In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Ariel Emanuel: UFC, WWE, Hollywood and the future of live entertainment

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

This week, Nicolai Tangen sits down with one of the most influential people in global entertainment and sports, Ariel Emanuel, CEO of TKO. From building the talent agency Endeavor into a giant representing Hollywood's biggest names, to bold moves like acquiring UFC, WWE, and expanding into live events and art fairs, Emanuel has redefined what it means to be an agent and an owner. His legendary career even inspired the character Ari Gold in the popular HBO show Entourage. In this conversation, Ariel reflects on his relentless early days in the mailroom, how he negotiates billion-dollar deals, why he believes pressure is a privilege, and what it takes to thrive in industries that never stop changing. They cover everything from Hollywood myths and combat sports to leadership, politics, art collecting, and the discipline behind ice baths and early morning workouts. In Good Company is hosted by Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management. New full episodes every Wednesday, and don't miss our Highlight episodes every Friday.  The production team for this episode includes Isabelle Karlsson and PLAN-B's Niklas Figenschau Johansen, Sebastian Langvik-Hansen and Pål Huuse. Background research was conducted by Oscar Hjelde. Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, I'm Nicola Tangan, the CEO of the Norwegian Southern Wealth Fund, and today I'm in really good company with Super Agent and Media Mogul Ariel Emmanuel. He's represented some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and he's now the owner of companies such as UFC and WWE. Ari, warm welcome. Hi, hi, how are you doing? So how long has this been since you started doing this and why? It's like three years. You think it's going to be an interview you to me.

I'm going to interview you. Let's see how it goes. So, Ari, when I was researching this, I was just astonished about how many things you do. So just in brief, what do you do? You know, I started out almost over 30 years ago representing writers, writer, director, actors, then had a vision for where entertainment was going, started, you know, merged, quote unquote, with William Morris, and then bought IMG, and then realized half my life was representation,

half my life was ownership. Almost like, I mean, I don't know what you're, I know that you're one of the largest investors in the world of every single country and every single company. But we realized when we were in the representation business of entertainment, and entertainment takes from podcasts to owning sports, sports, events, music, writer, direct, everything, we could look at companies that we represented or people or things, and then we could move them the thought process to an ownership position

because we could extract greater value because we were global. And if a company was localized but had a global possibility, we could extract a great deal of value. And as we're negotiating deals between IMG negotiating all sports rights on an international basis. We had content to that, and then we sold that business for a billion dollars. We had a very big playing field. And so we just started moving stuff to ownership from live events to sports. So we represented the WWE. We represented UFC. We represented bull riding. And we realized, you know, if we got involved, we could make all the broadcast deals, we could do all the

marketing deals, and then we could extract more value with site fees and all the other tricks that we have. And so we bought them. And people thought at the time we were crazy with IMG and then they thought we were crazy with the UFC and it turned out we made the right position and then we merged it.

We just are on the field a lot. So we get to kind of move things around. So Ari, we're going to kind of unpack one thing after the other here but let's let's get off at the beginning with the endeavor so you started in creative artist agency and how did they get the job you i gather you cold called them quite a lot of way way way before that uh i started in new york with a old with a kind of guy in the theater business by the name of robbie lance after six months i realized kind of the business i had just moved back from europe where i had been playing around my father told me to come back he was

cutting off my bank account, and I went into the mailroom when I was making 15 cents a mile. That's how I made my living, dropping in the mailroom, dropping packages off, became an agent, and then I went to this company, Intertalent, which was a small boutique that had started, a spin-off of some of the big guys. After three years, I think it was, they sold, they broke the company up, and I went to this company called ICM, which recently CAA bought. and a crazy thing happened I got hit by a car and I realized life was not a dress rehearsal you know you can't just sit around and think it's going to figure itself out so I just

after 18 months of surgery rehab surgery I said I want to you know be on my own and go for it and so we started this company called Endeavour in 1995 on my birthday March 29 he was your first client it's between Amy Lippman I think it was Amy Lippman and Greg Daniels and then there was a bunch of others

Why did that choose you I don't think they wanted me to keep on calling them to beat them up to sign with me so they just gave in what's the most times you call the client to get them on board

to get them to sign with me I think It was probably Larry David way back in the day. I don't know. It was unrelenting. I felt really bad for him. And I kind of said it to him, I think. I said, I feel bad for you.

Here's what's going to happen. I don't embarrass easily. So it doesn't really matter. What's the key to cold calling? You know, if I believe, like when I saw the UFC, that there was more value that could be creative, if I'm looking at a client that I don't think is being handled properly, I will just pound on that issue

until they realize because eventually they're going to realize I'm right I believe I start the conversation usually with something like are you happy and then

and I know where I believe after analyzing where the trigger points are and then I just pound away what does an agent do for a client well in this day and age because there's so much distribution and there's depending on the client like all clients are different music clients are different than actors actors are different than directors but if you're talking about

a writer creator in the television space you have multiple players going on how you tell them what properties to buy to write or create on their own and then packaging them together you're putting together kind of a package to go out to the marketplace it used to be that the students studios would be the composer of the content. It's now moved to the agent. And I always say to the people here, ideas matter more than ever right now as an agent. Because you have to be full service.

And what we've attempted to do by all the companies we've bought and put together is be a full service agency, whether it be licensing, marketing, books, all actors, how you put things, together for a director, an actor, a writer, happens inside our doors now, more than it does at the Sony's, at the Netflix, at the Paramounts. And what's the key to maintaining a good relationship with a client? Well, you have to just, you have to be, you actually have to be their partner, not their

representative. You actually have to be their business partner and think about the world and where the possibilities. And, you know, you know it. there's bad things happen you have to have an agent i believe that is willing and i hope we've taught this to have endurance um and take the failures and kind of think through all the different possibilities and bring teams together to help you think through things um i think we've done that here um not always great but usually pretty good um and i think that's the requirement for whether be a music client, a social media client, you know, a book, an author, an actor, a director, everything.

You are known as one of Mahaloids' toughest negotiators. Why do you think that is? I've won. Why is that? Well, I'm just, you know, I'm not going to roll over because somebody thinks, you know, somebody's more powerful or whatever. I'm not sure I'm the toughest negotiator. I just have a point of view on something and I'll stick to my guns.

I know when, first of all, I don't have to, I don't, I think when I negotiate, I don't have to have all the chips off the table. But I do have to, I think there's this line, there was this old lawyer at Warner Brothers in my first deal. And he told me, and I said to him in the middle of the negotiation, the head of CA, Bill Haber, gave me a property to negotiate for him, an underlying right, and I told him in the middle of the negotiation, I said, this is not fair. And he was the senior lawyer at Warner Brothers, and he told me to drive over to Warner Brothers. And I did, and I walked in, and I said, Mr. Stoleness, hi, I'm

Ari Emanuel. And he said, son, fair is where we end up. And he said, leave my office. And so, you know, in all these negotiations, I just always say to the people, People fair is where we're going to end up. I might not be completely happy. You might not be completely happy, but it is the right number. If you were to give the listeners like a 20 second crash course in negotiation, what would you include? One is you've got to keep the negotiation within the, you know, you don't go out of the,

you don't negotiate in public. You respect your negotiator. You're tough and you can't, you know, but you, you, um, you negotiate inside the rooms you don't kind of and every negotiation is different there's not one negotiation there's not one principle uh to a negotiation sometimes there's only one buyer you you you've struck out you have to get a deal done and you close sometimes there's multiple buyers and you you drag it out as long as you can to get the highest price um so you just have to recognize the environment and the situation you're in i think everybody does the same thing you know

You have to be honorable. You have to keep your word. Whatever you're negotiating, it's not your last deal if you're talented. And so your word, your negotiation with that person is actually important because that reputation kind of precedes you and follows you. You once said that agents are like cockroaches. Yeah. What do you mean about that? Meaning you can't kill us.

We're going to be around in this business forever. as much as people have tried to disintermediate agents. When I think I started in the business, we were just in the television business and a little bit of motion picture business. Now we're in Instagram people, podcasts, we're in so many different areas. And the agency business has constantly adapted

and kind of transformed itself and what is required to be a good agent and representation. You got to have marketing, in there. You've got to have books in there. You've got to have license and merchandising in there. And, you know, you just constantly are adapting your skill set, the agency at large, to actually perform the best for the clients. And I don't think a lot of agencies have done that. That's why they haven't survived. We have done that. And I think that's why we're thriving.

Many would have seen the series Andrew Rush, which is loosely based on you, I believe. How spot on that in my early days it was it was sad to say too spot on um but um i've mellowed so yeah i mean in the early days of remember when i started the business you had four no you had yeah you had four big agencies against us and you you weren't you there was no price differential that could distinguish you it was all the same price so you know i was um difficult well yeah i'm a lot i'm a lot nicer now why is that you know success i don't have to constantly be fighting battles um the employees are doing a lot of a lot of the heavy lifting that i used to do by myself um and with others and um yeah taking on a lot of the battles that i don't

have to take on, it makes life a little bit easier. And also, my clients have reached a stature that's a lot easier to move their careers. And I have, I think, and you'll have to just ask the buyers, I've lived by my reputation and how I negotiate. Moving on to sports. So in 2016, you bought UFC. Yes. Was that a strategic transaction or an opportunistic opportunity that just came by? Well, we had bought before that, PBR. We had proven that we could buy a company in the sports area and resurrect it. I think Silver Lake would say, as they thought about it, we negotiate every deal with networks

on behalf of packages, et cetera. At that time, we did internationally all the sports rights. We knew how to handle UFC internationally in the value. We represented them, and it already negotiated a lot of the broadcast deals. By owning it, running it properly, we could get 90% of the value as opposed to 10% of the value. When would you say that, when did you say where combat sport got into the main? stream? Well, I was just looking at the numbers and looking where sports was going to go and where I thought the distribution model was going and the requirement for SVod and AVod. And I did my

calculation that Fox had to have the product based on where they were going with their business from the RSNs and et cetera. I didn't realize that they were going to sell, that Ruper was going to sell. But I did realize where the marketplace was going with regard to stream. streaming. And sports has always been a huge driver in that space. And there's not a lot of sports selling. And I thought between international distribution, sponsorship, site fees, all the things that we did, production where we had global production facility in London in five different locations, we could take a lot of costs out and add a lot of value. And it rang true. And we just let, I mean, I have one of the great partners in Dana White who could continue to do what he

needed to do. And I would do the business side with Mark Shapiro. And, and if we had that combination, it was going to be a lethal combination. Why is it a good business to hold? What are the characteristics with that particular business? Well, that particular sport. Yeah, one is, it's a sport that happens over one day, six hours. hours. The demographics are four quadrants, young men, older men, women now. I mean, it's a, and it's global. And it's very, the fights are 15 minutes or 25 minutes. They're action pack. They're great for social. We're in every country in the world with our fighters. It was the dominant player in that sport. And so, and I just thought it had bigger and bigger upside because the

People want big events on a weekly basis, and, you know, it turned out to be true. You're going to have an event in the White House, I think, next year. Yeah, in June. I think it got announced, the president announced it last week. I don't know when this is airing, but yes. Tell me about the links between politics and martial art. Well, you, that you have to actually talk to my partner, Dana White. I have a, you know, I represented the president for seven, nine years.

in his days on NBC. He had an incredible relationship with Dana when the UFC started. He was the first one in Atlantic City to put the UFC on when nobody would do it, and they were calling it cockfighting. And they've maintained an incredible relationship. And when the president was running for the second time, Dana helped him out with his strategy in social. and was very helpful

and has been helpful for the president for a long time. Do you think politics is increasingly becoming a bit more like combat sport? I would say the following. I hope not going to this Charlie Kirk situation.

I hope that this is a kind of watershed moment where people realize this is a very bad path for the United States. States and for the world. I think it's all over the world. There's a very combative situation in politics. But, you know, I hope nobody gets choked out in politics. I just hope we kind of,

kind of realign our thinking. So, I mean, I think, as Bill Maher said, it's very important to talk to everybody and I agree with that because you have to have you have to understand them and you have to be able to express your opinion so that there can be a middle ground it's like any negotiation

as I said to you you can't take everything off the table they have to win some you have to win some then you bought WWE no we merged well you merged no you were I believe

I believe you were a wrestler yourself in, you know, in your early years. I mean, here's what happened. Is that where you begin to buy it or? No, I also, I represented Vince in the WWB for a long, long time at Endeavor. And then we didn't go public at the beat, like in, I want to say 19. I had approached Vince with my partner at Silver Lake Egon Durbin to kind of pull the UFC out merge it with the WWE and create one entity, and we would, like we have now, be private with Endeavor.

Vince, because we were just getting into COVID, I think it was in 2000, I don't remember, 2020, 2020, something like that. Vince didn't want to do it. We then retook Endeavor out with all of the, the first time we went out, we only had 51% of the UFC with, we had negotiated a deal that KKR and Silver Lake would roll their portion of it in. We went public. The market never really understood what I was trying to express that we cover every aspect of entertainment, from sports to social to books.

That conglomerate conversation never happened. We kept on selling off pieces. We sold off our academy. We sold off our production company. They just never got. And so, you know, we looked around after a significant time and other representative businesses is we're getting valuations of $7 billion,

and this doesn't make sense. And that's, you know, the pure play was the right thing for the UFC and the WWE in bull riding. We first started out with just UFC and WWE. Vince, under circumstances, had a leave. We then realized here's the remaining portion of what sports is, which is distribution, production, premium ticketing with on location,

and we rolled in our last sport PBR. And that is a pure play sports entity in TKO, and the rest is the representation business, and that's actually private. So now you have something like 350 events per year, and is it close to a billion viewers? A lot of viewers and a lot of events. Are there any challenges to having choreographed

than non-charograph content in the same company? One sports entertainment, and this past weekend, And I don't know when this again, when this is going to air, we had our launch for a wrestle paloosa in Indianapolis with ESPN. And ESPN realizes when you go to one of these live events or you watch it, it's sports entertainment. And it is definitely, you know, competitive. It is entertainment.

So there's, you know, but the fan base is incredible. It's, again, like the UFC, it's global. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, to see. And then you, um, I've said in the past that, um, you'd love to go into boxing. And then you had the Ali Act, which was kind of protecting the boxers. And now you have people who come out and say that they want to update the act. And so now you are going into boxing, right? Well, we had an event two weekends ago at Elysian Stadium where the Raiders play. And there was 70,000 people in the arena.

We had one of the great on Netflix, one of the great boxing events ever. Actually, in a legion, I think the records are with WWE and our boxing match for live events. It was crazy. It was incredible. We are in the middle of kind of seeing if we can work with the administration and Congress about kind of having an addendum to the ALE Act, which I think is better for the boxers, health-wise, money-wise, et cetera, creating an opportunity like we have with the UFC. And if everything works out,

boxing is an area that we're looking at. We're also in Jiu-Jitsu. So we will cover the full spectrum of combat sports. How large can boxing be for you? You know, the funny thing is, again, we have Nick Con and Dana White and Hunter Camp. We have a great team led by Dana. and Nick Kahn.

We have a good partner in the Saudis. And you see how big, I mean, I think on the event we had two weekends ago, I think there was 25 million consecutive streams on Netflix. I don't remember how many globally. It was a significant number. Boxing has been around for hundreds of years. I mean, UFC's been around for over 30, but, you know, not 100. And there's an understanding of it.

If we can bring it back to the glory days and Dana and Nick can create the stars behind it, it can be as big as any of our other assets. You nearly bought Formula One at one point, I believe. You know, when we, so before the TKO merger, we had been working on CVC in the UK. They had owned it at the time to buy it. because they were you know they had run its cycle and uh egon real we had just bought three months before the ufc and you know it was a nine 10 billion dollar chunk we had not gone into our execution of the broadcast strategy yet and we had we were starting to cut costs and do all

the things that we were doing and i just think it was um we got to remember also So, you know, you had Brexit, so we had a banking issue. We didn't have a relationship with you so we could get infinite money. And I think it was just a little bit kind of thought through hard to kind of get, you know, I think looking back and we both looked at each other, we're probably going to regret this. You know, regardless, we've done very well. If you could buy another sport, what would it be? well first of all i i'm not thinking about that right now i mean we have to execute on everything we have

now we have to uh get jiu jitsu up on its feet we got to continue to execute slowly our boxing strategy um there's a lot on our plate um we've just finished the majority of the broadcast deals domestically, internationally, things come up every year. So we still got integration with the WW and UFC savings that we have to get to. You know, I got a big plate. So I appreciate you me wanting to kind of keep on going. But if I just do what I'm doing, it's going to be a really, it's a great business. Philosophically, how is how is the,

way people consume and think about sports changing. How do you see this in 10? Well, you know, you have to, you have to have to keep it young. You have to have a really thought out social strategy with your fighters, with your sport, to keep the demo young. And I think we have some of the youngest demos in the business, but across our platforms. You then have to be on your distributors, domestically, internationally about their marketing strategy. And then you have to kind of, with your sponsors, you have to do integrations with them appropriately for your sports as the events come up. And if you do all three of those properly, then you can have a pretty successful business.

And we're in an enviable position. We have very young sports. and they're consumable on this thing. You know, you can have a knockout. Boom. So, Ari, when you do a deal, how do you do the research? How much is analysis and how much is gutfill? No, no, no.

Like when we presented the WWE or the UFC, when we're taking our rights out from market, we have a whole research team that does, here's our demo, like on Netflix or on Amazon or on, Apple, here's who you're not touching. Here's the people that want to sign up for your place. And if you get them, here's how much we believe. We do a huge, you know, 100-page decks about the value creation by being in business with our assets are like the NFL does, the NBA does, et cetera.

And, yeah, I mean, that was, you don't go into these things like, where do you think the wins? no, there's a huge presentation. And then you know, because each one of them has a different strategy with the WWE and ESPN. They wanted a big launch. They needed another thing to kind drive people into their new service. Netflix wanted to get to an advertising base. Each one of them have different reasoning for why they want an asset. And so you have to tailor your presentations to those assets. And we have a ton of people doing that for us. And you have a lot of different people in this process with different voices. Why is that important?

I think it's important for leadership that if you are a good leader, one is you want a lot of voices inside the mix to come to the right conclusion and not make a decision that your opinion is the right opinion. So there are many executives that we sit around constantly going back and forth about deals, you know, what we can. ask for what we shouldn't ask for, places we should be growing the business. We have calls every week on the UFC, calls every week on the WWE Jiu-Jitsu, pole riding. And I think that's, you know, important for leadership to get to the right conclusion. You always know you're going to make mistakes, but you want everybody that is running the operations for your company at all, every level to have a voice in it so that when the mistakes come, we can at least mitigate them a little bit and then have a path forward. And you constantly have to be reviewing this stuff

as you as you operate your business. I don't know how other people do it. Running a sport is like anything else but we have the added um situation that you're on the w w you know they're signed contracts on the on the ufc they're independent contractors that's why it's very difficult for a media company like a disney a compcast a warner brothers and netflix to own a sport i think they would hurt the operate because it's it's a very kind of fluid situation And that's why you need a lot of voices in that can tell you all the different things going on. Because it's not only how you run the business, it's how your superstars and athletes are thinking about it. And that's a very dynamic situation to kind of constantly be reviewing as you're trying to run the business.

What type of leadership does it take to run this type of fluid situation? A democratic dictatorship. And that's what you have? well we have we have multiple leaders in the democratic dictatorship yeah on the on the you know you know triple h runs wwee with nick con dana runs you know kind of making the fights and everything ufc mark and i run the business side of it with multiple people underneath us and then there's that coordination between uh you know the people that are creating the storylines creating the fights and us about where we're going with it.

So, yeah. You seem to have very close relationships with your management. How do you balance? Do you think there's work-life balance? No, I don't either. No, no, I don't think that. No, no, I don't think, I'm not asking how you balance your life. I'm just asking how do you balance professional and personal relationships.

You know, I've known Dana for 30 years. I've known, you know, Nick Kahn was an agent at CAA. We try to hire them as an agent here, have a very close relationship with him. I've known Triple H off and on for a long time now, very close. You just have to stay close, know, what's going on in their lives. I mean, you're in business with somebody, so therefore you have to know a lot about them and care about them. Now, moving on to a different type of entertainment, you recently brought. the freeze art fair right that's a new business is less violent well here's what i here's what i

concluded so we took endeavor private we spun ufc and pbrr and on location and i mcg into tko silver lake as we took endeavor private was selling they wanted it to just be a pure play representation business. We had bought over time about 700 different events. I have a thesis that we're down to four-day work weeks, maybe three-day work weeks. Europe, you know, with AI and a bunch of other stuff. COVID started it. So if that's the case, there's going to be more free time than ever. We're social animals, human beings. And they're either going to go to a sporting event. You're going to You're going to dinner, you're going to watch entertainment, you're going to live music, and I also think you're going to do live events.

So we've acquired the tennis business, the participatory sports in collectibles, freeze, and Barrett Jackson, our food festivals, a bunch of assets. And we've raised money, about $2 billion in equity. and we've bought these assets and we're going to hopefully create like Live Nation is in music we're going to create a mini version because they're a great company but in live events

a global live events business as this world kind of transforms itself with AI and freezes a part of that and freezes a part of it and I think live is more important than it's ever been and that's the marketplace that we're going to try and go capture

what kind of art do you collect I collect artists I've worked with this gentleman by name of Jeffrey Deich I collect art mainly at the beginning of my life it was all over the place and then I I've focused

significantly on black artists American black artists and South African 1930 to now from Sam Gilliam Mark Bradford, Noah Davis, Carrie James Marshall, Benny Andrews. It's a pretty nice collection. I've been doing it for now in this specific space.

And anybody I didn't mention, please, nobody, Karen Walker, please don't be affected. It's a good collection. It's not perfect, but I got a lot of time. Where do you think your energy comes from? well i was hyperactive when i was a kid i was one of the first riddling kids so i was actually just having this exchange with egon turban in this morning about um one of his portfolio companies that i'm involved with out of silver lake and he was saying something and i was saying something and i said to him what makes us crazy and we just had this tax exchange

I really don't know. But I'm still intellectually curious, you know, and I love it. I have, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I love the, every bit of the process now. I'm not sure I, I enjoyed the process before, but it was a, it was a, it was a means to get to, to. you know, to fulfill an idea. Now I actually love the process and the aggravation. Which part of the process? All of it.

I realize there's going to be a lot of aggravating moments. Those are what it's required to do business. If you don't, if you don't accept that, which was at the beginning I didn't understand it. Now I've accepted it. It's great, you know. I think you said the outcome is a different conversation. I think you said pressure is a privilege. Yeah.

I think that's a good one. I actually, I have to admit, I used it earlier today. Oh, you did? With what? No, I just explained why we like to be where stuff is happening, you know? Yeah. And it just, you just kind of get a different sense of the world as opposed to kind of like being a bystander. I'm not, my parents were never bystanders.

My mom wasn't. She was in the civil rights movement. my dad was a very pretty hard advocate. It was a pediatrician about, you know, kind of kids' rights. And you had two clever brothers. Yeah. Who's the cleverest of the three of you? In our respective field, I think we're all pretty clever.

I wouldn't want to have an argument about health care against my brother, Zeke, who's at Penn, as I said to you. And I definitely wouldn't want to have a political conversation against my brother, Rahm, who hopefully he runs, hopefully, the former ambassador of Japan and mayor of Chicago, hopefully he runs for president. And I think he's the most qualified guy out there for the Democratic Party. And they're pretty dynamic in their own specific fields. When do you wake up in a morning? Well, I flew to Indianapolis on Saturday, saw our launch of our WW wrestlepalooza on ESPN, then I flew to New York, had dinner with the Amir of Qatar last night, flew back, got in at two, woke up at six, here with you, and I'm flying back to New York on Tuesday,

because I have a premiere for a client, flying back here on Wednesday night, going to Aspen, and then back to Indianapolis on the following Tuesday. So I don't know. Whatever it is, it is, it just does. How does your, what kind of fitness regime do you have? Oh, it, that's its own, that's his own podcast with you.

It's too long to discuss. Okay, one minute. No, no, it's way too long. I mean, I wake up at 4.35 o'clock. I work out for an hour and a half. Sona, ice, I mean, it's just, it's just it it is over the years has gotten crazier and crazier do you drink anymore well i haven't got so wine from time to time i don't i don't drink at all anymore but i'll tell you

one thing before these podcasts i did have an ice bath and a sauna see i have one every day do you do one every day yeah yeah yeah how long is your sauna well i'm not very long i'm uh i'm pretty quick how long do you stand in a sauna 10 yeah maximum 10 minutes so i do i do 20 minutes and i do three minutes in the ice bath. Okay. Every day. That's good. No, I am a big believer.

Yeah. How long is your attention span, you think? I've been pretty good here. Yeah, absolutely. I'm, how long will we been going? No, no, yeah. I had expected you to say, I have to go, love you, because I think that's how you normally finish your conversations.

I can end it now if you want. No, no, two more minutes. Learning from, I mean, some people call it failures. I think you call it something else. but learning from trials, mistakes. One of the biggest failures was not going public the first time. I didn't even understand it, right? But that enabled us, and then COVID hit.

And so reading all the points of view of what wasn't good, admitting that we screwed it up going back into the market but with a different strategy working with Morgan Stanley and Egon and really refining it I had you know Mark Shapiro and team dealt with all the issues on COVID which was as as you know for a lot of your company significant how you handled it um doing the raise we you know we just you can't I try and instill this with my kids hopefully with people that work with me you know when you're running something it's not how many punches you can throw it's how many punches you can take so endurance emotional endurance is a really key factor and failure really puts the light on that

and being able to get up off the canvas and get back in the arena is crucial and there's all these great quotes about it and you know the tom brady's or everybody doesn't it just you just have to be able to get off the canvas yeah what's your so what would be your advice to young aspiring and entrepreneurs and actually enjoy the aggravation enjoy it because that is what it's about um if you if you love what you're doing and I still love it and it what what I'm doing is expanded um then enjoy the hardship how the hardship is part of the process of how can you enjoy how can you enjoy uh you know aggravation and stuff that hurts how can you teach yourself that pain is good well you know doing three

minutes in that ice bath, I ain't easy. Meditating in a very hot sauna. You know, one of my things in my, why I do these things for my health. You know, today I'm on a 24-hour fast. Every quarter I do a three-day fast. Getting your mind, the ability for your mind to be able to handle uncomfortable. Also on a personal level for your health helps you in business too because it and, you know, kind of putting barriers around yourself of what you can and can't do. And that also helps, even though it's for your health, it also helps in your business decision-making

and your ability to kind of be the ability to endure, the aggravation. And you realize this two will pass. And it's not going to kill you, and you're going to work through it. You just have to work really hard. and if you kind of learn those things at many different levels

sometimes it comes from business sometimes you see that you got through this or sometimes it comes from your personal life you can handle it for me it started and I didn't realize this during the moments I was dyslexic

it was not easy reading and it was embarrassing it was uncomfortable and being able to be comfortable in the uncomfortable enables you to handle aggravation and all the other things you need in business and even at the time i i i hated myself and my inability to read it has helped me now realizing that you have to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and i think that's true for all business people and what is your advice to young people be comfortable and the uncomfortable

learn that and don't think that you know it's just it just should just happen You actually have to work through all the pain to make it happen if you care. And I don't, I don't, you know, people talk about it. I'm not sure that that is being taught now. You know, your parents can't coddle you and can't give you an award for coming in second and have to, you know, ground you and do certain things for you. And then you have to pick up the mantle as an adult and keep on doing it. And your parents have to be there all the way, but not giving you the answer.

So hopefully I've done that with my kids. Sounds like it. It's been great having you on Ari. All of us have luck with all your projects. And there are lots of them. Thank you. Thank you. You know,

Thank you.