My First Million - Ariel Helwani Is Building His Own ESPN. He Already Has 1m+ Followers. He Tells Us How.

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Ariel Helwani (@ArielHelwani) joins Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@theSamParr) to discuss why he decided to leave ESPN to go independent, how he structures his business, how he decided to do MMA, why niches get riches, the power of leaning into controversy, and much more. _____ * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. _____ Show Notes: (05:30) - Ariel's background (13:05) - Leaving ESPN (20:24) - How Ariel drives revenue at his new operation (28:50) - How Ariel originally decided to do MMA (40:00) - Why Ariel gives away his Substack revenue (48:05) - Audience building techniques (58:50) - Leaning into controversy _____ Links: * BreakingT * Ariel Helwani YouTube channel * Helwani Nose (Substack)

I knew he wanted me out. He wanted me out from before I even got there. Like from the moment the news came out that I was signing, he was trying to get me to not even have day one at ESPN. And so just being 100% honest, I'm a petty guy. There was a part of me that almost wanted to stay in spite of him. We're live now. So we always hit recording right away. Geez. Getting me with the blindsided live. I like it. That's how the real pros do it, Ariel. I don't know how you guys do it on TV, but the real pros just go live abruptly in mid-sentence. I love it. I love it. I'm always ready. So we got introduced through a friend, our buddy John, who's apparently your closest buddy. And I don't know what you know about us. And we could tell you about it in a minute. But basically, like, we're pretty popular in the business world. And let's start with that. Yeah. Pretty big deal. Pretty big deal is what's happening.

Anthony Pettis is a fan. I know that. Yes. We're not nearly as big of a deal as you are in your world. But like, you know, we're on the cusp of being pretty big. And we've talked to a bunch of amazing people. We've talked to Titans of Industry. We've talked to billionaires.

We've talked to people who have tens of thousands employees, people who products you use, whatever. I have never been as star-struck or as nervous to talk to someone. This is such nonsense. No, I swear to God, Ariel. I've been listening. you for maybe 10 years. I've never been this nervous. Okay. And so for the audience at home, the only reason why Sam is saying this right now is because I think you recorded this after the explanation of what happened last time. We were supposed to actually do this a month ago,

and he stood me up. So he's trying to butter me up because he still feels bad. He was in some villa in Hawaii. I'm on the East Coast, freezing my butt off here, and he didn't wake up in time. and now he's trying to tell me that he is starstruck in front of me. Get out of here with this. No, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, as the kids say, this is full cap right here, all right? There's no cap. Sam doesn't know, he doesn't know cap.

He doesn't know this sort of modern lingo. Well, I've been, I've been, I've been dead honest, uh, like we've talked to a lot of a wonderful, amazing people. I've never been this nervous because you, you're, you don't take a lot of shit. You, uh, you, you, you, you, you call people out. You know, the whole thing with Brennan Shab is amazing. The whole Heowani, the whole thug knows. I know about it all.

CEO P.F. Changs. That's amazing. That is incredible. Well, like, every one of your guests takes their interviews from the phone while driving. I'm shocked you're not doing that. I know. No, every time, like, they go to me, you know, like, it's all right, now let's join so-and-so. Thank you for joining us, blah, blah, blah.

And then they go to the shot and they're in the car. I'm like, ah, for fuck's sake, you're in the car, really? Why did you tell me that this was a good time? if you're in the car. I don't know. There's just something less intimate about the car. Maybe for other people it's more intimate, but I don't know, when you're at home, you're comfortable, you've got your little

water bottle or coffee next to you. It just seems like you're going to get better stuff. But all that aside, thank you for having me. In fact, a very good friend of mine, not named John Beer, named Kevin Wang of Montreal. Give him a shout out. He currently lives in New York as well. I've known him for quite some time.

When I think you sent out the initial tweet that I would be on, he within seconds, sent me the screen grab and said, this is my favorite podcast. I can't believe you're going to be on it. This is incredible. Tell me more, all this stuff and more. So a lot of people are apparently excited. I appreciate you guys having me. No hard feelings. It took me a couple days to get over being stood up. You know, I had to rearrange my whole schedule and cancel on some people and things like that. But with great pleasure, I return to do this for real. Good. And we're going to do an intro ahead of this. So we don't, we don't.

don't need to talk too much about your credentials. But basically for the people who aren't listening, Ariel, you've been, you've been in this game. For the people who aren't listening? I don't think they care. Sorry. See, I told you, I'm nervous, Ariel. For the people who don't follow you, you're basically, you've been in the game since 06. You worked for Vox. You've worked for ESPN. You worked for a ton of different amazing publications. But you, you started as a reporter. At this point, I would say you're just as much of a character of the MMA scene, UFC scene, as Dana, as some of the fighters. Well, don't tell Dana that. Well, you're definitely, you're, you know, you're as much of the story sometimes as a lot of the stuff going on, which is awesome.

And you've built this amazingly large and loyal audience. We're a business podcast, so we can talk a little bit about MMA, but what's interesting is that you've recently kind of gone semi-independent, so you work with BT Sports, you work with Spotify, you work with substack, although you don't work with them, but you know what I mean? You have a substack. And what you're doing with journalism and an entrepreneur in terms of entrepreneur being an entrepreneur is pretty amazing. So you kind of like have this independent business where I think it's kind of interesting.

And I think if you are a young person wanting to get into business journalism, business media, what you are doing and also what some of the other guys are doing, Bisbing, Chal Sunnan, I think that is the perfect example of what you can become. So that's why we asked you to come on. Well, I appreciate that. and I could tell you how I arrived to this point in my life, if you'd like. I kind of feel like I'm an entrepreneur at heart, but I say that with the caveat that I'm a horrible business person, when I think of things like finances, stocks, investments, like it truly

makes my head hurt. My older brother, Mark, is someone who's very good at this stuff. My dad is very good at this stuff. My brother works in the financial industry and all this. I was always more of the sports fan, the creative, the dreamer, that type of person. However, I consider myself an entrepreneur in the sense that I have always tried to do things solo on my own, bet on myself. When I went to Syracuse University as a youngster, I was the only one of my friends who left Montreal to go study in the United States, in Canada, where I'm from, in Montreal. No one leaves.

They all just go to either McGill or Concordia. And so I felt like I was kind of, you know, building my own thing then. When I got there, I create, you know, I went to the traditional. So Syracuse University, in case you don't know, is the number one school for, at least in my opinion, to develop sports broadcasters. And they've developed the likes of, you know, the likes of Bob Costas went there and Marv Albert and Mike Tariko. I mean, the list is just incredible, the names of the people who, you know, went to study at Syracuse over the years. and they all go to this one station, W-A-E-R, to hone their craft and develop a voice and all that stuff. And I went there and I noticed that everyone kind of wanted to be the same person.

I never wanted to follow anyone. And so I left that station after one semester and I went to like the Rinky Dink third-tier student station in the student center. And I did my own combat sports show every Saturday morning over there. And so again, I was kind of just doing things on my own and trying to build out my own thing. Fast forward a long time I get to Spike TV in 2007. I hate it after a week. I start my own website and that's how I get into MMA journalism and I start interviewing fighters. And I give myself six months to get noticed.

I don't get paid for any of this. I was just kind of using this as an opportunity to show people what I can do. Fast forward to now and in February I'm starting to realize that my time at ESPN is probably coming to an end. And I'm starting to think to myself, okay, what do I want to do? what would make me happy, what's the future here? And what I came to realize was I can almost create this menu, this puzzle, as I called it, where I'm doing this here, this here, this here, that here. And I call myself independent, Halwani, independent, Hilwani.

And yes, I'm working with other people, but I feel very independent because I was able to go out and carve up my duties. Some of it's my own, my own YouTube channel, the substack, things like that. And some of it is I consider partnering with other people. It's been an incredible few months since I was able to leave. I was terrified of leaving it initially because ESPN was my dream. I actually had to talk to a therapist about that and we can get into that as well because I didn't feel, I felt like a failure if I left after three years because this was my dream. This was the mountaintop. But I was very unhappy.

And I realized that I had to go back to that entrepreneurial spirit and start building out my own things and start doing what made me happy and be around people who make me happy. and people who support you, I don't want to stab you in the back and all this stuff. And so, yeah, I'm very, very happy now. Now I'm working with Vox, my old friends at Vox Media, with the Ringer Spotify, with Substack, with BT Sport. I did a thing for Showtime recently, BetMGM, and it's great.

I've never been busier, but I've never been happier as well. And talk about that move. So you're at ESPN. The dream is realized because you're kind of like, you're like me. I don't know if you remember. There was a show back in the day about becoming a sports. Anchored. Do you ever watch this show? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a reality show. And it was

only on for like two seasons or something like that, but it was great. I think anybody who grew up kind of with SportsCenter on Loop, you know, there was something really aspirational about ESPN. You get there. And was it that, so this can happen. It happens with all kinds of entrepreneurs. You'll sell your company. And then you'll feel like kind of numb slash board. Like, wait, was this it? This is the thing I was working for this whole time. So was it that the dream really wasn't a dream or was it that, oh, it came to an end and I got to figure out where to from here. So what was the ESPN side like? Did the mountaintop feel like you thought it would feel? Or what was that like? Yeah, so that's a great question. I always wanted to work at ESPN.

That was sort of the end goal. I remember being a young kid going on vacation to the United States with my family. We'd get to the hotel and my brothers and I would watch Sports Center on loop. Remember in the mornings they would have like one episode that they would tape and they would just repeat it over and over again. and I would repeat it and I was just so taken by the magic of sports television and the characters and the highlights and all this stuff. And I'll be honest when I got there right off the bat, I was disappointed. The first few months at ESPN were very hard for me because I had this vision in my mind of what it would be like and the resources and the commitment to, you know, excellent content and coverage and attention to detail and all this stuff. and it honestly, it just wasn't what I expected.

Now, over time, we kind of found our groove, and I got to do a lot of fun things, and I'll be honest, in the back of my mind, I was like, I don't know how long I'm going to last here, partly because of the fit, but also partly because of the relationship with the UFC and not being able to cover the sport the way I want to cover the sport. And I tried to check off as many boxes as possible.

And so hosting a radio show, I wanted to do that. I checked that off. Doing an E-60 profile on my good. friend Daniel Cormier, I checked that off. Doing NBA sidelines, I checked that off. O.T.L. Outside the lines, checked it off. Sports center, checked it off. So I was trying to do as much as possible because I knew at some point this was not, I was not going to be a 25-year lifer. I came to that conclusion pretty early on, one of those guys who stays at ESPN for all those years. And, you know, it was tough. You know, I'm going from doing a show in a beautiful studio that

I helped design in New York City to a very small studio. with not the same resources to then going to Bristol, Connecticut, twice a week, driving four hours back and forth, Mondays and Wednesdays. To Bristol's, it's a four hour one way? Back and forth. So two hours and two hours in the same day. Twice a week. And sometimes it's, you know, you're exhausted. I'm doing a show that's three, four hours long. I'm mentally tired after this show. And I have to get back in my car and drive two hours. Often in the winter, it's pitch black. Like, this wasn't very fun. And yet here I am, you know, it's the dream job, it's ESPN. And then on top of that, it's all the other drama that you have to deal with behind the scenes. So, yeah, I mean, I came to the conclusion around a year ago, well, not a year ago now, like last summer, okay, you know, what do you want to do? What would make you happy?

Would leaving be the right move? Would that make you happy? And, you know, there was a part of, you know, I knew, honestly, I knew there were people that probably wanted me to leave. you know who I'm talking about. People in the UFC probably wanted me to leave. And if you're not listening, basically, and you just actually did a wonderful YouTube yesterday where you explained the background.

But basically you've had an issue, or Dana White, the president of UFC has had an issue with you for a variety of reasons, whether he claims you're too negative. He says you've leaked some information. There's always been some tension there. All of it's wrong. He couldn't be more wrong.

But, you know, he has his, he has his business and his motives and it would be great if we could meet in the middle like we once did but you know that's neither here nor there at this point so yes I knew he wanted me out he wanted me out from before I even got there like from the moment the news came out that I was signing he was trying to get me to not even have day one at ESPN and so just being 100% honest I'm a petty guy there was a part of me that almost wanted to stay in spite of him and I didn't want them to win I didn't want them to win because I knew that they would celebrate if I left. In fact, when I announced that I was leaving ESPN, I got a text message from an unknown

number that's not on my phone saying, I told you we'd get you out of ESPN, bye-bye. Now, I don't know who sent me that text message. I have my theories. So I needed to go talk to someone to figure out how to get over that, to not stay at a job in spite of someone, which is absolutely ludicrous, to do what makes me happy, to have fulfillment in my heart, you know, to wake up and be excited to be around people that make you, you know, happy and support you and all that stuff. I had to get over that in my brain. And thankfully, I did. And so it took, it took some time. I don't have any regrets. Do you tell the therapist about Petty Halwani, about Heelwani? Does the therapist support all these characters that you have in your arsenal?

Sometimes she's like, okay, what is the end goal here? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you bringing more stress? But she really helped me realize what is. important and what makes me happy and not sticking around to you know stick it to people and things like that and as i said on my show on wednesday i don't know if i end up at this point if uh if i don't talk to a therapist and i was always someone who was afraid of talking to a therapist because i thought that it made me weak i thought that it it would be um a sign of weakness that i was you know um needing help and all this stuff and and honestly uh i'm so happy and thankful that i got to that point it was a weird way to get there, but, you know, I'm happy that I was able to talk to someone who

helped me figure things out. Therapy is like exercise. I'm like, look, even if you look skinny, you should still exercise, you know, even if you're like in an okay place, you should still go and do stuff. And particularly if you're fat, you should exercise. If you're in a bad mental spot, you should definitely go and do therapy. Oh, yeah. I don't think you should.

Exercise. My Peloton bike helped me a lot. I got one of those. I mean, a lot of things helped me clear my head. And I don't have any regrets. I don't even have. One thing that I had to talk out was I didn't want to have ill feelings towards ESPN. I love sports.

I was just watching my Knicks beat the Celtics in an incredible double overtime thriller last night on ESPN. I didn't want to be the guy who couldn't watch ESPN, who couldn't go on the app, who felt some sort of way about this company that meant so much to me and live with that animosity. And I was afraid that that would happen. I don't have any of it. I don't have any animosity towards them, the people there. I don't have any animosity towards anyone there, to be honest, because they kept their word, they paid me till the very end, they stayed true to the contract.

They even offered me a new contract, unlike what other people are trying to say about me being fired. I was never fired. They offered me a contract, and I turned it down. And I met some legend, Mike Breen, Doris Burke. I met absolute legends of the TV business there. I will never forget my time, and I'm very thankful for the time, but three years was enough.

It was time to move on. Can I ask you, I want to ask you two questions. The second one is actually going to be about Dana White. And I want to ask you about what attributes do you think he has that have made UFC wonderful. And that's what I've asked people about you. I asked John and go, man, Ariel's amazing. What drives them? So it's always fun to ask other people about the people they work with.

But the first question is the current setup right now with your business, what do you think is going to be the biggest revenue driver? Is Substack, do you think, going to drive, you know, this paid newsletter business? Is that going to drive a significant? significant amount? Do you think it's most going to come from BT Sport, from YouTube ads? How's your business set up and where's your head at in terms of where the opportunity is? Right now, my biggest revenue driver, if you want to put in those terms, is Vox Media. They're paying me the most. And that was important to me because the MMA Hour was a show that I

created and put a lot of time and effort and, you know, just, I mean, everything. I poured everything into that show from 2009 all the way to 2018 and it was heartbreaking to see it end even though i was going to my dream job um that show just meant so much to me and i think it meant a lot to a lot of people and so that's the biggest one and that's a do you regard that as a youtube channel or or is a youtube and the and the the podcast does very well it's on apple it's on spotify it's on google it's on stitcher all those places as well and you own it i do not own it no i don't own it they pay me to do that show. So that's what's interesting about my situation is like some of the stuff I own, some of the stuff I don't own, but everyone's playing nicely together in this sandbox and I'm very

appreciative. It took some time to kind of figure out all the pieces. That was the most interesting part of this. Like back in February so when I came to the conclusion that I was going to go and leave ESPN and try to do things here and there, obviously you have it, oh, I'd like to do this and that, like some people call it a Chinese menu, you know, you kind of build your out your own thing. But But then the actual dance of getting everyone to play nice and be on board with all these little different things that I'm doing was the most interesting part of the whole process. And I really lucked out and I found all these people like people who are okay with me having my own YouTube channel that's completely mine and the substack, but also doing something for

the ring or Spotify and also doing something for Vox. So it's just been a really interesting exercise in, look, like my first, my friend Pat McAfee here I am dropping names. He's like, oh, well, you're not totally independent. You don't own everything. I'm like, okay, fine. If you want to get, you know, into that whole semantics game, fine. I don't own everything. But there's an independent spirit to all of this where at the end of the day, I feel like I'm partnering with other people as opposed to being a full-time employee with anyone. I'm not. I have an LLC now. And I'm able to pick and choose what I want to do. And so that's, that's really important. But to answer your question, the biggest deal that I have at the moment is

my deal with Vox Media. Do you think long-term that stays true? Or do you think, because some things are, something's pay off better immediately and then some things you say, okay, if I build, I don't know, the newsletter, if I build the podcast or the ringer stuff, if I build that up three years from now, this picture might look a little different.

Or do you, you said you don't really think too much about business. Do you not even care about that? You just do your thing and see what happens. Are you trying to get me to reveal my five-year plan, my business plan right here? That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm looking for 2030 Ariel.

Where's 2030 Ariel doing? Who's the guy who started the ringer? What's his name again? Bill Simmons. Yeah, like, you know, he was in a similar position as you. Sold the ringer probably netted $150, $200 million when he did that. I mean, is that going to happen to you? That would be nice.

I don't know. You know, right now, obviously I'm very happy with the situation. I'm really excited, and it's kind of the thing that's flying under the radar at the moment. which I'm totally okay with that. What I'm doing on my own YouTube channel is giving me, as I like to say, a lot of Nakhas. Nakhas is a Yiddish word, which means kind of like fulfillment and joy in my heart, because every week for now, every Thursday, I am posting an interview with someone outside of the MMA world because I've been itching for a very long time, and that was part of the reason why I went to ESPN

to show people that I'm more than just an MMA guide, that I can interview other athletes, musicians, comedians, anyone. It doesn't matter if you're in the sports world, if you're an actor, if you're a Holocaust survivor. If you're interesting, I want to talk to you because the thing that I derive the most enjoyment from are the interviews. I love talking to people. I could do a hundred, I mean, I do a four-hour show twice a week now, and I feel like I

could do it every day. It's just a lot of fun for me. And so I started that around a month and a half or so ago, and it's just my own little thing. It's me and two producers, an audio guy, a video guy, and we're posting these interviews. And I don't honestly care at this moment if a million people watch these interviews or three people watch the interviews. For me, now I'm doing them to fulfill this little passion of mine to talk to to other people, to scratch that itch, but also to eventually show people the right kind of people that I could do this, that I could be much more than just an MMA guy.

And it's actually the exact same thought process that I had when I got into all of this back in 2007. In fact, this past Tuesday, October 19th, marked the 14-year anniversary of me launching my own site. Jerrypark.com. It's still up. I was at Spike TV. In September of 2007, I got a job working at Spike TV, and Spike TV was the home of the UFC. and I was working in TV production. I thought, okay, this is the best place for me. TV production, UFC, they're the home of the UFC. It's perfect.

After a week there, I walked into my boss's office, and I quit. And I said, I don't really think this is the right fit for me. I'm not. Like, they didn't do anything creative. I'm a creative guy. I like to think of ideas, come up with things. And they were just kind of the middleman. The UFC was producing all the content.

So I walked into his office. I said, I'm really sorry. Thank you for the opportunity. but I don't think this is the right fit. And I'm the kind of guy who, when he's 85 years old, I don't want to wake up and say, I could have done this, I should have done this, I should have zigged when I zagged, all that stuff.

He was very upset. He said, you're going to regret this for the rest of your life. This is unprofessional. No one's ever done this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they made me stick around for a month and a half in my cubicle until they found someone to replace me. And that was the crossroads of my life. In fact, our mutual friend John was a part of this process

where we would go for lunch, during this process. I'm not doing anything. And I'm telling him, I'm going to start my own website and I'm going to start interviewing fighters because I really want to go into MMA journalism. I really want to show people that I could be the Howard CoSell, the Max Kellerman, the whatever, of MMA. And so I started to reach out to fighters via MySpace and every morning I would post an interview with a fighter and I didn't care if five people looked at the interviews or 500 people looked at the interviews or 500,000. I just wanted to use that to show people that I could do that. 14 years later, I'm doing the same thing on my YouTube page.

And now I want to build this and grow it and use it as an opportunity to show people. But for now, it's just like giving me so much joy to go back to those early days and just talk to people about things. And then now I'm like last week I interviewed Marty Fish, the former tennis player who's been, you know, very open with his battles with anxiety. And friends of mine who have never listened to my work, watch my work ever, who don't care about that, they're like, wow, dude, you're a really good interviewer. I'm like, yeah, I've been doing this for 14 years at this point, but it's opening me up to a whole new audience and I'm very excited about that. We have a couple of kind of like just go-to phrases or principles when it comes to business. One of them is bet on yourself. And I think you so some people are like, you know, if some people are listening to this, they're not super into MMA.

I think one of the things they can pull out is your bet on yourself mentality, especially when it's not easy, right? Like betting on yourself sometimes as an entrepreneur is kind of obvious. you didn't really have a job. You know, by default, you bet on yourself. You had, quote, unquote, good jobs at each of these stops. And then you said, look, this isn't it. I'm going to bet on myself and I'm going to go independent. I'm going to do my thing.

So you have a strong dose of bet on yourself. You have another one that Sam coined, which is Nitches Get Riches, which is that I know you're a basketball fan, but you didn't go into the more established field, that one that had a career track that you could tell your mom, look, there's other people who have made it in this field. I could be the next whatever in basketball. You went for MMA, which is today fringe, let alone back in 2006 or whatever.

Like nobody was really, there was no blueprint or there was no like success stories doing what you were doing. I don't think at that time. Like you are the kind of the success story of that niche. And so I want to hear kind of how you decided to bet on that even though you have other interests. You have other sports that you're interested in as well. And then the last one is there's this great phrase, which is, you know, you want to do the work that feels like, that looks like work to others, but it feels like

play to you. So like if I was going to interview somebody four hours a day, I would be exhausted. And I think you get your pickup steam by energy, by hour three, you're like, you're just hitting your groove and it gives you energy. So I think that's another example of where you kind of live one of these principles that we talk about. But tell me about the niche thing. Oh, why did you bet on this? That spoke to my heart. That spoke to my heart. That's a great line. Nitches get riches because I couldn't agree with you more. When I got to Syracuse, for the first time my life, like when I went to Syracuse, I wanted to be the next costis, Marv Albert, basketball, baseball, football, traditional

guy. Hello, welcome to ABC Sports. I'm Ariel Hawani, World Series Super Bowl. And for the first time my life, I realized, wow, there's a lot of people in this world who are my age, who have the exact same dream as me, who are a little more polished, who have nicer hair, who don't have as big of a nose, and maybe don't have such a foreign name. Their name is John Smith, and they just kind of fit that Bob Costas mold. And I never like to follow, you know, the pack. And so I remember telling my parents in September of 2001,

there's this sport called mixed martial arts. There's this organization called the UFC. At this point, it's not even eight years old. And I think it's going to be mainstream. And I think in 10 years, there's going to be some executive in some office, some older guy who's like, what is this crazy cage fighting?

sport. I know nothing about it, but apparently it's very popular. Who's the guy? Who's the voice? Who's the Howard CoSell of MMA? And I want to be that guy. And amazingly, literally 10 years later, August of 2011, I was hired by Fox and that was like my first big, you know, mainstream gig. And so it kind of worked out in that regard. But I say this to young people all the time when they reach out to me. And they send me, you know, oh, I want to do this. I want to do that. I want to be, you know, Stephen A. Smith and all this stuff. In this day and age, you don't want to be a generalist. You're a fan of the New York Knicks. You're a fan of the New York Knickabockers. I'm not going to go tune in to the radio, ESPN Radio now. I'm not going to go in my car, tune in and say, oh, I hope you

guys talk about the Knicks Celtics game last night. I'm going to go on my podcast app, and I'm going to go to the New York Knicks podcast as niche as it gets. to hear an hour breakdown of last night's game. If I'm a big pro wrestling fan, I'm going to go to my pro wrestling podcast and listen to MMA podcast, listen to business podcast. The days of sitting in your car

and hoping that they talk about something or listening to people just talk about God knows what, those days are over. And so it is actually a lot better, in my opinion, to go into a niche, to be the niche guy as opposed to being the generalist. Yeah, there's a couple guys who will make it Stephen A and those guys.

But for the most part, in my world, it's way better to be the niche guy. And I try to explain that. And within the niche, have your own niche as well. And so, like, my thing, interviews. I tell other people, like, find your thing. There was a young guy. I always bring up Mike Bond.

He works for M.A. Junkie. And he's a lot younger than I am. His niche that he used to get in the door were stats and factoid. So he would have all these stats about all the fighters. Great. These days, maybe it's betting. Betting is super hot right now. Use that as your niche to get in the door.

So, yes, I couldn't agree more with that mindset. And I would urge anyone in this day and age, of a la carte you know everything is out of cart right podcast streaming all that the more niche the better you'll have way more success rather than being just some guy like those days 50 years ago when you were a columnist for a newspaper those days are over how um how what what what size or how big is your your audience i mean i know the youtube videos get like 30 000 100 000 per per clip per video how what do you say the number is of your audience and what advice do you have you can use us for example. I mean, we're smaller than you of like of your tips for getting noticed and being great at

building this, this empire. This is going to sound, uh, don't tell me good content. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's going to sound whack, but I really don't know the size. I mean, I see the numbers on YouTube. I never asked for the podcast numbers. I don't want to know. It's actually one thing that really bothered me at ESPN. Like three weeks into my time there, we sat down and started like breaking down the numbers and the listening rate and the completion rate and all this stuff. I don't want to know this. Like, it's hard enough. By the way, in the, what is it now, 12 years of me doing this, like hosting this type of weekly

show and all this stuff, shows, I've never had a person booked the guest for me. I book every single guest. Every single name that you see on my show on Wednesday, Rose and Jan Bajovic and Fadov, I book those people myself. I do not have a booker. What do you just DM them on Twitter? I mean, how do you DM Fader? Now I have, you know, I have their numbers.

You know, and I know what everyone likes. Like, I know there are some people who respond quicker to DMs. There are some people who are strong quicker to WhatsApp. There are some people who strong quicker to I message. I never email anyone. I mean, you email a fighter. That's like throwing, you know, a toothpick into the ocean. There's no chance you're getting a message back.

But, you know, I'm just, I'm kind of relentless like that. And I'm obsessive like that. And I think that I would drive someone crazy if I said, Hey, I want to get Rose Nomi Unis on my show. And then I would probably ask them a million times, did she respond? Did she respond? Did she respond? So I'd rather just put that on myself.

Now, it's probably the worst part of the job. And it makes me, you know, very stressed out. But it's just the way I like to do things. So that brings enough stress. Now to know, you know, completion rate and downloads and subs. Yeah, but you must have an idea. You have a million followers on Twitter. I think BT Sport has 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube-ish.

Your videos ballpark, 50,000 to 100,000. views per maybe i don't know what your podcast downloads are but like do you know i really don't know no no one no one has talked to me now okay i'll tell you like at espn uh when my show with dc towards the end we were getting i think on the podcast only now this is one little sticking point that i have when so they would sit down and they'd be like okay the podcast with dc is getting around 90 000 downloads uh an episode i'm like all right that's pretty good 90 000 an episode once a week one hour a week but here's the problem they were comparing us to other podcast only shows. Let's say the low post podcast, the basketball podcast hosted by the great Zach Lowe,

but that's an audio only podcast. We have the YouTube show as well. So our audience is splintered. So if you want to know about our total audience, you got to count those numbers as well. And in addition, you want to get into the social. Dude, I've never listened. I listen to you every single time. I've never listened to you on the podcast app. Same YouTube only. So that's the, yeah, so that's the thing. And it would always annoy me that we were just, what about the YouTube numbers? Like, to me, I'm more of a visual guy and I care more about that. Like the audio podcast is almost like gravy for me, if you're in your car or whatever,

but I'm more inclined to push the video. So I would guess if we're going to use those numbers, that's from a few months ago. And I don't feel like we've really missed a beat on MMA fighting since I returned there from the video. You know, we're talking like 200, 250. But then there's the breakout stuff, right? like because then each each interview gets made into its own separate clip so i don't know man what you're

trying to stress me out here i'm just trying to live my life and no you get look you you gave an answer so you think 200 200-hish in episode i'll tell you why i think something like that matters what are we at 50 or i think we're at 60 000 an episode if if you add the youtube and the pod so i think that's amazing like like like i think i've been studying a bunch of different people from uh you know like there's there's there's you in let's say mima and then there's uh you know, I don't know if you follow cryptocurrency with this guy, pomp, and he's like the Bitcoin guy. And then there's Tim Ferriss and he's like, you know, the four hour workweek guy. There's all these people who build their brands.

And what I call, you know, solopreneurs or solo media people. And you could look at it. I did a comparison once of Rogan's show versus, you know, the, like the Tonight Show. And on every metric, it's like, you know, how many viewers do you get? How much money do you bring in? How many employees do you have? And on every metric, Rogan just like, like beats down the tonight show. And, uh, but people would still sort of, from a prestige

point of view, they think one is a television show where you wear a fancy suit and you have a monologue and a fake audience clapping. And the other one is like, you know, you just got done with a workout. You sit down in this little studio and you do a podcast. What the heck's a podcast? So people haven't really caught up on this model. Um, and then I sort of broke down the businesses of each. I said, oh, okay, interesting. So what it looks like to me is you get this number that I call your true fans, which is basically like the number of people who really trust you. And like, let's say that's like a quarter million people for you or something like that. Maybe it's 250,000 people that really trust you.

I'll follow you. I don't really care if you're on ESPN or MMA fighting or you're with BT Sport. I just know Ariel Hwani and I'll just kind of follow you wherever you go. It's like a fan of LeBron James. They're not a Cleveland Cavs fan. They're a LeBron fan. And now they're all Lakers fans. And so then I sort of studied the model and I said, okay, it looks like between two to four percent of your audience will sort of

buy anything you do. Like they'll pay for your paid newsletter. They'll buy your your, your hoodies. You know, you tell them, hey, I'm Ariel. I mean, I raised a venture capital fund. I'm investing in startups now. They'll invest in your fund. They'll do everything. And so now, now there's all these new models. Before it used to be, you know, you get famous and you write a book. You spend a couple years, you write a book and that's how you monetize your audience. And then people started doing courses and other different things like that. And I've been studying all the different models. One of the guys I got friendly with was Matthew Barry at ESPN because he has a niche which is fantasy football and he was doing this

you know before fantasy was sexy and he was like convincing Yahoo and others hey go into fantasy I'm telling you like guys are nuts about this and he became the fantasy guy and he's kind of like you he's got a little bit of a he's got a little bit of a good of independence he's got his own like text message like list and he's got his own fantasy football thing oh does he do that I didn't know he I didn't know he uh he had he's got a couple carve outs I actually asked ESPN in our negotiations. I was like, well, what if I do this? Like, if I just do the DC show and the Chale show, but then I do this other stuff my own and, uh, I don't know. It just, uh, it's not easy, but I think he has a couple of carve outs that work for him. Good for him. Um, and he got it kind of

grandfathered in basically. He's like, yeah, I get to keep this out. I don't make too big of fuss. But if you go look at his Twitter bio, what does he link to? It's like, I think he links to one of his properties, basically as like one of his things. So I've been studying this model. I would say for you, I, I, I think you're at a great spot. And, you know, if you just sort of think about like the menu of ways that how does somebody who's got a trusted loyal audience, they've built over 10 years monetize, there's all these creative ways beyond, um, beyond, you know, ads or sponsors on my, on my show. I don't know if you care about that stuff, but I know, I do care about it. You know, it's interesting. Like the substack thing is super interesting because I would say of the,

you know, the three main things that I do. Like obviously there's, uh, video, audio and writing. and there's different components, all of those, but those are obviously audio visual and writing. I feel very confident in my abilities as a video host and as an audio host. I don't feel as confident in my abilities as a writer. Now, people tell me I'm good. I just don't feel like I'm as good. And I try to be very genuine when I write. I try to be myself, not someone else.

And I talk to a bunch of people about the writing component of my menu. Um, and everyone wanted me to do stuff that I wasn't really down with. The guys at substack, so I, I'm part of this like substack pro model. I don't know if you guys know about this. Okay. And we've talked to those guys, uh, Heymish and all those guys, uh, fair bit. We like them. Yeah, yeah.

So, uh, there was a guy named Dan Stone who's a great guy. He reached out to me and they basically like pitch me this thing where I could kind of do whatever I want. And there's obviously this small component of it that's, uh, behind a paywall. I did not feel comfortable. with the paywall. I'm just being honest. I said the same to him. I did not. I think most people are in the same boat as you who come from your background. I do I don't want to look I've always been free and that's a weird thing in its own right because like 30 40 years ago you know you're

subscribing to Sports Illustrated you're subscribed like none we've we've we programmed the audience to expect everything to be free when in reality like this stuff does you know this stuff is worse something and it technically shouldn't be free, but it's been that way and it's hard to go back. It's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And so I didn't feel comfortable doing that. And so the conclusion, but I really wanted to work with substack. And so the conclusion that I came to was all the proceeds that I was getting from the subs, I'm donating to charity. So I want people to know I'm not profiting off of any of this. Why? Why? I mean, I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable. Dude, that's crazy.

So my company, I just, so this podcast was owned by my company called The Hustle. We just sold it for a lot of money to this company called HubSpot. And before we sold it, thank you. And before we sold it, we had a daily email that reached around 2 million people a day. And then we owned a subscription business called Trends that made many millions of dollars. And we charged $300 a year. I think we undercharged. What is going on?

Like most creators feel exactly how you feel. And I'm like, you're crazy. If you owned a restaurant and you were cooking every single day, grinding eight, hours a day. Would you give that food away for free? I can't do it. I don't know why. Even even stemming from like the shop stuff, uh, this, this company breaking tea, who I think are fascinating. You guys should have those guys on. They basically like react to, actually they made this sweatshirt. I'm not, I don't even know. What's their name? So breaking tea, like breaking news. So they're like kind of quick on trends with the. Exactly. So like let's say, uh, for example,

off top of my head, Jorge Mosvidal or Nick Diaz says, don't be scared homie. The next day, They have a T-shirt out, a really cool one, and they're selling it. But they have deals with MLBPA, NHLPA, so they're making stuff in real time. It's a fascinating business. And so one of the guys there was a fan and made a Heelwani shirt in the midst of my whole thing. I was like, oh, this is great. And we split the cost. And all of that, I'm donating to charity as well.

I don't want it. I don't know. You've got this like... Hilwani is actually like, you know, philanthropy. Mother Teresa. That's crazy. I love you, Ariel, and I think you're totally wrong. I've listened to you enough so that I know that you, you know, I'm married into a Jewish family.

You've got this very, like, stereotypical Jewish guilt about you of like, you're like, and I think that's weird. I think you are totally downplay. You know, it's funny, I watch you in the interviews, and I can tell you're nervous or you are having issues, like, realizing that you're the shit. And so as a fan, I will say, I think you're undervaluing yourself. What can I give you can I give you a free idea here for for as a creator? No charge for you area. You're a friend of the house. So here's a free idea for you.

Okay. One of the new little tools in the creator playbook of how to make a bunch of money. I don't know if you saw this, but Mr. Beast, who's one of the biggest YouTubers out there, launched this pop-up restaurant. And celebrities doing restaurants kind of been a thing, but like back in the day, it was sort of like, you know, there's like Margaritaville or like Gordon Ramsey's, you know, Wolfgang Puck's Kitchen or whatever. the hell these things are. But Mr. Bees came out with Mr. Beesburger. And overnight, he had 200 locations

across the country. And, you know, you think about this, is this guy been pouring his, you know, that, did that take years of preparation? No, what, what's happened is there's these companies, like breaking tea that exist that will create a virtual restaurant brand. And what they do is they partner with like, let's say you did, I don't know, I don't know what your, maybe it's Chinese food. I don't know what your thing would be. Let's just say for a second, it's pizza. Motsam al-Su. Matsum, okay, you went niche again. Like, I don't know how big the market is there, but let's say, let's say it was pizza just for, for, for ease here.

There's a whole bunch of mom and pop pizza shops in every city. What this company does, they go partner with one in Phoenix and San Francisco and in all these different cities. And they say, hey, we're going to send you some packaging. That's custom, Halwani branded packaging. And only on, you know, Saturday nights when there's a UFC pay-per-view, does this restaurant go live? And the menu is themed for, like, it'll be like, you know, a Mazvedol pepperoni and like a, you know, a Diaz burger and whatever else. And you are, you know, you make up your own names. And then basically your fans can kind of order with the pay-per-view.

Now, Mr. Beast, he did his little pop-up thing. So he didn't have to really lift a finger. He just kind of said, all right, when I'll give you some ideas on the branding of what the menu could look like, you know. And I approve it. Yeah. I'll approve it. And I'll put my name behind it. And then when the time comes, I'm going to tweet out that, hey, this is happening.

and today you can go buy from my thing. And I think this thing is done about over, somewhere between $50 and $100 million in revenue off this thing. I think, you know, if you just sort of assume a 10% kickback royalty that he's getting on this, I'm pretty confident he's doing somewhere between $3 and $6 million a year of just recurring passive revenue from the, from his little Mr. Beastburger thing.

Now, you're not, Mr. Beast, but you could do something alongside the paper view. and that would just be for fun. Your fans would feel like your... I'm going to steal that. I'm going to steal that idea. I can introduce you to these guys. So you've done the boxing thing, you know, the... Hawaiian boxing, yes, which I made no money off of as well.

I know, and I followed that. And I bought one. Oh, yeah. That was fun. I don't think you understand. Like, I'm a super fan. I appreciate it. And so I would, what I would do is the, you went to the Newhouse School of Journalism.

Sam's wearing Hawani Boxers right now. Yeah, I am. I would go to the, um, Hawaii School of Journalism. I mean, I think that that that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's Can you guys be my agent? I mean, these are all great ideas. I love this stuff. I mean, I just think that you could make like, I would imagine you could profit a million dollars a year selling a $500 to a thousand dollar. Really? School of like you've never heard of me. You never heard of me before with this podcast. I did a course on writing, how to be a better writer. And again, I'm nobody. And I did, I think what did I do? 250K last month in this course. And so, you know, you sort of average. that out across the year. I mean, these are like kind of like million dollar product lines. I create the course once and then I just run. I just say, hey, the new batch is open next month. And then it runs

again. And people get great value. At the end of the thing I say, hey, you know, you paid whatever, $900. How much value do you think you got out of this for you and your business, your career? Right. And they're like, you know, on average, it's 10K basically is what they say. So they get 10x return on their money from self, self-assessed on what they believe they got out of the course. So, you know, I could send a film crew to you right now and we could film a, course on how to, you know, how to break into journalism, how to make it as a, as a journalist. And then screw Syracuse, the people who really want this. All you need is, you know, basically a thousand people who really want this who pay you

$1,000 for this. That's a million dollars a year of basically pure profit because the video production costs are very, very small for this. Wow. This is great stuff. Who would have thought I'd come on here and get all these ideas? I feel like my head is spinning right now. Thank you guys.

Can you help us now? Please. talk to me about audience building i mean like i you seem like a guy who like you don't have you don't do like a significant amount of like growth tactics you just you're just i think you're talented and i think you're you have tenacity so you've been doing it for forever um but what have have for us and anyone listening who wants to break into to do what you've done what uh what advice do you have on on audience building and and and getting i mean i know you don't you're not you're not a hoar like a view whore at all, but you know, it's still, you want people to like your stuff and you want a lot of

people to like it. What do you have for that? So my mindset was always, okay, the first thing was, you know, look at the landscape. Look who's out there doing things. It's okay to derive some kind of inspiration from this person or that person. But at the end of the day, like, you need to develop a unique voice and give people a reason to tune into you, right? Don't be a copycat. Don't just try to do something because someone else is doing it. And so that was my big thing. And that's why The interview lane, I was like, oh, no one is doing this in MMA. I should, you know, develop my own voice in this lane and be the guy, be the leader here. And so that's the first thing.

The second thing is like it's exhausting. You know, you have to work your ass off to build the audience, to put the content out, to make it as good as possible. Be consistent. You know, pick a day. If you're doing a podcast or something, like pick a day. Monday is your day. Don't miss a Monday. You know, like people who do, oh, one here, two here, take a break here.

It's very hard. You have to be consistent. You have to be reliable. You have to be relentless. You have to be professional. So my thing was, you know, reaching out to the fighters. And the fighters who I reached out to, I was very respectful towards. I was very professional towards.

I didn't keep them for very long. I would keep them for like 20 minutes in hopes of getting them to come back the next time, right? Because it's not just about this time. It's about the next time and the next time and it's the next time. And so I don't want them in the back of their mind to say like, oh, this guy kept me for an hour. What a pain in the ass. I'm not going to, you know, do this again. And then afterwards, very thankful, very respectful, very professional. And then over time, you know, it was like, you know, developing these relationships, checking in with fighters, checking it. And it's not

in my world, it's fighters, but it can be with anyone else. If you're an interviewer and you're interviewing tech people and things like that. Like one big thing is, you know, I don't just talk to fighters when I need something from them. I don't just reach out to Michael Bisping when I want them on my show. We talk about things all the time. I mean, in some respect, some of these guys have become friends of mine, and they don't feel like they're being used. It's important to be a human being towards your guests, your sources, your things like that.

And so then when it is time to ask for something, they are more than happy to help you out because you've asked about their dog who passed away or their wife who had surgery or their son who want a big thing in football or whatever. And so these are all kind of things that you develop, not with the, you know, it's, to me, it's always very genuine. I'm not doing that. I'm not checking in on the dog because I hope that in three weeks it's going to pay off and he has, you know, he's willing to come on my show.

It's just being a human being about all this and working hard, working your ass off, trying to be different, putting the content out. Social media is a massive thing now, obviously. You can't do a show without having a social media presence. And I don't care if you have one follower or a million followers. You got to put the clips out because it's so funny to me, I hear from people all the time like, oh, that thing that Rose said on your show was awesome. And then in back of my mind, I'm like, oh, that's the one clip that we chose from the interview.

Did you watch the interview or did you just watch the clip on my Instagram? And oftentimes, it's just the Instagram clip. And that's okay. It's just about being out there, getting the stuff out there, making it shareable. And then hopefully it attracts more people to check you out and check you out. But like, if this doesn't happen, you know, I started this particular part of my life in 2007. I graduated in 2004. it took me 14 years just to get to ESPN.

And so a lot of people are impatient and they want to see the results right away. It's just not going to be that way. How many people, first of all, I want to know, how often are you working? Because UFC fights end at 1 a.m. midnight in New York and you do a post, you do a recap show often. But how often are you working? And also, how many people does it take to run your content operation? So I feel, honestly, I feel like I work every day. I don't know if that's good or bad.

It's for the most part with pleasure. Like I don't ever feel like, oh, man, I need a break. I need a vacation, this and that. Now, part of going back to the therapist, I was terrified of leaving ESPN and then kind of disappearing. However, I then came to the conclusion, hey, you know what? Distance makes the heart grow fonder for me and for them. And so June 15th was my last day at ESPN, and I essentially disappeared until August 15th. I was still on social media.

I was still doing stuff here and there. But I took a two-month break, and it was freaking awesome because I went home to Canada to see my parents for the first time in two years because of the pandemic. I really needed that break. And I think that that's important if you're doing something for a very long time. I think it's important to give yourself that type of break as well. But for the most part now, I feel like I'm working every day, especially with all these different people and all these different projects.

And there's travel and stuff like that. there is no real break and I'm okay with that. You just kind of find your moments. I can be a lot better. I wish I could put the phone away a lot sooner at night. I wish I didn't wake up and check my phone right away. I wish I was a little more present at times. I'm working on that. But I got to tell you guys like I feel like I'm working every day, but I'm also in this state where I've never been happier and the work has been so fulfilling and it puts me in such a good mood to create this stuff and to be there for people like there is no greater compliment that I can get when someone writes me and said I had a horrible day and then I checked out your show and it made me forget

about my day or during the pandemic I was so down and you and D.C. used to make me laugh and I just got a message from someone who's in Australia and it's been horrible there with the lockdowns and You know, I'm so happy your show is four hours again because you give me eight hours a week of stuff to think about outside of the lockdown. I can think about MMA and I have access to these fighters. Like there is no greater joy than I get than that. And so I don't mind it. But also, you know, I haven't been into a UFC fight in a year and a half. March of 2020 was my last UFC fight.

And partly because of the pandemic, now partly because of my job. And you ask me right now, big time UFC fight, Conner McGregor's return fight. Las Vegas, T-Mobile, sold out crowd on a Saturday night in July, the buzz, the celebrities, the atmosphere, nothing better, right? Or you ask me, do you want to go to your son's soccer game with 10 other parents there at the park nearby? I am choosing that soccer game without a shadow, a shadow of a doubt in my mind. Like, I get so much enjoyment at being at those games, being a parent, being with my kids, but then also doing the work that fulfills me and makes me happy. There was a time where I thought I had to be at every event, leave my family, travel every weekend because I needed to be omnipresent, because Woody Allen once said 80% of success is just showing up. And that served me early in my life and career.

It doesn't serve me anymore. And so now that I'm able to pick and choose what I want to do and work with people who I want to work with and do the kind of content that I want to do, but also be there for my family and my kids at this stage of their lives gives me a lot of joy. So I never thought I would get to this point where, wow, I don't have to go to the events and I can still do great stuff and still be happy and still be followed and still produce amazing and still be there for my kids. In a weird word, I'm so thankful to the man above because I feel like it all kind of like fell into place at this point in my life. Someone sends that clip to Connor. Ariel chooses a six-year-old soccer game over Connor McGregor's return. It's the truth. And I just use Connor because that's the biggest name possible.

Obviously, you know, he's been very good to me, and it's been an absolute honor. And I would love to go to events. You know, of course, like one a week or, sorry, one a year, two, a year, three, a year, four. Like, I got to go to the Jake Paul thing. That was a great, great experience. I was just using the most, you know, crazy example possible, the biggest name possible. The point is I used to have FOMO. I used to feel sad and depressed when I wasn't at the events because I felt like I was missing out.

I was becoming irrelevant. and I don't feel that way anymore. I feel very confident in what I'm doing. And before we wrap up the content team, what's your team in process looking like? Oh, right, yes. So right now, you know, it kind of, so the dream obviously is to like, you know, I think, I don't know if you guys are fans of Pat McAfee, but I think that he is doing media in sports, at least better than anyone right now.

He is just doing an incredible job, and he has his group of like, I think eight or so guys doing work for him and his social media. is brilliant because they're often tweeting out things and he's not even a part of it. It's just like in this wild oil machine and then he's going to do SmackDown. He has his private plane. I mean, what a life this guy lives. Now, I am nowhere near that at the moment. I also didn't play in the NFL.

But right now I have, I would say, three people who work with me. One person's social media, one person's video, one person's audio. And that's just me, you know, my LLC type of thing. And then I have people who are working on other projects, you know, the Vox stuff. They have people who work with me there, Ringer, people, et cetera. But yeah, I would love to grow that out. But I think the three most important people to have right now, it doesn't have to be, I mean, like all those interviews that you saw for me over the years, I only had one cameraman. I didn't, and I didn't have an audio person.

I didn't have anything. I don't think you need a gigantic team of people to do stuff. But yes, it would be nice over time to have, you know, maybe two social media people and have this person who's thinking of this. someone who's you know managing like i i was laughing because you know you said you had ben who did the scheduling and i was like man i wish i had someone doing my scheduling i wish i was i was in that position or i could even delegate some of that stuff that's part you know my problem as well i i don't do well at delegating um but it will come it will grow and then eventually it'll be fun to have a store a merch store to do the stuff that you're talking about and uh maybe make money off of it and not feel bad about it and

I mean, there's a lot more. I feel like I'm just, I'm 39. I've never been happier about, you know, like my age, my life. And I remember when I was a young kid and we went to Boston and my mom turned 40. And I remember she locked herself in the bathroom and she was crying because she was so sad that she turned 40. And I joke about this with her now as I'm about to turn 40. Thank God she's still alive and well. And I'm like, I'm so happy to be 40. I feel I'm way happier at 3940 than I was at 1920. And I just can't wait to see how this all plays out. Last thing I wanted to ask you real quick, you've mentioned Jake Paul, and you talked about audience building and all the good stuff, consistency, quality, hard work. But there's also controversy. Jake Paul is a master of controversy. Connor is a master of controversy.

And you have leaned into the controversy. I don't know if you've leaned in. I don't know if it's a work. I don't know if you, if this is actually back in the way. But you know, you are the number one MMA guy and you're banned for life from UFC from UFC events, because the president of the UFC has a feud with you. And Brendan Chob now has a little bit of feud with you. And it's highly entertaining.

I click every single one of them because, you know, everybody loves drama. Everybody loves the fight. You know, we all turn our heads and look whenever there's a brawl that breaks out. I'm, I'm actually, your clip, his, it's called Ask the Nose, I believe. On the nose. On the nose, sorry. And it's been all about lately his fight with other folks. It's great.

So tell me about. that leaning into that, is that intentional? Is that good for business? You're having fun with it. You're actually angry. What's going on? Okay, well, I'll just say, I am not banned for life. I was banned for 48 hours, but that was back in 2016. Over time, there's been some revisionist history where people think I'm still banned. I'm not banned. I've been to a bunch of events since then. But, yes, of course, there was that feud there that happened and all this stuff, and that's all well and good. And now, as I've come, you know, into this new era and this persona, Hilwani, thugnose, L. Nottese, whatever you want to call me, I've just enjoyed being able to respond to people.

And I think part of this comes from the fact that when I was at ESPN, they kept telling me, take the high road, take the high road. Like a lot of people were taking shots at me. And I had to take the high road, take the high road, take the high road, muzzle, muzzle, muzzle, censor yourself. And then all of a sudden I become free and I think as a byproduct of being told to take the high road for the last three years, I just kind of snapped and exploded. And I think people have enjoyed, see, look, I'm not this wimp that people think I am. I don't have big muscles. I'm not a fighter. I'm not this. But I'm a crazy, fiery Middle Eastern kid who grew up getting into fights all the time while I was playing sports, arguing, like, I'm not the, you know, I have glasses, I look nerdy,

whatever. I'm, and at times I've actually leaned into that because that's a good gimmick in this world of, you know, big, strong fighters, alpha males, I'm the beta, but I'm really not that guy. And the idea of letting people talk smack about me, walk all over me, disparage my name, lie about me, it's just not going to happen anymore. And so I don't care. And it was funny, like Brendan was saying, like, I wouldn't say this to his face. Like, did you guys? Did you guys? forget that I stood in front of Rampage Jackson when he wanted to like bite my head off? Did you guys forget that Nick Diaz wanted to beat me up? Did you guys forget that, you know, Mayhem Miller trashed my studio and I just sat there like I'm I would say anything to anyone's

face. I'm not the guy who sits in front of a keyboard or a camera and says stuff that wouldn't, you know, that I wouldn't have the courage to say in front of anyone's says. And I don't think I'm disrespectful. I just, you know, am not that guy. And so I think he said a bunch of lies about me and then I just kind of said something and people liked it and then he kept doubling down. And so I didn't go into all this saying like, oh, I'm going to come out and start wars with people and start all this beef. It's just like, now I don't have someone telling me to take the high road.

And I'm a little older and I'm a little more confident and I'm a little wiser. And people are enjoying, you know, I'll be honest. Like I've realized over time, you know, people want to know more about me. They want to see me talk about myself. It doesn't always have to be about the guests and all that stuff. And that takes some time, you know, to get used to because it's, it's taught, you know, you're taught very early on in your career. Like it's not about you.

You're not the story. But yeah, now I'm just having fun with it. And yeah, I'm a pro wrestling fan. And I like the drama and all that stuff. You could say what you will about all of it. But at the end of the day, none of it is fake. None of it is a work. I'm not looking for any of this.

I'm not trying to get paid off of any of this. I'm not trying to do it for the views and all that. I'm just tired of people talking shit about me and me having to eat it. And so those days are over. And I don't care who you are. I'm going to clap back. as they say. And I think I'm pretty damn good at the promos. And I may not be able to fight you and I have no interest in fighting you, but I think I could go toe to toe with you in a verbal war.

And so, yeah, it feels good to stick up for yourself. And this is why I was nervous to talk to you is because I fully believe that. I, I, I, I, I, you, you're sharp and you're not afraid. So we're at the top of the hour. I want to be respectful. Dude, this has been badass. I hope, Hopefully, you don't talk too much about yourself as a guest, and I hope you've enjoyed this, because I think a lot of people are. I have enjoyed it. I hope you felt like this was worth your while. I appreciate all the questions about building the business and betting on yourself. And I'm learning a lot about that as well now, you know, with all this LLC stuff that makes my head hurt talking to my accountant.

But I would urge anyone out there who is passionate about what they do and who believes in what they do. I don't have a lot of confidence. Like if you and I, I bet you, Sam, you and I go get a coffee right now nearby, you are a much more confident person than I am. You will walk up there and have your chest out and you're probably because you just sold your company for a few million and your loving life and life could be better. I'm actually a very shy person, a quiet person. I keep to myself, I had horrible social anxiety.

However, when it comes to this stuff, I believe in myself and I believe that no one can do it better than me. And that sounds cocky, but it took me a long time to actually be able to say that. And so I'm really enjoying getting to do this stuff on my own and getting to do this stuff the way I want to do it without anyone telling me how to do it. And I appreciate your interest in my story. And I appreciate you guys. It's been a therapy session for all of us, maybe a little bit. Well, Thursdays is my therapy day. So I was going to have actually my session.

I canceled it for you guys. So I'm doubling down here because we were supposed to, I don't know if you guys know this, we were supposed to do this last month and you stood me up. No, I'm just joking. I'm not going to go back there. Well, as your therapist, we call this letting go. Letting go of Sam. I'm not the letting go type. I hold on to things forever. That's part of my problem as well.

Yeah, I know. I know. I've listened to you long enough. I know this. But I love it. You got to charge more. Don't feel guilty about that. That's what, as you're a therapist today, that would be my feedback because if you are the best, you deserve the best.

Thank you. I appreciate that. In fact, I don't know when this is coming out, but I'll just say part of me trying to tinker with things, I'm doing a thing for founding members of my substack this evening. I'll do it three more times over the course of the year where it's just the founding members, the people who paid 180 to sign up. So the substack is $5 a month, 50 a year, or there's the founding member deal, which is 180. I picked 180 because the number 18 is a special number for Jewish people. And I'm doing a super secret VVIP one night only, no holds bar to Zoom chat with the people who signed up where they can ask me whatever they want for an hour. I'm going to be there. Are you going to be there? Yes. Well, I appreciate you signing up. Yes.

But don't record this and take notes and post it to your millions of followers because it's supposed to be VVIP. I'm going to spill all the tea, release all the dirt on all the bad people out there, but it's just for us, our little group. And there's not, I don't, honestly, I'm kind of nervous that no one's going to show up. So it might just be me and you, Sam, just for the record. I would love that. A dream come true, as Sam calls it.

Yeah. Well, thanks, man. This is badass. Hopefully, you've enjoyed it. This is awesome. You got to come back again. I would be happy to. Just don't, you know, stand me up next time.

Yeah, let go, bro. Thanks, guys.