Dana White on the early days of grinding 16-hour workdays and six-day weeks to outrun competitors. The intensity taught his team what rapid growth costs: families suffered, finances strained, but people who stayed got locked in and performance shot up. He calls it fun and formative, the price of building something.
Chapters
It's when you come out of the business and get on top of the business that you actually see what scale really can look like. You first have to learn that. So we're scaling with what we know how to do, like just beating the clock, 16-hour days, almost like, what else can we steal from this clock, you know? And it's just— those were the most fun times when we were really like scratching and clawing and trying to figure it out, just because it was just so fun. There was so many things we didn't know. We were so locked in on production and weekly production and lead spend, and that's what it looked like. And we just had people working 6 days week and realizing the power of it and, and just what it meant to them, their, their families, their bank accounts, and the competition of it. And it was, it was fun. So I think it was more locking in on people that kind of really wanted it and just kind of helping everyone raise whatever level they could get to.