THE CARDONE ZONE EPISODE 232 "A SPECIAL CONVERSATION WITH DANA WHITE"

Hey, welcome to the Cardone Zone, my newest podcast where every week I'll bring to you a new celebrity, artist, athlete, some of the top people in their field CEOs from around the world, running the world, to give you their insights, their knowledge and their breakthroughs. Look, these people came from nothing just like I did, so get ready with Uncle G. You're in for the ride of your life where we're gonna 10X everything you think, the way you work, the way you act, and the way you roll every single day.

Make sure you subscribe and comment. Love to see what you're talking about and get ready for today's show. Talk about his financial success. If you really knew what he was doing, you'd be blown away because he's an average everyday guy. He's the kind of guy I root for. The kind of guy that makes me, you know, makes me know I can do more. How many of you believe, just from what you've seen today, you can do more because of what you see here? Okay. How good was Stephen Graham, by the way?

Okay, that's about leadership. It's to show you guys different characters and different personalities and different walks of life, how they've done things and get connected with the most powerful people in the world. And this next individual is no different. One of the most powerful people on planet Earth. Nobody's ever called him that, but I'm calling him that right now. Ladies and gentlemen, bring to the stage Mr. Dana White.

Be alive, be alive! Come on, bring it up! Let's go!

I was gonna do the slap podium. Okay, you guys know about slap? Tell them about slap. Super controversial right now. Yeah, so in 2017, I started looking, you know, the slap stuff, I'm sure you're seeing it, started popping up on social media.

I was fascinated by it, so I took a deep dive in and started looking into it. And one of the things that really caught me was, first of all, it really works for social media. It's fast, it's shocking, it's exciting, whatever you want to call it. But it had 350 million views. And it looked like it was being filmed at a bar or a basement somewhere. And I said, imagine if you really did this the right way.

got it sanctioned by athletic commissions and tried to turn it into a real sport. So for those of you that know, I'm like four episodes in on TBS, I did a deal with TBS, but I built a huge digital campaign for it. You know, TikTok and

Instagram and everywhere else and it absolutely destroyed on social media like I had seen on the videos when I started to look into it. I mean in just four weeks ago social media for power slap didn't exist. Now on TikTok alone in four weeks we have a billion views, a billion in four weeks.

Then last week on Instagram, we were like 38.5 million views, and the list goes on and on. And I'm taking a lot of heat right now, as I usually do, but, you know, it's the same stuff that I went through when we started the UFC. I get involved in things that, you know, I look at things that I love burgers, you know? I saw the slapping thing, and I got it. You know, when I looked at, when you think about, they're doing this stuff out of Russian, Poland,

And it's on the internet and it's pulling three, think about how hard it is to pull 350 million views on the internet. I looked at it and said, there's something there. There's definitely something there. And if this was done the right way, and when you talk about it, you're gonna see a lot of stuff about health and safety. There's nobody better in combat sports at health and safety than me. We bought the UFC in 2001. 2001 to 2023, there's never been a death or serious injury in the UFC.

From 2001 to 2023, there's been 34 deaths in boxing. And these guys are talking about slap. I'm going to do the same exact medical protocol that we do for the UFC for the slap guys. And the other thing is, an average boxing match, a guy takes 400 to 600 punches in an average boxing match. And that does include the sparring they did to get ready for it. These slap guys take three slaps or less.

and an event, and go through the same medical testing as the professional fighters do. How many slaps could that take? Well, how many slaps depends on who's slapping you? Well, one of these guys. A half a slap. Wow. A half a slap. Yeah. You and me don't want to be getting slapped. I can tell you that right now. All I can slap is my credit card. Yeah, but... So, so...

So when you see it, when you see 350 million views, like you're not sitting there saying, I'm going to get in the slap business, you see 350 million, do you store an investigation? There's something to this. And the fact that when I saw it on social media, I was interested in it. When you think about how social media works, first of all, this is perfect for two things, right?

First social media, the attention span on social media is like this. Even mixed martial arts, if you put a UFC clip on there or whatever, it has to be an exciting clip, right? It has to be something. These slap matches are over in two seconds. It's shocking, it's jarring, and you're like, holy shit. You know what I mean? I sell holy shit moments for a living. That's what I do. So, right? So, when I saw this thing, I'm like,

That's a holy shit moment. This is probably going to work. I'll give it a shot. So what do you do? Then you make a phone call. You say, I mean, how does this process go now? Yeah, so when I came up with the idea, I called. You could get anybody to answer your phone now. Yeah, pretty much.

I called my old partners that I started the UFC with, and I told them, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I want to do, and they are like, we're in with you, whatever you want to do, we're in. So we get in, you start figuring out what it's going to cost, what it's going to take to get this thing done, and our initial investment in it was $10 million. So we invested $10 million in it, and I don't want to get it, but I literally closed the deal last night for Slap.

We're gonna we got it. We just get a deal for two years $25 million. I thought you weren't gonna talk about tonight. Well, yeah You told me right back to your channel we did it with okay, but we just closed the deal and sponsors and All the good shit you want to do we're only four episodes into this thing and we yeah, what so what do you think slaps worth? If you were gonna project. I mean right. Yeah, right here right now. It's worth a couple hundred million dollars now in four episodes and

So we got our $10 million back. Yeah. So now, so as you have success, I mean, how important is success to getting the next one and the next money and the next support and getting people to answer your phone? Well, I usually go back to the same crew. I know who I like to do business with. It's the most important thing when you do business. If you find a group of people, first of all,

In my opinion, everything is about loyalty because once you get into a business with people, you know, and it doesn't have to just be a business. Look at some of these rock groups out there. Everybody gets, you know, their ego gets out of control. You lose your mind and it destroys some of the greatest things in the world and some of the, you know, telling me guns and roses couldn't get together to go on tour for however many years because they hated each other. So it's just, it's, when you let your ego run away with you, it's just bad for everybody.

I've been in business with, I've been friends with Lorenzo Fertidis since we were in high school. We've been friends for a long time and we own a lot of different companies together. We own a lot of different businesses together and we have a good time doing it and we support each other, we back each other up, we never fight and sometimes we make money, sometimes we don't. So when you guys, you've been partners for 40 years. Yeah. And like, what happens? You make a call to them and say, hey,

I'm thinking about, do you ever do a deal without him? Or is it always inclusive? Well, you know, I started Howler Head, this whiskey company during the pandemic. So when the pandemic first started, I was literally having pool parties at my house. And I was with the rock in New York right before it hit. And he had just started Terraman at the Kila. So we're at a restaurant when I said, give me a piece of this thing. I'll promote it and whatever. He's like done.

He calls me back. The rock's tequila. The rock, yeah. Terramana tequila started then. And he called me like three days later. He's like, man, I'm so embarrassed. I don't have any more percentages to give in this thing. I said, it's all good. So three days later, his agent calls me and goes, you're not going to believe this. This guy that, you know, Kirkland brand? Of course you don't. Of course you don't. Of course you don't. No, I know Kirkland, man. I used to stop at Kirkland.

That's all I could afford. So he calls me and he says, this guy's looking to build brands with people. And I gave him your name. So they sent over like 50 different bottles of liquor. And I had my secretary put them all out on the desk. And I walked out and the first two that caught my eye, I grabbed and took them to my house and, you know,

We were drinking that weekend and they were making drinks. And I liked howler head. So I ended up doing the deal. And that was like, it's been like a year and a half. And we just sold to Campari, big Italian liquor brand a couple months ago. Got like a two year earn out. And then, and then I don't know what I'll do. I'll either stay with them or do it again. Yeah. So, so again, like,

Now you're in the whiskey business. You know, I like whiskey. Yeah, I do think burgers whiskey slap and UFC what else is there? What else are you not telling whiskey burgers? We got we own a company called throw one we own Ridiculousness nitrous circus Travis Pastrana's rally car and What's the other one we own in that the skate league SLS the skate league and we own that whole

And all of these, what do they have in common? Is there any common average? It's all action sports, you know. Good on social media. Killer on social media. Viral. Yep, 100%. So we're putting together a whole digital strategy for it right now. Ridiculousness, you know, basically it's the MTV network. I call MTV the Ridiculousness network now. It's all they have on there. But Rob Deartier just did a deal with MTV that lasts till like 2030 now.

And we're relaunching Nitro Circus for those of you that remember Nitro Circus. Thank you. We're going to basically reboot the thing almost like Johnny Knoxville did with Jackass. So you get younger guys. You have Travis Pastrana is the head guy. And you have younger guys that come in and do the stuff under him. And we're going to try to reboot the show. What would you tell Dana, the business owners in a room, like would you today, if you were one of them, would you go out

It sounds like you're buying businesses existing or taking a partnership. Yeah, we're about. Would you start something brand new? Yeah, no. Yeah, we would. I mean, but I holler had was brand new. I mean, this was a small little business that was selling, you know, 15 cases a year when I got involved. But, um,

You know, if there's something I like and I have to be passionate about something. I have to, you know, I don't just buy something because I'm not like an investment guy that I buy something because I buy something that I'm interested in and that I actually would like to work on every day. You know, if you're passionate about something and you really like it,

You're in. And you get up every day and it's not like work. It's fun to do. Yeah, is that something that finds you? Or is that something you go seek to find? That's a good question. Thank you. I don't know the answer to that question. It's just all sort of happened for me. All these things just sort of happened. But people pitch stuff to me all the time. And when people come to me and ask me for advice on things, I lead them in the right direction. And if people come to me and I really like it and it's good, then I'm probably in. Yeah. Yeah.

So, and you do have a lot of passion. Yeah. And I like to help for people who are trying to start a small business. I love being a part of that. Like, I'll wear a lot of, like when I do stuff on social media, I'll wear people's t-shirts. And you're not getting past that. Huh? You're not getting past that. No, no, no. Most cases, yeah. I'm good. I don't need, yeah. Yeah. So, so this house, you already see this guy's house. He's got the most ridiculous house I've ever been in. So, why do you do that though? Because I can tell when you do that,

that you're promoting somebody's brand or I've seen you do your, well it's like 10x health. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about it.

I mean, if you guys tell him the story, tell him the story how you got involved. Yeah, if you haven't seen me talk about this, for those of you that remember Casey case them, the big DJ that used to do the top 40. So me and his daughter have been friends for 25 years. And she's close to him and his wife too. And she called me one day and she said, I love you. You're one of my best friends.

I could never repay you for all the things you've done for me. I want to introduce you to Gary Brucka. He's going to change your life and whatever. Now, they're talking about all this natural, you know, and I'm like, this is some hippie shit, man. I'm not into this hippie shit.

And I was pretty messed up at the time. Physically, I was messed up. I weighed 236 pounds. I weigh 195 now. I mean, we don't have enough time for me to run through the list of all the things that were wrong with me, right? So Gary Brecker calls me one day, he reaches out to me, and he says, hey, I'm in Vegas. We should get together and whatever. I said, you don't want to come over here. I'm sick right now.

You know, why don't we wait? He goes, well, want me to come over and cure you? I go, yeah, buddy. Yeah. Come on over and cure me. Yeah. So I'm telling you. You would be like super pessimistic. Oh, I thought he was a lunatic. I said he is a lunatic. This guy just said he's going to come over and cure me. Yeah. So he comes over and you're feeling like shit. I shit you not.

Two hours later, I felt like a million bucks. It was the craziest thing ever. So while he was there, I was going to this, my son just turned 21 and we were going to Miami. And so we set it up for him to come and do my blood work and all that stuff. Well, I found out that he was, you know, he was a mortality expert and he could tell you when you're going to die.

And I became obsessed. That's all I wanted to know. I didn't want to hear any of this hippie bullshit. All I wanted to know is when am I going to die? Because I had this philosophy at the time, right? You got so much money. You got so much time, right? I don't want to leave too much on the table when I leave.

You know, so whatever my timeline is, it can show me how much I can spend over the next x amount of years. This is how I thought about it in my head, right? Because what you don't want to do is blow it all too soon. Then you're 80 and you're broke. That sucks, right? Nobody wants that.

So Gary comes out, he does the blood, and they're nice people, and we do the thing. And so I said, when are you going to tell me when I'm going to die? He says, we'll have the answer for you on Tuesday. So Tuesday, I can't wait. So he calls me on Tuesday, and I said, when is it? What? He says, you know what? I'm going to fly out there and sit down and talk to you. I'm like, Jesus Christ.

Where are you coming out of here? How many days is this? Oh, here he is right here. Yeah. When is this? He says, I'll be there on Friday. I'll be there before you die. So now I got to wait from Tuesday to Friday. So he comes out and he sits down. I want you to understand my mindset going into this thing that, you know, not into this type of stuff, didn't give a shit about my blood work. All I want to know is when I'm going to die. So he comes out and he starts walking me through my blood work.

And he tells me everything that's wrong with me. This guy knows nothing about my medical history. Nothing. I didn't tell him anything. He tells me everything that's wrong with me. Even stuff that I didn't tell other people. And to take that to another level, then he tells me what was wrong with my parents. And he's right about everything. I said, okay, you got me. I'm in. So he says, you do what I tell you to do for the next 10 weeks. I guarantee you I'll change your life.

And he's like, it's going to be hard. And I said, you don't know me. When I set my mind to it, it's done. I'll do it to the fucking letter, right? That kind of matters.

This has been a very long story. Let me cut it short here. The bottom line is, I weighed 236. Everything that was wrong with me is done. I was on blood pressure medicine, thyroid medicine, cholesterol medicine. I'm on nothing now except his supplements. And hippie shit, natural stuff, right? Yeah.

So I'm off all these meds that I've done on for 12 years. I lost 40 pounds. I used to have horrible sleep apnea. I used to snore like a savage. I don't snore it on sleep apnea. You don't use the machine? Yeah, oh yeah. That's the thing. I mean, how many of the people in this room snore and have sleep apnea have gone to the doctor and they give you a CPAP machine. You sleep for 10 minutes with this stupid thing on you. And I bought every mask you could buy. I bought every machine you could buy. It doesn't work. It doesn't fix you. It doesn't work.

I'm telling you right now right here, and I don't give a shit what you do. Go to the doctor, knock yourself out, do whatever you want. I'm not trying to sell anybody on anything. He is the most legit guy that I've ever met in the medical industry, and he will change your life. I guarantee it. I guarantee it.

He was not paid to say those things, by the way. He knows that we're partners in technology. Well, who's the other thing? When we first came out and I started talking about this, people are like, oh, he's getting scammed, or this guy's getting paid, or he's doing this, or he's doing that.

First of all, why would I do this to get paid and anybody can lose weight? If you've made the decision and you have the mindset, everybody in this room can lose weight if they want to. What you can't do is change your blood work, right? And what I was saying to people is, listen, if you don't believe me, stick with your doctor, knock yourself out, good luck to you, I hope it works out for you, it didn't work out for me. How many doctors did you have? I'm gonna tell you, I'm taking another step, so I got two really good doctors.

Right? I've had these guys for 10 years. They're nice guys, I don't mean to shit on them. But, you know, I tell them that I'm doing this and they're like, yeah, oh, Jesus Christ. Guess what? They both work with Gary Bracken now. He's doing their blood work. Right? So if that doesn't tell you anything, nothing will.

Yeah, both the guys that are all skeptical, he does both of my doctor's blood work now. Now they listen to Gary Brecker. Yeah, and listen, if I break my arm, I'll go to the doctor. Blowing me out, I'll go to the doctor. I will never talk to a doctor ever again about my general health, ever.

Oh, yeah. His shit goes viral, too. Watch. We're going to take a clip of this. No, it's the truth, though. I mean, it'll be the biggest TikTok I ever had or something. You've got any problems. You've got any problems health-wise. You see Gary Brecken do what he tells you to do for 10 weeks. But the first thing you did was a gene test. That's why he kept putting you off.

Oh, you're putting me off because I'm sure, I mean, you'd have to ask him this question, but I'm assuming he felt that I was like, all right, when am I going to die? Because I didn't care about any of this stuff. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe in it. I thought it was bullshit.

You know, he's the kind of guy Gary Breck is so passionate about what he does when he gets you in the room and starts walking you through it. And the other thing that he's good at is breaking it down. Listen, none of us are doctors, right? We don't understand half the shit. I don't understand half. When he gets in the room and starts breaking it down, it makes sense to you. Yeah, it makes sense. So what is his philosophy is this?

When you get put on these pills in the medicine, that's all these doctors know how to do. They don't fix anything. What they do is they put you on medicine. And then that medicine has 10 other side effects that fucks you up in 10 different ways, right? So then you go in and go, ah, now my legs hurt. All right, I'll put you on this pill. Now we'll put you on this pill. Before you know it, you're taking a handful of pills and you still feel like shit, right? And you do this for years. And it eventually starts to catch up with you where you feel so bad that you start going, you know what? This is what 50 feels like.

That's it. So you just give up, you just figure this is it. You know, I'm going to be limping around for the next however many years I'm going to live. And it's not true. And then you tell the guy I feel awesome and he says you don't feel awesome. What you feel is normal. This is what normal's supposed to feel like. And instead of everybody in this room is deficient in something, right? And what Gary does is he finds out what you're deficient in, puts the raw materials back in your body through supplements, and the body does the work itself. How does that not make sense?

Right? Don't get me started on 10x health. I'll be here for 30 minutes. This guy has sent us so much business. Like if I gave you guys some of the names of the people that are doing 10x health now, I mean, this guy knows everybody. When I say everybody, that is not an exaggeration. Every person you'd want to meet, which brings me to this question. You are a very, very strong supporter of Donald Trump. Right.

was probably the only room in the world where it's popular. Well, I brought him out last year. I brought him out last year on our first day, first morning. And we took so much shit for it. And I just brought him out. I didn't bring him out for the politics. I brought him out because I find him to be interesting. He's transitioned for long periods of time. He's a very strong voice. He was patriotic. I liked all that. How much shit did you take?

for supporting him. Yeah, I mean, I did and I didn't. The bottom line is this, is that when I was talking about loyalty earlier when we first got in here, this guy has been such a good friend to me for so many years. And you hear a lot of things in the media bottom that are, you know, listen.

Do I wish you'd stay off Twitter a lot more than that? Yeah, I mean, it would be awesome if you would stay off Twitter and stuff like that. But no matter who you're friends with, you don't always agree with your friends. And as soon as they make or things that they're into, this is what I can tell you. Donald Trump is one of the most loyal, good friends that I've ever had. And at the end of the day, we're all human beings and we all make mistakes. And I'm sure you guys saw I had one on New Year's Eve.

That happened to me, that was whatever. The guy called me four times since it's happened to make sure that I'm all right, are you okay? Every time he always asks about, how is your wife, how is your family, how is your kids. He's a good human being and he cares about people and he loves this country. He truly loves this country. He's a good man.

So as much shit as you want to give me, it's like giving me shit about being friends with Lorenzo Fertile. He's one of my very good friends. I love the guy and I openly support him. The thing is that's nutty right now, in this country, if you told me that you voted for Biden, I don't give a shit who you voted for. It's your God-given right as an American to vote for whoever you want to. It's become this whole war that if you support a guy,

You're a racist, or you're a bad person, or you're a this, or you're that. And it makes a lot of people afraid to come out and be honest who they voted for. First of all, you shouldn't even ask anybody who they voted for anyway. That's your own personal choice and whatever. And you and I will talk. Again, this is not political. It's just about how somebody stands up in business. Like he could have been as a business man that owns the UFC, wants to expand his businesses and his legacy. He could have just said nothing, but he didn't.

He decided to speak out. And I see you using social media. And you and I were having a conversation behind the scenes about never being dependent again upon a human being. Yeah. The scary thing about we've all become, listen, if you guys own a business, start in a business or whatever it is, I've said it many times. The greatest marketing tool on earth ever in the history of the world is social media. It's amazing.

Whoever opts in to follow you is interested in you or what you're selling. You're speaking directly to your fan base. Now back in the day before this, we had to try to figure out our demographic and where are they and how do we reach them and how much money do we spend, what's the right amount, what's not enough, what's too much. So these are all things that are a nightmare in business. Then comes social media. And there are a lot of great things about social media, but there are also a lot of bad things about it.

And now that Elon Musk bought Twitter, you're actually seeing it. Things that we already knew that was happening happened. For instance, I was just telling you in the back, Joe Rogan, right?

Joe Rogan- Listen to this. It's one of the most powerful voices in the world right now, okay? He's got the number one podcast in the world. He's in 96 countries and he's number one in all 96 countries. And if you go on Instagram, right? I have eight million followers on Instagram. Joe Rogan has 16, one six million followers.

That's impossible. Joe Rogan should have $150 million. Floyd Mayweather has $35 million. Connor has $40 million. Joe Rogan has $16 million followers. You're saying he's out of me? Celine Gomez has $450 million followers. Joe Rogan has $60 million? You're saying because he's the number one podcast in a world. He's on four or five times a week. He has been for years. Joe Rogan has double what I have. Joe Rogan should be

So much bigger than me. And I've talked to him about this. And the thing is with Joe Rogan is he doesn't give a shit. So you know what I mean? I've hammered him on this thing. Meaning what? He could get less. Joe Rogan is in a place in his life where he really doesn't give a shit about much. He's going to go in. And one of the things that's made Joe so great

and people continue to follow and listen is that once you get to a certain level of success, there's a lot of things that you become afraid of. Oh no, I don't want to say this. Oh no, I don't want to support this guy. I better not do this or this'll happen. He doesn't give a shit. He does his homework. He goes in and he says what he feels and whatever. The Cardone Zone. Get ready with Uncle G. Make sure you subscribe and comment. Love to see what you talking about.

The Cardone Zone, get ready with Uncle G. We're going to 10x everything you think and the way you roll every single day. He was on Air Force One this morning or yesterday? Yes, today. Okay. Can you just tell us a little bit about Air Force One? Yeah. So the president called me and asked me if I would fly to Colorado with him. Who else has gotten that phone call?

Okay. And, you know, so yeah, I cleared my schedule and went to Colorado and the plane is massive. It's incredible. It's like, you know, I was talking to one of my friends about this thing. When you talk about like the 1%, right? A handful of people experience in a lifetime, like a regular guy that doesn't work in the government, not in the light than ever.

in history experience what I experienced yesterday and it was pretty cool, yeah. So look, this guy, I want you to tell him about the Bellman we were talking about in the back. I asked you, hey, what were you doing when you were 19, 20 years old? Yeah, so when I graduated high school I didn't go to college and I, you know, I did all the odd jobs that young people do to try to survive and make it and I ended up

in a position as a bellman at a hotel in Boston called the Boston Harbor Hotel. Yeah, how Boston? What's up? And, you know, you get into these type of jobs and I don't ever want to sound like

I'm being negative about these type of jobs. There's lots of people that love doing that type of work. But you get everything that you think you wanted in life. You got a 401k, great benefits. You make cash every day and these kind of things. But I was standing in the lobby one day and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing here? What am I doing here? This isn't me.

This is not what I want for the rest of my life. I want something different. And where I've always been lucky is that I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be in the fight business, you know? I knew what I wanted. And realistically, everybody, 99.9% of the battle is knowing what you want to do. Most people don't know what they want or what they want to do for the rest of their life or what their true passion is. And once you figure that out,

Things become a lot easier. So what was it about the fight game that you knew that you wanted to play in? Well, I loved everything. This is why you just wanted to fight. When you're that age, you think you want to be a fighter. Then you realize you're not good enough to be a fighter. So that's step one.

But I didn't care about that. I just wanted to be in the fight business period. So there was this kid named Peter Welsh in Boston who was like a street fighting legend there and involved in boxing. And I knew that I had to find this guy because you want to be in the fight. But if you want to be a doctor, there are steps. You go to college, you go to, you know, then you go to school, you go, if you want to be a lawyer, there are steps. You want to be in the fight business?

There's no school for that. So I sought this guy out. I found him. And I said, I know this sounds crazy, but I want to work under you when I want to learn everything about the fight business. And he said, yes. So that's where it all started for me. So you blow the Bellman job. Was that hard to walk away from the Bellman job?

No, it was actually pretty easy, you know. I had a buddy of mine who was the doorman. He was the doorman and telling me how stupid I was to quit this job. And now he tells me, thank God you didn't listen to me. But you know, you know. Listen to me, if you wake up in the morning,

And it kills you to get in the shower and put your clothes on. Get in that car and drive to your job. You hate it so bad. Get out. You are in the wrong place. You don't belong there. I'm telling you. You don't belong there. You know it. You know you don't belong there. You're just scared to make that move. That move is scary. So how do you make the move? Do you put it at risk? Do you? Like how do you make that move then? Like do you put it at risk? You walk out. You walk out.

You walk out. Let me tell you what. When you start planning on doing something, it's like anybody in this room who has a kid. It's never the right time to have a kid. You never have enough money. It's never the right time. But then you have a baby, and it all works out. You make it work. It's the same thing with this. When you decide life is very short, way too short to be miserable, and get up and drive to a miserable job that you hate every day. It's just life's too short for that.

Get up and go out. As long as you know what you want to do, you wake up every day grinding and just working toward that goal. So I ended up leaving Boston and coming to Vegas. And I started training people out here, started to open gyms. And doing you were making money? Yeah, I was doing great.

The last year, so I had gyms and I was training, you know, I would train fighters on the side, but I like training. I actually like training guys like you and housewives. You people show up, you're dedicated, and you pay. Okay, you actually pay. That's me. Fighters don't pay you shit. I don't like training fighters, but I did it on the side. And so I had a successful business. My last year,

that before we bought the UFC, I'd brought in like $380,000 in training and gyms and things like that. And anybody that's in the gym. You're selling your outs, pitching, you're selling. I mean, how you get selling packages, but I was the guy doing all the work. I did all the trainers. I had hired a couple people under me that worked under me. But yeah, I was doing most of the work. So anybody that's ever done that type of business, if you make close to a half a million dollars, you're doing really well.

My business at that time was at the peak and I started to meet some of these guys in the UFC because we started training jujitsu. Me and my first partners, Lorenzo and Frank Fertita, started training jujitsu and we fell in love with it. We fell in love with the sport. Through that, we started to meet a lot of the UFC fighters.

And we were impressed by them, really smart, good people, not what you expected UFC fighters to be like. So we became fans of the sport. And we also started looking at it and going, imagine if they did this and imagine if they did that. This could probably be big.

And I was doing a contract negotiation with the old owner of the UFC over Tito Ortiz's contract. I had Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell as clients. Those guys signed with me and I was managing them. And I got in this huge battle with the old owner. And finally one day he flipped out on me and he said, there is no more money. There is no more money. You can't get any more money from me. I don't have any more money. I don't even know if I have enough money to do the next event. And I hung up the phone and I was like, oh shit. All right.

Interesting so I called my future partner Lorenzo Fertita and I said he and I always wanted to do something together in boxing We didn't think we were gonna be an MMA but boxing and I said I just got off the phone with Bob Meyer What's the owner of the UFC? I think he's in trouble and I think we can buy him and I think we should a Month later. We bought the UFC for two million dollars. Oh my god

Yeah. Where'd you get the $2 million from? Huh? Where'd you get the $2 million from? Oh, Lorenzo's a billionaire. Oh, you got the $2 million from him. Yeah, OK. So what happened was we thought he'd flip the quarter. He's like, yeah, here's a nickel. Yeah, well, we bought it. And they made me the president, and they gave me 10% of the upside in the company. Yeah. Did you know what kind of deal you were making that day? Did I know what? Did you know what kind of deal you were making that day? Oh, listen, I mean,

You know, you couldn't make a better deal. You couldn't have a fair deal than that. Who buys a company that just gives you 10%. You didn't know it's going to happen like that. You didn't know it was going to be a multi-billion dollar franchise. It was a hundred million dollar franchise. I mean, only 10% of it is, right? I want a 10% of anything that you didn't have to invest in is a win, okay? That's a win. Simple, simple.

So we start out, and it's when I always say, you know, when everybody hears a story that they think that it's, and I can tell you this, nothing is an overnight success story. There's no such thing as an overnight success. When you decide to, I don't care what business you open or what you do, get ready, because you're married to it. It's, you're in. 24, 7, 365, there's no more Christmas, it's my birthday,

That shit's gone, okay, over with. And you are literally married to this business, and everybody thinks that it's gonna get to a level someday, where it's like, all right, now we're up here, I can, no you can't, because it just never stops.

But it's awesome. It's yours. You decide where the company is going on a daily basis, and it's one of the greatest, most fulfilling things you will ever do in your life. So it demands a lot from you in a lot of time, but it's the best thing you'll ever do. That isn't what you ask me. I don't know where that is. No, no, that's exactly what I asked. What was the question? Like, I don't know. Like, I think you knock me out. You knock me out, dog. I'm tapping out.

That was good shit. Do you think I have any fight game, any fight game? Like, do I have any chance of getting in the cage? Could I learn the fight game? Should I do that? What did you guys say? Let's go! You're all nuts. You're all out of your minds. What motor did the UFC? What do you do? What are you doing to take care of yourself?

Listen, people always ask me that too. They're like, hey, how come you don't fight? I'm 50, okay? That's number one, I and he's rich. I fight every day to get on a treadmill, okay? My goal at 50 is don't get fat and don't get hurt. That's my goal.

Why did you agree, Dana, to come out here? This guy came out here, just popped up. He's heard about it, carried case him in the back, said, Dana, you got to come see this thing. Why did you decide just to pop up on the stage? You know, I love, uh, I love interacting with people, but I love telling the story, and I love inspiring people, and I love, uh, you know, if you can tell your story how you did it, and it helps to people. It's a good audience, huh?

And if it helps two people, you know, sometimes it's that little nudge. It's that thing that, you know, everybody's scared to make everybody's afraid to change and everybody's afraid to take a risk, right? But let me tell you this story real quick. We were just talking about in the back. So we bought this thing for $2 million, right? And I'm sure many of you know the story, but for those of you that don't, we sold four years ago for $4.025 billion.

You gotta love that! Big! Big! Big! So, the guys, everybody that was coming in and bidding on the company, you know, the one deal breaker was if I left. So, they all wanted me to stay and continue to run the business. And I'm 50. Well, you know, what am I gonna do? And listen, everybody dreams about vacations and retiring and

I hate three day weekends, okay? I hate three day weekends, man. If I go somewhere on vacation, I can't wait to get back to work. That's how much I love this. So there's no way that I was going to leave anyway. So I stay.

You know, Ari, the guy who put the deal together to come in and buy it for 4.025 billion leveraged everything. Now this guy, how many of you people have watched Entourage before? You know, Entourage? So the character, Ari, man, that's him. That's the guy who came in and bought it.

He is as much a lunatic as he was on the show. So you can imagine this guy came in and leveraged everything he had. He was going up against Disney. He was going up against Turner. He was going up against all these massive companies.

KKR, big hedge fund group, and a lot of other people, Dell, all these guys raised as much money as he could from then. Then leveraged, he leveraged his Hollywood agency business, right? Endeavor, he owned WME IMG, he leveraged that, and he took every ounce of cash that he had saved throughout the years.

everything he's shaking every account he has you guys understand what he's saying no matter how rich you are when you go for it you're gonna be grabbing everything from everywhere like billionaires go broke 100% right so this thing this thing fails he's done he's beyond done he's destroyed if this thing doesn't work now

Everything you do in your life, you know it now, it doesn't matter if you're broke, you're rich or whatever, there's always negativity. Always negativity. My body, when I walked out the door, said you're an idiot, right? There's always negativity. It only gets worse the bigger you get, trust me.

So he leverages this thing and he buys it for $4.025 billion. All the genius media people out there and all the critics, everybody, are smashing him. Telling him he blew it. What a bad idea. He overpaid for this thing. The UFC really isn't that big of a sport. And if it is, it's peaked. Every negative thing you can say about it, right?

He turns around and I don't know if this isn't disclosed on how much we did. But let me just tell you this. Raise your right hand and say I promise not to tell anybody. Let me just tell you this. This was four years ago, okay? The company's worth $9 billion now. But you're talking about a guy who believed in his thing, believed in his own abilities and what he could do

You know, and did it, and he did it. He leveraged everything he had, and he did it. Those are the people that you hear about that are successful. And you want to look, and some people dismiss it and say, ah, well, he was already rich, and he was already this. No, he was that close to being smashed and being completely broke. He took a risk. He took a shot. And my point is, don't be afraid to take a shot.

Whatever you do right now for a living, wherever you work, you can go back and do it. If shit doesn't work, go do that again. Here's what you can't do. You can't miss that opportunity and later on in life. Nobody in this room wants to be in their deathbed going, I should have.

Nobody wants to say, I should have. The worst thing that can happen is it doesn't work and you go back to what you're doing now. And when you fail, when it doesn't work out, you're gonna learn a lot from that. You'll learn a lot from that. Maybe it wasn't what you really wanted to do. Maybe it really wasn't your passion or you made a couple of mistakes. You build yourself back up and you go for it again. You know, telling you.

My story from 2 million to 4 billion sounds awesome up here on stage, but the last 20 years I've been grinding. Good things happen, bad things happen. We were losing lots of money at one point. We took some shots and we made it work. You have to get up and you have to keep fighting. There's a story I'll tell if you guys don't know, but one day Lorenzo, the guy that put up the money to buy this thing with me,

calls me one day and says, I can't keep funding this thing. We were like 30 million in the hole after the two million. He says, Dan, I can't keep funding this thing. Go out and find out what we could sell this thing for right now. I start making phone calls. At the end of the day, I call them back and I'm like, six, seven million, Lorenzo, right? They're 30 something million in.

He says, all right, I'll call you tomorrow. And I'm thinking it's over. These guys have done fun in this thing. It's over. And Lorenzo calls me the next morning and says, fuck it. Let's keep going. You know? And what's great. How long ago was this? How long ago was this?

So it was 2000 and I'd say 2004 or five. Was it was a sport popular? Yeah. Well, then we did the ultimate fighter. We came up with the concept for the first season of the ultimate fighter and it blew up after that. So, you know, when you get in these hard places, it forces you to think outside the box and do think who

Realistically, when I say this, be realistic about it and think about this in your head. Our idea was to do a reality show, because reality shows were big. Who the hell wants to be on a reality show? You know what I mean? You got to be a nut. Watch the big reality stars in here and stuff, but you got to be nutty to want to be on a reality show.

We, you know, but it was the only way reality shows were going like this. It was huge. And we're like, this is our Trojan horse to get crazy fighting on TV without people, you know, it rolled into a reality show format and it worked and it killed it. What is 10 X? The 10 X. What does that concept mean to you? The 10 X just anything 10 X multipliers 10 X big thing. That's big, massive.

Yeah, bigger than anything else. I mean, what shirts go to 4X? 10X is it. I mean, 10X is the shirt of all shirts. Oh my God, that's so good. That's so sick. Can you say that again, please? Getting 10X for anything isn't bad. Start out with this and end up at 10X. Not bad. How important is Big Think for everybody here? Big Think. How important is it to think big?

Yeah, the big thinking is that what you're doing. Yeah, for the audience, the big thinking. Yeah, I'm half deaf if you guys couldn't tell. But yeah, I mean, you have to think big. Listen, if you're in this room right now, and you know, who doesn't live in Vegas? Who's not from Vegas? You people made the decision to come here, buy a ticket, get a flight, book a hotel room, you got to pay for your food. Why did you do that?

Because you're already thinking bigger. You don't like where you're at. You want to hear some different stories. You want to get some ideas. How the hell do I get out of what I'm doing right now? How do I do it? You already know you don't want to be where you're at right now. So all the stuff that you hear this weekend while you're here, go home and do it. Do it. Do it. Whatever you're doing, call your boss as soon as you leave here and say,

whatever you want. I was probably going to give you a bad advice right there.

You know what I mean? You want bigger, you want better, and there's nothing wrong with that. Get it. You said when you walked in here, hey, man, I looked around. Tell him what you said. You looked around the stadium. You fill up big, big events. Yeah. Just tell him what you were telling me. So I didn't, my friend, Carrie, told me about this and asked me to come down here. And I didn't know anything about it. He didn't know who I was, by the way. I didn't know about this. What a damn shame.

And what's crazy bring me a book bring me a book Peter Hey, maybe you can read if you can't hear it's a Friday afternoon All right, I will read this So it's a Friday afternoon this place is packed and It's hard to get people to come in here for free

get people to sell out an arena on a Friday afternoon and people are here for three days and flew in from different parts of the world. That's pretty damn impressive. Yeah. And thank you guys. Thank you guys. Fascinated by these types of businesses. I love.

I love seeing this kind of stuff, you know? It's very cool. I'm one of these guys, I don't know if any of you have ever done this. I'm driving down the street and I'll see a Taco Bell, right? Or Del Taco or whatever's in your town, right? And if you've ever eaten a Del Taco, try to spend $20 a Del Taco. Okay? And if you do, you can't eat it. You can't eat that much food. You get a Del Taco. And I think about

What did it cost to build this place? Employees, just the air conditioning, medical, all these things, and the food is a dollar. How does that place exist? How does that stay open? I can't wrap my head. I always look at different places and try to wrap my head around the business side of it. This is phenomenal. This is phenomenal. Very cool. What he said was, he said, the first thing I do is I look around and I'm like, this place is packed on a Friday. And the second question he had was,

What is the car? How much are tickets? What did they pay to come here?

So have you always been that, have you always had that mind, that financial? I'm always fascinated by people's businesses. I like looking at what they do. I'll drive through some towns. We'll be in some town for a fight. And I'm like, how the hell does that guy stay open? What do you mean? The guy shows buttons on pants or something, you know? They always have some weird businesses in town. I'm like, how the hell does that guy survive? Dana, lastly, OK? We really, really appreciate you being here, OK? I mean, I can't thank you enough. No, pleasure. Thank you.

They love you, man. They love you, dude. You should be a motivational speaker. How important is money? All right. You guys are going to call bullshit on this answer, but I'm telling you it's the truth when it comes to me. I've never been in it for the money.

I've never been in it for the money. Money was never my motivator. When I walked out of that, especially when I walked out of there. If money was my motivator, I stay at the Bellman job, right? And I've always believed that when you do what you love and when you do what you're passionate about and you do it the best of your abilities, money just happens. Money's part of what comes along with all of it, right? And money is a tool to have fun.

And I think you're fucked up if you look at it any other way. You know what I mean? There are people who obsess over money. You know what I mean? Money, if you are a miserable person, trust me when I tell you this. If you are a miserable person, the misery you will have when you get money

will be a thousand times worse. There's a ton of different things that come along when you have money. And if you are an unhappy, miserable person, it will not fix it. It won't make you happy. It will make it worse. Money comes along with success and happiness and doing what you love to do.

Hey, welcome to the Cardone Zone, my newest podcast where every week I'll bring to you a new celebrity, artist, athlete, some of the top people in their field CEOs from around the world, running the world, to give you their insight, their knowledge, and their breakthroughs. Look, these people came from nothing just like I did, so get ready with Uncle G. You're in for the ride of your life where we're gonna 10X everything you think, the way you work, the way you act, and the way you roll every single day.

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