Dana White and another entrepreneur discuss building a business with a phased plan rather than copying competitors. White outlines a three-year roadmap starting with survival, while the second guest turned photography from a hobby into a career by developing a distinctive visual style. Evan Carmichael argues entrepreneurs should model successful strategies, then add their own secret sauce to stand out.
Chapters
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is: Have a game plan.
Over to you, Dana White.
The biggest mistake that everybody makes when they try to compete with us is they try to compete with us. First of all, we didn't come out yesterday and put together an organization, and now we're on Fox, and now we're on pay-per-view. Anything you do, nothing happens overnight, man. It seems that way, but it's all hard work. I have been on planes, trains, and automobiles for the last 13 years out selling the sport, getting deals done, getting doors slammed in my face. You name it, it's all happened. And these guys come out and they just start throwing money around and start trying to be the UFC. Don't try to be the UFC. The first thing you have to do when you start a business is know exactly who you are and what is your game plan. You know, what are we gonna do? First year is where you're looking. What are we gonna do first year? You make it through that first year and you're still alive, all right, what's our 3-year plan? You get into your 3-year plan, and that's how you start to build your company. The last thing on— This is how stupid it is, okay? Be like we're all sitting around, this is my living room. We're all here, we're hanging out in my living room. And we're watching NASCAR, okay? Holy shit, look at all the people at NASCAR. These guys must be making tons of money. You know what we should do? We should go get a couple of their drivers and let's start our own race league and we'll compete with NASCAR. Anybody wanna jump in with me? Hell no, you don't. Sounds like the stupidest idea ever. But people think they can do it with the UFC. UFC's been around for 20 years. 20 years. In this November, it'll be 13 years for us. And you think you're gonna just dive right in and start throwing money around? You will go out of business so fast.
So what do you think?
Yeah, I think that's a really great topic. And, you know, I remember in my life when I decided to go pro with photography, because it was always a hobby for me, and I went pro, I had a game plan that wasn't really a game plan. I just started shooting, and, and I, as I went on shooting it, at first I looked like everyone else. My work looked like everybody else's work. And then I started to experiment and started to do stuff that made me really happy and was really interesting and cool to me. So my pictures got cooler and more different and weirder and more colorful and more surreal than what was normal. And then I, you know, without even noticing what I've done, after about a year, I had my own unique style and people were calling me specifically to use me because I had like this unique edgy look that other guys didn't. So Have a game plan of what you want to do, but then explore to kind of find what works for you and create your own. What makes you feel good will probably be really great. Other people will connect to it. I love it.
And just to kind of riff off of that, I found a number of people now write to me and they say, "Hey Evan, there's this guy doing the same thing as you. He's doing another top 10 video, or he's using your content on his channel, and do you care?" And I get multiple emails a week from people. Like, I don't care, right? Like, I'm focused on what I'm doing, right? And I think too many entrepreneurs will often worry too much about the competition and worry too much what other people are doing, where you want to focus on your game plan, what you're great at, how you can be unique, and not spend so much time worrying about what everybody else is doing. And then the flip side of that is, as an entrepreneur, when you're trying to figure out what you're gonna do, too many people, all they do is look to copy somebody else.
Right?
Like, even this, Toronto Dance Saucer, right? We're the biggest dance school in Canada for sure, probably North America. We're bigger than all of the other dance schools in this area combined. And people look at us and be like, "Oh, I could start a dance school too. I can copy what they're doing." And, you know, what I'm worried about are the innovators, right? Like, somebody who just looks at us and tries to copy it, I don't care at all. Because you can never out-TDS TDS. You can never out-Evan Evan, right? You can't out-Rich Rich. It's just— Yeah, not possible. So I'm not worried about the imitators when people come up with new innovative ideas. And so as a startup, it's okay to model success, right? I love modeling success. Look to strategies that are working, but then you have to find a way to make them your own. You got to make them unique. You got to add your own little secret sauce to it so that people then do call you. They don't just see you as an imitator of somebody else.
Be original.
Be original. Have a game plan. Have a game plan to be original. That's right. I like it. So the question of the day today is What gets you really excited?
What gets you up motivated to do? Huh?
I like it. Leave it in the comments below. We'll join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and we'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
