the UFC.
It's perfect.
After a week there, I walked into my boss's office and I quit. And I said, I don't really think this is the right fit for me. I'm not— I really like— they didn't do anything creative. I'm a creative guy. I like to think of ideas, come up with things, and they were just kind of the middleman. The UFC was producing all the content. So I walked into his office, I said, I'm really sorry, thank you for the opportunity, but, but I don't think this is the right fit. And I'm the kind of guy who, when he's 85 years old, I don't want to wake up and say, I could have done this, I should have done this, I should have zigged when I zagged, all that stuff. He was very upset. He said, you're going to regret this for the rest of your life. This is unprofessional. No one's ever done this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they made me stick around for a month and a half in my cubicle until they found someone to replace me. And that was the crossroads of my life. In fact, our mutual friend John was a part of this process where, you know, we would go for lunch during this process. I'm not doing anything. And I'm telling him I'm gonna start my own website and I'm gonna start interviewing fighters because I really want to go into MMA journalism. I really want to show people that I could be the Howard Cosell, the Max Kellerman, the whatever of MMA. And so I started to reach out to fighters via MySpace, and every morning I would post an interview with a fighter, and I didn't care if 5 people looked at the interviews or 500 people looked at the interviews or 500,000. I just wanted to use that to show people that I could do that. 14 years later, I'm doing the same thing on my YouTube page. And now I want to build this and grow it, um, and, and use it as an opportunity to show people. But for now, it's just like giving me so much joy to go back to those early days and just talk to people about things. And then now I'm like, last week I interviewed Marty Fish, the former tennis player who's been, you know, very open with his battles with anxiety. And friends of mine who have never listened to my work, watched my work ever, who don't care about MMA, are like Wow, dude, you're a really good interviewer. I'm like, yeah, I've been doing this for 14 years at this point, but it's, it's opening me up to a whole new audience and I'm very excited about that.
We have a couple of kind of like just go-to phrases or principles when it comes to business. One of them is bet on yourself. And, uh, I think you, so, so some people are like, you know, if some people listening to this, they're not super into MMA, I think one of the things they could pull out is your bet on yourself mentality, especially when it's not easy, right? Like, uh, betting on yourself sometimes as an entrepreneur is kind of obvious. You don't, you don't really have a job, you know, by default, you bet on yourself, you had, quote unquote, good jobs at each of these stops. And then you said, look, this isn't it, I'm gonna bet on myself, and I'm gonna go independent, I'm gonna do my thing. So you have a strong dose of bet on yourself. You have another one that Sam, Sam coined, which is niches get riches, which is that I know you're a basketball fan. But you didn't go into the more established field, that one that had a career track that you could tell your mom, look, there's other people who have made it in this field. I could be the next whatever. Uh, in basketball, you went for MMA, which is today fringe, let alone back in, you know, 2006 or whatever. Like nobody was really— there was no blueprint or there was no like, um, success stories doing what you were doing. I don't think at that time, like you are the kind of the success story of that niche. And so I want to hear kind of how you decided to bet on that, even though you have other interests, you have other sports that you're interested in. As well. Um, and then the last one is there's this great phrase which is, um, you know, you want to do the work that feels like, that looks like work to others, but it feels like play to you. So like if I was going to interview somebody 4 hours a day, I would be exhausted. And I think you get a, you pick up steam by energy, by, by your hour 3, you're like, you just hitting your groove and it gives you energy. So I think that's another example of where you kind of live one of these principles that we talk about. But tell me about the niche thing.
Oh, that's great. That spoke to my heart. That spoke to my heart. That's a great line. Uh, niches get riches, because I couldn't agree with you more. Um, when I got to Syracuse for the first time in my life, like, when I went to Syracuse, I wanted to be the next Costas, Marv Albert, basketball, baseball, football, traditional guy. Hello, welcome to ABC Sports. I'm Ariel Hawani. World Series, Super Bowl. And for the first time in my life, I realized, wow, there's a lot of people in this world who are my age who have the exact same dream as me, who who are a little more polished, who have nicer hair, who don't have as big of a nose, and maybe don't have such a foreign name. Their name is John Smith, and they just kind of fit that Bob Costas mold. And I never, I never liked to follow, you know, the pack. And so I remember telling my parents in September of 2001, there's this sport called mixed martial arts. There's this organization called the UFC. At this point, it's not even 8 years old, and I think it's going to be mainstream. And I think in 10 years, there's gonna be some executive in some office, some older guy who's like, what is this crazy cage fighting sport? I know nothing about it, but apparently it's very popular. Who's the guy? Who's the voice? Who's the Howard Cosell of MMA? And I wanna be that guy. And amazingly, literally 10 years later, August of 2011, I was hired by Fox, and that was like my first big mainstream gig. And so it kind of worked out in that regard. But I say this to young people all the time when they reach out to me, and they send me, you know, oh, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna be, you know, Stephen A. Smith and all this stuff. In this day and age, you don't want to be a generalist. You're a fan of the New York Knicks, you're a fan of the New York Knickerbockers, I'm not gonna go tune in to the radio, ESPN Radio Now, I'm not gonna go in my car, tune in and say, Oh, I hope you guys talk about the Knicks-Celtics game last night. I'm gonna go on my podcast app and I'm going to go to the New York Knicks podcast, as niche as it gets, to hear an hour breakdown of last night's game. If I'm a big pro wrestling fan, I'm going to go to my pro wrestling podcast and listen, MMA podcast, listen to business podcasts. The days of sitting in your car and hoping that they talk about something or listening to people just talk about God knows what, Those days are over. And so it is actually a lot better, in my opinion, to go into a niche, to be the niche guy, as opposed to being the generalist. Yeah, there's a couple guys who will make it, Stephen A. and those guys, but for the most part, in my world, it's way better to be the niche guy. And I try to explain that. And within the niche, have your own niche as well. And so like my thing, interviews. I tell other people like, find your thing. There was a young guy, I always bring up Mike Bond, he works for MMA Junkie, and he's a lot younger than I am. His niche that he used to get in the door were stats and factoids. So he would have all these stats about all the fighters. Great. These days, maybe it's betting. Betting is super hot right now. Use that as your niche to get in the door. So yes, I couldn't agree more with that mindset, and I would urge anyone in this day and age of à la carte, you know, everything is à la carte, right? Podcasts, streaming, all that. The more niche, the better. You'll have way more success rather than being just some guy. Like those days 50 years ago when you were a columnist for a newspaper, those days are over.
How— what size or how big is your audience? I mean, I know the YouTube videos get like 30,000 to 100,000 per clip, per video. How— what do you say the number is of your audience? And what advice do you have? You could use us for an example. I mean, we're smaller than you, of like— of your tips for getting noticed and being great at building this empire.
This is gonna sound, uh, don't tell me good content. No, no, no, no, no, it's gonna sound whack, but I really don't know the size. I mean, I see the numbers on YouTube. I never asked for the podcast numbers. I don't want to know. It's actually one thing that really bothered me at ESPN. Like, 3 weeks into my time there, we sat down and started like breaking down the numbers and the listening rate and, and the completion rate and all this stuff. Like, I don't want to know this. Like, it's hard enough By the way, in the, what is it now, 12 years of me doing this, like hosting this type of weekly show and all this stuff, shows, I've never had a person book the guest for me. I book every single guest. Every single name that you see on my show on Wednesday, Rose and Jan Bajovic and Fedor, I book those people myself. I do not have a booker.
Now I have, you know, I have their numbers. And I know what everyone likes. Like, I know there's some people who respond quicker to DMs. There are some people who respond quicker to WhatsApp. There are some people who respond quicker to iMessage. I never email anyone. I mean, you email a fighter, that's like throwing, you know, a toothpick into the ocean. There's no chance you're getting a message back. But, you know, I'm just, I'm kind of relentless like that, and I'm obsessive like that, and I think that I would drive someone crazy if I said, hey, I want to get Rose Namajunas on my show., and then I would probably ask them a million times, "Did she respond? Did she respond? Did she respond?" So I'd rather just put that on myself. Now, it's probably the worst part of the job, and it makes me, you know, very stressed out, but it's just the way I like to do things. So that brings enough stress. Now to know, you know, completion rate and downloads and subs and this and—
Yeah, but you must have an idea. You have a million followers on Twitter. I think BT Sport has 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube-ish. Your videos, ballpark 50,000 to 100,000 views per— maybe, I don't know what your podcast downloads are, but like, do you know?
I really don't know. No one has talked to me. Now, okay, I'll tell you, like, at ESPN, uh, when my show with DC, towards the end, we were getting, I think, on the podcast only— now, this is one little sticking point that I have— so they would sit down and they'd be like, okay, the podcast with DC is getting around 90,000 downloads, uh, an episode. Like, all right, that's pretty good. 90,000 an episode, once a week, 1 hour. A week. But here's the problem: they were comparing us to other podcast-only shows. Let's say the Low Post podcast, the basketball podcast hosted by the great Zach Lowe. But that's an audio-only podcast. We have the YouTube show as well, so our audience is splintered. So if you want to know about, you know, our total audience, you got to count those numbers as well. And in addition, you want to get into—
dude, I've never listened— I listen to you every single time, I've never listened to you on the podcast app.
So that's the Yeah, so that's the thing, like, and it would always annoy me that we were just focused on, what about the YouTube numbers? Like, to me, I'm more of a visual guy and I care more about that. Like, the audio podcast is almost like gravy for me if you're in your car or whatever, but I'm more inclined to push the video. So I would guess if we're gonna use those numbers, that's from a few months ago, and I don't feel like we've really missed a beat on MMA fighting since I returned there from the video. You know, we're talking like $200,000, $250,000. But then, then there's the breakout stuff, right? Like, because then each, each interview gets made into its own separate clip. So I don't know, man, what you're trying to stress me out here. I'm just trying to live my life.
And no, you get— look, you gave an answer. So you think $200K-ish an episode?
I'll tell you why I think something like that matters.
What are we at? $50,000 or $60,000? I think we're at $60,000 an episode if you add the YouTube and the pod. So I think that's amazing.
Like, like, I, I think I've been studying a bunch of different people from, you know, like there's, there's, there's you in, let's say MMA. And then there's, you know, I don't know if you follow cryptocurrency, but there's a guy Pomp and he's like the Bitcoin guy. And then there's Tim Ferriss and he's like, you know, the 4-Hour Workweek guy. And there's all these people who build their brands and they're what I call, you know, solopreneurs or solo media people. And, and you could look at, I did a comparison once of, of Rogan's show versus, you know, the, the, the, like, The Tonight Show. And on every metric, it's like, you know, not even close. You know, how many viewers do you get? How much money do you bring in? How many employees do you have? And on every metric, Rogan just like, like beats down The Tonight Show. And, uh, but people would still sort of, from a prestige point of view, they think one is a television show where you wear a fancy suit and you have a monologue and a fake audience clapping. And the other one is like, you know, you just got done with a workout, you sit down in this little Studio and you do a podcast. What the heck's a podcast? So people haven't really caught up on this model. And then I sort of broke down the businesses of each. I said, okay, interesting. So what it looks like to me is you get this number that I call your true fans, which is basically like the number of people who really trust you. And like, let's say that's like a quarter million people for you or something like that. Maybe it's 250,000 people that really trust you. I'll follow you. I don't really care if you're on ESPN or MMA Fighting or you're with BT Sport. I just know Ariel Hawani and I'll just kind of follow you wherever you go. It's like a fan of LeBron James. They're not a Cleveland Cavs fan, they're a LeBron fan, and now they're all Lakers fans. And so then I sort of studied the model and I said, okay, it looks like between 2 to 4% of your audience will sort of buy anything you do. Like they'll pay for your paid newsletter, they'll buy your hoodies. You know, you tell them, hey, I'm Ariel, I mean, I've raised a venture capital fund, I'm investing in startups now. They'll invest in your fund, they'll do everything. And so now, now there's all these new models. Before it used to be, you know, you get famous and you write a book, you spend a couple of years, you write a book, and that's how you, that's how you monetize your audience. And then people started doing courses and other, other different things like that. And I've been studying all the different models. One of the guys I got friendly with was Matthew Berry at ESPN because he has a niche which is fantasy football. And he was doing this, you know, before fantasy was sexy. And he was like convincing Yahoo and others Hey, go into fantasy. I'm telling you, like, guys are nuts about this. And he became the fantasy guy. And he's kind of like you. He's got a little bit of a— he's got a cushy gig with ESPN, but he's got a bit of independence. He's got his own, like, text message, like, list, and he's got his own fantasy football thing.
Like, oh, does he do that? I didn't know. I didn't know he, uh, he had his own.
He's got a couple carve-outs.
I actually asked ESPN in our negotiations, I was like, well, what if I do this? Like, if I just do the DC Show and the Chael Show, but then I do this other stuff on my own? And, uh, I don't know, it just, uh, it's not easy.
But I think he has a couple of carve-outs for him, work for him, um, and he got it kind of grandfathered in basically. He's like, yeah, I get to keep this. I, I don't make too big a fuss. But if you go look at his Twitter bio, what does he link to? It's like, I think he links to one of his properties basically as like one of his things. So I've been studying this model. I would say for you, I, I, I think you're in a great spot. And you know, if you just sort of think about like The menu of ways that— how does somebody who's got a trusted loyal audience they've built over 10 years monetize? There's all these creative ways beyond, um, beyond, you know, ads or sponsors on my, on my show.
I don't know if you care about that stuff, but I do care about it. You know, it's interesting, like the Substack thing is super interesting because I would say of the, you know, the 3 main things that I do, like obviously there's, uh, video, audio, and writing. And there's different components to all of those, but like, those are obviously, you know, audio, visual, and writing. I feel very confident in my abilities as a video host and as an audio host. I don't feel as confident in my abilities as a writer. Now, people tell me I'm good, I just don't feel like I'm as good. And I try to be very genuine when I write. I try to be myself, not someone else. And I talked to a bunch of people about the writing component of my menu. And everyone wanted me to do stuff that I wasn't really down with. The guys at Substack— so I'm part of this like Substack Pro model. I don't know if you guys know about this.
Okay, and we've talked to those guys, Hamish and all those guys, a fair bit. We like them.
Yeah, yeah. So there was a guy named Dan Stone who's a great guy. He reached out to me and they basically like pitched me this thing where I could kind of do whatever I want. And there's obviously this small component of it that's behind a paywall. I did not feel comfortable with the paywall. I'm just being honest. I said the same to him. I did not. I did not.
I think most people are in the same boat as you who come from your background.
I do. I don't want to look— I've always been free. And that's a weird thing in its own right, because like 30, 40 years ago, you know, you're subscribing to Sports Illustrated, you're subscribed like none. We've, we've all— we've programmed the audience to expect everything to be free when in reality, like, this stuff does, you know, this stuff is worth something and it technically shouldn't be free, but it's been that way and it's hard to go back. It's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And so I didn't feel comfortable doing that. And so the conclusion— but I really wanted to work with Substack. And so the conclusion that I came to was all the proceeds that I was getting from the subs, I'm donating to charity. So I want people to know I'm not profiting off of any of this.
I'm giving it— why?
I mean, I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable.
Dude, that's crazy. So my company, I just— so this, this podcast was owned by my company called The Hustle. We just sold it for a lot of money to this company called HubSpot. And before we sold it— thank you. And before we sold it, we had a daily email that reached around 2 million people a day. And then we owned a subscription business called Trends that made many millions of dollars and we charged $300 a year. I think we undercharged. I'm like, "What is going on?" Like, most creators feel exactly how you feel, and I'm like, "You're crazy. If you owned a restaurant and you were cooking every single day, grinding 8 hours a day, would you give that food away for free?" I can't do it.
I don't know why. Even stemming from, like, the shop stuff, this company Breaking Tea, who I think are fascinating— you guys should have those guys on. They basically, like, react to— actually, they made this sweatshirt. I don't even—
What's their name?
—so breaking tea, like breaking news, breaking—
—Oh, so they're like kind of quick on trends with the merch?
—Exactly.
So like, let's say— —That's smart.
—For example, off the top of my head, Jorge Masvidal, or Nick Diaz says, "Don't be scared, homie." The next day, they have a t-shirt out, a really cool one, and they're selling it, but they have deals with MLBPA, NHLPA, so they're making stuff in real time. It's a fascinating business. And so one of the guys there was a fan and made a Hiawani shirt in the midst of like my whole thing. I was like, "Oh, this is great." and we split the cost and all of that I'm donating to charity as well. I don't want it. I don't know.
You've got this like—
Hilwani is actually like, you know, philanthropist.
Mother Teresa. That's crazy. I love you, Ariel, and I think you're totally wrong. I've listened to you enough that I know that you, you know, I married into a Jewish family. You've got this very like stereotypical Jewish guilt about you of like, you're like— and I think that's weird. I think you are totally downplaying. You know, it's funny, I watch you in the interviews and I could tell you are nervous or you are having issues like realizing that you're the shit. And so as a fan, I will say I think you're undervaluing yourself. What—
Can I give you a free idea here for, as a creator, no charge for you, Ariel, you're a friend of the house. So here's a free idea for you. Okay, one of the new little tools in the creator playbook of how to make a bunch of money. I don't know if you saw this, but MrBeast, who's one of the biggest YouTubers out there, launched this pop-up restaurant. And celebrities doing restaurants kind of been a thing. But like back in the day, it was sort of like, you know, it was like Margaritaville or like Gordon Ramsay's, Wolfgang Puck's Kitchen or whatever the hell these things are. But MrBeast came out with MrBeast Burger, and overnight he had 200 locations across the country. And, and, you know, you think about this guy been pouring his, you know, that, that Did that take years of preparation? No. What, what's happened is there's these companies like Breaking Tea that exist that will create a virtual restaurant brand. And what they do is they partner with like, let's say you did, you, I, I don't know, I don't know what your, uh, maybe it's Chinese food. I don't know what your thing would be. Let's just say for a second it's, it's pizza.
Matzo ball soup.
Matzo. Okay. Made a, you went niche again. Like, I don't know how big the market is there, but let's say, let's say it was pizza just for, for, for ease here. There's a whole bunch of mom-and-pop pizza shops in every city. What this company does, they go partner with one in Phoenix and San Francisco and in all these different cities, and they say, hey, we're going to send you some packaging that's custom Helwani-branded packaging. And only on, you know, Saturday nights when there's a UFC pay-per-view does this restaurant go live. And the menu is themed for like, it'll be like, you know, you know, a masvidal pepperoni and like a, you know, a Diaz burger and whatever else. And you are, you know, you make up your own names and then basically your fans can kind of order with the pay-per-view. Now, MrBeast, he did his little pop-up thing, so he didn't have to really lift a finger. He just kind of said, all right, when I'll give you some ideas on the branding of what the menu could look like, you know, and I approve it.
Yeah, I'll approve it.
I'll put— and I'll put my name behind it. And then when the time comes, I'm going to tweet out that, hey, this is happening. And today you can go buy from my thing. And I think this thing has done about over somewhere between $50 and $100 million in revenue off this thing. I think, you know, if you just sort of assume a 10%, you know, kickback royalty that he's getting on this, I'm pretty confident he's doing somewhere between $3 and $6 million a year of just recurring passive revenue, from the, from his little MrBeast Burger thing. Now, you're not quite MrBeast, but you could do something alongside the pay-per-views, and that would just be for fun. Your fans—
I'm going to steal that. I'm going to steal that idea.
I can introduce you to these guys.
So you've done the boxing thing, you know, the—
with the— yes, which I made no money off of as well.
I know, and I followed that and I bought one. Oh yeah, that was fun. I don't think you understand, like, I'm a super fan. I appreciate it. And so I would— what I would do is the— you went to the Newhouse School of Journalism.
You're wearing Hawaiian boxers right now. Yeah, I am.
I would go to the, um, Ho'olani School of Journalism. I mean, I think that— that—
that you guys be my agent. I mean, these are all great ideas. I love this stuff.
I mean, I just think that you could make, like, I, I, I would imagine you could profit a million dollars a year selling a $500 to $1,000 whole school of like, you've never heard of me.
You never heard of me before with this podcast. I, I did a course on writing, how to be a better writer. And again, I'm nobody. And I did, I think, what did I do? $250K last month in this course. Um, and so, you know, you sort of average that out across the year. I mean, these are like kind of like million-dollar product lines that I create the course once and then I just run. I just say, hey, the new batch is open next month and then it runs again and people get great value. At the end of the thing, I say, hey, you know, you paid whatever, $900. How much value do you think you got out of this for you and your business, your career? Right. And they're like, you know, on average it's $10K basically is what they say. So they get 10x return on their money, from self-assessed on what they believe they got out of the course. So, you know, I could send a film crew to you right now and we could film a, a course on how to, you know, how to break into journalism, how to make it as a, as a, as a journalist. And then screw Syracuse. Uh, the people who really want this, all you need is, you know, basically 1,000 people who really want this, who pay you $1,000 for this. That's $1 million a year of basically pure profit because the video production costs are very, very small for this.
Wow. This is great stuff. That, who would've thought I'd come on here and get all these ideas? I feel like my head is spinning right now.
Thank you guys. Can you, Can you help us now? Please. Talk to me about audience building. I mean, like, you seem like a guy who like, you don't do like a significant amount of like growth tactics. You just, I think you're talented and I think you have tenacity, so you've been doing it forever. But what have, for us and anyone listening who wants to break into, to do what you've done, what advice do you have on audience building and getting, I mean, I know you don't, you're not a whore, like a view whore at all, But, you know, it's still— you want people to like your stuff and you want a lot of people to like it. What do you have for that?
So my mindset, um, was always, okay, the first thing was, you know, look at the landscape, look who's out there doing things. It's okay to derive some kind of inspiration from this person or that person, but at the end of the day, like, you need to develop a unique voice and give people a reason to tune into you, right? Don't be a copycat. Don't just try to do something because someone else is doing it. And so that was my big thing, and that's why The interview lane, I was like, oh, no one is doing this in MMA. I should, you know, develop my own voice in this lane and be the guy, be the leader here. And so that's the first thing. The second thing is like, it's exhausting, you know. You have to work your ass off to build the audience, to put the content out, to make it as good as possible, be consistent, you know, pick a day. If you're doing a podcast or something, like pick a day. Monday is your day. Don't miss a Monday, you know, like people who do, oh, one here, two here, take a break here. It's very hard. You have to be consistent. You have to be reliable. You have to be relentless. You have to be professional. So my thing was, you know, reaching out to the fighters, and the fighters who I reached out to, I was very, you know, respectful towards. I was very professional towards. I didn't keep them for very long. I would keep them for like 20 minutes in hopes of getting them to come back the next time, right? 'Cause it's not just about this time, it's about the next time and the next time and it's the next time. And so I don't want them in the back of their mind to say like, "Ugh, this guy kept me for an hour. What a pain in the ass. I'm not gonna do this again." And then afterwards, very thankful, very respectful, very professional. And then over time, it was like developing these relationships, checking in with fighters, checking in, and it's not, in my world it's fighters, but it can be with anyone else. If you're an interviewer and you're interviewing tech people and things like that. One big thing is, you know, I don't just talk to fighters when I need something from them. I don't just reach out to Michael Bisping when I want him on my show. We talk about things all the time. I mean, in some respects, some of these guys have become friends of mine, and they don't feel like they're being used. It's important to be a human being towards your guests, your sources, your things like that. And so then when it is time to ask for something, they are more than happy to help you out because you've asked about their dog who passed away or their wife who had surgery or their son who won a big thing in football or whatever. And so these are all kind of things that you develop, not with the, you know, it's, to me it's always very genuine. I'm not doing that, I'm not checking in on the dog because I hope that in 3 weeks it's going to pay off and he has, you know, he's willing to come on my show. It's just being a human being about all this and Working hard, working your ass off, trying to be different, putting the content out. Social media is a massive thing now, obviously. You can't do a show without having a social media presence. And I don't care if you have 1 follower or a million followers, you gotta put the clips out because it's so funny to me, I hear from people all the time like, "Oh, that thing that Rose said on your show was awesome." And then in the back of my mind I'm like, "Oh, that's the one clip that we chose from the interview. Did you watch the interview or did you just watch the clip on my Instagram?" And oftentimes it's just the Instagram clip, and that's okay. It's just about being out there, getting the stuff out there, making it shareable, and then hopefully it attracts more people to check you out and check you out. But like, if this doesn't happen, you know, I started this particular part of my life in 2007. I graduated in 2004. It took me 14 years just to get to ESPN, and so a lot of people are impatient and they want to see the results right away. It's just not gonna be that way.
How many people, first of all, I wanna know how often are you working? Because UFC fights end at 1 AM, midnight, in New York, and you do a recap show often, but how often are you working, and also, how many people does it take to run a content, your content operation?
So, I feel, honestly, I feel like I work every day. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's for the most part with pleasure. Like, I don't ever feel like, oh man, I need a break, I need a vacation, this and that. Now, part of, going back to the therapist, I was, terrified of leaving ESPN and then kind of disappearing. However, I then came to the conclusion, hey, you know what, distance makes the heart grow fonder for me and for them. And so June 15th was my last day at ESPN, and I essentially disappeared until August 15th. I was still on social media, I was still doing stuff here and there, but I took a 2-month break, and it was freaking awesome because I went home to Canada to see my parents for the first time in 2 years because of the pandemic. I just, I really needed that break. And I think that that's important if you're doing something, you know, for, you know, for a very long time. I think it's important to give yourself, you know, that type of break as well. But for the most part now, I feel like I'm working every day, especially with all these different people and all these different projects. And there's travel and stuff like that. There is no real break, and I'm okay with that. You just kind of find your moments. I can be a lot better. I wish I could put the phone away a lot sooner at night. I wish I didn't wake up and check my phone right away. I wish I was a little more present at times. I'm working on that. But I gotta tell you guys, like, I feel like I'm working every day, but I'm also in this state where I've never been happier. And the work has been so fulfilling, and it puts me in such a good mood to create this stuff and to be there for people. Like, there is no greater compliment that I can get when someone writes me and said, I had a horrible day and then I checked out your show and it made me forget about my day. Or during the pandemic, I was so down and you and DC used to make me laugh. And, uh, you know, I just got a message from someone who's in Australia and it's been horrible there with the lockdowns. And you, you know, I'm so happy your show is 4 hours again because you give me 8 hours a week of stuff to think about outside of the lockdown. I can think about MMA and I have access to these fighters. Like there is no greater joy than I get than that. And so I don't mind it, but also, you know, I haven't been to a UFC fight in a year and a half. March of 2020 was my last UFC fight, and partly because of the pandemic, now partly because of my job. And you ask me right now, big-time UFC fight, Conor McGregor's return fight, Las Vegas, T-Mobile, sold-out crowd on a Saturday night in July, The buzz, the celebrities, the atmosphere, nothing better, right? Or you ask me, do you want to go to your son's soccer game with 10 other parents there at the park nearby? I am choosing that soccer game without a shadow of a doubt in my mind. Like, I get so much enjoyment at being at those games, being a parent, being with my kids, but then also doing the work that fulfills me and makes me happy. There was a time where I thought I had to be at every event leave my family, travel every weekend because I needed to be omnipresent. Because Woody Allen once said, "80% of success is just showing up." And that served me early in my life and career. It doesn't serve me anymore. And so now that I'm able to pick and choose what I want to do and work with people who I want to work with and do the kind of content that I want to do, but also be there for my family and my kids at this stage of their lives, gives me a lot of joy. And so I never thought I would get to this point where Wow, I don't have to go to the events and I can still do great stuff and still be happy and still be followed and still produce amazing and, and still be there for my kids. Uh, it, it— in a weird word, I'm so thankful to the man above because I feel like it all kind of like fell into place at this point in my life.
Someone send that clip to Conor. Ariel chooses soccer game— oh, a 6-year-old soccer game over Conor McGregor's return. It's the truth.
And it has— I just use Conor because that's the biggest name possible, obviously. Obviously, you know, he's been very good to me, and it's been an absolute honor, and I would love to go to events, you know, of course, like, one a week, or sorry, one a year, two a year, three a year, four, like, I got to go to the Jake Paul thing, that was a great, great experience. I was just using the most, you know, crazy example possible, the biggest name possible. The point is, I used to have FOMO, I used to feel sad and depressed when I wasn't at the events, because I felt like I was missing out, I was becoming irrelevant, And I don't feel that way anymore. I feel very confident in what I'm doing.
And before we wrap up, the content team, what's your team and process looking like?
Oh, right, yes. So right now, you know, it kind of, so the dream obviously is to like, you know, I think, I don't know if you guys are fans of Pat McAfee, but I think that he is doing media in sports at least better than anyone right now. He is just doing an incredible job and he has his group of like, I think, 8 or so guys doing work for him, and his social media is brilliant because they're often tweeting out things and he's not even a part of it. It's just like this well-oiled machine, and then he's going to do SmackDown, he has his private plane. I mean, what a life this guy lives. Now, I am nowhere near that at the moment. I also didn't play in the NFL. But right now, I have, I would say, 3 people who work with me. One person's social media, one person's video, one person's audio. And that's just me, you know, my LLC type of thing. And then I have people who are working on other projects, you know, the Vox stuff, they have people who work with me there, Ringer people, etc. But yeah, I would love to grow that out, but I think the 3 most important people to have right now, it doesn't have to be, I mean, like, all those interviews that you saw from me over the years, I only had 1 cameraman. I didn't have an audio person, I didn't have anything. I don't think you need a gigantic team of people to do stuff, but yes, It would be nice over time to have maybe 2 social media people and have this person who's thinking of this and someone who's managing. I was laughing because you said you had Ben who did the scheduling. I was like, "Man, I wish I had a Ben. I wish I had someone doing my scheduling. I wish I was in that position or I could even delegate some of that stuff." That's part of my problem as well. I don't do well at delegating. But it will come, it will grow, and then eventually it'll be fun to have a store, a merch store to do the stuff that you're talking about, and maybe make money off of it and not feel bad about it. I mean, there's a lot more. I feel like I'm just, I'm 39, I've never been happier about my age, my life, and I remember when I was a young kid and we went to Boston and my mom turned 40, and I remember she locked herself in the bathroom and she was crying 'cause she was so sad that she turned 40, and I joke about this with her now as I'm about to turn 40. Thank God she's still alive and well. And I'm like, I'm so happy to be 40. I feel I'm way happier at 39, 40 than I was at 19, 20. Um, and I just can't wait to see how this all plays out.
Last thing I wanted to ask you real quick. You've mentioned Jake Paul and you talked about audience building and all the good stuff, uh, consistency, quality, hard work, but there's also controversy. Jake Paul is the master of controversy. Conor McGregor is a master of controversy. And you have leaned into the controversy. I don't know if you've leaned in, I don't know if it's a work, I don't know if you— if you— if this is actually backing away, but the con— you know, you are the, the number one MMA guy and you're banned for life from UFC, from UFC events by— because the president of the UFC has a feud with you. And Brendan Chubb now has a little bit of feud with you. And, uh, it's highly entertaining. I click every single one of 'em because, you know, same, every— everybody loves drama. Everybody loves the fight. Uh, you know, we all turn our heads and look whenever there's, there's a brawl that breaks out.
I'm, I'm, I'm at your clip. His, it's called Ask the Nose, I believe, on the nose, on the nose. Sorry. And it's, and it's been all about lately his fight with other, other folks. It's great.
So tell me about that, leaning into that. Is that intentional? Is that good for business? Uh, you're having fun with it. You're actually angry.
What's going on? Okay, well, I'll just say I am not banned for life. I was banned for 48 hours, but that was back in 2007. 2016. Over time, there's been some revisionist history where people think I'm still banned. I'm not banned. I've been to a bunch of events since then. Um, but, uh, yes, of course there was that feud there that happened and all this stuff, and, and that's all well and good. And now as I've come, you know, into this new era and, uh, this persona, Heelwani, Thugnose, El Nariz, whatever you want to call me, uh, I've just enjoyed being able to respond to people. And I think part of this comes from the fact that when I was at ESPN, they kept telling me, "Take the high road, take the high road." Like, a lot of people were taking shots at me, and I had to take the high road, take the high road. Muzzle, muzzle, muzzle, muzzle. Censor yourself. And then all of a sudden I become free, and I think as a byproduct of being told to take the high road for the last 3 years, I just kind of snapped and exploded. And I think people have enjoyed See, look, I'm not this wimp that people think I am. I don't have big muscles, I'm not a fighter, I'm not this, but I'm a crazy, fiery Middle Eastern kid who grew up getting into fights all the time while I was playing sports, arguing with people. I'm not the, you know, I have glasses, I look nerdy, whatever. And at times I've actually leaned into that because that's a good gimmick in this world of big, strong fighters, alpha males. I'm the beta. But I'm really not that guy. And the idea of letting people talk smack about me, walk all over me, disparage my name, lie about me, it's just not gonna happen anymore. And so I don't care. And it was funny, like Brendan was saying, like, I wouldn't say this to his face, like, did you guys forget that I stood in front of Rampage Jackson when he wanted to, like, bite my head off? Did you guys forget that Nick Diaz wanted to beat me up? Did you guys forget that, you know, Mayhem Miller trashed my studio and I just sat there like, I would say anything to anyone's face. I'm not the guy who sits in front of a keyboard or a camera and says stuff that wouldn't, you know, that I wouldn't have the courage to say in front of anyone's face. And I don't think I'm disrespectful. I just, you know, am not that guy. And so, uh, I think he said a bunch of lies about me, and then I just kind of said something and people liked it, and then he kept doubling down. And so I didn't go into all this saying like, oh, I'm gonna come out and start wars with people and start all this beef. It's just like, now I don't have someone telling me to take the high road. And I'm a little older and I'm a little more confident and I'm a little wiser and people are enjoying, you know, I'll be honest, like I've realized over time, you know, people want to know more about me, they want to see me talk about myself, it doesn't always have to be about the guests and all that stuff and that takes some time, you know, to get used to because it's taught, you know, you're taught very early on in your career like it's not about you, you're not the story, but Yeah, now I'm just having fun with it, and yeah, I'm a pro wrestling fan, and I like the drama and all that stuff. You could say what you will about all of it, but at the end of the day, none of it is fake, none of it is a work. I'm not looking for any of this. I'm not trying to get paid off of any of this. I'm not trying to do it for the views and all that. I'm just tired of people talking shit about me and me having to eat it. And so those days are over, and I don't care who you are, I'm going to clap back, as they say. And I think I'm pretty damn good at the promos. And I may not be able to fight you and I have no interest in fighting you, but I think I could go toe to toe with you in a, uh, in a verbal war.
And so, yeah, it feels good to stick up for yourself. And this is why I was nervous to talk to you is because I fully believe that. I, I, I've, I've first, you, uh, you're sharp and you're not afraid. So we're at the top of the hour. Um, I want to be respectful, dude. This has been badass. I hope, hopefully you don't talk too much about yourself, like, um, as a guest, and I hope you've enjoyed this because I think I have enjoyed it.
I hope you guys have enjoyed it. I hope you felt like this was worth your while. I appreciate all the questions about building the business and betting on yourself, and I'm learning a lot about that as well now, you know, with all this LLC stuff that makes my head hurt talking to my accountant. But I would urge anyone out there who is passionate about what they do and who believes in what they do. I don't have a lot of confidence. Like, if you and I I bet you, Sam, you and I go get a coffee right now nearby, you are a much more confident person than I am. You will walk up there and have your chest out, and you're probably— because you just sold your company for a few million and you're loving life and life couldn't be better. I'm not. I'm actually a very shy person, a quiet person. I keep to myself. I had horrible social anxiety. However, when it comes to this stuff, I believe in myself and I believe that no one could do it better than me. And that sounds cocky, but it took me a long time to actually be able to say that. And so I'm really enjoying getting to do this stuff on my own and getting to do this stuff the way I want to do it without anyone telling me how to do it. And I appreciate your interest in my story, and I appreciate you guys.
It's been a therapy session for all of us, maybe a little bit.
Well, Thursdays is my therapy day, so I, you know, I was gonna have actually my session. I canceled it for you guys. So I'm doubling down here because we were supposed to, I don't know if you guys know this, we were supposed to do this last month and you stood me up. No, I'm just joking. I'm not going to go back there.
Well, as your therapist, we'll end with—
Therapists, we call this letting go. Letting go of some things.
I'm not the letting go type. I hold on to things forever.
That's part of my problem as well. I know. I know. I've listened to you long enough. I know this, but I love it. You got to charge more. Don't feel guilty about that. That's what, as your therapist today, that's my advice. That would be my feedback, because if you are the best, you deserve the best. Thank you. I appreciate that.
In fact, I don't know when this is coming out, but I'll just say part of, you know, me trying to tinker with things. I'm doing a thing for founding members of my Substack this evening. I'll do it 3 more times over the course of the year where it's just the founding members, the people who paid $180 to sign up. So the Substack is $5 a month, $50 a year, or there's the founding member deal, which is $180. I picked 180 because the number 18 is a special number for Jewish people. And I'm doing a super secret, VVIP, one night only, no holds barred Zoom chat with the people who signed up, where they can ask me whatever they want for an hour.
I'm gonna be there.
Are you gonna be there? Yes. Well, I appreciate you signing up.
Yes, I'm gonna be there.
But don't record this and take notes and post it to your millions of followers, because it's supposed to be VVIP. I'm gonna spill all the tea. Release all the dirt on all the bad people out there, but it's just for us, our little group. And there's not— I don't— honestly, I'm kind of nervous that no one's gonna show up. So the fact— it might just be me and you, Sam, just for the record.
I would love that.
A dream come true, as Sam calls it.
Yeah. Well, thanks, man. This is badass. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. This is awesome. We would— you got to come back again.
I would be happy to. Just don't, you know, Stand me up next time.
Yeah, let go, bro. Thanks, guys.