BigDeal - #09 The MMA Champion: The Crazy Mindset Shift for Winning at All Aspects of Life (feat. Michael Chandler)

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

🚀 Main Street Over Wall Street is where the real deals get done. Join top investors, founders, and operators for three days of powerful connection, sharp strategy, and big opportunities — live in Austin, Nov 2–4. https://contrarianthinking.biz/msows-bigdeal How can you stay mentally strong when life gets tough? Michael Chandler shares his advice with host Codie Sanchez, highlighting his UFC and MMA experience. Michael offers an inside look at the preparations needed to excel as a fighter and family man, focusing on gratitude, self-perception, and the pursuit of excellence. They also cover his company WalkOn Fitness, the upcoming fight with Conor McGregor, backing the healthy and high-protein PB&J called Kram, and the business behind making money as a fighter. Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. 00:01:05 - Contrarian Idea: You need a story to tell yourself when life is hard 00:02:34 - Steal My Rich Friend: Michael Chandler 00:05:13 - The role of a mindset coach 00:16:13 - The real passion project is family 00:30:11 - Handling trolls 00:35:30 - How the business of UFC works 00:43:56 - Creating an empire and the upcoming fight with Conor McGregor 00:46:17 - Backing Kram, healthy and high-protein PB&J 00:48:54 - Creating a plan within your relationship 00:57:51 - Staying out of the toxicity and noise 01:03:14 - Looking fit but not being healthy 01:06:03 - Deal of the week: Making money as a fighter 01:12:05 - CEO Story Time: Increase your self-control MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Resources: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17461391.2019.1629180#abstract https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946721000337#sec0080 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, and welcome back. It's Cody Sanchez, and this is the Big Deal podcast for those who don't just want to be rich, but be free, and do what it actually takes to get there. Okay, today I have a treat for you. This is a long-form interview with a real man in, dare I say a world of boys, who's become a friend, Mike Chandler. So he's a UFC fighter. He won the Bellator championship three times, slated to fight Connor McGregor, and also oddly one of the nicest humans I've ever had the pleasure to become friends with. Now, Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. And Mike and I joked about that because it turns out that's true. And it's useful kind of to talk to those who have been repeatedly face punched and still keep their demons in their mind at bay. So you should listen to this if you want to be more mentally strong. You wonder how to take control of a life and a childhood that was hard. You wonder what it's like to be inside of the mind of a champion. And you

want to have it all, like an incredible career, a six-pack, beautiful wife and children like he does. So I think we should get into it. What do you think? I completely agree. And before we even jump into stuff, I feel like you should read something that you wrote the other day. So here's my contrarian idea. I think sometimes you need a story to tell yourself when life is hard when you're losing and you don't even want to get out of bed. And so I wrote this to remind myself of that. It's the dark of the night. My alarm says 12.44 a.m. But my brain says sleep no more. The world outside is loud, pounding. insatiable, and it will not settle. A running to-do list races through my mind, marching like incessant ants in a line. Then I remember, every army needs a general, so I throw off the covers and relegate sleep to a future self. We've got work to do. God gave us a body filled with capacity,

a horde straining to break free. Better use it. The coffee pot whistles happily thrilled at being used for its true capacity. Happy to have an early friend to start the day. My pen traces paper taking ideas out of my head and onto the one place where they can't slip away from me so easily. It's quiet. No emails coming in, no pings, just me in the night. That feeling of purpose of execution of getting shit done flows through me. I'm convinced there's no greater sensation than creating exactly what you should. The architect drafting his building, the brick mason laying his final cornerstone, the writer's words to books, the farmer sewing seeds. So this day, this morning, wherever you are, settle not for sleep. See what you are actually capable of. The world is waiting

for it. All right. So before we get into Mike, ask yourself, do you have a story so strong, it'll pull you out of sleep and complacency. And if you don't, you can steal some of his. I really like this part. Bring the band in. I think the little man and the everyday man in the U.S. is sort of getting crushed by the big, you know, the big companies, the big banks, the big government. And increasingly, there's like a nation of men and women who sort of feel purposeless and a little bit powerless. And when I read your story, I was really inspired by the fact that you started and self-proclaimed are a everyday man from a small town who became something a little bit bigger. And so I'd be curious to hear from you and your words. What was that journey like?

Well, I think eventually every big shot is just a small shot that never stopped shooting. You know, you just got to keep on going. I was. I was a small guy from a small town. I was taught to do small things, the people I was around my closest of kin, my closest of community. there wasn't a lot of gumshed heading toward the outside of those county lines. You know, it was even a gamble for me to go two hours west of me to go to Missouri and walk on to the University of Missouri. Wrestling team, when everybody said, you know, why are you going to go do that? Why are you going to go, ride the bench?

Why are you going to go? What if you never wrestle? What if you quit? What if you come back with your hat in your hand? And we can all say, I told you so. And I think so many of us have been put into a box, whether it be our upbringing, whether it be the people around us, whether it be our own self-sabotaging self-talk or self-sabotaging vision and view and self-image and self-concept of ourselves.

And I still battle that little guy from the little town every single day. He's still inside. I've just got really good at duct-taping him to the basement of my mind. And continuing to believe that if I work hard, I operate with integrity, if I meet the right people, if I'm nice to and serve the right people, they will in turn serve me. and it will in turn serve me, my greater purpose, my greater mission. And then eventually things will work out. And some days it feels like I'm treading water.

And some days it feels like I'm shooting to the moon. But I think that's the essence of our human condition. You're never going to feel 100% happy with where you're at. You're never going to feel 100% like you did every single thing that you needed to do. But all in all, success or growth, becoming the man or woman you're supposed to be on the other side is just a bunch of small decisions every single day, a little bit of hard work every single day that adds up to the big success. You know, and it's worked out well for me, went from wrestling to mixed martial arts and

winning some world titles and now in the biggest fight I could I ever ask for. It's actually wild because you talk a lot about mental toughness. And in particular, I believe you have a mindset coach, not just a boxing coach and not a growth coach, but a coach that helps you, as you've mentioned, like slay the dragons or lock a dragon in a room that shouldn't be let out. Talk to me about that. Why a mindset coach? And I've had numerous over the years and specific mentors and even, you know, we're sitting here at Operation Blackside. I mean, these are the guys that I want to be able to call. I want them to call me when they think, hey, I need something. You know, I want to be like these guys here, like the leaders here.

We are the sum total of the people that we hang out with or aspire to be like. And obviously today, the world is so connected because I can just hit follow to a million different people and feel like I'm in their lives. But ultimately, if you're doing something impactful with your life, if you're trying your hardest, if you're operating with integrity, you hold your reputation to a very high regard, then eventually those people start being attracted to you as much as you were attracted to them. I had a mindset coach that I've worked with on and off, and we really did. It wasn't necessarily forward-thinking self-image. How do I get to where I'm going to go? Who am I now?

What do I stand for? Who is Michael Chandler? What is my story? What are the lies that I've been telling myself for the last 30-something years? What are the pitfalls that I continue to fall back into, the valleys I continue to fall back into because of the way I see myself, the stories that I've told myself, and what do I stand for? You know, I think a lot of us, are wandering generalities instead of meaningful specifics, knowing exactly who we are, what we want to do and what we want to accomplish. It's okay to embark on a journey

with no virtual certainty of success or even close to success or even close to it working out the way we want it to work out. But if we move forward by not knowing exactly who we are and what we stand for, you're kind of just a wandering generality and it's much harder to get from point A to point B. So for me, it was trying to figure out, who am I? You know, who am I when I show up as my wife's husband?

Who am I when I show up as my kid's dad? Who am I when I show up in a business meeting? Or who am I when I show up in a cage in front of millions of people? All of those questions can be answered before the actual moment. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of introspection and a lot of writing and a lot of thinking, a lot of visualization. And as you alluded to, I mean, some dragons I've been able to slay. And some of them I've just been really good at pushing into a corner and being able to manage them, being okay with them being there for the rest of my life, knowing that that's a part of my

story. It's one of the chains and the links in the chain of this huge life that I'm going to live here on this earth and just being okay with constant and never-ending improvement, but knowing who I am, what I stand for, who I want to serve, whose I am, and growing every single day. Yeah, it's funny because I have always, every time I embark on a new business venture, I always get, I don't usually call them coaches, but a consultant. So like, if I want to start a new business, I want to go to try to hire the best person I can to start that new business. And the same thing if we're struggling in an area, maybe I need a new sales coach.

And so, you know, I get them with a call a week and we break down the stuff that I don't know technically how to do. But I think if you would have told me a year ago, Cody, you need a mindset coach. I would have been like, what sort of fucking nonsense is that like fluffy? What? And then I would have felt like, oh, I'm going to spend money on that. And you seem like a tough guy, obviously. And yet, did you ever feel that way?

Or how did you get past the idea, if you ever had it, that, you know, that might be fluffy, or it's not a coach who's going to teach you how to hook better, or is going to teach you how to do something tactically better? Well, I think ultimately, every single thing that we do, every single thing that we say, everything that we feel, every single aspect of our life always really does go back to our self-image, our self-concept, how we see ourselves, how deserving, how deserved it are we of, success. How deserve it are you of even embarking on the next business venture? Who are you to think that these people are going to watch, tune in, buy? Yeah. Want the services or, you know, what is the story that you're telling yourself? And I think for me, I always had such a lowly view of what I brought to the table that I needed to start doing a lot of work, you know? And so ultimately, whenever that cage door closes and Bruce Buffers scream in my name and says,

it's time and all that kind of stuff, it's not the punches, kicks, knees, and elbows, it's not the techniques, it's not the game plans. It's not all these tactical black and white binary things that people think it is. It really is, do I believe that I am better than that man and I should beat that man tonight here in the middle of this octagon. And that's the same that's true in business, same as that is true in your relationships. it's the same that is true in every single aspect of life. You can be really, really, really tactically good at something,

and you can find success year after year or season after season. But eventually, if the self-image itself isn't keeping pace with that, eventually there's going to be burnout, there's going to be self-sabotage, there's going to be things that you're going to fall into to make sure that you don't reach that level, because a man or a woman can never consistently perform in a manner that's inconsistent with the way that they see themselves. You can find success here and there, like we said, tactically, you can be very good tactically at certain things.

But eventually, to find that long, drawn out, consistent year over year success, it all goes back to the self-image. So for me, I realize that. And I also realize who I am when I step inside a cage in front of millions of people. And I look like a tough guy. And I look ripped. And I look like that guy, right? They could be on a movie behind King Leonidas on 300, right? I look like that guy, right?

But ultimately, that doesn't mean a dang thing if right here between my ears, I don't actually see myself that way and I don't think that I deserve to be there. Ultimately, I realized that the mindset side of things, the self-image side of things was probably, not even probably. It was definitely more important than the tactical side of things. Yeah, I mean, in my mind, I'm trying to imagine, like I'm sure many, people do, that you know, you're in this octagon, you're in this cage, and, you know, it's getting towards the end of the fight, and you are out of breath, and you've taken a few hits, and you can't

feel your legs anymore, and you're maybe vaguely aware of the audience shouting the other guy's name. Like, what does it take mentally, and what do you say to yourself in that moment to keep going. Yeah, well, I think it's, I think it's the decisions that I've made leading up to that moment, you know, whether it be my five years at Missouri wrestling where I turned myself into a mixed martial artist or like, or at least a, the spiritual being of where I needed to be to go into mixed martial arts, then work and work on the tactical stuff. All of the work that I've done over the last 14 years to get to that moment. And a lot of that goes back to a couple different things, gratitude. I do believe I'm operating my best when I'm extremely grateful. When I wake up every

single morning, I thank God for another day, the blessings in my life, what I do have, two capable arms, two capable legs, an awesome platform, a voice to speak, people that look to me and admire me, all of these different things that we can sometimes forget about. I'm very good at just going straight blinders on and just running my head into a brick wall and you tell me to go and I'll go, right? If you're my coach, say, okay, I'll run through that brick wall if you tell me to. But ultimately, being grateful for what I have and then thinking to it, it all started too with Mike and Betty Chandler back in High Ridge, Missouri, my mom and dad, who worked two and three jobs nonstop to make sure me and my two brothers had every opportunity to be successful, to be to where

I am today. Sitting here on this chair, speaking to you with the platform I have and the life that I've created for my family now, it all started back with those gifts they gave me and to give anything less than my best every single day and pour myself into that into everything that I do is to sacrifice those gifts, is to literally, you know, it's a slap in the face to them. So gratitude, thinking about what they did for me and then now having the woman of my dreams and having my two sons and now it's just, it's so much bigger than just me, if I lose a fight, no big deal. Maybe I lose a little bit of money. Maybe I lose a world ranking. It means so much more for

the masterpiece that I'm painting for my two sons, the promise that I make. to my wife to serve and protect and love and to provide for her so i have the past that has motivated me and still motivates me i have my present right now with my family and ultimately an overarching theme of gratitude so in that moment i'm honestly just operating with the muscle memory and the neuro pathways and the my spirit and my soul continuing to push me forward through all of the hard work, all of the deposits in the bank, if you will, that has led me to that moment to where I can push through and people are wildly entertained by it. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. So in those moments where everybody thinks the minute or the second matters, it's actually just a compilation

of your historical actions. Yeah, well, and we've watched so many movies too where, you know, the guy gets beat down and he's bleeding or whatever and his inner monologue or Rocky's inner monologue or the coach says something and it's like, sometimes that happens. But for the most part, You know, it's, you're in the moment and you are trying to make the best decision you can with the information you have, the split second information that you have right there in the moment. Sometimes you zig when you should have zagged and sometimes you lose and sometimes you make bad decisions. And sometimes you go back and watch the tape and think, what the heck was I thinking? Can't believe I did that. Can't believe I made this decision inside of the confines of competition.

But it's all a learning process. And I am where I am today because of my wins and because of my losses, because of my shortcomings and because of my triumphs. And because of, you know, the tears that I've cried and the hard work that I put in and the pain that I put myself through, the times I've bled. And ultimately, you just, you're able to find something inside of you. So that's why I think it's so, it's a bastardization of the blessings that you have to not be pushing yourself every single day. And it sounds a little off putting to people like, well, this guy's a little bit intense. It's a little bit crazy. But, I mean, I'm here to tell you today that I just have pushed so hard and tried to find the outskirts of my comfort zone in every single aspect of my life.

to get me to that moment where the lights are shining brightest, at your greatest moment of opportunity, or at your darkest hour, for you to inherently, spiritually, deeper than just the cognitive thinking of, am I enough? And I want to be able to answer that question with, yes, I am. You know, what's interesting is you talk about these things

that I think a lot of people think sound good. Like, I'm a family man. I'm a family first person. But I remember when we were first texting back and forth, you know, I was like, what do we want to talk about? What businesses do we want to talk about? What products are you really focused on? And we talked about your businesses. We talked about cram and we talked about walk on fitness.

And we talked about, you know, some of your goals for your business. But the line that I won't forget that you texted me was, so here are some of my businesses and hobbies, but my real passion projects are my wife and kids. You know, I engage with a lot of business people. And that's rarely a sentence said up front. Where do you think that family-oriented nature came from as it seems really important to you? And also, this thing we're at right now, What astounds me is of like the five guys I know the best who have the biggest platforms here, like all five of them are super family guys before almost anything else. You know, I mean, I'm six years into being a father now, almost 10 years into being a husband.

Some of these guys here, actually almost all of these guys here that you're kind of alluding to, have been in that quest longer and honestly probably made a lot more money with a lot more businesses and all these other things. And I'm sure they would tell you, you know, we always want to seek the, we always want to seek the material. We always want to seek whatever it is, the respect and the awe of driving a cool car, having a nice big house, or having all these zeros in your bank account. You know, guys here that would tell you, hey, all that stuff really is cool, but it took me 15 years to learn or this experience to learn that what is most important is who you're doing life with and who you're

serving. Because ultimately, it's those things that are going to last forever. And that's what I've said about, you know, winning belts and making a lot of money and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff really is awesome, and it's a means to and in to provide for the family, but nobody's going to give a crap about that stuff a decade from now. My sons aren't going to care about the world titles that I might win or the different accomplishments that I've had. All they're going to care about is, did you show up and do what you said you were going to do? And did you show up when I needed you?

Did you serve me mentally, spiritually, emotionally throughout this process? process that we call life, you know? And I really did have a phenomenal upbringing. My mom and dad supported me, loved me, took care of me. We felt safe in our home. And for me now to where I'm at, and the success that I have had, it's just I look at what they did, how hard they tried. And if they tried that hard, and now I have a life that's probably easier than theirs. I work less than they do. I make more money for less time than they had to put in. I have this huge platform that's just such a huge blessing. It just seems like the only right thing to do is have your priorities straight. And for me, my priority always has been, well, okay, I might have

this business venture, I might have this fight that entails this fight camp or this, all of the different things that I have going on. But how does it affect my family? What lens can I look through it and see it coinciding with the Venn diagram of my family, my reputation, and who I want to be on the other side of it because ultimately the lights are going to fade and the interviewers are going to stop calling and all of that all of this stuff is going to be over I'm just going to be a retired mima fighter and all that's going to matter is the reputation that I have with those amongst the world who were able to watch me fight and then the most important reputation is who am I as a father and who am I as a husband and it's just you know both of my sons just deserve that and my wife deserves that

and she's the most supportive, amazing woman that I could have ever asked for. So it's pretty darn easy to make them a priority. Ah, take notes, dudes. Yeah. I think, you know, my friend Alex said it really perfectly. He was like, the Queen of England, like arguably one of the most famous people on the planet had the longest reign in history. You guys watched her funeral and everything.

And she died. And how many times have you thought about her today? Not three or four or six months later, not once. And so you have a queen of an entire kingdom. and she is irrelevant six months after she died. And it sounds a little harsh, except I think it's true. At the end of the day, nobody will remember you, and most of your life will mean nothing except to a very few amount of people.

So I think that's really powerful. Now, that said, you have some violence in you, obviously, right? Like, you can't do what you do without some point of violence. And I guess I think about that because my husband's special forces, and he came from a different background than you. A lot more trauma in his background, maybe, at least as far as he would say. and difficulty and strife, but he always talks about how his parents

fucked them up just enough to be a team guy and not enough to be a stripper, you know? And he was like, yeah, thank God for that, you know? Just enough. Just enough. But like that violence for you, where does it come from? And how do you tap into it when you have to,

you can't gratitude Connor McGregor to the ground? So what happens? Yeah, I mean, you can't gratitude them to the ground. You can't joy them to the ground. You can't serve other people to put him to the ground. But I think ultimately, for me, the sport of wrestling was the same way. I mean, I wanted to bury people. I wanted to absolutely, I wanted to hurt them.

I wanted to make them quit. I wanted to make them cry. But it's inside the confines of competition. You know, it's, I don't think about that at all in my everyday life. I mean, if anything, I'm probably the biggest pacifist you might ever meet. I am afraid of confrontation. I don't like confrontation. I don't want to get in trouble.

I don't. You know, like people think, well, shoot, you must have a bunch of street fights. That's why you got into mixed martial arts. I never got into a street fight. Number one, I didn't, I never really got into those scenarios. And number two, I was too afraid to get in trouble. So I think, for me, it's just another competition. It just so happens that people get hurt and stitches get put in and blood gets drawn

and people get knocked out and choked out. It's just, it looks like such a violent sport. And if you're ever around mixed martial arts, you really dive into it. The people in mixed martial arts, of course, there's some violent ones, some people who really enjoy the violence. I wouldn't say that I enjoy the violence whatsoever. Now, if you watch when that cage door closes, it looks like I'm really enjoying the violence.

And I've never once thought, well, I don't really enjoy this violence thing. I'm focused on the task at hand. That last bell sounds or that guy gets knocked out, the fight is over, whatever. Then it turns back into, okay, now I'll just go back to being normal again. You know, and I think, you know, if I could really just think about me and who I am

because I did a lot of this work with my mindset coach Jim Hensel, and it was like, who am I? And I think God has given me a really awesome gift that I am extremely grateful for to be able to live on both ends of the spectrum in a big, big way. Like extreme joy and peace and contentment and service and love. And then the most savage individual that just wants to dominate people inside of a cage. And somewhere in between, you know, I'm always usually living on this, side of the spectrum and then all of a sudden that cage door closes and I've been given a gift to be

able to go cross that line to be that guy and some guys some guys can't in this sport some guys live too close over here in the violence and it shows for better or worse in their fights or in their craft in their business in their and their life that's why self-image and self-concept and mental health is so important in this world and I've just done a lot of work I think on myself to make sure I show up as the man that I want to show up as in life in these kind of interactions and with my friends and my family and my colleagues. And then I show up as a completely different person whenever that cage door closes. And it's just, I think it truly is a gift. I think it's, it's something I didn't choose to. I've never once in my life tried to will myself or visualize

myself into a savagely violent person inside of the cage. It just, it just happens. And I think, I think the greatest, I think the greatest compliment I ever get is whenever I, meet somebody and hang out with them, they're like, you really are a really nice, cool guy. You know, you're pretty normal. And I'm like, thank you. Because you can watch my highlights and you can see the way that I fight. And rightfully so, I would think the exact same thing about me. You know, there's a couple of sayings.

Like, one, I can think, you know, if you think that strong men are scary, wait until you meet, weak men. And I think that image of, you know, do you want to be the warrior in the garden or the gardener at war is really important for this time and date that we sit in. And so if you have the capacity for violence, but not the need for violence, that's actually really important to humanity overall. I mean, we know this from the theory of disarmament and what happens at a certain level. Some people need to have arms in order for others to not push forward. So I do think there's a huge place for violence in society that we don't like to talk about. And I think there's also a place in outlets for it like MMA. Most of the people I've met who do MMA, a lot of them you wouldn't know, and most of them are incredibly soft, like the people here that are teaching self-defense.

And yet, you know, in an action, I'd much rather be in this realm than many others. If you need to, yeah. And it goes, and it also goes back to, you know, as you talked about being a gardener and a war compared to being a warrior in a garden, one of my favorite books of all time, John Eldridge, Wild at Heart, talks about how a man's soul and heart was. designed and every man was was was created for a battle to fight an adventure to have and a beauty to win and in this day and age in this society there's less and less people who are seeking adventures to have and battles to fight and i'm not saying battles to fight like going getting in a street fight but as you talk like being in here these these men and women are are having battles to fight in here and they're learning things mixed martial arts and jiu jitsu all of these different

things. Just pushing yourself so that you don't feel the need to push yourself in the wrong direction in other areas, you know? And we've just, we've got things backwards in a lot of ways. And it's, it's very important. And I do, you know, even in here, we're doing gun disarmament. And we're saying, hey, okay, what do you do if a person sticks a gun in your face? My wife is here, my son is here, I'm walking down the street, downtown Nashville, whatever. And, you know, the confidence that I have, if that happened. It's something, and I'm not just saying this to boast about myself. I don't know the techniques,

but it's just that scenario where I think there's no way that I would not be able to protect my family in this scenario. And I can't imagine what so many, especially men, might think. And with that comes lack of self-image, which then leads to so many different things. So you just have to be proficient in so many more things than we think we need to today. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, you know, I was actually, I was scrolling through your comments on some of your Instagram posts.

Don't do that. It's a terrible idea. Jesus, nobody do that. You should go follow my Chandler, M.A. on Instagram, but I was scrolling through your comments. And whoa, you know, speaking of weak man trying to sound strong, I saw that all over yours. You know, really violent commentary. And I get a few things, but, you know, mostly my husband and I chuckle at them. Yeah. But some of yours were really, really intense. I remember being at the McGregor. Porier fight and hearing people yell and scream when one person gets hurt and feeling what that energy feels like, I've never felt anything like that before. And so you have such vitriol directed at you. How do you handle haters? How do you handle people that say bad things about you? Is there something that you go to when that happens? Admittedly, I do read more than I probably should. You know, I probably should just post and not worry about what they said. But I think for me, it could be 20 negative bad things, but then there's one that's just like one of those ones where

you get it, I'm sure, as well, whether they're talking about me helping them with their self-image, me helping them with confidence, me helping them get in the gym, or the way that my fitness app has helped them and gained the confidence or lost fat, gained muscle, all of these different things. So I want to be in tune with the people that are in tune with me. And, you know, I am convinced that a lot of those negative comments sometimes too come from bot farms across the across the world. Social media is a weird place. But also I do, you know, I'm not naive to think that there's definitely some real people behind those comments. And it's, ultimately, it's, it's, you just got to keep doing what feels right to you and the people are going to comment with the way

that they comment. And, you know, there has been, there's been those haters and there hasn't been social media for, you know, hundreds of years, but for hundreds of years, thousands of years, there has been people that are not going to believe in you. They're going to trash you at, every single turn. They're going to say things about you that aren't true. And ultimately, it's the highest nail that gets hammered always. So if you can continue to climb and climb and climb and and so many people are so worried about trying to grab at your heels and pull you down from the rung that you're on instead of just reaching up and trying to climb to the next rung themselves, ultimately it comes with the territory and, you know, just probably similar to you or any of the

other people that we kind of rub elbows with, we take a silent smile at it. We take a silent smile every single time we see one of those because you know you're doing the right thing. You know you're doing the right thing when you have that many people saying things about you. And mine is just, I like to talk, you know, candidly, but also not sound like a narcissist, but ultimately, I think being a mixed martial arts fighter, a UFC fighter, you know, similar to like your husband, special forces. I mean, there's only so many areas for the male gender where we're like, that guy. Like that's that's the guy, right?

Maybe I don't want to be just like them, but I want that aspect of it more. That, you know. So I think fighting in a cage and being on the big platform and doing what I do, looking the way I look, working out as hard as I do, I think there's a lot of aspects of desirable traits that most men would want. But instead of making that life for them themselves, they would rather say something about it and accuse me of steroids or accuse me of this or accuse me and whatever.

And it's just, it's part of it. You ever let it slip? and accidentally feed the troll a little bit? Or you pretty good at that? Well, every now and then, yeah, I do. Well, normally, you know what I actually do? What's your best one? Have you ever had one?

You're like, that was a fucking great comeback. No, I actually, never to trolls, but I have had a few good comebacks like to other fighters who have said things. Because I also came into the UFC and nobody gave me any credit. And rightfully so, I was outside of the UFC forever, you know, world champion outside the UFC,

which isn't really world champion. You're not the number one guy in the world. It is world champion, but it's not, you're not the number of, one guy in the world. So I didn't get a lot of respect from my fellow fighters. So I had threw a couple of zingers here and there. But for the most part, I'm more of a direct message kind of guy. I don't want to give you the satisfaction of responding to you on that public thread to let everyone else know that I'm even responding to you. So I'll just respond to you

in a direct message, which they could screenshot it and show people anyway. And it's not mean. It's not, you know, maybe a little snarky, a little condescending a little bit, you know. Mike Tyson said social media made y'all way too comfortable with talking and not getting punched in the mouth type of, you know, and would I ever punch someone in the mouth or something? They said, absolutely not. But every now and then, you're like, no, I'm not letting this one slip. The worst is when people completely make stuff up. Like, I had a guy make something up. I was like, well, I work with somebody who went to high school with him and he was doing steroids in high school. And I'm just like, that was a direct message worthy type of comment.

It's like, okay, why don't you go ahead and tell me who that is? It always turns into one more snarky comment. Then I go back and they say, okay, actually, it's not true. Actually, man, and I'm a big fan. Like, I'm really sorry. The amount of times that it goes complete 180 and they end up being like, oh, man, I'm a really big fan. And just keep doing what you're doing. I'm like, no response, block, whatever. You know, it's just, it's the world we live in. The biggest flags, I think. Like, it's incredible. I mean, there's something in psychology, actually, they talk about that where, one, we have a negative bias as humans, otherwise we're dead, right? And then two, because we have that negative bias, we've realized, oh, man, if we talk negative to

somebody else, we get 10x the attention that we do from a positive comment. And And so I can see where society conditions us to have that reaction. It's really, really unfortunate. Yeah. But I think as a fighter, it's fascinating because you really can't punch somebody in the face. I can, but like not much might go to know down. Maybe after I use your app. Yeah.

I'm going to be on it. It's good, though, too, when other people stick up for you. Or they'll say something like, do you do realize how badly this guy would beat you up in one punch? And everyone else does the commenting and they go after the trolls. And it's even better. It makes me smile even more than me having to do it. Yeah, so it's kind of cool.

Well, it's true. So you were on Bellator for a long time. Yeah, it was like a decade, yeah. And top guy there for a long time. Lots of people say you should have been in UFC sooner. Lots of people wonder kind of why that didn't happen, you know, why you didn't get the look from Dana White or whoever. So what's your take on that?

Why did that take so long? And then what do you have to do to finally overcome it? And it's fine. The way you frame the question is almost like, well, I wasn't good enough to go there or the UFC wouldn't have taken me earlier. And I think that's what a lot of people thought. I honestly was making the best business decision that I could for a very long time. You know, the business of mixed martial arts is it's a beautiful, beautiful thing for certain people.

And it's a tough, tragic thing for a lot of people. You know, I was making a great living outside of the UFC and also saw myself continuing to build my platform outside of the UFC. So therefore, when I did come over, it was going to be a better business decision. Right. And ultimately, too, there was a lot of factors. involved. It never felt like the right time to finish my contract, test free agency, and then field offers from other organizations until, I think it was 2020. I had my last fight in Bellator in August of 2020, knocked out a former UFC champion, Benson Henderson. It was a tough fight for me

because he's a tough guy to put away. He's extremely durable. And he's a tough guy to look good against. You know, you can beat somebody, but you have these fights where you're like, it wasn't that beautiful, graceful, dominant, you know, because he's just good. everywhere. So it was a scary time, but I made the decision about bet on myself. And then it's just crazy how, and I talk about this often, is so many doors in life stay closed and stay locked until it's the exact right, perfect time. And that door stayed locked or felt like it should have been locked for such a long time. Then it was time to be opened, and I just kicked the door down. We had the Khabib was the number one guy in the world. He retires. Connor and Porre were tied up in

their trilogy that they were about to have the fight you're alluding to. So that gave me the title shot after my UFC debut win. And it was just, it all worked out perfectly for me. So people say, man, you should have been in the UFC much sooner because I hear that a lot. And I think I came over at the exact right time. Or maybe that's just me accepting my current circumstances and not having to look back and say, well, I would or should have could. But it worked out perfectly. Definitely healthier. That's interesting. So I don't know anything about UFC negotiations and how the business of UFC or even if we don't say USC, fighting works. Like, how does that work? Obviously, people are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of fighters. When you go into a fight, and you can speak in

generalities, obviously, like deciding to go against McGregor, how do you, what turns on in your business brain? What do you have to negotiate? And who gets what? Like, you have an agent that gets something, then you have you, then obviously the UFC takes something, then you got to negotiate against McGregor. How does that work? Yeah, so we're all under contract. So as I... per fight? Or do you have a standing salary with you? No, no salary. You only get paid if you fight, you know. And it's usually you can sign a four fight deal, you can sign a six fight deal, an eight fight deal. And it'll be, say, you know, two years or six fights, whatever happens sooner. If you get your six, if you got your six fights in in one year, your contract's over. Or if you had three fights

in a two year period, your contract is over. So it either goes by term, which is the time or the amount of fights. You negotiate those terms, your manager or your agent manager or attorney. For me, I've had one manager my entire life who was also a criminal defense attorney who has negotiated thousands of contracts at this point and a lot of NFL, NBA, and UFC contracts now. We've done the best that we could to protect me, also leave enough meat on the bone for the current promotion to always make them feel like they're sometimes. getting a deal, if you will. I think that's, you hear a lot of people who would never, ever say that. They want to get as much as they possibly can, and they're going to dig their heels

in, and it usually doesn't work out. Because one thing that you have to realize, this is not just mixed martial arts. This is you. This is everybody in this room. This is everybody in every endeavor, every single scenario besides a very, very, very tiny fraction of the entire populace. We're all replaceable. Every single person is replaceable. If you shut your phone off and you stop making content. There's going to be someone else who's just going to be just as big as you. That can well up something inside of you. We're like, wait a second. But if you can set aside that, my TikToks are important. Well, yeah. Who would be able to survive without that? It's true. But it's it's one of those scenarios where in mixed martial arts especially, we think that the show won't go on without us.

And it will. I promise you that. You know, you've got mega superstars that retire or Connor being out for two full years. John Jones being out for two and a half, three years. They can build new stars. And one year from now, there's going to be a guy that they're making money off of, just like they were making money off of these other guys. And having that approach, I've always had that approach. I had that approach in Bellator. I had that approach now with the UFC.

We're all replaceable. The show will go on. And I think there's a certain level of freedom that comes with that. It sounds like you're giving away your freedom, saying, well, they're in control more than you're in control. But ultimately, there's so much more freedom that comes with that. Because then you can just operate, in my opinion. in doing the best that you possibly can and realizing that this whole show is going to end eventually

for you. Nothing lasts forever. And yeah, you negotiate these contracts. And then when your contracts are up for negotiation, you get a new one or there's time. Yeah, or not. Or not. Or your three fights into a contract. They say, hey, you have grossly overperformed on this contract. We're ripping it up. Call us money. We're ripping this up. We're doing a new deal. Interesting. That happened with the UFC. I got four fights in and they said, hey, we're doing a new deal. You deserve more. I'm like, okay. Now, had I been like, hey, I deserve more. Guess how many more fights I would have had on that contract? I would have had to have those two. We never would have went back to the negotiation table. Interesting. So if you take care of those who sign your paycheck, be a good employee, show up on time,

do more than what is asked of you, it usually works out. So if I was to do a pie chart like this of like how a fight works, it's like, I don't know, I have an agent. And like our agent manager fee is like 20%. right? And then you have your promotion fee or distribution. And I'd think about in my business and say, like, my distribution cost me. So all my marketing people is probably like another 30%. So that's 50% of what I make right there. Then on top of that, because our net margins at the end are more like 40% we get to maybe keep 40 cents of every dollar that we make. On top of that, I have like administration and I have like legal and all that shit on the back end. So like in my world, maybe I keep 40 cents of every dollar that I make. Not exactly for you, but theoretically,

in fighting, what does that look like? Like, who do you have to pay? And how does that business shake out? Because there are people like Jake Paul, right, that are like, oh, fuck it, I'm going to create this whole thing. And I want to own the whole pie chart theoretically. And instead of me keeping 40%, I'm keeping 60 and they get 40. Yeah, so, I mean, we pretty much as mixed martial artists,

we're worried about two things, your fight contract and your fights. And then endorsement deals, sponsorship deals, relationships with company. You know, sometimes that starts out as free, you know, like everybody, it starts out as free product, then maybe it starts out, then you get a little bit of cash and then a little bit of product, and then you get more and more and more product and whatnot. Yeah. And then sometimes you end up with equity in companies, whether you made an investment financially or you're made an investment financially and sweat equity.

And then, yeah, I mean, I just pay my manager, management, if you will. They take their percentage. Is there a company around you besides your manager? Or is everything you do? My management has my, they're an agency at this point. You know, when we started out, it was like a skeleton clue of just crew of just two guys basically now they're, now they got, you know, four or five people working underneath them. Someone handling travel and medical, someone handling going out and bird dog and finding deals. And so they've continued to grow, which is, you know, good for all of us because there's a bigger pool to be able to find opportunities in.

So I just pay that percentage. and then pay taxes. I don't. I probably should at this point. And no social media person either. That's you too? I don't. Well, I have a full-time media director, so he shoots all my content, edits all my content. We do our podcast episodes. Posts it.

Yeah. Well, he doesn't put, I do all the posting. We are in a transition right now where I've realized, hey, it's time to go a little bit harder throughout this year, especially leading up to this big fight. Probably going to have him take over some of it. and then him posts probably 50% of my content and me posts the other 50. Because I never wanted to relinquish all of that control because I always wanted every word that was sent out to people going to be me. It was going to be me and it was going to be authentically me.

And truthfully, what I realize now is it still will be mine. It just won't be me writing it right now and then posting it. It will be us actually scheduling it and then me writing it today. And it not posts for a month, but it was my words. Of course. Yeah. Or if it's a clip of a. a podcast or whatever, pulling out that clip and then me expanding on that, if you will,

and then making sure it's just all my words that are going out to my people who, you know, I think they trust me at this point. I think I've created a trustworthy following with a reputation of people who are, you know, who say, I like what that guy stands for. So I want to make sure I stay true to that. You're, one of your big things is if you want to influence many, you have to have a, you have to cast a wide net, which is why you have this podcast. that is not just about fighting, it's about wisdom and philosophy and theory and ideology. And it's actually quite profound, having listened to quite a few episodes. And so I think the other way to think about it, too, is just like how big can you get

if you're in between fights, you know, sending out tweets? You know, it's hard. But if you can allow other people to become the shepherds of your message, then actually you can have quite a flock because there's not just one of you out there tending it. Coming from that to, I always just wanted to, I always wanted to break the mold of what people thought a fighter was. You think fighter, okay, you're like, okay, he looks like this and he acts like this and he, you know, he lives his life a certain way. Yeah, exactly.

Lives his life a certain way. And it's like, I've always wanted to break the mold. I always wanted that interaction of, holy cow, like you're like a normal guy. This is not exactly what I thought a fighter was. And it's like, well, not all of us are like that, but that's how I am. And maybe I fight in a cage for a living, but, you know, it's not the most important thing about me. So I, you know, that's why my podcast is called Walk on Wisdom. not, you know, MMA wisdom or, you know, and we talk about mixed martial arts here and there.

We'll take only MMA questions from our viewers and then we'll make them in MMA episodes, but so far we've only done maybe one or two actual MMA episodes and a lot of them are just, hey, I'm going through this right now or, hey, I'm struggling with this or, hey, this, you know, my girlfriend broke up with me or whatever it might be. I'm going through this transition. And then I just sit there and I always start the podcast with, hey, I am by no means an expert in anything, but I've been around the world a couple times and experienced a lot of great things. Here's what I have to say about it. I love that.

Let's talk business again for a second. So a lot of people have built giant empires with audiences like yours. I mean, not to use McGregor, but you do have this fight coming up with him. But he's sold his tiny little whiskey company for $500 million, right? You know, we've had The Rock, not quite a fighter in the exact sense, but, you know, sell his or not sell his, grow his to be worth, I think, close to now a billion dollars, right? What do you see for you? Do you want a business empire?

And if so, what would it be up? You know, right now focusing on this fight, building my platform, and then continuing to rub elbows with, you know, like the guys we have here and doing business with them, doing good business with good people, whether it be real estate, whether it be in actual businesses like cram, having my fitness app. Because ultimately, for me, it's always about the people behind the product,

if you will, valuing the people over. profit, valuing my voice going out to people and making them feel something. You know, I don't, what I want most when I'm fighting is to make people feel something. Make them feel something about their life. Make them feel something about what they're going through. Make them feel something about what they can accomplish. If a small guy from a small town who was taught to do small things, little old me can do it and somehow end up on that big stage, so can you.

And I want them to feel that. So making investments in real estate into companies, building my platform, I'd like to speak on stages and do big events and really get that one-on-one connection like we have here at Operation Blackside. I mean, the people that we have here, and they're all successful in their own right, you know, they all have businesses or they're entrepreneurs or they're all doing awesome things. But to get this opportunity to hang out with them. We just got done with lunch and sitting there at a picnic table talking to a couple business owners. Andy's from Madison, Alabama, Joe is from Cincinnati or where, you know, you're just getting to meet all these people. I think there could be a product or two in there. I think cram is going to crush it. I'm excited about that one a little bit because that's a pretty cool product. So I looked

it up. It's cram PB&J replacements, sort of like, what is that other one? It's like uncrustables or something. But lots of process stuff in there, basically sugar and additives, as opposed to this really clean product. So you are one of the backers of it. Why did you choose like a PBNJ and why that company? Well, ultimately, it goes back to the people. Austin and Ruth. It's a mother and a son who started it out of Colfax, California, kind of northern California. It took me a couple conversations to realize, okay, these, I believe in these people. And then also you try the, you try the product. It's absolutely delicious. For its nutrition profile, and how nutritionally sound it is and nutritionally dense it is, how healthy it is for you,

the fact that it also tastes good was enough for me. You know, because obviously, like you said, Uncrustible, it's been around forever, owned by Smuckers, tons of added sugar, you know, bleached white flour bread. Yeah, all of these different things, seed oil after seed oil after seed oil, you know, we have no seed oils. You know, the preservatives were actually, it's a natural preservative. We're nationwide in sprouts. There's no sugar added 19 grams of protein in our B 16 grams of protein and our OG.

And we're working on some research and development right now for whether it be an almond, you know, kind of an almond butter because some people are allergic to peanuts or, you know, tree nuts. And there's all these different things. And they're forward thinking like that. They want to have numerous products on the market by, you know, by the end of this year and then next year. So is it profitable yet? Profitable.

Yeah. We are nationwide and sprouts. We've had conversations with, I won't say who we've had conversations with, because I don't know if they're going to happen. But we got some really, well, we got some really good options as far as nationwide, big-time grocers, you know, because obviously we started online. That's how every business pretty much starts. And so you're going to get those sales to be able to get nationwide and sprouts.

So, but ultimately, it's the people behind it. And they're just, they're awesome. And we just continue to keep on the connecting the dots between all kinds of different. people and I think I think cram's gonna do very well. So I've found that being married and having a lot going on, having a big platform, being relatively successful maybe, or just being married in general, can be really hard. And so, you know, my husband and I do this thing called team every day. I would say we do it 60% of the time. We're in the evening we get together and we have this small little sort of framework that we take each other through so that we're touching base on some of the

stuff that's bothering us through the day, maybe with each other or in life in general. Also just that we appreciate about one another, and it's become a ritual for us that's helpful. For you and your wife, is there anything that you do habitually or a framework that you use to stay sane amidst the chaos? Habitually, not all the time, but we have tried to be intentional about similar to what you said, actually sitting down and going through our schedule, because we don't like surprises. Nobody likes surprises in general. I mean, some people can live like that, but whenever you live a life like ours where she's got a full-time job, she's a career woman, We got our two children.

We got me and all the craziness that I'm doing as well. Life can also sometimes happen so fast that you realize, holy cow, I didn't realize what was coming up. We didn't realize we had that. And then all of a sudden, what you thought was going to be kind of a down week to be able to kind of hang out and get back to neutral turns into a very chaotic week.

So us actually planning things out. And this was a huge step for me. When we, it was kind of a beautiful opposite ends of the spectrum. My wife was a big, so she was in kind of medicine. where it's just like very binary, very black and white. Everything was kind of planned out. You know, you go to school, and then you get your degree,

and then you go and get your job, and then you work your hours, and you kind of, that's medicine, right? Whereas mine is, I don't know if I'm going to make zero dollars for the next three months or I can make a million dollars in the next month. I don't know. You know, I might fight next week. I might fight a year from now, you know? So she came from this, hey, I like to have everything planned out,

and I came from like a, I can't plan anything out because I don't know what the heck is going to happen. So she's become more towards the center and I've gotten better at planning things as well. So for us actually making sure that we have things on the calendar, me being more proactive, where I wasn't thinking as much about how it affected the entire family or us or her career. And her career is extremely hectic right now as well. Going off of that, obviously that's more kind of habitual or tactical. but then an overarching theme for us is me making sure that even when I've had the success that I've had and she hasn't needed to work in years. She wants to work and she enjoys work and she

gets value out of work, she gets purpose out of work. She has arguably works more now than she did when we first got together and she needs to work. She doesn't need to work even half as much as she needed to back in the day when we first got together, but she probably works more now and makes more now and provides more now than she ever has. And I've always gave her that ability to do so. And she needed that. A lot of guys did not understand her. They didn't understand that she was married to medicine. They didn't, they didn't understand that, oh, well, if she doesn't text back in an hour or two hours or call back is because she was doing a sterile procedure in the emergency room. And it was, and it became this personal thing. And for me, thank God, she came into my life at the right time where I was

very secure in myself and I was in love with mixed martial arts and she was in love with medicine and our roads converge together. So me just making sure I always give her the leeway to be her own person, pursue her own thing. She never wanted to be a mixed martial artist wife or a professional athlete's wife. She never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and there's nothing wrong with that. That's some of the hardest work that you can ever do. But ultimately, she knows what she wants to do, and I've always given her the leeway, the permission to do those things. And in turn, I get permission to do all the crazy things that I'm doing and pursue the crazy things that I'm doing. And so I think that love and that mutual respect pays so many dividends day after day,

season after season, in the tough times, in the easy times, and every time in between, because we truly are so equally yoked when it comes to that. Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I think the world right now is having this weird mix-up about gender, and femininity and masculinity and in so many different ways that I try to largely not pay attention to. But one thing that I've found is because I've been a career person for a long time, is that it does seem today like you need a man. If you're going to have a career and you're going to be kind of a woman who's going to be relatively forceful or in her masculine a lot, however the hippies like to say in an Austin,

then you basically do need this man that's really confident in that. And my husband being in his background, he could care less. He's like the least motivated by money human I've ever met in my life. He just does not let what society says define, like should define him, define him ever. He will walk around in mandals and jorts and a Hawaiian button down and he will be the baddest dude in the room and will show it to nobody. He could give a fuck. And I think it's really rare, but it's really powerful for people to hear men like you say that because there's this one side, which is like we were coming to this event. and one of one of our team members' friends,

we were looking at Operation BlackSight. And I was like, tell us ideas, questions, what should we do to film here? And they didn't know me, obviously, and they didn't know who I was married to, but they were like, why are you going to an event that is focused on toxic masculinity?

And why would you support that? And I, like, chuckled on the inside because I'm like, if this is toxic masculinity, like we're in trouble. This is just humans being hard to kill, which really actually has nothing to do with whether they have a penis or a vagina, It just tends to be a good idea, generally.

But I wonder what your thoughts are on, one, this idea of if you're tough and you're hard, you're a toxic dude. Have people said that to you? And do you have feelings on that one way or the other? I've been called that or accused of that or saying that I'm perpetuating that narrative. But toxic masculinity is, you know, it's a real thing. There's masculinity or there are men who are toxic, but it's, you know, it's a real thing. there's masculinity or there are men who are, they're toxic, but it isn't because of the way that

God created a man. It's because of the societal pressures, the box that we put ourselves in, the literal chain and collars that we put around our neck, and we're being held back, or we're being pushed into the corner, or we're being told that we can't do this, or being told that we should do that, and we're being pulled in so many different ways, and what it means, the definition of what it means to be a man has continued. It's never changed philosophically. It never should have changed, but societally it has continued to change. And even going back to my wife, the harder I work, the more purpose-driven I am, the more a little bit kind of off my rocker, blinders on, going towards my purpose, what I need to go to perform, to be who I need to be, ultimately

makes me the best husband I can possibly be, the best lover I can possibly be. The best lover I can possibly be, the softer I can possibly be, because you lose that softness when you don't have that hard. You really do. And then it just becomes this facade of being a tough guy, the facade of being equipped, the facade of being a real man. No person or no man who engages in those kinds of activities or actions that could be deemed toxic masculinity in its truest form is an actual real man. They are a small child with deep, deep wounds and they never truly grew up. They never truly grew into the man that God created it to be. And a lot of times it's not their fault. It could be their parents. It could be the things that have happened to them in the past. The seasons that they

have gone through that has just turned them into who they are in a negative way. But I think ultimately being able to protect yourself, protect your family, stand up for your family, provide for your family, having a battle to fight and adventure to have and a beauty to win is is what makes a man a man. And that is the healthiest way and the healthiest thing on the planet. And it is interesting. I mean, yeah, I'd fight in a cage for a living. I try to knock people out. I try to choke them out. I fight them. I try to make them bleed. Ultimately, if I am impacting people, reaching people, making people feel something inspiring and motivating people through the way that I'm living my life and through my performances, it's ultimately me pursuing my passion and fulfilling my purpose,

which then in turn makes it vastly more hard for me to actually be toxicly masculine, if that makes sense. Yeah, I've never liked the term much. I think it's so misleading. I think there's just toxic. There are women who are toxic feminists. Well, yeah. If there's toxic masculinity, there's definitely toxic femininity.

And truthfully, if there was a definition, I would say, okay, there's definitely a small subsect of people who fit that mold, if you will. Yeah. I think of like AOC and Andrew Tate had a baby. We would just have the two of those like all together, you know? Just both sides. The problem is, again, in this world of social media, the extremes get all the views, right? I mean, we see it all the time.

It's so fascinating on YouTube and everywhere else. But if I say something like toxic masculinity or if I say something like communism, you You know, on either side of the thing, you're going to get all these views and all these, whatever. And I think one thing you've done really well is you've kind of stayed out of the noise. Yeah, sometimes I was just having a conversation in the taco line here. I know what I stand for. I probably should stand up more. I should probably be more vocal.

You know, I think the best thing that we can do, too, even going back to us making sure we don't put in a box too is, yeah, I mean, we could have that conversation. I probably could be more vocal about what I truly believe. And I think it's going to offend some people. And it's also going to get people to say, heck yeah. But ultimately, just operating in a sense that you truly feel like you are saying, saying what you want to say when you want to say it or as much as you want to say it, doing what you want to do as much as you want to do it and not having anybody tell you that you need to or that you should do more or should do less. For me, I've always just kind of operated that way where I just, I want to do and act the way I want to act and say what I want to say. And there will be times where I say, well, I can't believe I said that or I can't believe I did that. Well, that's going to get some unfollow.

That's going to get some hate. That's going to be a headline, but it's all part of it. Yeah, you're all over YouTube right now. We're searching your name, and it's like videos everywhere. We need to find a way to get you monetized on other people's stuff that they talk about. Yeah, we have a saying at contrarian thinking, which is civilized the mind, make savage the body, build the bank account. We kind of believe that you need to have financial freedom, typically, before you can have physical freedom, a.k.

Like, work where you want, when you want on what you want. And then finally, you could have philosophical freedom, freeing of a physical freedom of your mind. And in a society in which most people today, you know, one out of five people will die broke, which is wild in a world where we have all this. I think one of your missions is, and where I kind of want to wrap, is on that make savage the body. Like you have walk on fitness. You obviously are in great shape. You've got about 37 abs. 36. Yeah, okay, I ran it on there. And so fitness is big for you. But obviously, America needs it. We're more obese than ever. we have more chronic disease than we ever have, and we have more mental health issues than we've

ever had. So why walk on fitness? And if you could say in like three words, like what do you think, if you were just a normal human who didn't get paid to have like 36 abs, what would you be telling them they need to do today? You've got to start somewhere, you know, and I think that's, and truthfully, you know, obviously I've been in, you know, organized athletics since I was 13 years old and I've now been a professional athlete for 14 years. So I get paid to be fit. you know i get paid to to work out essentially right and it's so fitness is so intimidating to so many people and they say well i'm overweight now or i got bad knees or well my mom and dad were overweight and their mom and dad were overweight and this family tree is just a bunch of overweight people

you know and that's we tell us we tell these stories and it's we think i'm not going to be able to see the results that i want to see so therefore i'm not going to start i think if we wait to start whenever the conditions are perfect or we have a perfect plan or there's any kind of uncertainty whatsoever if we wait until you have the perfect plan or it's going to be certain you're just never ever going to start it's just part of it so that's why i create a walk-on fitness i you know the the hardest part for me is the fact that i i did create one that is for higher level fitness higher level yeah higher level athletes but our leg program anybody can do it our our our upper body program anybody can do it. My guided on-camera body weight only circuits, anybody can do those. Any fitness levels.

It doesn't matter if you do all the reps or you do 100 pounds lighter than I'm doing. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing. Well, that's the biggest thing is, is here's the workout, here's the plan. It's proven to work. I've been doing it over the last 22 years as a professional athlete, essentially since wrestling. These are the exercises that I've done to create this body. and the hardest part about fitness too is everyone wants everyone wants that secret what is the secret what's the silver bullet and it really isn't besides consistently being consistent day after day diligent in the small diligent in the small thing so then and only then can you have the big breakthroughs the big success or the body that you want the fitness that you want which then in turn turns into

mental clarity that you want which then in turn comes and goes into body confidence spiritual confidence the way you carry yourself. So fitness has a way of unlocking doors that almost nothing else can. But like you said, you're going to see aspects of it in every single aspect of your life. If you got your fitness in order, your relationships are going to thrive, your finances are going to thrive, your self-image is going to thrive. Every single aspect of your life is going to thrive. So it's very easy for me to talk about it because I've seen it in my own life and I've seen it in so many other people's lives, so many the success stories that we've had with walk-on fitness has been awesome. Well, what I like about it too is, like I was in the gym the other day,

and there's these girls in there, and they're trying to get the butt. You know, every girl wants a butt. So they have these little vibratey things that are connected to their, but have you seen this? Like electronic things? Yeah, like a little electrodes. Yeah. And it's hooked up to this thing, and so they're doing movements while they've got the thing hooked up. But then they've got these tiny little legs, and they've got these tiny little arms, and there's like no muscle there. And I think one of the cool things about walk on fitness when I was looking at it is, you know, you want to be healthy, yeah, because it looks nice, you know, when you look good naked. Like, that's rad.

But also, there's just a longevity thing, which is super linked to athleticism, right? And so, sure, you could hook up electrodes, you can do a Brazilian buttlift. You could take this fucking drug that everybody's taking because the Kardashians took it. But at the end of the day, like, you might look good, but you're actually not doing so great. Yeah, you're not healthy. Right. You're not healthy. And I think one of the few things people don't realize about MMA is it's just all out,

Like you don't really care about the muscles, though you do have to wear the underwear in the ring. Do you ever, do you get nervous when you walk out in the underwear? You're not thinking about the underwear. No, I've been like I've been wearing a single. You know what a wrestling singlet is? A wrestling like it looks like a leotard look at that. I mean, I've been wearing that since I was 13, 14 years old. So it's like well. So if you think you look good in it, you put it on. You're like, check out that. I use to check myself out a little bit. Like, okay, butt's looking good. Okay. Slucking it a little bit now. No. No. But you would think though. I mean, I have millions of people watch you. You're like, well, hopefully these shorts don't have a wardrobe malfunction, but I've gotten so used to it. It's just like, you know, I'm used to wearing very minimal clothes in front of a lot of people. I feel that. Yeah. It's like a bikini. Yeah, exactly. Before you get your ass kicked. Exactly. Or you kick somebody else's ass.

Yes. But like you said, too, I mean, the fitness aspect of it. Yeah. I mean, people, and even though we talk about the little the butt electrodes and whatever, at least they're doing something, you know, that's, you know, I guess I would, I would only say that. At least they're doing something. It's not what I would do if you're only like, hey, here's my entire body. I only want this muscle group to be good, hard, big, whatever, whatever it is. Juicy. Yeah, whatever the kids are saying, juicy. But so it's, yeah, I mean, ultimately, too, from head to toe, are you being more proficient to be able to go throughout life and not create injuries and be able to provide for your family and be able to not fall down a set of stairs because you can't catch yourself because you're overweight or

your muscles don't fire, you know, the amount of people who are walking around, but they're not really walking the way we were created to walk. They're just moving forward and they slip on one little crack, they fall, they break a bone. Can't get up. Yeah, before you know, you can't provide for your family, you know, especially men, you know. I mean, that's mainly my audience, you know, take care of yourself so then you can really take care of those that you love. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, I mean, Jordan Peterson, right? Like, he was pretty overweight, wasn't known anywhere internationally. His daughter got him on a pretty crazy diet, and he started. working out. Now the dude doesn't shut up. He's all over the place. Big platform, you know. So I do think you're right. Well, this was awesome. You're the man. I'm excited to see you in multiple different ways on the ultimate fighter. And then also your fight with McGregor, I think it's just really cool to see a very tough dude show a very soft and theoretical side. So I'm stoked to see you crush some skulls. Thank you. I will. I'll keep doing it.

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Anderson Silva, and John Jones earned about $2 million to $7 million per fight from 2011 to 2016. Which seems like a lot, right? To me, I mean, I don't watch a lot, but I know after researching that this is this is nothing yeah what's crazy is how much smaller of a percentage they earn than the other u.s sports leagues so we were looking at the numbers ufc revenue split versus the other u.s leagues NBA all the way to MLB or somewhere between 51 and 45 percent ufc is 13 to 14 percent nice job to get your face smashed in you know like oh man i know so the fighters have to actually get really clever with their core satellite model basically and i think mcgregor is a really good example of this. So let's talk about how much money McGregor made and break down some of the numbers.

Okay, so as far as we can figure out, when McGregor made his UFC debut in like 2013, he basically cash a welfare check on the way to the airport and won in 67 seconds, which is awesome. So he was paid 16K for his first fight, 8K to show another 8K if he won, and then a big bonus if he hit a KO or a knockout. So McGregor also gets paid $5 to $10 million annually off of endorsements. But his real money is in like the whiskey company proper, McGregor Fast, the sport agency, the Irish stout. And that's what ultimately made him, I think, the highest paid athlete ever. So we were looking at the numbers for proper 12. Basically, the whiskey company offered McGregor a cash-based sponsor deal in 2016. But McGregor was smart. And his manager, whose name is Audi, I hope I'm not butchering that, decided to partner up

with them because he realized the power of a spirits business blasted behind 55 million social media followers with McGregor. So proper 12 would then go on to sell 200,000 cases in its first six months on the market, and they later sold their 51% stake in the business for about 600 million bucks, which I thought was wild. And that's how he's made $650 million. But if you think about the part that's crazy, is he only made, only, but he made 50 million from the fighting and 600 million from the other things. I do want to point out that, like, with a lot of athletes, it is really difficult to see how much they're getting paid and how much money that they're making in sponsorship. So I'd be interested to know, like, a financial breakdown of how much he makes right now.

Yeah. There's a guy I follow on Twitter that I really like his brother, Anthony Pompliano. His brother Joe Pompeiano does a ton of these threads. Yeah, the pomp brothers. Yeah. You know those guys. So anyway, Joe has great breakdowns of this if you want more detail. I think the overarching thing here that's interesting is, you know, no matter what business that you're in, you can always have a bigger solar system than you can have a single planet. And so that's why I always think about the core of what you do, you know, let's say you're an actor, you get paid to act in movies, but what's the solar system or the satellites that you can launch all around it that can make you more money? And I think Connor's a perfect example of that. Also, Mike's the man. And Mike has launched a healthy

PB&J company. Yeah. That I tried that was actually delicious. And then he also now has a tequila the company called hiatus. So I think a lot of these athletes are realizing they can't make all the money in the sport. Plus, you know, you make a ton of money, but how many of these guys go broke because their career is not very long? And once they stop playing, they stop earning. Yeah. Like, you can only take somebody hits the face before you got to retire. You know that kind of reminds me of a friend of the podcast, Brian Johnson, productizing himself, just really interesting how we're starting to see the rise, like across industries, not just sports, of people really diving into how can I make money off of my likeness to like the nth degree because I will not,

in Brian's case, I'm sure he, there's only so much like YouTube videos of his life that he wants to do forever and ever. I cannot relate. You're like keeping on this baby. But like doing something like creating a product, like I saw he had olive oil, that makes total sense. You know what I mean? Like productizing something using your like likeness, but maybe not having to play the game as as one would say, I guess, forever. Yeah, it goes back to even the name of this podcast, the big deal. It's like, we see all the tiny deals running around us, but we miss the big deal. And, you know, I think about that often, about what game are we playing? Do we actually play the right game? And are the deals in front of us the ones that we should take. And I think breaking down examples from athletes and billionaires

and big deal makers teaches us how to apply it in our own life, which is really, really cool. I mean, college athletes are going to be able to do this soon because they're actually going to be able to make some money and they're going to have to be smart about the way that they do it and become independent centers of gravity as opposed to just athletes. How much does the women's basketball players make in college? That's what I want to know. I feel like I've been seeing a lot of somebody that does not watch sports at all. It's a lot about women's basketball. That pom brothers, giving you guys content ideas. Well, I'm not sure anybody's really wondering how much the women's basketball players make. Dude, they're bringing in eyeballs. Are they? Yeah, they're bringing in crazy eyeballs. Oh my gosh. What's that

one girl's name that's a powerhouse. Caitlin Clark. What's she doing? She's just killing it in the basketball world. And she's like, I have seen her now. Like Dave Portnoy talked about her on BF podcast. That's how you've made it. Yeah, yeah. But I want to know how much money that girl's making on brand deals. Cannot be a little amount. That's amazing for her. She should definitely grab that money while she's got it. Yeah, she wants to come on the podcast. Tell us how much you make, Caitlin. Come on. Well, I'll be all the questions that you wish nobody had ever asked you. We'll make it super uncomfortable. It'll be. Great. Okay, I want to get into a CEO story time a little bit because there were some studies that totally blew my mind. So let's get into that really quick. So one of my favorite lines from Mike Chandler was this one that he said, which is I don't take advice from my doubts. And he's a machine, like never misses a workout, runs multiple companies, killer dad, hard. So I wondered why. And it's something I see a lot with MMA guys, mixed martial artist guys. And here's something I thought was fascinating that I think you're going to like the statistic. The statistic blew my mind. And

And it goes back to doing things that help you increase your self-control as much as humanly possible. Why? There's a study across hundreds of boys who did jiu-jitsu and a control group for those who didn't. The kids who did jiu-jitsu for just one to three times a week for 45 minutes on average, increase their self-control by double digits versus their peers. They stopped being easily distracted. They focused more. They did what needed to be done. Or what's called inhibitory control. In a world constantly trying to distract us, apparently, you do more JJ, you can be more. J-J., you can be more disciplined and hard to kill. So interesting. And also, why that matters, I think, is because the more self-control or discipline you have, it turns out the more likely you are to be successful,

according to most of the data. So maybe the thing to take away is that we put our kids in BJJ. I know it shows discipline. I'm just so scared of putting a kid in fighting. Would you put a kid in football? No. Oh, yeah. I mean, I get that. I do think it shows discipline, though. Like, I see what you're saying. I think that's normal. I have a good girlfriend that put her kids in fighting. and she had the most incredible experience. So they're on the mats. And if you've ever been around little boys, they're crazy. Yeah. So he's like eight years old or something like that, 10 years old. And he's on the mat, doing great. Then he comes to his mom. And he kind of has given his mom a hard time.

And he's sort of like, you know, kind of like pushes his mom a little bit like little kids do. Yeah. And she chastises him and the instructor sees it. It looks over at the kid and calls him over and says, what is your mom? He goes, family. What do we never do to, family, hit our family. What do we do with our family? We protect our family. Oh, wow. And then he goes, if you ever do that again, and I ever see that again, you are not allowed back on this mat. And she's like, it was revelatory. She's like, that kid never messed up again and never, never acted out. Because, you know, as a mom, at least from what I can hear, my parents tell me, you can tell your kids things until they're blue in the face, but hearing it from an outside influence and one of

respect is something totally different. So I think the world would be a better, place if more people learned what it felt like to get hit and if words had consequences. Yeah, as I say this, though, out loud, I guess the thing I'm most worried about is I don't want have a kid with like some CTE issue. So I guess that's one thing. I guess if there's not an issue with like concussion central happening, I was in Kung Fu and so we're all my siblings. My shout out, Cifu Jamie. He came to my birthday party is, I think up until I was like 21. Yeah. And like when my dad was deployed was like somebody that. that like really came in to our lives.

I'm like, was a great person. So I guess like I'd have, we had a really good experience with it. And my brothers definitely did. And I saw this quote once and I'm totally going to butcher it, but it was something like uncoachable kids make unmanageable adults. And if you see your kid kind of like getting coached on the sidelines,

like that might be really difficult for you as a parent. But honestly, like it's probably going to work out pretty well for them in the end. Um, just moving on like into the workspace as an adult and that. I do think that's like an interesting perspective. I mean, I can understand why you wouldn't want to put your kid in MMA, like getting kickbox. I'm thinking of Connor McGregor's style.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu is really wrestling. So the likelihood of that's pretty small is my understanding. But, you know, where I want to end here for everyone listening is, so Mike Chandler had this quote that I loved that I want to leave you guys with, my friends. And it's, I don't want to just be a great fighter, but also be a great man. And I think you can become a great man by first being a great fighter. I think this is something to ruminate on. to think about can all of us learn a little bit more about how to take a punch to the face?

And the consequences of running our mouth from people who know how to punch faces. So thanks for being here. Thanks for being you, a builder and a world of consumers, a doer. I see you. And I think you are a big deal. See you next time.