My First Million: Ariel Helwani Is Building His Own ESPN. He Already Has 1m+ Followers. He Tells Us How.

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app

you listen to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

I knew he wanted me out.

He wanted me out from before I even got there.

From the moment the news came out that I was signing, he was trying to get me to not even

have day one at ESPN.

Just being 100% honest, I'm a petty guy that was a part of me that almost wanted to stay

in spite of him.

I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to, I put my all in

it like no days off on a road, let's travel, never looking back.

All right.

We just had Ariel on the podcast, Ariel Hoani.

If you guys don't listen to, or you don't pay attention to UFC, Ariel Hoani is kind

of like the number one journalist reporter.

He's also at this point become like a character of the show, of the UFC show.

If you don't listen to UFC, it's almost hard to explain, but he's a very big deal.

He recently went independent and started his own business where he's like the, the independent

reporter and he's built probably a really good business.

And so that's how we had him on.

We just finished the episode.

Now we're kind of doing a really quick recap.

I thought it was amazing.

I could have talked to him for another few hours.

He's great.

I loved, I loved, like, you know, when the guests come on, there's like the pre-show,

then there's the show, there's a post or whatever and it's amazing.

You can really get a feel for people and he just is a good, he's a good dude and he's

a good hang, meaning like he was funny.

He was fun.

He knew how to talk.

Obviously he's a talker.

He's a professional talker.

So I knew he would tell, tell good stories and be able to explain things well.

I love the guy.

I only like a more now that I know me too, Ben, you're, you're not a UFC guy.

I don't think you are.

What did you think as a non UFC person?

Did you understand how epic he is?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think he could tell how excited you were, Sam.

Yeah.

I was like fumbling my words.

Yeah.

I mean, but I watch enough ESPN to kind of know what a big deal he is kind of in his

world and he was just, he was just so good.

And he was like that for, for people who, who obviously can't see behind the scenes,

like there was no difference between Ariel from like when we hit stop on the recording

to when we hit start.

Pre-recording.

Like he's just, he is that guy.

Right.

And I think that's why he's so good.

It's just like, that is who he really is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what do we talk about?

We talked about a couple of things.

How we got his start and there's a bunch of lessons in there, right?

Like not everybody is going to be trying to be an MMA journalist, but how he went niche

and went to MMA instead of, you know, he's a basketball fan.

He could have gone into basketball broadcasting.

So why he picked a niche and what he recommends to people who messaged him every day saying,

how, how do I get into the biz?

I want to be the next Stephen A Smith, whatever.

So we had good advice on picking a niche, betting on yourself.

So, you know, he left, he turned down his extension offer from ESPN and left to go do

his own thing.

That Fox, he left at Spike, he left because he each time has been betting on himself.

So I love that.

That's kind of the entrepreneur's mindset, right?

It's to bet on yourself.

And he clearly has high anxiety.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.