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

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

I completely agree. And before we even jump into stuff, I feel like you should read something that you wrote the other day.

So here's my contrarian idea. I think sometimes you need a story to tell yourself when life is hard, when you're losing and you don't even want to get out of bed. And so I wrote this to remind myself of that. It's the dark of the night. My alarm says 12:44am but my brain says sleep no more. The world outside is loud, pounding, insatiable, and it won't not settle. A running to do list races through my mind, marching like incessant ants in a line. Then I remember every army needs a general. So I throw off the covers and relegate sleep to a future self. We've got work to do. God gave us a body filled with capacity. A horde straining to break free. Better use it. The coffee pot whistles happily, thrilled to be in use for its true capacity. Happy to have an early friend to start the day. My pen traces paper, taking ideas out of my head and onto the one place where they can't slip away from me so easily. It's quiet. No emails coming in, no pings. Just me and the night. That feeling of purpose, of execution, of getting shit done flows through me. I'm convinced there's no Greater sensation than creating exactly what you should. The architect drafting his building. The brick mason laying his final cornerstone. The writer's words to books. The farmer sowing seeds. So this day, this morning, wherever you are, settle not for sleep. See what you are actually capable of. The world is waiting for it. All right, so before we get into Mike, ask yourself, do you have a story so strong it'll pull you out of sleep and complacency? And if you don't, you can steal some of his. I really like this part.

Bring the band in. Let's go.

I think the little man and the everyday man in the US is sort of getting crushed by the big, you know, the big companies, the big banks, the big government. And increasingly there's like a nation of men and women who sort of feel purposeless and a little bit powerless. And when I read your story, I was really inspired by the fact that you started and self proclaimed RA everyday man from a small town who became something a little bit bigger. And so I'd be curious to hear from you in your words, what was that journey like?

Well, I think eventually every big shot is just a small shot that never stops shooting. You know, you just gotta keep on going. I was. I was a small guy from a small town. I was taught to do small things. The people I was around, my closest of kin, my closest of community, there wasn't a lot of gumption heading toward the outside of those county lines. You know, it was even a gamble for me to go two hours west of me to go to Mizzou and walk onto the University of Missouri wrestling team. When everybody said, you know, why are you gonna go do that? Why are you gonna go ride the bench? Why are you gonna go, what if you never wrestle? What if you quit? What if you come back with your hat in your hand and we can all say, I told you so? And I think so many of us have been put into a box. Whether it be our upbringing, whether it be the people around us, whether it be our own self sabotaging sel talk or self sabotaging vision and view and self image and self concept of ourself. And I still battle that little guy from that little town every single day. He's still inside. I've just got really good at duct taping him to the basement of my mind and continuing to believe that if I work hard, I operate with integrity, if I meet the right people, if I'm nice to and serve the right people, they will in turn serve me. And it will in turn serve me. My greater purpose, my greater mission, and then eventually things will work out. And some days it feels like I'm treading water, and some days it feels like I'm shooting to the moon. But I think that's the essence of our human condition. You're never going to feel 100% happy with where you're at. You're never going to feel 100% like you did every single thing that you needed to do. But all in all, success or growth, becoming the man or woman you're supposed to be on the other side is just a bunch of small decisions every single day, a little bit of hard work every single day that adds up to the big success, you know, and it's worked out well for me. Went from wrestling to mixed martial arts and winning some world titles and now in the biggest fight I could have ever asked for.

It's actually wild because you talk a lot about mental toughness and in particular I believe you have a mindset coach. Not just a boxing coach and not a growth coach, but a coach that helps you, as you've mentioned, like slay the dragons or lock a dragon in a room that shouldn't be let out. Talk to me about that. Why a mindset coach?

And I've had numerous over the years and specific mentors and even, you know, we're sitting here at Apple. I mean, these are the guys that I want to be able to call. I want them to call me when they think, hey, I need something. I want to be like these guys here, like the leaders. Here we are the sum total of the people that we hang out with or aspire to be like. And obviously today the world is so connected because I can just hit follow to a million different people and feel like I'm in their lives. But ultimately, if you're doing something impactful with your life, if you're trying your hardest, if you're operating with integrity, you, you hold your reputation to a very high regard, then eventually those people start being attracted to you as much as you were attracted to them. I had a mindset coach that I've worked with on and off and we really did. It wasn't necessarily forward thinking, self image. How do I get to where I'm going to go? Who am I now? What do I stand for? Who is Michael Chandler? What is my story? What are the lies that I've been telling myself for the last 30 something years? What are the pitfalls that I continue to fall back into? The valleys I continue to fall back into because of the way I see Myself, the stories that I've told myself, and what do I stand for? You know, I think a lot of us are wandering generalities instead of meaningful specifics, knowing exactly who we are, what we want to do and what we want to accomplish. It's okay to embark on a journey with no virtual certainty of success, or even close to success, or even close to it working out the way we want it to work out. But if we move forward by not knowing exactly who we are and what we stand for, you're kind of just a wandering generality. And it's much harder to get from point A to point B. So for me, it was trying to figure out, who am I? You know, who am I when I show up as my wife's husband? Who am I when I show up as my kid's dad? Who am I when I show up in a business meeting? Or who am I when I show up in a cage in front of millions of people? All of those questions can be answered before the actual moment. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of introspection and a lot of writing and a lot of thinking, a lot of visualization. And as you alluded to, I mean, some dragons I've been able to slay and some of them I've just been really good at pushing into a corner and being able to manage them, being okay with them being there for the rest of my life, knowing that that's a part of my story. It's one of the chains in the links, in the chain of this huge life that I'm going to live here on this earth and just being okay with constant, never ending improvement, but knowing who I am, what I stand for, who I want to serve, whose I am, and growing every single day.

Yeah, it's funny because I have, every time I embark on a new business venture, I always get, I don't usually call them coaches, but a consultant. So, like, if I want to start a new business, I want to go to try to hire the best person I can to start that new business. And the same thing, if we're struggling in an area, maybe I need a new sales coach. And so, you know, I get them with a call a week and we break down the stuff that I don't know technically how to do. But I think if you would have told me a year ago, cody, you need a mindset coach, I would have been like, what sort of fucking nonsense is that? Like, fluffy. What? And then I would have felt like, oh, I'm going to spend money on that. And you seem like a tough guy, obviously, and yet did you ever feel that way or how did you get past the idea, if you ever had it, that, you know, that might be fluffy or it's not a coach who's going to teach you how to hook better is going to teach you how to do something tactically better.

Well, I think ultimately every single thing that we do, every single thing that we say, everything that we feel, every single aspect of our life always really does go back to our self image, our self concept, how we see ourselves, how deserving, how deserved are we of success, how deserved are you of even embarking on the next business venture? Who are you to think that these people are going to watch, tune in, buy, want the services, or, you know, what is the story that you're telling yourself? And I think for me, I always had such a lowly view of what I brought to the table that I needed to start doing a lot of work, you know. And so ultimately, whenever that cage door closes and Bruce Buffer's screaming my name and says it's time and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's not the punches, kicks, knees and elbows. It's not the techniques, it's not the game plans. It's not all these, these tactical black and white binary things that people think it is. It really is. Do I believe that I am better than that man and I should beat that man tonight here in the middle of this octagon. And that's the same that's true in business, same as that is true in your relationships. It's the same that is true in every single aspect of life. You can be really, really, really tactically good at something and you can find success year after year or season after season. But eventually, if the self image itself isn't keeping pace with that, eventually there's going to be burnout, there's going to be self sabotage, there's going to be things that you're going to fall into to make sure that you don't reach that level. Because a man or a woman could never consistently perform in a manner that's inconsistent with the way that they see themselves. You can find success here and there, like we said, tactically, you can be very good tactically at certain things. But eventually to find that long, drawn out, consistent, year over year success, it all goes back to the self image. So for me, I realized that. And I also realize who I am when I step inside of a cage in front of millions of people and I look like a tough guy and I look Ripped. And I look. I look like that guy, right? They could be on a movie behind king Leonidas on 300. Right. I look like that guy, Right. But ultimately, that doesn't mean a dang thing if right here between my ears. I don't actually see myself that way. And I don't think that I deserve to be there. Ultimately, I realized that the mindset side of things, the self image side of things, was probably not even. Probably. It was definitely more important than the tactical side of things.

Yeah, I mean, in my mind, I'm trying to imagine, like, I'm sure many people do that. You know, you're in this octagon, you're in this cage, and you know it's getting towards the end of the fight and you are out of breath and you've taken a few hits and you can't feel your legs anymore, and you're maybe vaguely aware of the audience shouting the other guy's name. Like, what does it take mentally? And what do you say to yourself in that moment to keep going?

Yeah, well, I think it's. I think it's the decisions that I've made leading up to that moment. You know, whether it be my five years at Mizzou wrestling where I turned myself into a mixed martial artist or like. Or at least a. The spiritual being of where I needed to be to go into mixed martial arts, then work and work on the tactical stuff. All of the work that I've done over the last 14 years to get to that moment. And a lot of that goes back to a couple different things. Gratitude. I do believe I'm operating my best when I'm extremely grateful. When I wake up every single morning, I thank God for another day. The blessings in my life, what I do have. Two capable arms, two capable legs, an awesome platform, a voice to speak, people that look to me and admire me, all of these different things that we can sometimes forget about. I'm very good at just going straight blinders on and just running my head into a brick wall. And you tell me to go and I' go, right? If you're my coach, say, okay, I'll run through that brick wall if you tell me to. But ultimately being grateful for what I have and then thinking, too. It all started, too, with Mike and Betty Chandler back in High Ridge, Missouri. My mom and dad, who worked two and three jobs nonstop to make sure me and my two brothers had every opportunity to be successful, to be to where I am today, sitting here on this chair speaking to you with the platform I have and the life that I've created for my family now it all started back with those gifts they gave me. And to give anything less than my best every single day and pour myself into that, into everything that I do is to sacrifice those gifts is to literally, you know, it's a slap in the face to them. So gratitude, thinking about what they did for me, and then now having the woman of my dreams and having my two sons and now it's just, it's so much bigger than just me. If I lose a fight, no big deal. Maybe I lose a little bit of money, maybe I lose a world ranking. It means so much more for the masterpiece that I'm painting for my two sons, the promise that I made to my wife to serve and protect and love and to provide for her. So I have the past that has motivated me and still motivates me. I have my present right now with my family and ultimately an overarching theme of gratitude. So in that moment, I'm honestly just operating with the muscle memory and the neuro pathways and my spirit and my soul continuing to push me forward through all of the hard work, all of the deposits in the bank, if you will, that has led me to that moment, to where I can push through and people are wildly entertained by it. Ray Ban Meta glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.

Hey Meta, play Gorgeous. Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat.

You can also ask Meta AI questions.

Hey Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert? Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles theater next to Sweet Ray Ban.

Meta Glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers.

Hello friends. Guess who?

That's right, it is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play the new Call of.

Duty Black Ops 7 with three expansive.

Modes, 18 multiplayer maps, and the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever frickin seen. Call of Duty Black Ops 7 available now. Rated M for mature.

Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. So in those moments where everybody thinks the minute or the second matters, it's actually just a compilation of your historical actions.

Yeah, well, and we've watched so many movies too, where, you know, the guy gets beat down and he's bleeding or whatever and his inner monologue, or Rocky's inner monologue or the coach says something and it's like sometimes that happens, but for the most part, you know, it's. It's. You're in the moment and you are trying to make the best decision you can with the information you have, the split second information that you have right there in the moment. Sometimes you zig when you should have zagged, and sometimes you lose and sometimes you make bad decisions and sometimes you go back and watch tape and think, what the heck was I thinking? Can't believe I did that. Can't believe I made this decision inside of the confines of competition. But it's all a learning process. And I am where I am today because of my wins and because of my losses, because of my shortcomings and because of my triumphs and because of, you know, the tears that I've cried and the hard work that I've put in and the pain that I've put myself through, the times I've bled. And ultimately you just, you're able to find something inside of you. So that's why I think it's so. It's a bastardization of the blessings that you have to not be pushing yourself every single day. And it sounds a little off putting to people, like, well, this guy's a little bit intense. It's a little bit crazy. But I mean, I'm here to tell you today that I just have pushed so hard and tried to find the outskirts of my comfort zone in every single aspect of my life to get me to that moment where the lights are shining brightest. At your greatest moment of opportunity or at your darkest hour for you to inherently spiritually deeper than just the cognitive thinking of, am I enough? And I want to be able to answer that question with, yes, I am.

You know, what's interesting is you talk about these things that I think a lot of people think sound good. Like, I'm a family man, I'm a family first person. But I remember when we were first texting back and forth, you know, I was like, what do we want to talk about? What businesses do we want to talk about? What products are you really focused on? And we talked about your businesses, we talked about cram, and we talked about walk on fitness, and we talked about, you know, some of your goals for your business. But the line that I won't forget that you texted me was, so here are some of my businesses and hobbies, but my real passion projects are my wife and kids. You know, I engage with a lot of business people, and that's rarely a sentence said up front. Where do you think that family oriented nature came from as it seems really important to you? And also this thing we're at right now, what astounds me is of like the Five guys I know the best who have the biggest platforms here. Like, all five of them are super family guys before almost anything else.

You know, I mean, I'm six years into being a father now, almost 10 years into being a husband. Some of these guys here, actually, almost all of these guys here that you're kind of alluding to have been in that quest longer and honestly probably made a lot more money with a lot more businesses and all these other things. And I'm sure they would tell you, you know, we always want to seek the material. We always want to seek whatever it is, the respect and the awe of driving a cool car or having a nice big house or having all these zeros in your bank account. And, you know, guys here that would tell you, hey, all that stuff really is cool. But it took me 15 years to learn or this experience to learn that what is most important is who you're doing life with and who you're serving. Because ultimately it's those things that are going to last forever. And that's what I've said about, you know, winning belts and making a lot of money and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff really is awesome. And it's a means to an end, to provide for the family. But nobody's going to give a crap about that stuff. A decade from now, my sons aren't going to care about the world titles that I might win or the different accomplishments that I've had. All they're going to care about is, did you show up and do what you said you were going to do and did you show up when I needed you? Did you serve me mentally, spiritually, emotionally, throughout this process that we call life? You know, And I really did have a phenomenal upbringing. My mom and dad supported me, loved me, took care of me. We felt safe in our home. And for me, now to where I'm at in the success that I have had. It's just, I look at what they did, how hard they tried, and if they tried that hard, and now I have a life that's probably easier than theirs. I work less than they do. I make more money for less time than they had to put in. I have this huge platform that's just such a huge blessing. It just seems like the only right thing to do is have your priorities straight. And for me, my priority always has been, well, okay, I might have this business venture, I might have this fight that entails this fight camp or this, all of the different things that have going on, but how does it affect my family? What lens, Can I look through it and see it coinciding with the Venn diagram of my family, my reputation, and who I want to be on the other side of it? Because ultimately the lights are going to fade and the interviewers are going to stop calling, and all of that, all of this stuff is going to be over, and I'm just going to be a retired MMA fighter, and all that's going to matter is the reputation that I have with those amongst the world who are able to watch me fight. And then the most important reputation is who am I as a father and who am I as a husband? And it's just, you know, both of my sons just deserve that, and my wife deserves that, and she's the most supportive, amazing woman that I could have ever asked for. So it's pretty darn easy to make them a priority.

Ah, take notes, dudes. Yeah, I think, you know, my friend Alex said it really perfectly. He was like the Queen of England, like, arguably one of the most famous people on the planet, had the longest reign in history. You guys watched her funeral and everything, and she died. And how many times have you thought about her today? Not three or four or six months later, not once. And so you have a queen of an entire kingdom and she is irrelevant six months after she died. And it sounds a little harsh, except I think it's true. At the end of the day, nobody will remember you and most of your life will mean nothing except to a very few amount of people. So I think that's really powerful. Now, that said, you have some violence in you, obviously, right? Like, you can't do what you do without some point of violence. And I guess I think about that because my husband's Special Forces and he came from a different background than you. A lot more trauma in his background, maybe at least as far as he would say, and difficulty and strife. But he always talks about how his parents fucked him up just enough to be a team guy and not enough to be a stripper, you know, and he was like, yeah, thank God for.

That, you know, just enough.

Just enough. But, like, that violence for you, where does it come from? And how do you tap into it when you have to. You can't gratitude Conor McGregor to the ground. So what happens?

Yeah, I mean, you can't gratitude him to the ground, you can't joy him to the ground, you can't serve other people to put him to the ground. But I think ultimately, for me, the sport of wrestling was the same way. I mean, I wanted to bury people. I wanted To. Absolutely. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to make them quit. I wanted to make him cry. I want. You know, but it's inside the confines of competition, you know, it's. I don't think about that at all in my everyday life. I mean, if anything, I'm probably the biggest pacifist you might ever meet. I am afraid of confrontation. I don't like confrontation. I don't want to get in trouble. I don't. You know, like, people think, well, shoot, you must have had a bunch of free street fights. That's why you got into mixed martial arts. I never got into a street fight. Number one, I didn't. I never really got into those scenarios. And number two, I was too afraid to get in trouble. So I think for me, it's just another competition. It just so happens that people get hurt and stitches get. Stitches get put in and blood gets drawn and people get knocked out and choked out. It's just. It looks like such a violent sport. And if you're ever around mixed martial arts, you really dive into it. The people in mixed martial arts, of course, there's some. Some violent ones. Some people who really enjoy the violence. I wouldn't say that I enjoy the violence whatsoever. Now if you watch when that cage door closes, it looks like I'm really enjoying the violence. And I've never once. Well, I don't really enjoy this violence thing. I'm focused on the task at hand. That last bell sounds or that guy gets knocked out or the fight is over, whatever. Then it turns back into, okay, now we'll just go back to being normal again, you know, And I think, you know, if I could. If I could really just think about me and who I am and because I did a lot of this work with my mindset coach, Jim Hensel, and it was like, who am I? And I think God has given me a really awesome gift that I am extremely grateful for. To be able to live on both ends of the spectrum in a big, big way, like extreme joy and peace and contentment and service and love, and then the most savage individual that just wants to dominate people inside of a cage and somewhere in between, you know, I'm always usually living on this side of the spectrum, and then all of a sudden, that cage door closes. And I've been given a gift to be able to go cross that line, to be that guy. And some guys, Some guys can't in this sport. Some guys live too close over here in the violence, and it shows, for better or worse in their fights or in their craft, in their business, in their life. That's why self image and self concept and mental health is so important in this world. And I've just done a lot of work, I think, on myself to make sure I show up as the man that I want to show up as in life in these kind of interactions and with my friends and my family and my colleagues. And then I show up as a completely different person whenever that cage door closes. And it's just, I think it truly is a gift. I think it's something that I didn't choose to. I've never once in my life tried to will myself or visualize myself into a savagely violent person inside of the cage. It just happens. And I think the greatest compliment I ever get is whenever I meet somebody and hang out with them, they're like, you really are a really nice, cool guy. You're pretty normal. And I'm like, thank you. It's actually because you can watch my highlights and you can see the way that I fight. I rightfully so. I would think the exact same thing about me.

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

If you needed to. Yeah. And it also goes back to, you know, as you talked about being a gardener in a war compared to being a warrior in a garden. One of my favorite books of all time, John Eldredge, Wild at Heart. He talks about how a man's soul and heart was designed and every man was created for a battle to fight, an adventure to have, and a beauty to Win. And in this day and age, in this society, there's less and less people who are seeking adventures to have and battles to fight. And I'm not saying battles to fight like going. Getting in a street fight, but as you talk, like, being in here, these. These men and women are having battles to fight in here, and they're learning things, Mixed martial arts, jiu jitsu, all of these different things. Just pushing yourself so that you don't feel the need to push yourself in the wrong direction in other areas, you know, and we've just. We've got things backwards in a lot of ways, and it's. It's very important. And I do. You know, even in here, we're doing gun disarmament and we're saying, hey, okay, what do you do if a person sticks a gun in your face? My wife is here, my son is here. I'm walking down the street, downtown Nashville, whatever. And, you know, the confidence that I have, if that happened, it's something. And I'm not just saying this to boast about myself. I don't know the techniques, but it's just that scenario where I think there's no way that I would not be able to protect my family in this scenario. And I can't imagine what so many, especially men, might think. And with that comes lack of self image, which then leads to so many different things. And so you just have to be proficient in so many more things than we think we need to today.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, you know, I was actually, I was scrolling through your comments on some of your Instagram posts.

Don't do that.

It's a terrible idea. Jesus, nobody do that. Like, you should go follow Mike Chandler MMA on Instagram. But. But I was scrolling through your comments and. Whoa. You know, speaking of weak, man, trying to sound strong. I saw that all over yours. You know, really violent commentary. And I get a few things, but, you know, mostly my husband and I chuckle at them. Yeah, but some of yours were really, really intense. I remember being at the McGregor Poirier Fight and hearing people yell and scream when one person gets hurt and feeling what that energy feels like. I've never felt anything like that before. And so you have such vitriol directed at you. How do you handle haters? How do you handle people that say bad things about you? Is there something that you go to when that happens?

Admittedly, I do read more than I probably should. You know, I probably should just post and not worry about what they say. But I think for me, it could be 20 negative bad things, but then there's one that's just like one of those ones where you get it. I'm sure as well, whether they're talking about me helping them with their self image, me helping them with confidence, me helping them get in the gym, or the way that my fitness app has helped them and gained confidence, or lost fat, gained muscle, all these different things. So I want to be in tune with the people that are in tune with me. And I am convinced that a lot of those negative comments sometimes, too, come from bot farms across the world. Social media is a weird place, but also I do, you know, I'm not naive to think that there's definitely some real people behind those comments. And it's ultimately, it's, you just got to keep doing what feels right to you, and the people are going to comment with the way that they comment. And, you know, there's been those haters, and there hasn't been social media for hundreds of years, but for hundreds of years, thousands of years, there has been people that are not going to believe in you. They're going to trash you at every single turn. They're going to say things about you that aren't true. And ultimately, it's the highest nail that gets hammered always. So if you can continue to climb and climb and climb, and so many people are so worried about trying to grab at your heels and pull you down from the rung that you're on, instead of just reaching up and trying to climb to the next rung themselves, ultimately it comes with the territory and just probably similar to you or any of the other people that we kind of rub elbows with, we take a silent smile every single time we see one of those because, you know you're doing the right thing. You know you're doing the right thing. When you have that many people saying things about you and mine, mine is just. I would like to. I like to talk, you know, candidly, but also not sound like a narcissist. But ultimately, I think being a mixed martial arts fighter, a UFC fighter, you know, I'm so similar to, like, your husband, Special forces. I mean, there's only so many areas for the male gender where we're like that guy. Like, that's the guy, right? Maybe I don't want to be just like him, but I want that aspect of it or that, you know, So I think fighting in a cage and being on the big platform and doing what I do, looking the way I look, working out as hard as I do, I think there's a lot of aspects of desirable traits that most men would want, but instead of making that life for them themselves, they would rather say something about it and accuse me of steroids or accuse me of this or accuse me of whatever. And it's just. It's part of it.

You ever let it slip and like, accidentally feed the troll a little bit.

Or you pretty good? Well, every now and then, yeah, I do. Well, normally, you know what? I actually do.

What's your best one? Have you ever had one? You're like, that's a fucking great comeback.

No, I actually never to trolls, but I have had a few good comebacks, like, to other fighters who have said things. Because I also came into the UFC and nobody gave me any credit, and rightfully so. I was outside of the UFC forever, you know, world champion. Outside the ufc, which isn't really world champion, you're not the number one guy in the world. It is a world champion, but it's not. You're not the number one guy in the world. So I didn't get a lot of respect from my fellow fighters, so I had threw a couple zingers here and there, but for the most part, I'm more of a direct message kind of guy. I don't want to give you the satisfaction of responding to you on that public thread to let everyone else know that I'm even responding to you. So I'll just respond to you in a direct message, which they could screenshot it and show people anyway, but. And it's not mean. It's not, you know, might be a little snarky, a little condescending, a little bit, you know, Mike Tyson said social media made y' all way too comfortable with talking and not getting punched in the mouth type of, you know, and would I ever punch someone in the mouth for something they said, absolutely not. But every now and then you're like, nah, I'm not letting this one slip. The worst is when people completely make stuff up. Like, I had a guy make something up and was like, well, I work with somebody who went to high school with him and he was doing steroids in high school and blah, blah, blah. And I'm just like, that was a direct message worthy type of comment. It's like, okay, why don't you go ahead and tell me who that is? It always turns into one more snarky comment. Then I go back and they say, okay, actually, it's not true, actually, man. And I'm a big fan. Like, I'm really sorry the amount of times that it goes complete 180, and they end up being like, oh, man, I'm a really big fan, man. Just keep doing what you're doing. I'm like, no response block, whatever.

You know, it's just the biggest flags, I think, like, it's incredible. I mean, there's something in psychology, actually, they talk about that where one, we have a negative bias as humans, otherwise we're dead. Right. And then two, because we have that negative bias, we've realized, oh, man, if we talk negative to somebody else, we get 10x the attention that we do from a positive comment. And so I can see where society conditions us to have that reaction.

That's really, really unfortunate.

Yeah. But I think as a fighter, it's fascinating because you really can't punch somebody in the face. Yeah, I can. I can. But, like, not much good to know that. Maybe after I use your. Then I'm gonna be on it.

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

Well, it's true. So you were on Bellator for a long time?

Yeah, it was like a decade. Yeah.

And top guy there for a long time. Lots of people say you should have been in UFC sooner. Lots of people wonder kind of why that didn't happen, you know, why I didn't get the look from Dana White or whoever. So what's your take on that? Why did that take so long? And then what'd you have to do to finally overcome it?

And it's fine. The way you frame the question is almost like, well, I wasn't good enough to go there, or, like. Or the UFC wouldn't have taken me earlier. And I think that's what a lot of people thought. I honestly was making the best business decision that I could for a very long time. You know, the business of mixed martial arts is it's a beautiful, beautiful thing for certain people, and it's a tough, tragic thing for a lot of people. You know, I was making a great living outside of the UFC and also saw myself continuing to build my platform outside of the ufc. So therefore, when I did come over, it was going to be a better business decision. Right. And ultimately, too, there was a lot of. Lot of factors involved. It never felt like the right time to Finish my contract, test free agency, and then field offers from other organizations until I think it was 2020. I had my last fight in Bellator in August of 2020. Knocked out a former UFC champion, Benson Henderson. It was a tough fight for me because he's a tough guy to put away. He's extremely durable, and he's a tough guy to look good against. You know, you can beat somebody, but you have these fights where you're like, it wasn't that beautiful. Graceful, dominant, you know, because he's just good everywhere. So it was a scary time, but I made the decision to bet on myself. And then. And then it's just crazy how. And I talk about this often is so many doors in life stay closed and stay locked until it's the exact right, perfect time. And that door stayed locked or felt like it should have been locked for such a long time. Then it was time to be opened and I just kicked the door down. We had. Khabib was the number one guy in the world. He retires. Conor and Poirier were tied up in their trilogy that they were about to have the fight you're alluding to. So that gave me the title shot after my UFC debut win. And it was just. It all worked out perfectly for me. So people say, man, you should have been in the UFC much sooner. Because I hear that a lot, and I think I came over at the exact right time. Or maybe that's just me accepting my current circumstances and not having to look back and say, well, I woulda, shoulda, coulda, but it worked out perfectly.

Definitely healthier. That's interesting. So I don't know anything about UFC negotiations and how the business of UFC or even if we don't say UFC fighting works. Like, how does that work? Obviously people are making hundreds of millions of dollars off of fighters when you go into a fight. And you can speak in generalities, obviously, like deciding to go against McGregor. How do you. What turns on in your business brain? What do you have to negotiate and who gets what? Like you have an agent that gets something, then you have you, then obviously the UFC takes something, then you got to negotiate against McGregor. How does that work?

Yeah, so we're all under contract. So as a car fight or do.

You have a standing salary with you?

No, no salary. You only get paid if you fight, you know, and it's usually you can sign a four fight deal, you could sign a six fight deal, an eight fight deal, and it'll be say, you know, two years or six fights, whatever happens. Sooner if you get your six. If you got your six fights in, in one year, your contract's over. Or if you had three fights in a two year period, your contract is over. So it either goes by term, which is the time, or the amount of fights you negotiate those terms. Your manager or your agent, manager or attorney. For me, I've had one manager my entire life who was also a criminal defense attorney who has negotiated thousands of contracts at this point, and a lot of NFL, NBA, and UFC contracts. Now, we've done the best that we could to protect me. Also, leave enough meat on the bone for the current promotion to always make. Make them feel like they're sometimes getting a deal, if you will. You know, I think that's. You hear a lot of people who would never, ever say that they want to get as much as they possibly can and they're gonna dig their heels in, and it usually doesn't work out. Because one thing that you have to realize, this is not just mixed martial arts. This is you. This is everybody in this room. This is everybody. In every endeavor, every single scenario, besides a very, very, very tiny fraction of the entire populace, we're all replaceable. Every single person is replaceable. If you shut your phone off and you stop making content, there's gonna be someone else who's just gonna be just as big as you that can well up something inside of you where like, wait a second, but is if you can set aside, yeah, my tiktoks are important.

Who would be able to survive without that?

Well, it's true, but it's one of those scenarios where in mixed martial arts especially, we think that the show won't go on without us. And it will, I promise you that. You know, you've got mega superstars that retire, or Conor being out for two full years, Jon Jones being out for two and a half, three years, they can build new stars, and one year from now, there's going to be a guy that they're making money off of, just like they were making money off of these other guys. And having that approach. I've always had that approach. I had that approach in Bellator. I had that approach now with the ufc. We're all replaceable. The show will go on. And I think there's a certain level of freedom that comes with that. It sounds like you're giving away your freedom, saying, well, they're in control more than you're in control. But ultimately there's so much more freedom that comes with that, because then you can just operate. In my opinion, doing the best that you possibly can and realizing that this whole show is going to end eventually for you. Nothing lasts forever. And, yeah, you negotiate these contracts, and then when your contracts are up for negotiation, you get a new one. Or there's time. Yeah. Or not. Or you're three fights into a contract. They say, hey, you have grossly over performed on this contract. We're ripping it up. Call us money. We're ripping this up. We're doing a new deal.

Interesting.

That happened with the ufc. I got four fights in, and they said, hey, we're doing a new deal. You deserve more. I'm like, okay, now, had I been like, hey, I deserve more, guess how many more fights I would have had on that contract? I would have had to have those two. We never would have went back to the negotiation table.

Interesting.

So if you take care of those who sign your paycheck, be a good employee, show up on time, do more than what is asked of you. It usually works out.

What if thousands of deals were waiting for you?

Black Friday is here at Best Buy, where you'll find new door busters and big savings.

But hurry.

Black Friday deals end Saturday, November 29th. Shop now at BestBuy.com, best Buy.

Imagine that you're basking on a beach in the Bahamas. Now you're journeying through the jade forests of Japan. Now you're there for your alma mater's epic win. And now you're awake. Womp, womp. Which means it was all a dream. But with millions of incredible deals on Priceline, those travel dreams can be a reality. Download the Priceline app today, and you can save up to 60% off hotels and up to 50% off flights. So don't just dream about that trip. Book it with Priceline. So if I was to do a pie chart like this of, like, how a fight works, it's like, I don't know, let's. I have an agent, and like, our agent manager fee is like 20%, right? And then you have your promotion fee or distribution. And I think of that in my business and say, like, my distribution cost me, so all my marketing people is probably like another 30%. So that's. That's 50% of what I make right there. Then on top of that, because our net margins at the end are more like 40%, we get to maybe keep 40 cents of every dollar that we make. On top of that, I have administration and I have legal and all that shit on the back end. So in my world, Maybe I keep 40 cents of every dollar that I Make. Not exactly for you, but theoretically, in fighting, what does that look like? Who do you have to pay? And how does that business shake out? Cause there are people like Jake Paul that are like, oh, fuck it, I'm gonna create this whole thing and I wanna own the whole pie chart, theoretically. And instead of me keeping 40%, I'm keeping 60 and they get 40.

Yeah. So I mean, we pretty much, as mixed martial artists, we're worried about two things. Your fight contract and your fights. And then endorsement deals, sponsorship deals, relationships with company. You know, sometimes that starts out as free. You know, like everybody, it starts out as free product. Then maybe it starts out, then you get a little bit of cash and then a little bit of product, and then you get more and more cash and more and more product and whatnot.

Yep.

And then sometimes you end up with, with equity in companies, whether you made. You made an investment financially or you made an investment financially and sweat equity. And then, yeah, I mean, I just pay my manager, management, if you will. They take their percentage.

Is there a company around you besides your manager? So you do.

My management has my. They're an agency at this point. You know, when we started out, it was like a skeleton crew of just, just two guys, basically. Now they got, you know, four or five people working underneath them. Someone handling travel and medical, someone handling going out and bird dog and finding deals. And so they've continued to grow, which is, you know, good for all of us because there's a bigger pool to be able to find opportunities in. So I just pay that percentage. And then. Then.

Do you have like a PR person?

I don't. I probably should at this point.

And no social media person either. That's you too?

I don't. Well, I have, I have a full time media director, so he shoots all of my content, edits all of my content. We do our podcast episodes, post it. Yeah, well, he doesn't. I do all the posting. We are in a transition right now where I've realized, hey, it's time to go a little bit harder. Throughout this year, especially leading up to this big fight, probably gonna have him take over some of it and then him post probably 50% of my content and me post the other 50 because I never wanted to relinquish all of that control because I always wanted to. Every word that was sent out to people gonna be me. It was going to be me and it was gonna be authentically me. And truthfully, what I've realized now is it still will be mine. It just won't Be me writing it right now and then posting it. It will be us actually scheduling it, and then me writing it, you know, today, and it not post for a month. But it was my words, you know, that's the content. Yeah. Or if it's a clip of a podcast or whatever, pulling out that clip and then me expanding on that, if you will, and then making sure it's just all my words that are going out to my people, who they trust. Me at this point, I think I've created a trustworthy following with a reputation of people who are totally, you know, who say, hey, I like what that guy stands for. So I want to make sure I stay true to that.

One of your big things is if you want to influence many, you have to have a. You have to cast a wide net, which is why you have this podcast that is not just about fighting. It's about wisdom and philosophy and theory and ideology. And it's actually quite profound, having listened to quite a few episodes. And so I think the other way to think about it, too, is just like, how big can you get if you're in between fights, sending out tweets, it's hard, but if you can allow other people to become the shepherds of your message, then actually you can have quite a flock, because there's not just one of you out there tending it.

Coming from that, too. I always just wanted to. I always wanted to break the mold of what people thought a fighter was. You know, you think fighter, okay. You're like, okay, he looks like this and he acts like this, and he, you know, he lives his life a certain way. Yeah, exactly. Lives his life a certain way. And it's like, I've always wanted to break the mold. I always wanted that interaction of, holy cow. Like, you're like a normal guy. This is. It's not exactly what I thought a fighter was. And it's like, well, not all of us are like that, but that's how I am. And maybe I fight in a cage for a living, but, you know, it's not the most important thing about me. So I, you know, that's why my podcast called Walk on Wisdom. It's not, you know, MMA wisdom or, you know, and we talk about mixed martial arts here and there. There. We'll take only MMA questions from our viewers, and then we'll make them into MMA episodes. But so far, we've only done maybe one or two actual MMA episodes, and a lot of them are just, hey, I'm going through this right now, or, hey, I'm Struggling with this or, hey, this, you know, my girlfriend broke up with me or whatever it might be. I'm going through this transition, and then I just sit there and I always start the podcast with, hey, I am by no means an expert in anything, but I've been around the world a couple times and experienced a lot of great things. And. And here's what I have to say about it.

I love that. Let's talk business again for a second. So a lot of people have built giant empires with audiences like yours. I mean, not to use McGregor, but you do have this fight coming up with him, but he's sold his tiny little Whiskey Company for 500 million bucks. Right? You know, we've had the Rock. Not quite a fighter in the exact sense, but, you know, sell his or not sell his, grow his to be worth, I think, close to now a billion dollars. Right? What do you see for you? Do you want a business empire? And if so, what would it be?

Of, you know, right now, focusing on this fight, building my platform, and then continuing to rub elbows with, you know, like, the guys we have here and doing business with them, doing good business with good people, whether it be real estate, whether it be in actual businesses like Cram, having my fitness app. Cause ultimately for me, it's always about the people behind the product, if you will. Valuing the people over profit, valuing my voice going out to people and making them feel something, you know, I don't. What I want most when I'm fighting is to make people feel something, make them feel something about their life, make them feel something about what they're going through, make them feel something about what they can accomplish. If a small guy from a small town who was taught to do small things, little old me can do it and somehow end up on that big stage was so kind of. And I want them to feel that. So making investments in real estate into companies, building my platform. I'd like to speak on stages and do big events and really get that one on one connection like we have here at Operation Blackside. I mean, the. The people that we have here, and they're all successful in their own right. You know, they all have businesses and they're entrepreneurs or they're all doing awesome things, but to get this opportunity to. To hang out with them. We just got done with lunch and sitting there at a picnic table talking to a couple business owners. Andy's from Madison, Alabama, Joe is from Cincinnati, or where, you know, you're just getting to meet all these people. I think there could be A product or two in there. I think Cram is going to crush it. You know, I'm excited about that.

Let's talk about that one a little bit because that's a pretty cool product. So I looked it up. It's Cram, PB and J replacements, sort of like. What is that other one? It's like uncrustables or something. Crustable.

Yeah, uncrustables being around forever, but lots.

Of processed stuff in there, basically sugar and additives as opposed to this really clean product. So you are one of the backers of it. Why did you choose like a PB&J and why that company?

Well, ultimately it goes back to the people. Yeah, those two, Austin and Ruth. It's a mother and a son who started it out of Colfax, California, kind of Northern California. It took me a couple conversations to realize, okay, I believe in these people. And then also you try the product. It's absolutely delicious for its nutrition profile and how nutritionally sound it is and nutritionally dense it is, how healthy it is for you. The fact that it also tastes good was enough for me because obviously, like you said, uncrustable. It's been around forever. Owned by Smuckers, tons of added sugar, bleached white flour, bread. Yeah, all of these different things. Seed oil after seed oil after seed oil. We have no seed oils. The preservatives were actually. It's a natural preservative. We're nationwide in sprouts. There's no sugar added, 19 grams of protein in our B, 16 grams of protein in our OG and we're working on some research and development right now for whether it be an almond, you know, kind of an almond butter because some people are allergic to peanuts or, you know, tree nuts. And there's all these different things and they're forward thinking like that. They want to have numerous products on the market by, you know, by the end of this year and then next year.

Is it profitable yet?

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

So.

But ultimately it's the people behind it and they're just. They're awesome. And. And we just continue to keep on connecting the dots between all kinds of different people. And I think cram's gonna do very well.

So I've found that being married and having a lot going on, having a big platform, being relatively successful maybe, or just being married in general can be really hard. And so, you know, my husband and I do this thing called team every day. I would say we do it 60% of the time where in the evening we get together and we have this small little sort of framework that we take each other through so that we're touching base on some of the stuff that's bothering us through the day, maybe with each other or in life in general. Also just things that we appreciate about one another. And it's become a ritual for us. That's helpful for you and your wife. Is there anything that you do habitually or a framework that you use to stay sane amidst the chaos habitually?

Not all the time, but we have tried to be intentional about. Similar to what you said, actually sitting down and, and going through our schedule because we don't like surprises. Nobody likes surprises in general. I mean, some people can live like that. But whenever you live a life like ours where she's got a full time job, she's a career woman, we got our two children, we got me and all the craziness that I'm doing as well, life can also sometimes happen so fast that you realize, holy cow, I didn't realize what was coming up. We didn't realize we had that. And then all of a sudden what you thought was going to be kind of a down week to be able to kind of hang out and get back to neutral turns into a very chaotic week. So us actually planning and this was a huge step for me when we. It was kind of a beautiful opposite ends of the spectrum. My wife was a big. So she was in kind of medicine where it's just like very binary, very black and white. Everything was kind of planned out. You know, you go to school and then you get your degree and then you go and you get your job and then you work your hours and you kind of. That's medicine, right? Whereas mine is, I don't know if I'm going to make $0 for the next three months or I can make a million dollars in the next month. I don't know. You know, I might fight next week, I might fight a year from now, you know. So she came from this, hey, I like to have everything planned out. And I. And I Came from like a, I can't plan anything out because I don't know what the heck is going to happen. So she's become more towards the center and I've gotten better at planning things as well. So for us actually making sure that we have things on the calendar, me being more proactive where I wasn't thinking as much about how it affected the entire family or, or us or her career, and her career is extremely hectic right now as well. Going off of that, obviously that's more kind of habitual or tactical. But then an overarching theme for us is me making sure that even when I've had the success that I've had and she hasn't needed to work in years, she wants to work and she enjoys work and she gets value out of work. She gets purpose out of work. She has arguably works more now than she did when we first got together. And she needs to work. She doesn't need to work even half as much as she needed to back in the day when we first got together, but she probably works more now and makes more now and provides more now than she ever has. And I've always gave her that ability to do so and she needed that. A lot of guys did not understand her. They didn't understand that she was married to medicine. They didn't. And they didn't understand that, oh well, if she doesn't text back in an hour or two hours or call back is because she was doing a sterile procedure in the emergency room and it became this personal thing. And for me, thank God, she came into my life at the right time where I was very secure in myself and I was in love with mixed martial arts and she was in love with medicine and our roads converged together. So me just making sure I always give her the leeway to be her own person, pursue her own thing. She never wanted to be a mixed martial artist wife or a professional athlete's wife. She never wanted to be a stay at home mom. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's some of the hardest work that you can ever do. But ultimately she knows what she wants to do. And I've always given her the leeway, the permission to do those things. And in turn, I get permission to do all the crazy things that I'm doing and pursue the crazy things that I'm doing. And so I think that love and that mutual respect pays so many dividends day after day, season after season, in the tough times, in the easy times, and every time in between, because we truly are so equally yoked when it comes to that.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I think the world right now is having this weird mix up about genders and femininity and masculinity and in so many different ways that I try to largely not pay attention to. But one thing that I've found is because I've been a career person for a long time, is that it does seem today like you need a man. If you're gonna have a career and you're gonna be kind of a woman who's gonna be relatively forceful or in her masculine a lot. However the hippies like to say it in Austin, then you basically do need this man that's really confident in that. And you know, my husband, being in his background, he could care less. He's like the least motivated by money human I've ever met in my life. He just does not let what society says define, like should define him. Define him as he will walk around in mandals and jorts and a Hawaiian button down and he will be the baddest dude in the room and will show it to nobody. He could give a fuck. And I think it's really rare, but it's really powerful for people to hear men like you say that. Because there's this one side which is like, we were coming to this event and one of our team members, friends, we were looking at Operation Black site and I was like, tell us ideas, questions, what should we do to film here? And they didn't know me, obviously, and they didn't know who I was married to, but they were like, why are you going to an event that is focused on toxic masculinity? And why would you support that? And I like chuckled on the inside because I'm like, if this is toxic masculinity, we're in trouble. This is just humans being hard to kill, which really actually has nothing to do with whether they have a penis or a vagina. Just tends to be a good idea generally. But I wonder what your thoughts are on one. This idea of if you're tough and you're hard, you're a toxic dude. Have people said that to you? And do you have feelings on that one way or the other?

I've been called that or accused of that, or saying that I'm perpetuating that narrative. But toxic masculinity is. It's a real thing. There's masculinity or there are men who are toxic, but it isn't because of the way that God created a man. It's because of the societal pressures, the box that we put ourselves in, the literal chain and collars that we put around our neck, and we're being held back, or we're being pushed into the corner, or we're being told that we can't do this or being told that we should do that. And we're being pulled in so many different ways. And what it means, the definition of what it means to be a man has continued. It's never changed. Philosophically, it never should have changed, but societally, it has continued to change. And even going back to my wife.

The.

Harder I work, the more purpose driven I am, the more a little bit kind of off my rocker, blonde blinders on going towards my purpose. What I need to go to perform, to be who I need to be, ultimately makes me the best husband I can possibly be, the best lover I can possibly be, the softer I can possibly be. Because you lose that softness when you don't have that hard. You really do. And then it just becomes this facade of being a tough guy, the facade of being equipped, the facade of being a real man. No person or no man who engages in those kinds of activities or actions that could be deemed toxic masculinity in its truest form is an actual, real man. They are a small child with deep, deep wounds. And they never truly grew up. They never truly grew into the man that God created them to be. And a lot of times, it's not their fault. It could be their parents. It could be the things that have happened to them in the past, the seasons that they have gone through, that has just turned them into who they are in a negative way. But I think ultimately being able to protect yourself, protect your family, stand up for your family, provide for your family, having a battle to fight and adventure to have and a beauty to win is what makes a man a man. And that is the healthiest way and the healthiest thing on the planet. And it is interesting. I mean, yeah, I fight in a cage for a living. I try to knock people out, I try to choke them out. I fight them, I try to make them bleed. Ultimately, if I am impacting people, reaching people, making people feel something, inspiring and motivating people through the way that I'm living my life, life and through my performances, it's ultimately me pursuing my passion and fulfilling my purpose, which then in turn makes it vastly more hard for me to actually be toxically masculine, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I've never liked the term much. I think it's so misleading. I Think there's just toxic. There are women who are toxic feminists.

If there's toxic masculinity, then there's definitely toxic feminine, toxic femininity. And truthfully, if there was a definition, I would say, okay, there's definitely a small subsect of people who are fit that mold, if you will.

Yeah, I think if, like, AOC and Andrew Tate had a baby, we would just have the two of those, like, all together, you know, just both sides to kind of. The problem is, again, in this world of social media, the extremes get all the views, right? I mean, we see it all the time. It's so fascinating on YouTube and everywhere else. But if I say something like toxic masculinity or if I say something like communism on either side of the thing, you're gonna get all these views and all these whatever. And I think one thing you've done really well is you've kind of stayed out of the noise.

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

Yeah, you're all over YouTube right now. We were searching your name, and it's like, videos everywhere. We need to find a way to get you monetized on other people's stuff that they talk about. Yeah, we have a saying in contrarian thinking, which is civilize the mind, make savage the body, build the bank account. We kind of believe that you need to have financial freedom, typically before you can have physical freedom, AKA work where you want, when you want, on what you want. And then finally you could have philosophical freedom, freeing of your mind. And in a society in which most people today, one out of five people will die broke, which is wild in a world where we have all this. I think one of your missions is, and where I kind of want to wrap is on that. Make savage the body. You have Walk on Fitness. You obviously are in great shape. You've got about 37 abs.

36.

Yeah, okay. I ran around there and so fitness is big for you, but obviously America needs it. We're more obese than ever. We have more chronic disease than we ever have, and we have more mental health issues than we've ever had. So why walk on Fitness? And if you could say in like three words, like, what do you think? If you were just a normal human who didn't get paid to have like 36 abs, what would you be telling them they need to do today?

You've got to start somewhere, you know, and I think that's. And truthfully, you know, obviously I've been in, you know, organized athletics since I was 13 years old, and I've now been a professional athlete for 14 years. So I get paid to be fit. You know, I get paid to work out, essentially, right. And it's so fitness is so intimidating to so many people. And they say, well, I'm overweight now or I got bad knees or, well, my mom and dad were overweight and their mom and dad were overweight. And this family tree is just a bunch of overweight people. People, you know, and that's. We tell our, we tell these stories and it's, we think I'm not going to be able to see the results that I want to see. So therefore I'm not going to start. I think if we wait to start whenever the conditions are perfect or we have a perfect plan or there's any kind of uncertainty whatsoever, if we wait until you have the perfect plan or it's going to be certain, you're just never, ever going to start. It's just part of it. So that's why I created Walk on Fitness. I, you know, the, the hardest part for me is the fact that I did create one that is for higher level fitness. Higher level. Yeah, higher level athletes. But our leg program, anybody can do it. Our upper body Program. Anybody can do it. My guided on camera body weight only circuits, anybody can do those. Any fitness levels, it doesn't matter if you do all the reps or you do do 100 pounds lighter than I'm doing. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing. Yeah, well, that's the biggest thing is, is here's the workout, here's the plan, it's proven to work. I've been doing it over the last 22 years as, as a professional athlete, essentially, Essentially since wrestling. These are the exercises that I've done to create this body. And the hardest part about fitness too is everyone wants, everyone wants that secret. What is the secret? What's the silver bullet? And there really isn't, besides consistently being consistent day after day, diligent in the small things. So then and only then can you have the big breakthroughs, the big success or the body that you want, the fitness that you want, which then in turn turns into mental clarity that you want, which then in turn comes and goes into body confidence, spiritual confidence, the way you carry yourself. So fitness has a way of unlocking doors that almost nothing else else can. But like you said, you're going to see aspects of it in every single aspect of your life. If you got your fitness in order, your relationships are going to thrive, your, your finances are going to thrive, your self image is going to thrive, every single aspect of your life is going to thrive. So it's, it's very easy for me to talk about it because I've seen it in my own life and I've seen it in so many other people's lives. So many success stories that we've had with Walk on fitness has been awesome. So.

Well, what I like about it too is I was in the gym the other day and there's these girls in there and they're trying to get the butt. Every girl wants a butt. So they have these little vibrating things that are connected to their butt. Have you seen this?

Oh, wow. Like electronic devices.

Yeah. Like a little electrode. Yeah. And it's hooked up to this thing. And so they're doing movements while they've got the thing hooked up. But then they've got these tiny little legs and they've got these tiny little arms and there's like no muscle there. And I think one of the cool things about walk on Fitness when I was looking at it is, you know, you want to be healthy. Yeah. Cause it looks nice, you know, when you look good naked. Like. That's right. But also there's just a longevity thing, which is super linked to athleticism. Right. And so, sure, you could hook up electrodes, you can do a Brazilian butt lift. You could take this fucking drug that everybody's taking because the Kardashians took it. But at the end of the day, you might look good, but you're actually not doing so great.

You're not healthy.

Right.

You're not healthy.

And I think one of the few things people don't realize about MMA is it's just all out athleticism. Like, you don't really care about the muscles, though you do have to wear the underwear in the ring, which. Do you ever do? You get nervous when you walk out in the underwear. You're not thinking about the underwear.

No, I've been wearing. I've been wearing a singlet. You know what a wrestling singlet is? A wrestling. Like, it looks, you know, like a leotard.

Look at that.

I mean, I've been wearing that since I was 13, 14 years old. So it's like, well, so do you.

Think you look good in it? You put it on, you're like, check out that.

I usually check myself out a little bit. Like, okay, butt's looking good. Okay, suck it in a little bit now. No, but you would think, though. I mean, you have millions of people watching, you're like, well, hopefully these shorts don't have a wardrobe malfunction. But. But I've gotten so used to it. It's just like, you know, I'm used to wearing very minimal clothes in front of a lot of people, so I feel that you're.

Yeah, it's like a bikini. Before you get your ass kicked.

Exactly.

Before you kick somebody else's ass.

Yes. But, but like you said, too, I mean, that the, the fitness aspect of it. Yeah. I mean, people. And even though we talk about the little. The butt electrodes and whatever, at least they're doing something, you know, that's, you know, I guess I would, I would only say that at least they're doing something. It's not what I would do. If you're only like, hey, here's my entire body. I only want this muscle group to be good, hard, big, whatever, whatever it is.

Juicy.

Juicy, yeah, whatever the kids are saying. Juicy. But so it's. Yeah. I mean, ultimately too, from head to toe, are you being more proficient to be able to go throughout life and not create injuries and be able to provide for your family and be able to not fall down a set of stairs because you can't catch yourself? Because you're overweight or your muscles don't fire, you know, the amount of people who are walking around, but they're not really walking the way we were created to walk. They're just. They're just moving forward and they slip on one little crack, they fall, they break a bone and can't get up. Yeah. You can't provide for your family, you know, especially. Especially men, you know, I mean, that's mainly my audience, you know, Take care of yourself, so then you can really take care of those that you love.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, Jordan Peterson, right? Like, he was, he was pretty overweight, wasn't known anywhere internationally. His daughter got him on a pretty crazy diet and he started working out. Now the dude doesn't shut up. He's all over the place. Big platform, you know, So I do think you're right. Well, this was awesome. You're the man. I'm excited to see you in multiple different ways on the Ultimate Fighter and then also your fight with McGregor. I think it's just really cool to see a very tough dude show a very soft and theoretical side. So I'm stoked to see you crush some skulls.

Thank you. I will. I'll keep doing it.

A message from McAfee.

Wondering why the post office is texting.

You or why you owe thousands of dollars in toll fees because someone's trying to scam you. The good news, McAfee can help. With McAfee's award winning scam detection. It's easy to tell what's real and what's fake over text in your inbox and online. If you if they're fa, you want a free gift.

Seriously, if they're faking it, they're not making it pass to us.

Get award winning scam detection today. McAfee.com KeepItReal with Venmo Stash.

A taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more. Pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with stash. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me stash terms.

Chandler's the man. Let's get right into the deal of the week. So I became friends with Mike and we went back and forth on Instagram. And I was looking at his comment section and holy hell, first of all, do not do that. It's crazy. And then which got me to this quote from his potential competitor. This week, they love you. Next week, they hate you. Just be sure you get paid both weeks. Conor McGregor, since fighting fans are so brutal, how do fighters make money? To counter that, a class action lawsuit against the USC kind of gave us some insight into how fighters make money and what they have to do to get clever with some of the stuff that I call the core satellite model. So making money fighting, yes, but mostly surrounding fighting. So, Rachel, you did a bunch of research on how much they make per fight. What did you find out?

So the TLDR is that fighters like Conor McGregor, Anderson Silva, and Jon Jones earned about 2 million to $7 million per fight from 2011 to 2016, which.

Seems like a lot, right?

To me. I mean, I don't watch a lot, but I know after researching that this is. This is nothing.

Yeah. What's crazy is how much smaller of a percentage they earn than the other US Sports leagues. So we were looking at the numbers. UFC revenue split versus the other US leagues. MBA all the way to MLB are somewhere between 51 and 45%. UFC is 13 to 14%.

Nice job to get your face smashed in, you know, like, oh, man, I know.

So the fighters have to actually get really clever with their core satellite model, basically. And I think McGregor is a really good example of this. So let's talk about how much money McGregor made and break down some of the numbers. Okay, so. So as far as we can figure out, when McGregor made his UFC debut in like 2013, he basically cashed a welfare check on the way to the airport and won in 67 seconds, which is awesome. So he was paid 16k for his first fight, 8k to show another 8k if he won, and then a big bonus if he hit a KO or a knockout. So McGregor also gets paid five to $10 million annually off of endorsements, but his real money is in, like the whiskey company proper McGregor fast, the sport agency, the Irish stout. And that's what ultimately made him, I think, the highest paid athlete ever. So we were looking at the numbers for Proper 12. Basically, the whiskey company offered McGregor a cash based sponsorship deal in 2016. But McGregor was smart and his manager, whose name is Audie I hope I'm not butchering that, decided to partner up with them because he realized the power of a spirits business. Blasted behind 55 million social media followers with McGregor so Proper 12 would then go on to sell 200,000 cases in its first six months on the market. And they later sold their 51% stake in the business for about out 600 million bucks, which I thought was wild. And that's how he's made $650 million. But if you think about the part that's crazy is he only made only. But he made 50 million from the fighting and 600 million from the other things.

I do want to point out that, like, with a lot of athletes, it is really difficult to see how much they're getting paid and how much money that they're making in sponsorships. So I'd be interested to know a financial breakdown of how much she makes right now.

Yeah, there's a. There's a guy I follow on Twitter that I really like, his brother Anthony Pompliano. His brother Joe Pompliano does a ton of these threads.

Yeah, the Pomp brothers.

Yeah, you know those guys. Yeah. So, anyway, Joe has great breakdowns of this, if you want more detail. I think the overarching thing here that's interesting is, you know, no matter what business that you're in, you can always have a bigger solar system than you can have a single planet. And so that's why I always think about the core of what you do. You know, let's say you're an actor. You get paid to act in movies, but what's the solar system or the satellites that you can launch all around it that can make you more money? And I think Connor's a perfect example of that. Also, Mike's the man. And Mike has launched a healthy PB&J company. Yeah, that I tried. That was actually delicious. And then he also now has a tequila company called Hiatus. So I think a lot of these athletes are realizing they can't make all the money in the sport. Plus, you know, you make a ton of money. But how many of these guys go broke because their career is not very long, and once they stop playing, they stop earning? Like, you can only take somebody hits the face before you got to retire.

You know, that kind of reminds me of friend of the podcast, Brian Johnson, productizing himself. Just really interesting how we're starting to see the rise, like, across industries, not just sports, of people really diving into, how can I make money off of my likeness to, like, the nth degree? Because I will not in Brian's case, I'm sure he. There's only so much, like, YouTube videos of his life that he wants to do forever and ever.

I Cannot relate.

You're like, keep me on this, baby. But, like, doing something like creating a product, like, I saw he had olive oil. That makes total sense. You know what I mean? Like, productizing something using your likeness, but maybe not having to play the game, as one would say, I guess forever.

Yeah. It goes back to even the name of this podcast, the Big Deal. It's like, we see all the tiny deals running around us, but we miss the big deal. And I think about that often. About what game are we playing? Do we actually play the right game? And are the deals in front of us the ones that we should take? And I think breaking down examples from athletes and billionaires and big deal makers teaches us how to apply it in our own life, which is really, really cool. I mean, college athletes are going to be able to do this soon because they're actually going to be able to make some money, and they're going to have to be smart about the way that they do it and become independent centers of gravity as opposed to just athletes.

How much does the women's basketball players making in college? That's what I want to know. I feel like I've been seeing a lot of. As somebody that does not watch sports at all. It's not about women's basketball. That Pump Brothers giving you guys content ideas?

Well, I'm not sure anybody's really wondering how much the women's basketball players make.

Dude, they're bringing in eyeballs.

Are they?

Yeah, they're bringing in crazy eyeballs. Oh, my gosh. What's that one girl's name that's a powerhouse? Caitlin Clark.

What's she doing?

She's just killing it in the basketball world. And she's like, I have seen her now. Like, Dave Portnoy talked about her on BFF podcast.

Like, I know you've made it.

Yeah, yeah. But I want to know how much money that girl's making on brand deals. Cannot be a little amount that's good for her.

She should definitely grab that money while she's got it.

Yeah, she wants to come on the.

Podcast, tell us how much you make.

Caitlin, come on.

We'll ask you all the questions that you wish nobody had ever asked you.

We'll make it super uncomfortable. It'll be great.

Okay, I want to get into CEO story time a little bit, because there were some studies that totally blew my mind. So let's get into that really quick. So one of my favorite lines from Mike Chandler was this one that he said, which is, I don't take advice from my Doubts. And he's a machine, like, never misses a workout, runs multiple companies. Killer dad, hard. So I wondered why, and it's something I see a lot with MMA guys, mixed martial artist guys. And here's something I thought was fascinating that I think you're gonna like. The statistic. This statistic blew my mind. And it goes back to doing things that help you increase your self control as much as humanly possible. Why?

Why?

There's a study across hundreds of boys who did jiu jitsu and a control group for those who didn't. The kids who did jiu jitsu for just one to three times a week for 45 minutes on average, increased their self control by double digits versus their peers. They stopped being easily distracted. They focused more. They did what needed to be done, or what's called inhibitory control. In a world constantly trying to distract us, apparently you do more bjj, you can be more disciplined and hard to kill. Kill. So interesting. And also why that matters, I think is because the more self control or discipline you have, it turns out, the more likely you are to be successful according to most of the data. So maybe the thing to take away is that we put our kids in bjj.

I know it shows discipline. I'm just so scared of putting a kid in fighting.

Would you put a kid in football?

No.

Oh, yeah, I get that.

I do think it shows discipline though. Like, I see what you're saying.

I think that's normal. I have a good girlfriend that, that put her kids in fighting and she had the most incredible experience. So they're on the mats. And if you've ever been around little boys, they're crazy.

Yeah.

So he's like 8 years old or something like that, 10 years old, and he's on the mat doing great. Then he comes to his mom and he kind of is giving his mom a hard time, and he sort of like, you know, kind of like pushes his mom a little bit like little kids do, you know, and she chastises him. And the instructor sees it and looks over at the kid and calls him over and says, what is your mom? He goes, family. What do we never do to family? Hit our family. What do we do with our family? We protect our family. Aw. And then he goes, if you ever do that again, and I ever see that again, you are not allowed back on this mat. And she's like, it was revelatory. She's like, that kid never messed up again and never, never acted out. Because as a mom, at least from what I can Hear my parents tell me, you can tell your kids things until they're blue in the face, but hearing it from an outside influence and one of respect is something totally different. So I think the world would be a better place if more people learned what it felt like to get hit and if words had consequences. Yeah.

As I say this though out loud, I guess the thing I'm most worried about is I don't wanna have a kid with some CTE issue. So I guess that's one thing. I guess if there's not an issue with concussion central happening. I was in kung fu and so were all my siblings. My shout out Sifu, Jamie, he came to my birthday, I think up until I was like 21. Yeah. And when my dad was deployed was somebody that really came in to our lives and was a great person. So I guess we had a really good experience with it and my brothers definitely did. And I saw this quote once and I'm totally going to butcher it, but it was something like uncoachable kids make unmanageable adults. And if you see your kid kind of getting coached on the sidelines, that might be really difficult for you as a parent. But honestly, it's probably going to work out pretty well for them in the end. Just moving on into the workspace as an adult and that I do think that's an interesting perspective.

I mean, I can understand why you wouldn't want to put your kid in MMA. Getting kickboxed, something like Conor McGregor style, Brazilian Jiu jitsu is really wrestling. So the likelihood of that, that's pretty small is my understanding. But where I want to end here for everyone listening is so Mike Chandler had this quote that I loved that I want to leave you guys with my friends and it's. I don't want to just be a great fighter, but also be a great man. And I think you can become a great man by first being a great fighter. I think this is something to ruminate on and to think about. Can all of us learn a little bit more about how to take a punch to the face and the consequences of running our mouth from people who know how to punch faces. So thanks for being here. Thanks for being you. A builder in a world of consumers, a doer. I see you and I think you are a big deal. See you next time.

That I have it, you know that.

I got it no need to look all in a bag stunning like this.

Cuz I work so hard I'm the.

Best I only speak facts if I say that I have it you know that. I got it.

No need to look all in a bag.