Next Level Pros - #6: Dan Caldwell - Founder of Tapout, AKA Punkas*, 9-Figure Exit, Foundational Member of MMA
Episode Date: June 2, 2023It is always a good time catching up with my friend Dan Caldwell. Dan shares his extraordinary story of building his clothing company "Tapout" from selling t-shirts out of the back of his ca...r, to sitting ringside and helping in the foundation of the UFC. Dan's story is motivation to anyone that if you believe in something, stick to it, never give up... ultimately you will break through and find something that works. Go and give this a listen! 🚀 Join my community - Founder Acceleration https://www.founderacceleration.com 🤯 Apply for our next Mastermind https://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⛳️ Golf with Chris https://www.golfwithchris.com 🎤 Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=dc252f8540ee4b05 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefounderspodcast
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Welcome to the Founder Podcast, where we explore the journeys of some of the most successful
and inspiring entrepreneurs from around the world.
I'm your host, Chris Lee, a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building and growing businesses.
Throughout my career, I founded multiple nine-figure businesses and learned a thing or two about
what it takes to succeed in the world of business. I want to share those lessons with you by searching
out the coolest guests on planet Earth and have them share their own incredible stories.
But this podcast, it's not just for entrepreneurs. It's for anyone that's looking to be inspired by
these stories of people who have overcome incredible odds and create something truly remarkable. So join me on this journey as we explore the
fascinating world of entrepreneurship and meet the founders that are shaping it today. Let's dive in.
Hey everybody, we want to welcome Mr. Dan Caldwell to the podcast. Super excited to have him on here. Dan is a freaking rockstar
entrepreneur. Was the founder of a, I don't know if I would call it a childhood brand. It was more
of like when I was like early 20s teenager, which was super, super rock and the founder of Tap Out.
Really excited to get to know Dan a little bit better today,
have him share his story. Welcome to the show, Dan.
Hey, thanks a lot, Chris. Thanks for having me on, buddy. I want to hear your story. I hope
at some point you're going to interview yourself on your podcast so I can hear the whole story
about how you're taking over the world. Oh, dude, we'll get to that sometime.
You know, with this, I just want to keep it a good discussion.
It can be about you.
We can talk about pretty much anything.
I like to talk about founders and what made them tick, what makes them tick, what made them who they are.
But anything that's on your mind, what's driving you today, we're going to jump into all of that.
Dude, Dan, for those that don't know your story, tell us about Mr. Dan Caldwell.
Yeah. So, I mean, I grew up in San Bernardino. I, I, I think I always felt like I was an
entrepreneur, but eventually I took a class in high school on law enforcement and decided I wanted to become a police officer.
And so I kind of veered off.
I went from thinking I'm going to be an entrepreneur, starting a business.
I was skipping high school.
I was skipping classes so I could go interview different entrepreneurs.
I would drive out to the beach and walk into some guy's store that I realized he was the owner.
And I kind of talked to him about, you know, how did you start your business?
And so I always thought I was going to be an entrepreneur until I heard this law enforcement thing.
And I thought, you know, chasing bad guys and car chases and, you know, getting in fights.
And I thought this could be the best job in
the world so i thought i would try that out so i put myself through the academy and it became um
while i was in the academy i took on this job as a security officer at a high school and i my partner
who's also a security officer at the high school um uh we just kept talking and became best friends. And that was my friend,
Charles, who one day came to me and said, hey, there's this show called the Ultimate Fighter,
Ultimate Fighting Championship, where these guys are going to fight to like the death or something,
you know, no rules. And we knew as police officers, that was important to what we were doing.
So we set up, you know, hey, we got to watch this thing.
So we watched it and we were blown away. We could not believe what was going on on the show,
but it was like police work. You know, cops is on at the time and I'm watching this stuff.
And I'm like, this is just like police work. You know, you get, you grab a guy,
you take him down to the ground, you try to get him, you know, subdued. And this is exactly what
this guy, Hoyce Gracie, was doing. So we saw this guy, Hoyce Gracie, be, you know to get him you know subdued and this is exactly what this guy hoist gracie was doing so we saw this guy hoist gracie be you know i don't know uh three or four guys
in in the first ultimate fighting championship and so we decided to look him up and found out
that he had this school in torrance california so the next week literally the next week while
we were still in the academy we drove down to to Torrance on a Saturday because we had classes during the week.
And we drove down on Saturday and started taking classes with Royce Gracie.
And then ultimately realized we saw how much money these guys would make them selling T-shirts.
And we thought, why can't we do something like that?
And of course, we had no idea.
We don't know anything about making T-shirts.
We were not in the T-shirt printing business.
We had no idea how that worked.
But we knew it was a good idea.
So we just started from ground zero.
Like, we're going to go to these little tiny jujitsu events and small MMA events that they were starting to have at the time.
They were still illegal in California.
But we'd go to these little events and we would set up a little tiny table.
I mean, that video of us, like four shirts all folded up in squares and like two hats sitting on top of them because there wasn't enough room.
And we would try to sell our goods there.
And it started out really small.
You got to send me over a couple of those pics. We got to sell our goods there. And it started out really small.
You got to send me over a couple of those pics.
We got to feature that on here, you know, from, from those.
Yeah.
What, what year was this, that this was all taking place?
So this is like, so I, I became, I think I got hired in 1993 and we started the company in around 1997, conceptually, you know, getting the drawings together, trying to figure out how we were going to make stuff.
We got our first, but what was crazy was right out the gate, we got an ultimate fighter because, I mean, we got a UFC guy. So because we knew a lot of the people that were in the space and we had met this manager who knew this other manager who happened to have a bunch of UFC
guys.
And we just saw the opportunity there.
And it was like,
we didn't have a lot of money and we just gave him a call and we said,
Hey,
do you think,
you know,
you have some fighters fighting in the UFC?
And he said, I happen to have a couple great fights coming up.
Pat Miletic, who's going to be fighting for the for the Ultimate Fighting Championship belt.
And then also Jeremy Horn, who's fighting a really tough guy from Brazil.
And we were big fans of Jeremy Horn because he was a big jujitsu guy.
So we've been watching Jeremy a little bit in different fights of his.
And so I think he – I want to say he charged us about $2,800 or $2,500, which was like – I know it seems like nothing today, but it felt like a lot of money.
Sounds like a lot of money when you don't have any.
Oh, yeah, because we're living to our means.
You know, we're like we're getting paid nothing as police officers hardly.
And, you know, yeah, we have to drive a nice car.
So he's driving a badass, souped up Mustang that he, you know, a Cobra that he put exhausts on and aluminum heads and all, you know, this thing's all suped up and i'm driving this badass twin turbo
rx7 you know living to the last dollar so you have like no money left and uh but you know that's
that you're not getting paid a lot either risk our lives put our lives out there but
i i think that uh you know it's it just we had to figure out how to scrape twenty five hundred.
And ultimately we figured out that we were going to just put it on a credit card.
What kind of money were you making as a police officer?
Oh, gosh. I want to say I was getting paid around twenty bucks an hour, right around that neighborhood.
Yeah, 20 bucks an hour is 40 grand a year.
And 40 grand a year in California, right?
Like doesn't go anywhere, let alone you're paying state income tax, you're paying all these things and you got to scrape up 2,500 bucks to get this sponsorship with this guy.
Yeah, that's crazy.
So you said you ended up putting it on a credit card?
Yeah, you know how that really high interest rate,
you could pull cash off your card?
Cash advance.
But you do what you got to do.
And it was something that we just kind of,
we didn't know we could,
I think at that time,
we just didn't know what we didn't know.
We didn't know we shouldn't,
it shouldn't work or, you know, that we should fail.
We didn't even understand the concept of failure. Like we should fail.
We want to fail.
Like it's a, it's a smart concept to look back now and go failure is what made us.
But I didn't want to fail because in our line of business, if you fail, you're dead. So
failure is not an option. So we always thought of failure as like, that's not an option,
but doing is an option and we have to do, we understood doing because, you know, you don't
have a choice in, in law enforcement. You know, you've got an alarm going off in a building, a broken window, you're going in. There's two of you guys and you're going
in, gun out, and there's nobody else. There's nobody coming to save you. You have to go in
there and do that. That's our line of business. So we understood the concept of we have to do,
we have to go make it happen, but didn't understand the concept of failure really.
Like it's a good thing. We
understood failure. Like there's no way we can fail. We can't fail. We got to make this work,
especially as we started to spend a lot of money and we're trying to figure out how
we don't want to lose the money. You know, we have all this money invested now of our own money,
credit cards are racked up, you know, 20,000 bucks. That's back when they give you,
you know, you couldn't afford it.
They shouldn't be giving you 20 or $30,000 credit cards, but of course they do.
And we're maxing them all out trying to keep, you know, the business afloat.
Yeah, you know, that's always a scary time in business.
In fact, my first business that you talk about failing, my first business that you talk about failing my first business that did fail, uh, you know, uh, things that you're sharing right now are like eerily, like reminding me of like
times that we had to max out credit cards to make payroll, you know, uh, you know, fortunately,
um, I didn't go and get a cash advance on my credit card, but I found out, I found a buddy
that would actually run my credit card through his business and cash me out, whatever the difference was in,
in like the 3% fee. And, uh, yeah, use that to cover payroll. Man, those, those early times of
being an entrepreneur, when you're just scraping by and you're, and, uh, you know, it's, it's
interesting because I think a lot of times entrepreneurs, the reason why we're successful is because we're a little bit stupider than other people, you know, like just stupid enough to do things like maxing out your credit card and taking risks that don't make any sense at all.
And it doesn't add up.
At least at least that's what I've found is like I'm just dumb enough to take a risk.
Yeah, I was.
Yeah, I mean, we're totally stupid. That's
that's exactly why we didn't know what we didn't know. We didn't know we shouldn't. This shouldn't
work. None of this should work. Whatever we're doing should not work. You have no money. You're
starting a business. You're building this company. I mean, honestly, at the beginning, we didn't
really see the biggest vision. We thought we knew the UFC was going to be big and we knew the sport because
everybody we told it to every time we would show it to them like if I come over to your house and
I go like hey there's this thing on tonight we should get it and we would go watch it and I
actually did this with like law enforcement buddies of mine and we watched the very first
I can remember I was at a friend of mine's house, Jason, and we went to his house to watch the first UFC that we actually had our clothes in there.
And I was with my partner because he was someplace else.
And I was working.
I was just getting off work, so I had to go straight from the office to this guy's house.
And we were watching the first UFC, and he watched that thing, and he could not believe what was going on in the ring.
You know, nobody nobody anybody who watched
it couldn't believe it and they all recognized it too as being you know for law enforcement
recognized and you have early adopters like john mccarthy who was a ref in the early ufcs
um he was you know worked for lipd so those we knew as law enforcement this was going to be
this was something there's something to do with this with law enforcement this is going to be big in law enforcement like they're going to all police officers at some point was going to be, this was something, there's something to do with this, with law enforcement. This is going to be big in law enforcement. Like they're going to,
all police officers at some point are going to have to learn this.
So what, what would you say like initially drove you? Was it like the passion for the sport? Was
it the idea that you could make money as an entrepreneur? Was it doing something else besides
being a police officer? Like what, what drove you in those early days to take all those stupid risks?
I think it was honestly, I mean, I just have to say it was probably almost all the above.
Like, you know, you're not making a lot of money.
So we're trying to figure out what is every cop out there has.
Ask any law enforcement buddy of yours.
They all have a side hustle, every single one of them.
Some of them are making them.
I know one guy who's making those little beanbag tossers you know that you try to get in the hole
and you know somebody else is making tables another guy he's doing a a turo business you
know every law enforcement officer another another guy's in with the local drug dealer
getting paid on the back hopefully they're not doing that you know they're that's the
that's the one but it's honestly what causes guys to do that you know it's like i mean of course getting paid on the back end. Hopefully they're not doing that.
It's honestly what causes guys to do that.
That's the worst crime in the world is an officer who betrays his people.
But at the end of the day,
that's why they're dragged into that.
It's like teachers. teachers and law enforcement officers, those two people should be paid more.
And, you know, there's not a lot we can do about that. But if, you know, if I can ever vote for a bill where that we can allocate some money away from the politicians and towards the teachers and law enforcement, that's exactly what I would do. I agree with you. I was actually a victim of childhood labor because my dad was a
school teacher. And so we had the rule growing up in our household by the age of 12, you had to
take care of all your stuff besides underwear and food on the table. Like you want to close shoes, go out,
gas in the car, a car, whatever, right? Like we had to go and we had to make it happen. And so,
you know, I got my first job when I was nine years old because old Chuck Lee, my dad, he,
yeah, he wasn't getting paid enough as a school teacher. And my mom was a stay-at-home mom. So,
you know, we had to learn the art of the side hustle very early on.
That's a great idea.
I somewhat did that with my own kids, too.
It's the same exact thing.
Start a business and have them work.
You've got to work in the business if you're going to pay your way here in the family.
Love it.
Love it. your way here in the family love it love it so yeah so you were i mean you were just driven on
on a bunch of different things like what was it what was the turning point for your business and
i've heard this story before and it's actually like one of my favorite things about you is just
like the hustle that ultimately led to like the tipping point um in fact like what what was the
timeline of like when you started until until the tipping point finally hit?
Well, I think you're talking about the story with the Ultimate Fighter.
But that's ultimately what changed our business because it changed the UFC too.
The UFC was – they were putting a lot of money into it well when the Zufa purchased the UFC
which was Lorenzo Fertitta, Frank Fertitta and Dana White when they purchased the UFC in 2001
we were already sponsoring fighters and somewhat in the UFC they were giving us a little bit of
love we were in their video game so it was kind of exciting to us because we were having these
small wins along the way we're getting these little wins along the way and it's pushing us because,
you know, tap outs all of a sudden in this video game,
the Dreamcast video game tap outs on this new fighter that just came out and
he knocked some guy out, you know, tap out.
We're getting a lot of interest,
but we were so much the mouse in front of the flashlight.
We just, the money, we weren't making a ton of money.
And in some ways, I mean i mean we got to in the early
2000s we were making over a million dollars uh several million dollars but every penny were
self-capitalized business so every penny was going into capitalizing the business and you've never
done that i'm sure you understand this but you know as know, as you're, we had inventory. So as you have to build this company and you have to put more money into inventory, all the money that you're making, you're having to put back into inventory.
So you're not really making money or at least you're making money, but it's not in your pocket.
It's sitting on the shelves out in the warehouse.
So we have this little tiny warehouse.
And in 2005, they decided that we
heard that they were going to do this television show which was kind of big for us um we knew this
would this was going to be somewhat like we knew something was going to change because of this
you know we're going to be on tv now instead of just pay-per-view everybody's going to be able
to see this so that was great for us because you can tell people tune in and watch this you'll see what this UFC stuff's all about so we were I was driving I had I was living in
a small condo I was driving down to San Diego and I get this call from my partner who says
Chuck Liddell just called he said they're starting to film the ultimate fighter right now he just got his place in in vegas and we need to leave
for vegas right now today and i said i'm on my way to san diego i don't i'm i'm going down there
with the family to sea world right now you know like what year was this what year was this 2005 This is 2005. 2005. So we're talking, you started this thing in 1997.
2005, you guys are starting to make some money.
You got some revenue coming in, but it's all going back to recapitalize the business, continue to grow.
At what point did you drop out of the police force?
I want to say 2003, i left for good in 2003 so six years of just straight side hustle
weekends nights mornings like lunch breaks whatever whatever it was to to making this
thing happen you know a lot of a lot of people don't realize like this is the this is the
underlying of what happens right most people look at guys like yourself, myself, or other people that have that 9-figure, 10-figure, 11-figure exits, right?
The Elon Musk of the world or whatever.
And they think everything lined up for them.
They put in a little bit of effort.
They got some financiers.
They got some seed funding, Series A, series B, whatever, went public, got paid out big time. They never see
the actual and understand the real details of six years of side hustle. And then another two years of doing it full time and really just operating at a
break even, maybe having a good job, but not really a great business. And so I don't know,
I just want people to focus on that, right? How much deep roots you were sending down before anybody saw what was happening with the tree or with the bamboo shoots, right?
I mean, it was just roots, roots, roots, roots, roots for a long time.
So I think that's so cool.
So you get this call, Chuck Liddell, from your partner.
Chuck Liddell's up in Vegas.
They're going to be filming this show.
You're down.
You have every excuse in
the world not to go up there, right? You're with your family. Hey, we'll do it later. Whatever,
right? Like there's always going to be another opportunity. Okay. So take us there.
Yeah. I mean, I think you were so on point. I think what, you know, and just in the bigger
picture, if I step back, that's the difference of what separates people.
Successful entrepreneurs, most of the time, it's just the fact that you're willing to keep going.
That you're six years in, seven years in, eight years in, seeing progress, but not the type of progress that you had dreamed about.
And you keep going. And at this moment, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking, okay, I could go
to SeaWorld with my family. I, you know, where bags are packed, that's, that was our day.
Or I'm actually going to have to tell my little daughter that we have to turn around halfway down
there and go back. And I'm probably, daddy's going to be gone now for, you know, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks.
Right.
And that's what I had to do.
And I turned back around and got home.
I had to go straight to, we had a small warehouse at like 1,900 square feet or maybe 2,200 square feet.
And I had to go grab all the clothes, get them all ready.
My partner met me
there. We jumped in the car and we start driving to Vegas. It's four or five hour drive. We get to
Vegas and we ended up sleeping on, Chuck Liddell had this apartment and we just, you know, we didn't
have the money really. I mean, we were making so little money, you know, so much money was on the
shelves that we were just paying ourselves enough to pay our rent we're like write a check for the rent write a check for some
groceries and that's it you know everything else we had to figure it out you know my his girlfriend's
working my girlfriend's work or my you know girlfriend's working and we're putting just
being able to try to get by and so we're sleeping on chuck liddell's couch we're just being able to try to get by. And so we're sleeping on Chuck Liddell's couch.
He's one of the coaches for the Ultimate Fighter.
So he's going in there every day.
So we want to make sure he's got tap-out shirts ready.
And we would go in the middle of the night.
We found out where they were doing the show.
We kind of tricked Chuck into telling us where, I mean,
he wanted to tell us, but you know, we, we can't let him know.
We can't let the UFC know that he just gave it up.
So we told us where the gym was going to be.
And so we decided to start going to the gym every night at like 1 PM or 1
AM. And you know,
those little like slots where they have,
where you put your mail in on the side of the door there, we would shove like 10 shirts in there and a couple hats and a couple pairs of shorts every
night. Um, and just praying that one day this is going to get to a fighter somehow. We didn't know
how, we didn't know if we didn't know what we just hoped that you know it would pay off down the road and um
we would go home and we we part of us staying there we wanted to wash so when chuck was out
filming we would wash all of his clothes for him and um he he i don't know if he knows yet but
because we never told him but we would only pretty much wash his tap out stuff.
So he'd be left with like Pitt, which was his gym with his partner, Hackleman.
And then we would wash his tap out stuff. So that's all he would have to wear when he went into the show.
And so when you ask the producers today, they'll still tell you there was no tap out in the first Ultimate Fighter.
But if you watch it, you'll see there was because that's
what we were doing you know and then a few months later what happened is so they did these fights
in the ultimate fighter where they keep fighting to try to get to the end and then at the end of
the show the two coaches um are gonna fight and um they uh and then they have all the fight all the guys who
were the ultimate fighter are gonna fight and so these two so so one day for the show the coaches
didn't fight on the same day but they had the show at the las vegas um uh university out there and the University of Las Vegas.
And that's where they held the event.
And we just we didn't really know exactly what the event was, what was the event was
going to be like, but we knew it was going to be televised and we wanted to sponsor the
event, but we didn't have enough money to sponsor it.
So they let us give them clothes to sell at the event the ufc did just
so that we could pay for the sponsorship and so before you go before you go into this let's let's
recap so yeah so you're you're in vegas or and you're just hustling right you're you're shoving
t-shirts and and shorts through through a freaking mail slot at night you're you're just hustling, right? You're shoving t-shirts and shorts through a freaking mail
slot at night. You're sleeping on the ground, sleeping in your car. You're going into Chuck
Liddell's laundry, doing his laundry for him, which by the way, is just a principle of how to
network and how to add value, right? If you want something from somebody, go and add
as much value as you possibly can. This guy didn't want to be doing his own laundry, right?
And he's got these guys that he likes. He likes Dan and his partner, and they're willing to do
his laundry for him. He's like, sure, why not? Right. But then the ingenuity of like, dude, let's only make sure that he has clean tap out clothes.
And I think, dude, that right there, I've remembered that part of the story.
And, you know, Dan told me this story a few years back when we first met.
And I was just like, dude, that's freaking phenomenal.
That is the epitome of entrepreneurial ingenuity hustle, right?
It's like grit with some smarts and just willing to get it done.
And all these little things, all these little wins that you're doing along the line is ultimately what leads to this moment that you're about to share, which I'm super stoked about.
So they're about to air this big fight, right? You can't afford to pay for the sponsorship,
but they allow you to sell some t-shirts. So you're going to get your name out there a little
bit. What, what happens next? You know, I mean, we had a lot riding on this because we, you know,
we put a lot of time and effort into this, trying to make sure that this was, you know,
making sure we always made sure though, that this was, you know, making sure.
We always made sure, though, that we were, you know, in every place that we could be.
And that we knew this big event was going to go on.
So we just knew something special was going on when we got there because we had it.
So there were so many people in the crowd wearing our stuff.
And this guy, Diego Sanchez, who was going to be fighting they made him wear ultimate fighter stuff but we had our two logos on the mat and we had logos on the sides and we had
their parents wearing the stuff and we could we could see them on the on the big broadcast
video screen they kept showing their parents you know of the fighters because that was kind of
you know these guys were about to fight.
And so as they came in, they wanted to see the reactions from their parents, especially even as they were fighting.
And they had our tap out stuff on.
And we're like, we're all over this thing.
And we're sitting next to Chuck Liddell.
And when the Stefan Bonner fight happened with Forrest Griffin and Stefan Bonner, which is still considered one of the best fights in UFC history.
At one point, these guys are throwing leather,
and they're putting everything on the line.
At one point, Dana White walks back, and he tells Chuck Liddell,
there's 10 million people watching this event right now.
Well, the UFC—
10 million!
10 million.
And in pay-per-view they were only getting you know
maybe a few hundred thousand views on their pay-per-view shows at that time but to have
on television the mainstream audience who really didn't may not be um totally into the ufc but they
were liking what they were seeing because that's why 10 million people are watching right now.
And so not just that, but what we didn't know was at home,
my parents are texting me and they're going,
they're putting your logo on the television.
Well, I didn't understand what that meant until later I watched the broadcast.
And, you know, when they do that, it just shows them Bocce by Budweiser, on the television. Well, I didn't understand what that meant until later I watched the broadcast.
And you know how when they do that,
hey, this show's been bought to you by Budweiser,
you know, the king of beers.
Well, that's what they were doing for us.
We're like on there and they're saying,
this show's been brought to you by Tapout at inyourface.com.
Go check them out for the best white gear on the scene.
Say the URL once again.
I love this.
What was your URL, your original URL?
So it's inyourface.com.
That was my capout.com at the time.
Somebody else, though?
Was it spelled Y-A or in your?
Yeah.
It was so stupid because, you know,
if you're trying to help people find your website,
this is probably the worst name on the planet,
but it was I-N-Y-A was our site but oh i love that so about um right towards the end of the fight my web guy calls me and he goes what the heck is going on man and i i i could
barely hear him get the fights going on
i'm going what do you mean what are you talking about he's going your site is shutting down like
there's so many orders coming in right now there's 3 000 orders a minute coming in right now a minute
sorry i'm sorry an hour 3 000 hours an hour coming in right now and it's happening so fast
back then you know you're talking 2005 they didn't have gateways that could support that.
At least we didn't have the gateway that could support that.
So he said, I've literally had to stop the processing, and all we can do is capture the credit card numbers.
So I said, do whatever you got to do.
And I'm telling Charles what's going on and the electricity in that room.
And then Stephen Bonner and Forrest Griffin fight.
Hold on, time out.
For listeners that don't understand what Dan just shared, he said, so the credit cards actually weren't processing.
Okay.
Which means when something processes, it automatically happens by the computer.
It checks if they have the balance.
It hits, you know, so on and so forth.
All they were able to do at this point, because basically the website had been shut down, was capture the credit card information.
So there was nothing being processed.
And so essentially what had to happen at that point was like you had to go back and manually process every one of these, right?
Yeah.
One at a time, just manually on those credit card machines, little square boxes that just has the phone number pad.
That's how we had to process every single credit card after that, which were thousands and thousands and thousands of orders.
So how many orders came in that first night?
Honestly, I wish I could tell you, but I don't even know.
I just know it was thousands. And when we got back over the next weeks, we had so many orders that we had to shut
off the, well, we didn't have an inventory program.
So you figure most people now today, everybody's got an inventory program.
Well, at that time, shopping carts were like built.
We had to build these things.
Yeah.
And we didn't really have an inventory program.
So unfortunately, all the stuff that people were ordering, we didn't have in stock.
So none of it was in our warehouse, or most of it was.
You mean your 2,200-square- foot warehouse didn't have thousands and thousands of orders?
No.
And so we ended up, I called, I mean, we're doing, we're trying to do, you know, plug all the holes on the way home.
I remember driving home, talking to my, I'm on multiple phones.
I'm talking to my web guy.
I'm talking to the landlord. I i'm talking to the landlord i'm trying
to take the space next door because it happened to be empty and so that was another 2200 square
feet so um i tried to take that space and the next space but the other space wasn't ready yet
so we as soon as we got home we cut a hole in the wall and we took that space next door and we had thousands of
orders just leaned up against the wall waiting to be fulfilled because we couldn't fulfill them all
that is that is wild so you go in if i remember the story right like you guys just continue to
like any piece of space that was adjacent to your building, you guys continue to rack up over the next foreseeable future, right?
Oh, yeah.
We were in an industrial park.
So it was kind of like built in a sea.
And I can't remember exactly how much square foot we had.
It's somewhere close to 100,000.
But we took all the big spaces all the way around the whole center
until we had the whole place. And so ultimately in the tap out center. So, I mean, this is,
this is just like, I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and I swear I have never
talked to somebody that just had such a pinnacle event, right? Like that was just so changing. But like,
once again, as we talked about it, I mean, it was, it was seven year or eight years of, of work,
uh, all the, you know, six years employed, two years fully, uh, fully engaged in this business,
right? You just doing the work, doing the work, doing the work, paying the bills. That's it. And then just smack, man. You got lucky. Basically, all this ingenuity, all this hard work translates into this massive amounts of luck where the UFC, if I remember right, you shared that they essentially aired your ad because they weren't able to sell ad space to anybody else.
And they didn't want to seem like just a small little organization.
Is that right?
Well, I think that early on, that was kind of early on.
So early on, they needed to put some sponsor there.
And they really liked our logo. and we were already kind of in the
UFC. So I think they felt sorry for us when they first bought the UFC and they wanted, and they
felt like we were kind of the grassroots marketing of the whole space. And they, they honestly came
to us in 2001 when they had their first show and, and called us into the arena um lorenzo and dana did
and we walk into the arena we'd never seen this and we'd never had this before um because we'd
just been on fighters up to that point but when we walked into the arena we had two huge tap out
logos on the mat and we were blown away we could not believe that these guys had did this for us
and so you know i always have to give credit to dana lorenzo for helping us you know build i think
when you when you're when you when you're relentless and you're always out there pushing
and pushing and pushing and people see this in you know they see they want your dream to come
true too you know i know a lot of people preach that
everybody wants to stomp on your dream. They don't want you to be successful. But I think
when people see the energy that you put into and how much you believe in yourself or believe in a
dream, people want to get behind those type of people they want to get behind the dreamers they want to be a part of that dream and i think and that's i think that's a lot why dana and lorenzo
kind of took us under their wing and and uh started us off with that sponsorship and we were at that
time we were paying them like three thousand dollars to be on that mat for every ufc and we
would pay it in clothing we would literally literally give them $3,000 worth of clothing to sell.
And that's what we had to go back to
because we would kind of go back and forth
between giving them cash and giving them clothes
when we couldn't afford
because we didn't have the cash in the bank
to write that check.
So we would go back to,
so for this Ultimate Fighter,
we had to go back to that
because it was a little bit more at the time,
but we had to give them clothes for that
because we didn't have the money.
Right. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. Definitely other people are, you know, other entrepreneurs, they want to see people that are, that are doing exactly what they did
once upon a time, right. The grind, the, you know, and so the fact that Dana and those guys
recognize that that's, that's really so cool. cool and and it wasn't just because you showed
up one day or two days it was like you were there year in year out grinding just doing doing the
thing and like uh man so big entrepreneurs because in beginning entrepreneurs when i see like i see
i'm excited for you chris when i see your business grow. That excites me. I think even as a non-entrepreneur, like people that are building a coaching business or a podcast or whatever that might be, even if it's your first business, when people see you're passionate about something, that passion is infectious.
People want to be around people that are passionate and relentless and have a dream. They want to be
around that because sometimes it helps them find their own dream. And even if they never, you know,
don't even, if they're not entrepreneurs, they just see people who have a dream like that. And
they wish that they have a little bit of that in them. And so they're willing to follow them.
They're willing to help. That's why these guys like guys like you know like gary v has a story about where his cameraman you know gave up his time to come
filming for like three for like months on end until gary decided to hire him one day you know
when he was just giving up his time and that's i think people do that because they see this dream
that this person has and they just want to follow them. They want to be a part of that dream.
And they're willing to do that, do whatever it takes to follow this person.
And I think every entrepreneur has to know that if they live that every single day,
if you're relentless and you're talking about your dream all the time and you're putting it out to the world,
that you'll get people that file in behind you and want to be a part of that with you.
Absolutely.
I love that.
Love that.
Dude, so from then on, if I remember the story correctly,
I mean, that was really the catalyst.
And then things never slowed down from there.
You guys continued to just exponentially grow from 2005
until ultimately you ended up exiting from the business.
Was it 2008, 2009?
When was it that you?
2010, yeah.
I mean, it was always something.
You always are looking for the next big thing.
I mean, we have ultimately, we had our TV show.
We had our own show that we had signed for three seasons, but we only ended up doing two
because unfortunately my partner got killed
before we started our third season.
We had the opportunity to be in a movie like Warrior.
We had a NASCAR.
We've had, you know, we've just done, you know,
the things that the opportunities that this,
that having a dream has given me and my partners is unbelievable.
I can't even put it into words because it's something that I never would have thought would have ever happened to a person like me coming from San Bernardino in the place that I grew up in.
I had great parents, but we lived in,
we didn't have a lot of money.
And for us to be able to kind of have something like this for people,
and I know it happens to a lot of people.
I mean, I'm sure that there's so many stories.
That's why podcasts like this are so great because there's so many,
every entrepreneur has a story.
Like I say,
every police officer has a story because every police officer could write a
book from all the things that they go through. Every entrepreneur has a story. Like I say, every police officer has a story because every police officer could write a book from all the things that they go through. Every entrepreneur has a story,
has a movie in them, has a podcast in them, has a book in them. Just because we all go through so
much when we're trying to build our companies, there's so much on the line. Everything is on
the line. Everything is being sacrificed sometimes. Or, you know, our every penny that we have, every all of our time, all of our dreams and hopes and family members, sometimes friends that walk away.
I can't tell you how many friends when we started Tap Out, we had other guys that were with us and they literally walked away from us.
I was telling him, dude, we're about this is about to blow up.
This is coming right now.
It's going to blow up this is coming right now it's
going to blow up please just give us a little more time i can remember being on the phone with the guy
talking those words to him and he's uh i can't do it no more man it's just taking up my time and i
just don't see it you keep saying that yeah i remember him saying you keep saying that, but nothing's happened. And then within a year, three feet from gold.
Exactly.
There's a great little story about Howard Carter.
I don't know if you know who Howard Carter is, but I was just watching a documentary about this guy, Howard Carter, that in the late 1800s, he went to Egypt to you know find some find the
riches you know everybody was kind of excavating Egypt at the time and he went to Egypt at 17 years
old with just this dream to find something over the next 30 years you know he just every day
trying to find what could be the next thing and And around 2007, he had got word, I mean 2007,
in 1907, he got word that there might be another king
in the Valley of the Kings that they haven't found yet,
and another tomb.
And that became his dream.
And everything that he did from that point on
just became about, how can I find this other tomb? Now, nobody believed in this guy. Nobody. Like everybody's saying, no, all the kings in the Valley of the Kings have been found. All the tombs in the Valley of Kings have been found. There's not another tomb out there. Where are you finding anything that says that there's more tombs out there?
But he had found little things and little clues and little things that said that there was a little trinket that somebody found in a dig that said that there was a king tut out there still. in like 20 you know 30 years later or 20 years later from that point he he they find on one of
his digs that are being financed but the last dollars that they have literally this guy had
told him lord parnav and he was financing said this is the last last year that you're going to
be able to dig and on that last year they're. Imagine they've been digging for years. He still believed in this. He kept pushing forward and they find the steps to this tomb.
And they dig it out over the next couple of months.
And when he gets in there, they open up a small hole in there and they tell this beautiful thing that I just love what they said.
So much so that I just remembered it. It gets me a little emotional when I even think about it.
But he said, he goes, Lord Carnarvon was there with him,
and they punch a little hole inside,
and Howard Carter looks through the hole,
and Lord Carnarvon, what do you see?
What do you see?
They're both invested in this, time and money,
millions and millions of dollars.
And he says, beautiful he says beautiful things beautiful things and i could just imagine that moment because every entrepreneur has that moment
in their life you know like for me that was 2005-6 when the ultimate fighter was happening
they're watching this fight going something special is going on here right now.
This is something special.
This is going to change our lives.
We didn't know how.
We didn't know it was going to be that much.
But we knew something special was happening.
And I think you, I'm sure, I know you have moments in your life where those things have happened for you.
And it's just unbelievable to kind of go through a life changing moment like
that. But it's because you keep going. That's something you won't have them as an entrepreneur.
You won't have them if you don't keep going. Yeah, my my buddy Alex Ramosi, you know, he loves
he loves talking about that. Like the only way that you actually fail is when you take yourself
out of the game is what he was. He says's like when you quit, when you give up.
As you continue to go, you keep pushing forward. It's the compound effect, really.
And in my own career, the compound effect has been absolutely insane. Because when you're doubling a penny, those first five or six years of doubling a penny is hardly anything right but when you continue to
double it right so you'll chinese parable of double a grain of rice in 31 days and you have
enough rice to fill the world and uh and and really like those those moments right of seeing
beautiful things of the 2005s and 2006s for for tap out you know that my
company sold you in power you know just kind of the pinnacle of of things of like all the work
all the sacrifice for me like it was the doors knocked and the failures and the and the opportunities slammed in my face that didn't
didn't work out and just like constantly constantly on the grind looking for it until
finally right like the stuff really compounds and then it manifests and people begin to see
all the grassroots that you've been laying for so, so many years, right? Like they, there was no respect for you. There was no anything else you got, you know, business
partners, like you're talking about that are bailing out that they just can't catch the vision.
Um, you know, they, they don't believe in it. Um, you know, one, uh, one of my, my favorite
things is like, for me as an entrepreneur is, is being the evangelist
and being the one that believes. And, and, uh, you know, I don't, I don't need,
I love the definition of evangelist as to be a true evangelist. You don't need others to
believe what you believe. They just need to believe that you believe. Right. Yeah. And so,
you know, that, that's always been, that's always
been my calling in business is like being the believer and getting other people to believe so
much that I believe in getting behind the vision and the direction and everything. And so, man,
it's so cool to, to hear that part of your story. Now, obviously we're talking about all the glamor,
like what, what is a point in your career?
So you've had many years since 2005 and 60.
What's a what's a point in your career that was like depressing, that was really hard to get through?
And like, how did you learn from it, drawn it?
What can you share something like that?
You know, all the so many, so many many so many times uh you know bill i mean of course
my partner was killed was unbelievably hard it's on honestly why i decided to sell the company
because we were i just didn't want to do it anymore you know it was like it was a dream of
ours together and without him there it just didn't feel the same uh it didn't taste the same um but
uh you know during that time in 2005 when we were um after the ultimate fighter and all those orders
were coming through we were only qualified for like fifty thousand dollars in credit card sales
and because we had all of a sudden started doing you you know, almost a million dollars a month.
They had canceled all the money coming through.
And we needed that money because we didn't have any of that product produced.
We needed that money to produce the goods.
And so I remember being on the phone with those guys,
trying to figure out every way possible to get them to release some of the money just some of it so we could start putting orders together you know i was like
release half of it because if i get half of it i can put the money you know i can use that money
to go make the goods but they didn't want to release none of it and they wanted to actually
hold it for like six months until they could make sure there were no chargebacks and they
you know it was such
an explosion they hadn't seen that before so they just wanted to to hold on to the money until they
made sure it was safe and i just remember being so like i could not sleep i was getting one hour
of sleep a night i was deal trying to deal with them every day i was trying to find other credit
card companies that could take us on none nobody would, nobody would, we didn't have great credit. And, uh, I remember at one point I'd
thrown all the chairs in the office out in the lot. And I was just, I, I mean, I, I was emotional.
Um, I was sitting on a curb and I was pretty emotional. And I called my partner. I said,
I don't know, buddy. I don't know how we're going to get out of this. Like it's done. Like we need to make goods and all these people are going to start,
you know, it's crazy how you're in the best place in your life and you're, you're contemplating
quitting. That's what comes over you, you know, during the best time of your life, the best things
are happening to you in your life and you're contemplating quitting you're like oh we're
i don't know what to and that's why it's so great i think to have a partner because when you're down
hopefully they're up and when they're down hope you know hopefully you're up and uh he gave me
some great advice he does remember that guy we were talking to last week he was a great
business guy that made a bunch of money in different businesses. And
we had met him last week. He goes, he gave you his number, right? And I said, yeah. He goes,
why don't you give him a call? And I gave him a call. Within like a few hours, I had the whole
thing solved. He was willing to sign for credit for us with the credit card company. And they released all the funds
immediately. The next day, all of our money started releasing and it fixed the whole problem.
So it's just great. I think always having a partner where you can look at, you know,
they can see things that you're not seeing, especially when you're in those down and outs
moments. And, you know, we always had moments like that. There were always never enough money. There was always, and it doesn't matter how big you get, it's just going to be bigger numbers.
You know, it's like, there's not, you don't have $20,000. Well, down the road, you're not going to
have the million dollars to make the payment. And down the road, you're not going to have the $20
million to make the payment. So I can remember writing, you know, I can remember $20 million
coming in. I can remember $10 million going out. I wouldn't even have ever thought we could do'll be successful. Eventually you'll make it. so very imperative like me i'm a partnership guy right like i hate doing things alone sounds like
you're you're very similar based on your experience of what you've done and what you're
doing right now and um you know for me that that business partner has been daryl kelly and then in
life my wife uh andrea and you know both have have helped me really keep that good, solid perspective. And it's so funny,
like these, these demons that we create in these big, like, we think that things are unsolvable as
you were talking about with like this credit card thing. And when reality there's, you know,
there's a solution out there. We just haven't thought of it yet. And like, and it's so very
important as entrepreneurs, as just, I mean, livers of life.
Right. Like that, we that we remove ourselves from the situation, remind ourselves like how good we have it.
Like what's going good? You know, I have a good physical body.
You know, God is still good. My family's good.
We have all these all these sales coming in for these t-shirts. We just
have no idea how to process them, right? Like all the, all these positive things, like, cause when
you, when you get out of there, at least for me, and I remove myself from the negative situation,
it helps me solve that at a way higher rate and especially look for solutions outside of what I'm
currently thinking. Just having a different perspective, which I loved is what you shared.
But yeah, man, that is so, so, so important because, I mean, just like you,
there's so many times in my career that I just thought the world was crumbling, right?
Like, oh, like, I have no solution for this.
I've never been through this. We're done. It's over. I should quit, you know, early, early in launching our business. So it was launched in October of 2017, January 2018. We get hit with a million dollar fine from the state.
And, you know, I think at that point we had like $5,000 in our bank account.
You know, and, you know, we had all these sales and stuff that we were trying to get processed very similar to you guys.
Inventory problems, all this stuff. And we get hit with this fine because of a an
electrical infraction not only were they hitting us for actual infractions but they they tried to
hit us with a fine for every single proposal that we had given to potential customers and
you know i thought life was i'd tell y' right now, you've been that early in the business.
I had to quit for sure. I mean, it takes a lot to get through that,
you know, the inbox at that time.
I mean, dude, I thought we were done. I was just like, you know,
all this anxiety, all this stress, all of my shoulders,
like there was nothing I could do to in the short term that I felt like I could do to get out of it.
My business partner, he was stressing Darryl.
But then like, you know, he came to me like the next day.
He's like, dude, I just feel like everything's going to be fine.
We'll work through this.
Let's get through this.
And, you know, eventually, you know, we ended up fighting the state and we eventually put it off put it off put it off
and we ended up settling like 10 months later for like an eighteen thousand dollar fine and it was
like paid out thousand dollars a month for the next 18 months you know and it was like it was
like one of the best case scenarios of like what I initially thought it was going to be putting us out of business. And so, man, it's, it's,
it's amazing. And, and, you know, you had this experience,
we've had so many experiences like this where it's just important to,
for anybody that's listening to this, that, that they understand,
like just keep going, right? Like there will always be a solution.
Life is too good to give up, right. Like don't give up on your job. Don't give up on your marriage. Don't give up on your life. Don't give up on like there's so many good things that if you just have your head down, you'll figure out a solution. There's somebody out there that's going to be able to help get you through it. So, um, appreciate you sharing that. Yeah, there's, I think, uh, when
you talk about having a partner, I mean, him just telling you that probably changed your perspective
a little bit. I mean, and you talked about your, your wife, you know, like right now we, we just
started up our podcast again too. And, you know, I, I was going to do a podcast by myself and I was,
and I can, I'm reaching for a partner you know like i'm like i want to have a
partner i want to have so i i love being able to bounce things off of people and so um when we
decided to start our podcast we were like let's we have to do this i i wanted to do it together
because i just i i felt like that was that was just my aim out and anybody who has partners
their businesses there's some people who say And anybody who has partners in their businesses,
there's some people who say,
I don't want partners in my business.
That's okay.
You know, that's them.
But for me, I'm a partner type guy.
You know, it's interesting.
I actually had, my very first business,
I had a terrible experience with partnership.
You know, both my partners ended up being just not people I could trust.
You know, one, after our business failed,
went on to running a Ponzi scheme and ends up serving prison time.
Just like just some crazy, crazy partnerships.
But luckily that didn't deter me from partnerships because Daryl has been an
incredible business partner.
We've done several different ventures together.
Like I'm a, I'm a big believer.
Obviously, a very tragic thing with your business partner
dying. Sorry, when you first told me that story,
that was heartbreaking. You end up selling your business.
It was a nine-figure exit, if I remember
right. Yeah, we're-figure exit, if I remember right.
Yeah, we're on NDAs, but it was a good exit.
It was a good one.
It was nowhere near where we wanted to be.
I think we had, you know, I was kind of disappointed.
And, you know, sometimes you always, as you start to get going,
you sometimes start to believe, you know, your own hype.
And I think that we wanted to build the next Nike.
And I, I'm sure I made some mistakes along the way.
There were things that I wanted to do different. There are things that I, I, I probably should have done different.
We just, it was just so much, you know, going on.
We had never built a clothing company before.
There was no blueprint for this.
And I just didn't know what I didn't know.
And I, as we started to grow in clothing, the difference between, it's a really, really
hard business because people will wake up
one day and just decide, oh, that's not the clothing they want anymore. They want the next
thing. And I think we dealt with that a little bit as it started to grow after the crash of 2008,
people started to get away from, we were kind of known for our big prints. We had big tap out logos
and we, you know, it was a hard experience all of a sudden having a lot of pushback in the design area where people were, you know, pushing back because they didn't want to wear that type of stuff anymore.
But yet the store still wanted it because they felt like that it was what was selling.
But we're like, this is changing.
We could feel it on our side that this
is changing right now. And they didn't want to be a part of fixing it. You know, didn't want to be
a part of the solution. They just wanted to keep buying what was already out there. And then when
it ended one day, they just kind of wanted to not do it anymore. So we, you know, there were some
things that happened out there in the retail space that became hard. We're still a great business. I mean, our drink
business is still out there doing, you know, nine-figure sales every year, you know, just in
the drink business, just drinks, you know. So we built an amazing business that I think we're very,
you know, I'm very proud of. I know my partner is smiling down still.
You know, I think that we will always be remembered
because we were there at the beginning of the UFC,
you know, nearly the beginning of the UFC,
during the explosion of the UFC.
If you ever look back and tell the story,
you have to tell the story of Tap Out too.
Tap Out was there.
Tap Out was a part of that growth in the early years. And, you know, we the story of Tap Out too. Tap Out was there. Tap Out was a part of that growth
in the early years. And, you know, we're proud of that. We're proud that we did our TV show.
Like I said, amazing experiences of, you know, having dinner with Jay-Z, having, you know,
sitting down with people that, you know, Mark Wahlberg or, you know, all these different people that we met through building our businesses, these amazing businessmen being signed to CAA.
All these experiences were just life changing.
And I wouldn't be here talking to you right now, you know, it all wouldn't have played out the way it did.
Yeah, dude, that's it's such a's such a, such an amazing, uh, story,
such an amazing experience. So question for you, any regrets in selling the business?
Would you do it again? Would you do it in the same timeline? What, what would you do differently?
Um, you know, I wish, unfortunately, I think at that time i needed to sell the business between wanting to you know
it was just i just did not have i didn't want to get up every day and deal with it you know be
the guy that everybody was looking at um and i've been going through that for a while
uh after my partner passed away and I initially got excited at first about,
well, I'm not excited because I was still dealing with that,
my partner passing, but I was like thinking that,
you know, I want to keep this alive for him.
I want him to, you know, I want to keep his name around.
You know, we talked to the Fertittas and Dana
about getting his name in the ring,
and they left, they decided decided they were going to,
they said, as long as we own the company,
as long as we still own this brand,
Charles's name will be in this ring.
And they inducted him into the hall of fame.
All that stuff was amazing and great.
And it felt satisfying.
But at the end of the day,
I just didn't feel like getting up and doing it anymore.
And so taking kind of a backseat because I stayed on as president for the next five years, taking a backseat felt like the right thing to do, even though I felt like, you know, so many things get the position for the UFC, you know, as the main sponsor anymore.
And we were changing stores and a lot of stores didn't work out.
So we were in different stores and it was just a lot of things that didn't happen the way I wanted them to go down.
And it became difficult. So I left in 2015.
And, you know, I felt so good about the experience.
I mean, of course course i wish it would have
kept going in a in a way in a positive way but i felt like we built something pretty amazing
and um and i'm glad to move on keep you know i want to build the next amazing thing that's what
i'm looking down to to do now i'm i love being with my family i love we we're, you know, just, I just, it's just a different part of my life.
And I love how life takes you into these different transitions and you go through these different
moments at the right time in life. I think that's God proposed. You know, I think God takes you
through different parts of your life and puts you in those places at the right time of your life and in challenges that you can overcome
and experiences that you can either, you know, let go by the wayside or you can live up to that
and build something great. Man, I think it's so awesome what you're able to experience. I mean, exiting a nine-figure business, like that's what so many entrepreneurs dream of.
And I mean, most, at least myself, I don't ever view myself as like being a part of a company until the day I die, right?
I'm looking at building value, being able to extract some value by selling off the business or whatever it may be.
And so like the fact that you were able to experience that, that's something that very,
very, very few people will ever be able to accomplish in their lifetime. And, you know,
obviously you've been able to build upon that. You've got some really cool things going on.
Do you share with us, like, what do you, what do you got going on right now? So I know that you're involved in another clothing brand. Is that right?
No, not right now.
Clothing brand.
Oh, man.
Probably called it wrong.
I'm actually, so I can't talk about my other,
I'm consulting for a big company right now
that I'm really excited about,
but I can't talk about it right now
just because of some of the things that are going on. But we're about to make some big
announcements and it's going to be pretty exciting. So I can't wait for that to happen.
I wish I could talk to you about it right now, but I can't. The biggest thing that I'm excited
about, and that stuff's big, but that's not my full-time thing. And really what my full-time thing is right now, I'm excited about starting my podcast or restarting our podcast because we came up on doing our podcast a year ago.
And we felt like we were doing so many good things.
And then life kind of took us a different direction.
Unfortunately, my wife's mother passed away and we were going through some other stuff.
My daughter had caught the C-word, and so we were dealing with that, and we were traveling, and it just felt like so much was going on.
And we put it aside for a second, you know, and it's like the one thing that, you know, sometimes you don't drink your own juice.
You know, like we know I know what would have kept that going is if we would just push through and found a way to keep continuing it.
We'd probably be in a different place right now.
But we decided we really wanted to go back and do it because it felt really fulfilling just doing this type of thing with our kids.
And, you know, our kids been speaking on stages and doing some amazing stuff.
But we want him to see us doing this.
And he's on the podcast with us too and our daughter.
And so we just want our kids to see us doing that together
so that we kind of, you know,
kids really learn through watching.
They don't learn,
they'll never learn through what you tell them to do. They always learn through watching. They don't learn. No, they'll never learn through what you
tell them to do. They always learn through seeing you do it. And I, my, my youngest ones, I have
older kids, two, three older kids, but my youngest, my two young ones, they, they never, they don't
remember tap out because they're born way, way after that. So they, I want them to see us building
this business again. I want them to see us go through this.
I want them to see what we have to do in the, the things, you know, the struggles,
the, the putting yourselves in a position where you're uncomfortable.
You know, I'm not always uncomfortable.
I'm not always comfortable speaking or, uh, being in front of crowds or, uh, or, or audiences
or interviewing some, you know, people that I consider people, my mentors,
people that I look up to. That's hard for me to do sometimes. And, but I think we do a pretty
good job and I love having my kids on the podcast and I love them seeing what we're doing. I love
watching them grow. And, and right now that's, what's exciting me. So we have the pretty and
punk. We just changed it a little bit.
The Pretty and Punk Business Parent Podcast, which is about, you know, seeing the struggle, kind of struggles of founders, but, you know, the struggles of people building businesses while also raising kids.
And it's not an easy thing to do.
And you go through a lot while you're doing it.
And it's challenging, but it's worth it and it's uh it can be really fulfilling in the way that
you're for your kids them seeing what you're doing because again they're going to learn by watching
i love that you know as a as a father of five myself you know that's like the most important
thing to me in the world is is my kids my my wife and how i'm teaching them. You know, to your point, they rarely listen to the words I say, but they almost always mimic my actions.
And so that's that's always cool because I think I do a pretty good job in my actions and I screw up my words a lot.
So that's that's that's good, dude.
So cool.
So a couple of things.
Social media, where's a good place that people can follow you?
At Tap Out Punk Ass.
I still use that handle.
I just never changed it.
I figure it's what people know me by.
They used to call me Punk Ass when I was running Tap Out.
And it's tattooy on my lip so uh you know at tap out punk ass on instagram and uh
twitter and uh i don't dance on tick tock but i happen to be on there for just business first purposes only and then of course our youtube you can find us at pretty and punk uh pretty and punk business family empire pretty punk business family love it love it so yeah be
sure to to follow you hey no judgment on tiktok i think tiktok's i think tiktok's one of the
coolest uh phenomenons of our of our time and it's actually one of the only social media platforms
where freedom of speech still exists.
It's like Twitter and TikTok.
And it's funny because it's owned by a Chinese company.
And here we are trying to shut it down.
And I think we're probably trying to shut it down more because of freedom of speech.
They want to shut us up.
But, you know, so I love TikTok.
Great, great spot.
Couple other things.
So number one habit that like you or one or two habits that just drastically change your day, change your life, whether it's fitness or what are some of your favorite habits?
Oh, man.
You know, some of the habits I wish I had, I was better at, you know, one of the things I do, I honestly, I think it's the one thing that keeps me grounded.
And I actually started off for my kids. But, you know, I consider myself, you know, a church going, uh, God loving father, but I wasn't, you know, in a lot of ways I wasn't
praying like I probably should. And I get up every morning now and I pray with my kids. So
I think that's probably one of the best habits I have. And then I have, uh, when I go to my kids,
see, I get stupid emotional over stuff like this. So I love it. emotion the better oh man i uh so uh affirmations
with my with my kids in the morning my my wife actually started that which is you know all the
credit to her for that um but i need two of the affirmations that you guys say um we just uh
say i'm you know i have our kids say they'll they'll say it and then we'll repeat after them.
Sometimes we'll do our own too, but they'll say, I'm powerful.
And we'll say it and they'll say, I can do anything through God.
And then we'll say it and then they'll say, I'm going to change the world.
And so we make them do 10 affirmations in the morning and uh a few at night and they do
a lot of quotes and stuff throughout the day my son loves to do quotes so if you go to his
instagram uh daniel david ink you'll see all his quotes that he does and his speeches and stuff
how old is he he's six oh that's so cool good good good him. Favorite book, favorite author,
fiction, nonfiction, what is it?
Well, I mean, of course, Star Wars, but I won't say that because nobody will get nothing from
that. Honestly, the one book I honestly feel like changed, built our business.
If I had to give credit to something outside of ourselves and God, I have to say that the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie changed everything.
Everything about the way we dealt with people. And it made, it built our
business. I know there's no way, I mean, there was a, in, in, on September 11th, 2001, when those
planes were crashing into those buildings in New York and that horrible thing was happening we were sitting in a conference room with two billionaires
Frank Fertitta and Lorenzo Fertitta and Dana White and we're talking about how
tap out is going to be a part of the UFC as long as they own it that we that they
will owe that we will always have a place in the UFC we don't get into
conversations with people like that unless you have some understanding how to speak to people
in the right way and how to you know how to deal with people and how to um you just have those
conversations and how to win friends and influence people it's not about, it's about influence in a good way.
It's about putting other people first.
It's about dealing with people in a way that is selfish but unselfish.
And it was just an incredible book.
I've read it probably 30 times or so now.
Listen to it.
I have it on audio.
I have the CDs.
I have the tapes back in the day i have i have
it in all forms i have multiple books i have signed books i sent you a signed book didn't i
yeah you did yeah you know i mean i i would know i sent you a different book i've sent you a book
but yeah but yes but uh the how to win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is my favorite book of all time.
So cool. So cool. Thanks for sharing that with us.
So kind of last question to leave off on, you know, somebody somebody's feeling discouraged in life, whether it's they're they're wanting to take the next leap,
whether it's into entrepreneurship or they're feeling like giving up,
what words of advice do you have for them? I mean, we said it, be relentless and don't give up.
I mean, that's the only rules to success. I mean, I was a D student when I graduated.
I'm not the smartest tool in the shed i'm a guy who just
refuses to give up that everybody in the room is always smarter than i am i get in the room and i'm
just like i make sure it's that way you know i want to be surrounded by great people i think
that was part of tap out success um but you gotta know that if you just don't give up and that
doesn't mean the same idea like you know i some people confuse this for like, hey, I have a great idea for this clothing company. Well,
you know, down the road, you start, there's so many to tell signs that this isn't going to work.
And maybe you have to give up on that idea. But don't give up on yourself. Right? Be relentless
about yourself. Decide that, hey, that didn't work work maybe i have to pivot and it's going
to be this instead be relentless don't give up don't listen to the naysayers and just keep moving
forward i know it sounds like you know like um you know something somebody would tell you in a book
but it's just so true it's the reason why it's out there is because it's true that if you won't give up, if you don't give up, you will make it at some point.
Love that.
Appreciate your time today, Dan.
I know it's valuable.
And I know with family and business and everything else that you have going on.
So appreciate you sharing some of your time with us today and excited to catch up with you in the future, my man.
Thank you for having me on, Chris. I appreciate it.
All right, my dude. Have a good one.