#91 with Ben Askren - The UFC Star Turned Crypto Investor

what's up everyone this is a special episode with ben aspirin if you don't know who ben aspirin is he is one of the most famous mma fighters in the world he was an a limp wrestler he was in u he's got his own podcast podcasts his so doing a whole bunch of stuff around launching a course he's doing some cool stuff he's one of the more interesting guys to talk to he got famous because he was great in kind of his interviews during the u and so me and sam we're big mma and u seen nerds and we we love this stuff so we were we were pumped you can probably hear in our voice during the interview we were pumped for this one you know i i got up early i did some research i i showered i i was i was excited for this we've had billionaires on here but i was way more excited to talk to ben aspirin and so hope you guys enjoy we talk a little bit about dealing with fear i mean these guys they walk out in their underwear to fight another person who they've been talking trash to for the last two months with millions of dollars on the line millions of people watching in a stadium full of people just watching them sort of hand hand combat so it's a it's a incredibly intense pressure that very few people get to experience so we ask ben about how do they deal with for how do you get good at the active competition what is he doing post career like what does an athlete do how do they leverage their brand to build a business afterwards and then he's also kinda active in the crypto space so we talk a little bit about cryptocurrencies at the at the very end but i hope you guys enjoy this interview anytime we just get a cool guest on who is somebody who's they're kind of world class at whatever they do we're gonna jump on that opportunity so this is no different enjoy this episode with ben as guys we have ben as today if you're a u fan which sean and i both are and bra is as well then you absolutely know who he is but if you're not a fan i'm gonna get background here so i so ben ben you went to the you went to the olympics right yep two thousand eight so ben was an olympic wrestler he was famous in my home state of missouri as a a wrestler even when was in high school everyone talked about the ask family and them being wrestlers and he eventually went to a variety of different i guess you'd could describe him to non fans leagues in asia yeah championships chips i think bell as well yeah yeah so i i fought mainly well i so i bought my first three fights in small motions then i fought bell bella over a four years and then i fought in one championship for four years i retired at the end of my run with one championship and then i un retired when i traded e yeah so we came to the seat about two years ago and it was a big deal ben was on joe rogan and everyone said that this was the guy that wasn't in the usc and he was the best guy that wasn't in the and what the hell isn't in the usc and so we came to u usc and caused a whole bunch of ru which we'll get into and mh he he's also kind of like a big deal in the crypto space and he's kind of like a oh a big deal in like stoic he he's just kind of like a weird interesting person in and i met ben about six or something months ago on twitter we just became buddies on twitter than then we started talking and ben is thinking about launching a course and i've just been giving him feedback and yes we just been shit a shit and we just said you know ben come on the podcast so that's kinda how we how we kinda got to where we are yeah so yeah my life has been i've i have done a lot of things besides fighting i have a lot going on right now podcasting my brother and i own five wrestling aca we own a couple of the buildings so i i've got my hand in a a wide variety of things i'm really interested in you know social media content creation that type of thing really really interest me a lot and obviously you know i got interested in business land it's took zero business classes but obviously when say started business in twenty eleven with aws i got more interested now it's became like a fascination to me know actually i tell my wife so when i was younger i would literally work out like every single day and if i went on vacation and i didn't have my work i'd start getting a little nutty and she'd be pro you need to go workout like you know would leave go do something and now it's it's kinda upside like this obsession over business and finance because and i feel like i've you know twelve years fifteen years like to the party because i didn't do any of in college and so i feel like now i'm just trying to rapidly absorb as much as i can do understand more and more about business finance how and the ways the world really works so if you were like black belt level i know there's not black belt in wrestling but if you were like black belt level at wrestling which is essentially you're olympic wrestler you kind of invented your drone brand wrestling really yes you had mastery in that now with you know your post career i i think you retired was it just a year ago like it's not it was let last november so less than a year less than a year where do you say you're at on the business side of things well so we we started our business twenty eleven my brother and i did with high school wrestling coach at that point in time i wasn't even i didn't even have the intention of working there i was actually living in arizona and when when we decided to open the first one there is a good mma gym here called ru sport and so i decided to move back in the summer of two thousand eleven i was like three or four months after the gym opened and you know what it's just fun it's fun to be there i love coaching wrestling i love working with the kids and and then on top of that the business sites business side started being fun for me also so we opened up gym number two in twenty thirteen and gym number three in twenty seventeen and then we just obviously did this spring has been real by coronavirus but we've essentially opened up jim four and gym five this spring gym five is kinda gonna come online in like a month or two but you know it's it's getting there it's been slowed down by corona so yeah so the business side's been fun and then obviously i've i've kind of mentioned in into other aspects of business also so i don't know we'll say purple belt made maybe blue bell purple bell i think think learning they're like a really good blue belt it's just you gotta put in that time to get the purple yeah so absolutely when you went into u no this is not a knockout at you but i would say you were probably the least athletic great mma fighter would you would you agree with that yeah i mean for for elite level wrestling or elite level mixed martial arts for your traditional athletic abilities you know strength speed etcetera etcetera i think i would scored very very low compared to most of my peers i do think i have some one some things that are kind of a little harder to see you know one of them that a lot of people talk about prop reception like understanding where your body is in space and wrestling specifically i think that is huge and whether i came out of the womb like that or whether i learned that from being on the map just for many many many hours that's one thing with that something and then i have this really weird like isometric strength and again i think that's probably been developed through wrestling but i can just see that's like grip strength like squeezing holding yes i've seen a video of you how much almost like if it was doctor i know is a viral video but there's not internet it's if you haven't seen this you probably haven't but go look it up if you're listening to this ben ash youtube watermelon and just he's squeezing a watermelon like not with any like big buildup you're just holding it and then you start to squeeze and then you just crush two watermelon yes simultaneously which is kind of insane and ben most people can't do that i most even even most mma wrestlers couldn't do that correct they could they can know i actually saw so what there was a really good wrestler i mean we're trying multi i think a three ten national champion and he did want it i think it was like four to july or it was somewhere around there and so i saw do one i said f that i'm i'm gonna buy two i'm two and i did two and you know i thought i was i had the social media following so you know my my video went went quite viral but yeah i've done it a few other times since then when people have challenged me to back it up because they you know they thought i was lying or being fraudulent so they'll bring a watermelon to squeeze it and i've popped it a few more times and just to give the listener even more perspective ben you like i i in the in s the world that sean and i in the usc world you're a huge deal so how can i get perspective to the to the listener so you have what maybe two million social followers i know man way over me i have i'm at i'm at three twenty five on twitter and i'm like little over six hundred on instagram so yeah okay so a million that's fair so i admit my my it's my twitter following is fairly rapid i i get quite a bit of interaction i have a lot of fun i i love the twitter medium i don't really love facebook or instagram or i don't do snapchat at all but i love like the witness and you know the what they i love about twitter is the egalitarian any anyone can speak anyone can in a conversation and for words worth i think you can find out where the people are full of shit and whether they're smart pretty damn quickly right yeah it's it's better bet better background check than anything else just go scrolling through the timeline and you know i'm glad you're on the pub because there's a lot of great like let's say athletes or especially e fighters that me and sam would be big fans of but i wouldn't necessarily want on the podcast like okay i'd want dana on i'd want probably conor mcgregor on but that's a short list you're you're right there with it it's like cool nate diaz is a great fighter would not make for a great podcast and so well we had and and we had lance armstrong on and that he's not a fight do well he's cool he's amazing yeah he's wonderful he's he he was very real and i think for somebody like that you know we're gonna talk a little bit about kind of your one of the most infamous moments for you but like for lance he obviously has you know very polarizing part personality and i don't know if it's just because it's been many years but he just sat down and just shot the shit with no filter and people loved it and i loved it because and i don't know if he just is tired of give a fuck and he's like okay i i don't need to like are this anymore it's been ten years or whatever but that you know that was really great but i'm glad you're here because you can tell us about kind of like two different worlds right so there's the like to be a great athlete world there's the business world but there's another world which is about a year ago today and you know i'm sorry for bringing it up brian that's all good i did my hell wanna interview about it this morning yes so so i'll just put out a tweet i'll i'll read your tweet about it which was imagine the most embarrassing moment of your life getting replayed incessantly on twitter so for those who don't know about a year ago you had a big fight i was actually in the arena nice in in vegas and you were finding this guy you guys had talked a bunch of shit to each other and it was a huge build up and then the fight starts and he sprints at you you do what you do best which is you go for a a wrestling take down he does this crazy flying me and knocks you out in five seconds and it looked horrible little bit awful was like in tears when it happened i was oh my god sam was like crying i was just irritated i was in arena and so then of course because you were a high profile guy and because you talked a lot of shit beforehand you know twitter tried to give it back to you so tell tell me about like and then i and then i gave it back to twitter i i own those trouble and you did so okay so if you were gonna write you had have a very unique experience right like yeah if you were gonna sort of write the book or give the playbook on dealing with you know your worst nightmare your public public humiliation dealing with it what are the what are the different steps or different stages that you went yeah well so funny up so sam we talked about sam encouraged me to do a of course my c course that is coming out and i taped it but last monday so we're we're doing a new website for me and then we are the editing stages of the videos but i i've had this passion interest in in sports psychology for for many years and i would thought i would write a book and so it's gonna come in video format which is probably i think more twenty twenty than than writing a book right and i suck at writing so it's gonna be much easier you know we and i talk a lot about that failure but you know we can kinda circle back to lance and and this i actually said this i was really talking to arrow about this this morning i think it's one of the reasons that george is getting over so well its authenticity is highly valued and in twenty twenty where everything's on social media man it's pretty easy to figure out really quick if someone's being authentic or if they're being a fraud and you know marty the other thing who's fighting for the title walter to wait i i think you know i knew him before he was kind of a a big deal right and that person and the person that or you know who he is now is just it's just not not the same thing at all and so i think with lance you know he probably had all those years built up of having to kinda be ina and and you could tell he just like a dude that just wants abnormal and i think like you know obviously watched a dock on espn thirty or thirty is like that authenticity is just coming out and people appreciate it and and i really thought i love the doc i thought he did a great job of saying listen i f up i was bad at this person and i was bad at that person and it just felt like he was just saying like it was and peep people love that and so you know that that's for me is just like just be authentic and a and one of the biggest things i talk about in in the course coming up is that you know you don't wanna tell your ego to the outcome it and when that is the case at at least a whole bunch of bad things but that and that's my ego was tied the when they get knocked out five seconds or whether i win and then i fight for the title next i'm i'm the same dude as as before that five seconds and how many mma fights have you had i had so i i'm retired obviously i had twenty one nineteen wins two losses what was the most amount of live people at one of your fights and what was the most amount of viewers or and is there any numbers yeah the people watched that your second to last fight that one went a hundred a hundred billion yeah i so that that that is probably watch i mean a hundred billion is probably a low estimate of how many times that fm impressions yeah impressions yeah so i would say you know one championship did a great job is selling out arenas so bell tour my my last five in belt they were starting to do larger arenas it was in mexico i think it was six thousand seats it was sold out one championship every fight i fought it in one championship was sold out and then obviously u has has great crowds as well so my my last ten eleven fights were fought in front of sold arenas so ten to twenty thousand maybe and then yeah mh in the hundreds of thousands for paper views yep and then if you had an illegal streamers yeah on then we're talking a lot more than that and so yes a lot more so millions of views yes and when we talk about business a lot i we always say or i always say that launching and building shit intellectually it's not that hard but emotionally it's quite challenging to overcome like fear and i remember yeah the hustle we launched this idea asian boot camp and i was texting i think you day before i was like oh my god i'm so fucking so afraid like i'm so nervous about this and sometimes i think like i'm like well lewis and clark just traveled the country where they didn't even know where they were going over three years and they did it no idea like launching this course it's not a big deal and and then other times i'm like ben or all these other guys like go and and fight to the death potentially in front of millions of like millions of people in your underwear underwear in your underwear and i'm like i can launch a stupid freaking thing like i'm sitting at my desk and i like complain about my backyard because i get sit down all the time what's that feel like when you are preparing for something and what's does it feel like like when i was i ran track in field in college i remember like thirty minutes before race when you're just sitting down after you warm up you're like ugh i don't wanna fucking do this god this sucks what am i doing i'm quitting this my last time what like what what's that like thirty minutes in the backstage when you're just waiting yeah so i mean i i've been i guess like i fighting but wrestling you know with the wisconsin high school state chairman is fifteen thousand fans sold out so i mean i was doing that as fourteen year old the state tournament which i made the finals all four years in that's twenty thousand fans sold out every every single year and so you i don't wanna say it's normal to me but it but it kind of is at the same time and i'm doing it for all of my adult life and you know i i guess i i talk about this in the course too but finding what works best for you and for me i'm i'm an over thinker and i learned that at a really early age and i had a coach that was you know kinda gave me some insight into that because he he was a similar way and that that's the biggest thing that helped me is is i i find my zone i i take my mind off of you know whatever task is is head because you know that that thirty minutes to an hour that nothing's gonna happen you're not gonna make any better or worse you're not gonna figure out some magical thing in that in that period of times so for me it's just about staying relaxed and enjoying the moment and get getting ready to compete as hard as compete so practically how do you do that like what did you what did you list a music did you look watch a tv show did you just sleep but what did you try to do in the back before the fights i always have i always have people i enjoy with me in my corners i mean a little i i tell this because i'm like listen dude i i put my money where my mouth is i'm not just telling you this and i i'm trying to say some fluff off bullshit like i fought what nine times in asia eight times i don't know a bunch of times in asia i would fly someone there that was just my buddy to just bullshit with me in the life room because i value my mental preparation so much so it's like i'm not just telling you like this is what as you do like i spent my money i put my money in my mouth to you fly someone to asia who just just my buddy who wasn't there as a coach but that would just you know get me in the right friend of mine to compete your hype man your flavor fl did you did what was there an element of fear i mean like you're retired you don't have to be that tough anymore i wasn't jeff anymore what what was it like a like i don't wanna fuck be here i don't wanna do because like i i i listed other fighters and yeah fail and donald and the like they're like i'm gonna like they throw up ahead of times they're so fearful i don't know i've never had those feelings i you know what when i listen to people talk with that i actually think like i can't really relate to you right now like i i'm telling you guys and i'm not i'm gonna that i'm not tired of i'm trying to be tough guy i genuinely enjoyed it i i really did i mean like you know people say what do you miss since it's like there's a lot of shit i don't miss like i don't miss training but if i could like relive that preparation and walk to the cage like or you know or walk to the nc finals matt big moments like that like dude that's feelings that you you get a few times in life you know like if i could wake up and every morning while i went down to my podcast in the morning there was fucking twenty thousand people cheering i'm like oh yeah i'm gonna get it you know would be it would be exciting so for me i always felt that way about it like i always felt really positively i was enjoyed that i never had those negative feelings and i you know what i i guess i could probably have a deep conversation you know sports psychology wise some feel i i don't know i don't know necessarily what they were fearing what you know was it fear of being injured was it fear of failure like what what was the fear of that was causing those well i think it goes i think that we all hear failure be yeah the same thing is it it's more failure and then secondary in your sport is getting hurt i mean right i i mean i think it's a fear of i remember when i this is a smaller scale when i used to race in in university for track and field i was like i have just set my hopes and dreams on this outcome and if i don't break this time i am gonna be so disappointed in myself yeah same thing with business it's like i wanna i wanna be great i wanna be rich i wanna prove everyone i have what it takes and it's like if this doesn't work i'm fucked and did you have like rituals that you did beforehand so you had your buddy come the shit i think ritual are bad were i think they're i think they're very counterproductive because they they don't really provide a purpose the what the the one purpose they would somehow provide is to get yourself mentally prepared to do whatever it is that you need to do but then what if it doesn't happen right what if the you saw it needs you to come pee what if something you what if there's some way you whatever your ritual is whether there's some way that you can't execute the does that mean you can't actually compete and the answer is no that's dumb obviously you go compete but some people build those rituals up or those good luck charges up so much that it actually hurts them hurt when they're going when yeah and so it's like can't you know generally speaking i know i know where i wanna be mentally like so it's like i wanna have you know some of them i'm just gonna shoot the shit with but having like a very specific ritual or a pair of socks or right you know something like that or a specific song or something i just i think those didn't becomes a weakness yeah it becomes a weakness he has a vulnerability for sure connor has his phrase as he said superstition is a code word for fear i never heard anybody knocking super superstition you're the second person i've ever heard sort of knocking those for that same reason mh he also did something that i don't know if you've ever done it sounds like you didn't really put too much practice into this but i know before the fight with floyd they did several like simulation days where they would simulate fight day like at the same time we're gonna arrive at the front your hands wraps sit in the back do nothing come out there's a rep who you don't know and there's an opponent on the other side that you don't like and they try to simulate the feelings of that i found that very interesting because you know if i'm gonna give a big pitch to an you know investor i'm gonna go try to raise fifteen million dollars these are things you don't get a lot of reps at so you kinda have to fake those reps as best as you can and under pressure because if you just do the pitch in your head looking at your slide deck while you're sitting in your boxer in your bedroom it's not the same thing like as that so did you ever try to mimic competition in that way no i i i did i didn't but that doesn't value and so we'll go that as a i do that so i think competing is a skill competing in and of itself right so wrestling is a skill fighting is a skill but competing is a skill right it's separate skill okay a separate skill in and of itself and what do you wanna call competing or performing kinda you know same genre it's a skill and so like you know finding out that i compete best when relax like that's an important thing to find out about myself now one of the you know wrestlers are the most successful people in mix martial without a shadow of a doubt and you know part of that i think is obviously the technical part where we can control whether the fight happens but the other thing is that most wrestlers by the time they get out of college from their childhood up they'll probably have a thousand plus matches and like i said i've i was wrestling in front of fifteen thousand people at the coal center in madison when i was in high school i was competing as twenty thousand people are front twenty thousand people at the nc tournament every single year like i got those big moments i got a lot of them right and so before i ever fought before i ever stepped the cage i had i had thousands of competitions and i had we'll say hundreds of very big matches we're a box someone with a boxing base is not gonna have anywhere near that volume with or mma right mma no no t one you know all that of know you're just not going you're not gonna get that volume so yeah i mean yeah i think you're totally right is like you need to figure out how you compete or how you perform well you know you know like a speech yeah you need to put yourself in his males high pressure moments and one thing i would i would do i still i still do sometimes but i i would think i'm actually relatively good at it now when i wanna start becoming a better speaker when i started podcasting and i tell you do this all the time do instagram lives do facebook lives why because listen you you may do you have to figure out you're gonna f up and you just gotta keep on rolling you can't say no got it got it no you just gotta keep going right so you have to you have to figure out a deal with he and then also there's all idiots on the on the thing saying like extract tape you saw you know heavily you so you have to deal with the process all of that while you're going live and i think it's really really good tactic for people learn how to speak just kind of on the spot and and roll with things how have you translated this so so like i said i messaged you before we're launching something i like oh fuck this is scary how and and this is my world right building businesses how has this those reps of wrestling and fighting translated into your ability to deal with this stuff for launching businesses so you have five you have five gyms you you're a real estate guy now you're launching digital stuff how has that fear or that that ability to to handle that translated into business yeah i mean i so again i think no this is gonna be like one of my psychology slash sports psychology thoughts i think being so this i said you know wrestling the skill i think competition slash performers they think that that's the skill in himself the other thing that i think is the skill is being successful like literally understanding how to be good at something i think that is a skill and you know like i always joke with my kids about like what do you think i teach your single and and you good at one time you know like you got you have to do it many many many times and so you know there's all these tactics that go into being successful at something and so like when you start wrestling like i know i have to put a lot of time in period there's i'm not gonna go be good at real estate or content creation without putting time i will have to in fact put time in right i will have to overcome adversity i will have to be creative at time points of time right there's all these things that are fall in place me being successful i think you can use a blueprint essentially a blueprint and kinda crossed it over now are there certain tactics differently you might take it in business sure but i i think it's roughly the same from one field to tonight being successful is a skill sean have you read the book mastery by robert greene no i read not no but i read i love forty eight laws of power that was i believe read that on your recommendation yeah it was so outstanding this guy his name's robert greene i he's almost a historian slash philosopher more more so than author and he's got this wonderful book that changed my life it's called mastery he wrote forty all a power which is like a modern version of art of war and he has this book called mastery and it changed my life and it was just about that same thing of like you have to get reps in and you have to master a skill set because if you master a skill set you're not mastering that skill set you're mastering being great yeah there's a great little story it's there's a little bit long but bear with me it's good so so average person here's what the average person does average person gets excited about ra and that this is stolen from from a tony robbins sink but it's good i i remember it five years later because it was that good so average person decides they're gonna play racket ball go to the gym re check out the the equipment they start playing this is a blast or smashing the ball against the wall having a great time they go home they're like oh my god i love ra they start telling the friends how they they play ra ball they go online they order all the gear because you know if you're gonna do something better order all all the best gear right away and they go back the next day and they start doing it but they start planning to get somebody who actually knows how to play ra and all of a sudden they're not smashing the ball against the wall anymore this person's placing the ball and spots that they can't hit sometimes and this person starts getting frustrated and so a week goes by two weeks ago go by and they're just getting they're not they're not beating this person and so they're like you know what ball this is a stupid fucking sport like what box you know why don't i have to wear these goggles this racket is small it's like a children's wreck i'm gonna go play a real man's sport i'm gonna go play tennis i'm gonna get out of this spot so they get tennis same pattern happens first week is awesome they're having blast they order all the gear they look like roger federer they start playing with somebody who knows how to play tennis and all of a sudden you know they're sweating they're sliding they're hitting into the net they can't get over it and then they're like you know what this is a stupid sport why am i out here you know you know in in the sun baking around this thing and the stupid net is in my way i need a free range sport and they go to play golf and the first day they play golf they just say fuck and they did golf doesn't even give you that that initial sense and he talks about he's like there's three people in this world there's a a dabble and a dabble is gonna do exactly that they're just gonna go into each thing and they're gonna get twenty percent of the way in and then they're gonna give up when they hit at first mh and then there's the achieve or grinder and this where a lot of people land which is they're used to being successful and so they just try to grip their teeth and grind through everything and they to try to get through the pain at all times and they sort of become kind of mas about the pain and they and they're stressed the whole time so they actually calls it a stress or achieve and so they're stressed the whole time they don't enjoy it and and that's where most people even successful people will land but they no fulfillment but they do have success and in the last group which are the masters the masters enjoy it they know this is gonna take a long time which is what you said ben they know that there's this initial hype curve and then the plateau will come they always come yeah and when the plateau comes they are not surprised they're not offended they meet the plateau like an old friend and they're like it's you i i expected to see you soon there you are okay now i know how to deal with plateau and one of the big things is like dealing with plateau they're like for our podcast yeah we've grown this thing into millions of downloads in one year but now it's plateau actually and we have to figure out we can't be a surprised or upset we gotta figure out how to deal with those plateau so has that applied to you in your life yeah dealing with those plateau the i i think that i think the success is always like step step function right it's not like everyone everyone wants it to be like this they do one thing here and they one thing here what thing here hear you know what it's a a regular slope line but it's more like you do a whole bunch of work and you get nothing and then all a sudden when they boom you're up here you do a whole bunch of work do nothing boom then you're all sitting up here but you know kind of what what you're i've never heard someone kermit the way you termed it but it actually really made me think a a lot about my man some of the sales pitch my my failure course and i said what when you meet failure there's there's really three things that you can do when i talk deeply about all of them number one is dig in right so you dig in and you work hard and they like you said that is the option that most people choose because it's real relatively easy you know it's not very hard number two you could pivot and you could quit and do something else which is what you talked about in the first part yeah at dabble right and and so what's but sometimes it is good to pivot right you know talk about i've i actually bring up the netflix blockbuster story and my thing and like netflix pivoted to digital streaming at the perfect time not too late not too early just at the right time and then the third thing you you could do is innovate and you'll know innovate and pivot can kinda be confused like there is some gray area there but for me innovation it doesn't mean creating something new which you know i did wrestling right so innovation intervention could mean creating something new but it could also just mean doing something new for you right and so like i you i bring up a couple stories in in the in the course and that's like okay one at a times i had to create some new new shit right i and i did right but another time it was just like there was just this one really basic skill that i wasn't doing and i was just missing it and so for me innovating was bring that basic skill and figure out how to do it really really well innovating who i was as a wrestler and so yeah i think that's kinda like the three tactics you can take when you see failure and you know obviously if you're gonna be good at something there's gonna be kind of a combination of all three sometimes you're gonna do one sometimes you do the other sometimes you do third one right you know obviously pit pivoted can't happen too frequently or you you never get anywhere so to get to the the business stuff you you told me your goal was to be like tony robbins but for this niche like your sports yeah and tony ross supposed to say that don't know if i i don't know i said that was my goal i i don't remember how i don't memorize said might verbatim verbatim i'm sure yeah like tony robbins is freaking savage so tony robbins i think i bet you that cumulative his visit or in some i bet you his business is probably due two or three hundred million dollars a year in sales do you think so yeah fine he says that the events that he the his business due over five hundred million in sales i i don't personally believe that maybe maybe that's like same he enterprise value yeah exactly but like clearly his his core thing which is like the workshops and then his either books or audio tapes back in the day those have clearly grossed over a hundred million dollars no no doubt and he's the most he's the michael jordan of that field of self improvement so ben what what what first of all oh if you but cannot clarify dave famous honor yeah what sam what what i think i what i think i said i mean you said we were talking about you know getting into this and you know me doing this course which is you know i don't wanna to say you pushed me and but you pushed me in a good way like need i needed to kick in the ass to go do it and i you know i've been i i first i almost i i did i wrote a book with phd and sports psych in two thousand and seven just wasn't very good so right this is kind of a long time coming i was thought i was gonna get into this and i i have all these thoughts on you know success and sports psych and kinda how they tie together and and i always wanna do something in this field and i hadn't gotten there yet and i think i have lot of ideas that can help people so yes so you gave me the kick in the butt and i think i think you said something like you know what what where would you take this or what are you gonna do and it's like well i'm not sure but but you know like if i wanna do something i wanna be the best at it i'm gonna do it i'm gonna try to be the best just like everything else i've done i've done in my life you know i try to be the best wrestler i got pretty far tried to be the best mma five and i got pretty far you know i'm trying to have the best accounting system in in america we we're probably not all that far off being number one yeah you know right now so it's like when i attack something i i attack it all the way and i wanna be the best and know for i don't know what you called the life coaching performance coaching like tony robbins he is freaking outstanding so i that is kinda like what i think i was thinking sam yes it was i i was overs thing that and so i i wanna ask you like what interest you written now in the space but before that even that i wanna set the stage which is as a an mma guy like is that a good living no for me it was for for most people know i mean right i i got lucky i'm when nineteen fights i don't wanna say i lucky i was good and i you know sure some brakes came my way and i i was nineteen i didn't lose for ten years right and so i and and people enjoyed my personality so i got to end up making quite a bit of money and there is a handful of people who make quite a bit of money but you see some like mike perry who is he he's not a nobody he's a pretty damn good fight he's a fairly big name and this man's got zero dollars to his name and knows the government a whole bunch of money right so like a guy like you so let's like you're in the top one percent where you are in the top one percent i don't know how many maybe dozens or a dozen people at your level can guys and and u like you can you net pre tax a million dollars a year or seven figures a year yeah yeah there there are there are some that that can do that and there's not a not the number's not big i you know if i'm guessing twenty maybe maybe i that's this is a guess off the top of my head and obviously you can you don't can only compete for so long and it does take you a while to build up and usually you know what it's kind of like a step function like he said like once you get to a certain level they're not probably not gonna drop you back down even like you know it is gross but chuck with to ortiz when they fought this year i think they made four hundred thousand dollars or something even though they're both old and terrible now and that was it was this shame to watch him still fighting but you know one one of the things again i'm gonna go back to my course and talking about failure it's like listen you're only gonna fight for so long and one of the things i rage on these spiders they had this like burn the boat mentality it's like listen you dumbass is if you get to thirty five and you wanna retire and you have nothing to do literally you have no other skills you have nothing built up dude you're gonna have back in the cage you're gonna run out of money you're gonna get used to a certain standard of living you're also gonna have almost zero income and you're gonna end up back in the cage so that pivot move when you decide to retire fighting you have to pivot into something you can't pivot into nothing right you have to at some point decide hey i'm done with this i'm gonna do something else you know the guy i bring up this on the on the band side bj pan i love bj penn he's doing one best fighters si he went one in nine one and eight in his last nine and dana literally said bro i'm not giving you another the fight right so a guy like well let's use you for example i mean were you able to earn enough from fighting that you're like i'm set for life no heck no god no okay it was more i'd be set for like two years or a year maybe no shit only two years you think if i earn no other money whatsoever when i'm done yeah yeah yeah a couple years i mean but i you let's see i i don't live but i don't i don't live like a peasant either you know i've i live in a nice house but i you know i don't say buy like designer clothes right i would say i have i live at a fairly high standard i mean if i if i wanna to buy like in an rv and live out of rv then yeah maybe i probably would have been separate life that way negotiating with seems damn near impossible because the fighters have yeah pretty much no leverage so to give people a sense because most of people like thought athletes are rich it's like yeah if you're in the nba or the nfl even sure you hold on guys different whole situation like sixty percent of those guys go bankrupt well they go bankrupt afterwards we're talking about like get any money right the but the guys all he made it he and what i guess the thing is like you know the like the top level the top level fighters like you know the john jones and the connor and what they'll make in the millions mh and then the the sort of the middle class is way lower than the middle class of any other league and the reason why it's like structural right so first yes you have sea fighters are independent contractors they're not they're not employees or guarantee they have no guaranteed deal they only get paid if they fight and you can get hurt do you seen can offer you shitty fights that you wanna turn down and they'll say hey no problem great i offered you my fight i didn't my charge obligation you don't end enter no but you can't leave and go to another like league in most cases because they've signed you these like seven seven fight deals you gotta finish your deal in order to to leave so you haven't basically no leverage against the fc unless you're such a big name that you draw paper reviews which i think you built yourself into right you did the i never i never got paper points ever but but you had some leverage with because you were at least famous people wanted to watch you fight yeah and so even if you didn't get the points whatever deal you did negotiate was better than like the app even the average yes that's true nineteen and o fighter or whatever that means like even the average great fighter won't make the type of money you made because you built the personal brand yes that's true and was that intentional or that just right yeah i mean i always figured hey if i'm if i'm gonna do this might as well make some money doing it but you know mike perry would be and so so obviously the reason that i bought the barrel like to be a pro mma fighter both do you guys could it here here's the deal all you gotta do is is be willing to get paid to get your ass kicked right and so we're talking the bottom of the barrel the baseline salary and e is ten and ten if you get in the get in the you can get ten thousand show up you can get ten thousand new win now that that is not including anything where you pay your insurance you pay coach you pay your manager you pay everything else out of that right and so you did it and so and then you got two and two bump that's a standard base u contract so if you want all three of your fights your first year in usc you go ten and ten twelve and twelve fourteen and fourteen so you would make cumulative a seventy two thousand dollars the for paying insurance housing you know food coach training costs yeah all all of that which is in taxes which some of these guys some of them forget about the taxes so you would yeah you you would do all of you'd do all those things you know and so like that's not a good living think about that i mean when just taxes a alone in some states and fifty percent of that seventy thousand and then you talk about you know all the other stuff i mean we're talking that guy is probably clearing twenty twenty five thousand dollars and and listen that's the guy who had some success that's the guy who won his first three five in e and the reason that number that ten and ten will will never go up by that much is like there's a thousand other dudes maybe more who are just freaking waiting and praying that the u calls their phone and offers them that ten and ten so the ten ten could never go up because it's a supply and demand and the supply is is so enormous that that is it that base number unless there's some type of league is never gonna go up so you have five gyms what would be good revenue for one wrestling gym so let's see we can one jim do a million no no no we can do i think i think a a quarter million i think is gonna be where we we will where we would have hit this year without corona and that would be kind of our our first two and the that's that's they're dual revenue yeah yeah that's the top line yeah so i mean the hard obviously yes for one gym so the hard part about wrestling the wrestling gym and and just kinda do athletic spaces well they're a school day so really we're we're very limited by what we could do it's you know it's five thirty and nine o'clock at night and and that that's it you know so we operate the at nights and you know maybe a sunday obviously we do some classes but yeah it's it's gonna be hard to go you know i think maybe a maximum is we could get around three hundred thousand say in sales per year i think would kinda be like at the very high end of of what we do per gym and so for us it's gonna be more of like you know we need to open up a handful of gyms and and buy the buildings and kind of own the whole space and that's gonna be you know i mean listen i i don't need a hundred million dollars sam you know is that i'm not judging your brother i'm just i no don't i love picking shit apart yeah i i don't give intentionally nova if i wanted to make a lot of money but i wanna be really rich i would probably move in new york city and try do some type of finance crazy to me but let me let but you got you could make more literally just public speaking fees you could literally silicon valley well well you could just say i'm gonna go to silicon valley or i'm gonna go talk to pepsi and nab and jpmorgan i'm gonna give inspirational talks i'm ben asking about olympia and but you have fired i'll teach you about dealing with fear and i'll teach you that ego is the enemy and you could be getting paid ten twenty k a pop you think so i don't i i literally know people doing that yeah well give me thanks bro and i get five k to talk i could get you to come talk at our company right now get you ten k for that really i'm in what am i what am i coming so literally this is i i have several friends who have this as their playbook and you know the they're clearing a lot of money and then then on top of that they say by the way i have this course because hey this was great this a great session but obviously i've been asking i can't be here all the time yeah but if you guys wanna do this leadership training that's blah about blah blah blah then you know you buy the package that's the you know you get ben in your in your desktop you know every week for the next year if you pay an additional twenty k or whatever yes that's you you might have to wear a shirt though which no way i i'm i'm i'm always me i'm not you know i'm gonna wear foot flops and i'm gonna wear a tank top if it's warm enough you know and i and i kinda told you this sam is like and and may maybe a short side on my side but you know i never really thought about going to the public speaking i always thought like i would need to have some business success first you hit world class level at something that's enough to be to go on the circuit basically so like a to look at is chris v i don't know have you ever heard of him i feel like i've maybe i've seen him on twitter so you you can check him out on youtube or whatever so this guy story he's a he teaches negotiation so he's like he works for the fbi they have watches his guy yeah government job you he don't make a lot you know as a government official or whatever so he works the fbi but he's he became world class at hostage negotiation yeah like situations but nothing think i the books sean can have a look book yeah i feel like you're red is book never split the difference never supposed i've read i mean that's like many business nerds and myself included put that in the top book of the year in two thousand nineteen and then he goes and he consult for companies and he teaches at harvard business school in other places and he just walks around he basically says hey i was a world class negotiator i negotiated life or death situations so i could teach you how to negotiate as a real estate agent he'll go teach he'll go consult for real estate agencies and make you know hundreds of thousands of dollars just doing that and he doesn't have to have any physical infrastructure or anything yeah basically no cost to that now you do have to go on the road a lot which is kind of a pain in the ass yeah about who who knows about the kind of covid after covid what that's gonna look like people are doing via of zoom for now yeah zoom yeah i know you know what i i looked this book i i i talked to someone about it and i today washington this guy but i've never read the so i'm gonna i'm gonna put it on my list now i actually had a goal over reading in twenty five books since year i'm already at twenty two so i'm gonna get way past twenty five the best one you read this year oh okay let me bring up my list so i don't i would say forty eight laws of powers it is is relatively happened there but i'm i'm gonna get my list read it it was that was a very long read so i i would do i think three chapters a day or something like that to or three through laws per day let's see you know what's a good one what you do is who you are but ben h i mean that's peace by a famous guy in your guys community he would that was a pretty outstanding book i read let's see the power of moments by chip and dan heath i think that that was a really interesting book and they have a handful of books together that are that are all relatively good the greatest trade effort that was a lot of fun that was about like guy i who bed against the housing bubble and then at the emailed like remember eleven billion dollars on a trader something totally totally insane forty eight laws of power and yeah those probably the best ones nice yeah what okay so you you're you're gonna do this course yes they're dabbling with the ideas that sean and i are discussing what else where else is there opportunity in the world by the way guys yeah have you heard of this thing ben and sean have you heard of the thing call ram blog range of motions work out of the day yeah and so it's an app that i bought i pay a hundred dollars for it and it and i just say i've got tight tight hips or type back and it helps me with my range of motion they're bringing in something like eleven million in subscription sales no i have not heard of that but let's do a brainstorm start on if i'm i i have a good one i a good one so ready to answer your question so and this is this is actually why i originally called you i will i remember you connect with me and then this is why i connect with you is that i i think there's gonna be like this independent media thing just that comes out like in the next ten years where everyone's kinda just their own media person and so my buddy who found in full sports you found this company called rock fan that's why how douglas with sam and essentially there's this payment algorithm on the blockchain where you get paid in tokens and so obviously you can cash those tokens in the day you get them for a us dollar right on an exchange or you can keep them and and the duality of that gives you the option of earning a dollar right or you can keep them and you can grow with the value of the company so like you know and so he has a bunch of patents on this process but think about uber right it's the first uber drivers were paid in tokens not in dollars right that day they can they can cash out their tokens if they want for dollars but if they say hey is uber thing i think this uber thing is gonna be something i'm gonna gonna save twenty percent of all my tokens because in any digital network the first people in the network provides way more value than the millions person the network so those first and you could do this with youtube you could do this with a whole bunch of things right airbnb whatever you name it ain't pretty much it has a digital network and so those first drivers in uber that maybe stored their tokens now when uber is worth many billions of billions of dollars the value of their network is now boom way up right so now these these original drivers who they were a very big part they were a very integral part of the value of the network now they had these tokens that are worth you know five million dollars instead of having that five hundred dollars that they were were would have originally gotten so i think my buddy martin is really really onto something and that was kinda to connect them with sam thought there might be some interest from sam and you know sam just kinda doing other things so it didn't really fit at that point in time but i think that's gonna be a huge business opportunity and so i think i think people so i can kinda separately i think there will be a lot of independent media people because so many people are are so behold to the sponsor the shows and i think regular legacy media is going down an independent non traditional media will be going up in the next let me let me get background on the spend because you're you're you're an insider and so men people martin so yes this guy what was his it martin martin marian yes martin he was cool dude he started this thing called flow sports yes look sports is crazy fascinating i never saw it would have worked and i actually think the verdict is still if it's gonna be huge or if it's just gonna be mildly big and flow sports owns something that i was a subscriber too called flo track yeah they own flow wrestling i think they own flow gymnastics it's like twenty four i think so like re non mainstream sports that have passionate fan bases like track and wrestling and you pay thirty dollars a month pretty expensive and it's it's actually what they do now they only have a yearly package one fifty a year that's the only package you can buy okay so one fifty a year and they send these guys out to like high school state championships events which again sports nerds like me who and ben who like these niche sports is totally pay for it it's pretty great i i don't know how big that is this scott if i had a guess i would say thirty million in recurring revenue i i i have no idea no i think it i i would guess more actually i i it seems i had seen numbers that were bigger yeah wow okay i would guess it's bigger but it that and that is just totally guess i don't know so they're building up like they're the like they're a steep tv station it it yeah i think it's definitely bigger i think it's definitely bigger fan oh okay well it could be it could be i know that they raised a lot of vc and then eventually private equity so much of so i don't know but my issues is i don't know if it can be big based on how much money they raised i think they raised a hundred million dollars i think so like a a very large amount so you you gotta to have a billion dollar company for that to be interesting to people who gave you a hundred billion dollars i think it maybe could be but the verdict still out and so but it's a ro r o k f i n it was started by the c cofounder of flow sports but here's my issue with that ben is ro they only have thirty five hundred subscribers and it hasn't fucking grown i the cool thing about rock is rock dot com slash dashboard you could see all their numbers they had like pretty good growth first started in order to make this whole damn thing work they gotta it's gotta grow yeah i guess i guess it looks like growth stopped in march when corona again yeah and and obviously the other thing there was they had a really a large wrestling base because that was you know kind of martin's first connections but they have picked up a few good people lately but you know what you know i told you i how the optional of keeping the token or cashing of our a dollar like i think that's very important i think you know think about the first thousand creators of youtube what their tokens will be worth if they got paid in tokens versus dollars yeah be you you a lot you would be insane you would be insanely rich based on the i mean the value of youtube is so valuable that google won't even put out the numbers on it they've gotten a few really good contributors lately but most people can't yet see the issue with not getting paid in the tokens right it's such a new concept that most people really struggle with that and they see that as a negative not a positive so yeah i mean obviously rock hurdles to overcome but i think i think when people wrap their head around when you like really get it you're like oh my god like when you talk about like uber or youtube you're like oh wait yeah that makes so much more sense even if say every every every dollar you got paid you save ten cents of it in the token value if you were in one of those early companies are you early in one of those companies you would be insanely rich and so people don't yet understand the value of of the token versus the dollar yeah but i i get it and i think that that's i i actually quite interesting but they need to get more freaking users i agree if i was to dumb down rock would you say that it's like only fans but for non like only fans but for athletes i don't know only fans exact you pay don't need to get this you you pay money to you pay ten dollars a month or however many dollars a month but don't you don't you just pay for that one person yeah to that person yeah okay so like rock fin is it's a bundle right so when you pay ten dollars you you get every but every it that's on the network which is you know so then the network will reflect this huge too right it's it's if if sam and sean and i have if i have ten people and you have ten people and and sean has ten people and we bundle our subscription it will get forty people right and how how's does the payout what do you mean go ahead do they only pay you in tokens like for if you wanna make what are you saying you can cash out you can cash out cash good hold yes it literally takes ten minutes five minutes is it so this idea is either gonna be like the greatest thing ever or toll flop and i and i i appreciate that what there's so the so i got super interested in this about three years ago not rock specifically but the same model because the biggest companies in the world are all based on this network effect principle right no and it's extremely hard to compete with a a network when they have network network effects established like a youtube or twitter or anywhere else yeah and so for us on the outside better the sort of insurgent you know startup entrepreneurs that are trying to break in you were always thinking about how can i bootstrap the network of it how can i create a system of incentives so that people want to join this new platform yeah and not be on that old platform and so you know one way to do that was this idea of well what if we gave the earliest people tokens and if you come a little later you get a little less tokens so it incentivize the early adoption of of our platform and the tokens are used to do things like buy ads and each other other's streams or whatever it is depending on what what platform you kinda built so i got super excited i was like holy shit this could be the new bootstrapping mechanism and if you can think of a good bootstrapping mechanism that's like worth its way gold it's like when paypal realized hey when we do this thing where you get you know you get five dollars and you if you give five dollars to your friend to invite that to paypal like growth exploded they were like that one mechanism was was sort of what built the network out and so so similarly here the idea would be can candies tokens be used to build new network so then a couple bunch of people tried it there was one that was like a reddit a reddit style thing it's actually pretty famous i i can't remember the name off i top my head right now but there's there's basically a reddit one where every as you post your earn tokens if your post gets uploaded you earn more tokens and it's sort of like hey what if reddit lets you earn for putting out good content yeah and the early people get it i it they did okay it didn't do great yeah and then one of the things one of things martin always talks about with that is like their the stocks are stock like if you give stock be say why don't you give stock or something it that's that's really it's not forward looking or i'm sorry it is only forward looking and like the the blockchain like i don't really if think this token thing could've have been done ten years ago because blockchain didn't exist and it actually lets you know you have some type of protocol which calculates the value of each person on your network and then reward them appropriately yeah and so like ethereum is the biggest example of this right ethereum basically gave you tokens for for putting compute power on the network and whatever i'll i can nerd out about that but with the the best example of this actually happened in new york somebody tried to take on uber i'm i'm forgetting their name off start jay yeah juno or something like that yeah does it so being guys started it did it it's not not with tokens but they just did it the same way where they said hey come on here your earliest drivers you're gonna get either shares in the company or you're gonna get some sort of disproportionate reward for being the first drivers in the network the second drivers get a little bit less third gets a little bit less and then by the time it's big you don't really earn any more share tokens and they actually got pretty big i wanna see what they exited for another company that did this when they launched was jet dot com so when they launched billing yeah the people who shared most they got equity in the company and the guy who shared most ended up making a couple million bucks in stock when they were acquired by walmart yeah so it kinda worked out so so juno got acquired for two hundred million dollars wow that that's pretty good at one point in time that's a great that was that's the biggest success story of people trying to do this exact thing although this is like an old principle like i met the guys from ben and jerry's once and ben and jerry's when they needed to raise money early on they did a a local ipo or some shit like that that's called a direct offering or something where they offered only to other people in vermont like local people really basically they basically raised money from the local citizens and then they became owners of that shop and then oh so they they were incentivized to go buy ice cream from that shop because they own they report customers were owners of the of the shop and so this the same idea where what if the users were owners of the platform that's kind of the core idea yeah sam users as sam adams did it as well and they put little stocks certificates in their beer six packs they end up raising twenty million dollars in the nineties doing it this way wow so ben have you heard of these athletes that are trying to token their like contracts at their lifetime right i i think it's fascinating yeah i did you have considered that or done that i i would have to think more through it i you i have took a deep dive into it but know i think it was it's spencer to windy din witty i think he's the one i do yeah i i mean i think i think it's almost like buying an insurance policy on yourself right right you're you're giving away some of the potential upside but then you you're also you know capturing some rewards right away so yeah i i think it's fascinating i'd have to think more about it if i want if i did wanna give away any upside or if i did not want to and then the other interesting thing is like their athletic career is going to end so at some point that token value is gonna go like this right or or or can you you know is it set up so you can capture their post career stuff right is say they get new comment or something to that effect can you capture that also so yeah i think there's actually i think there's gonna be a lot of interesting stuff with blockchain that that kind of allows you do things that that that that you weren't able to do ten years go about you know when you're talking about calculating the value of networks who look who who do you look up to as a post post athlete career that's like that guy crushed or that girl crushed it you know that's what that's the best case scenario for a post athlete career nobody i don't i can't wanna figure it i mean like i don't know i mean as people i like but you know like magic johnson he crushed yeah i mean i think i think i would like to you know i don't really i i said you the podcasting you don't know i've thought about doing the accommodating by i don't know i think it's just kinda limiting myself in same time where i'm not gonna really gain a huge amount of value i mean i i think i'm gonna do the business thing i really enjoy that and you know i do my i enjoy that and probably just continue you know honestly like politics fa me finance fa me i don't yet feel educated enough to really speak too deeply on those topics you know that's something like i would really in enjoy to talking about also any other businesses been that fascinated you or problems that you're seeing out there that we wouldn't know about like even the wrestling world or you can also put out a call to action there's a bunch of entrepreneurs engineers who listen to this and you're like dude do you know what problem i need all yeah and then they'll do it i actually pitch this on my i have my crypto funky podcast crypto only talk i talking then to his guy jason and he's kinda huge entrepreneur also and one of things i said was would be really fascinating was with with these police shootings you know peep people are kinda dumb down because they're they're their making the difficulty of the police way less than it really is and the thing with the police have i've talked them about hand to hand combat and that type of thing before and it's like you can't let someone get to you because they get your gun they get your gun they can shoot you right so it's like you can't exchange a punch for a punch you can't really grapple with them because they can get your gun and so i always thought if there was some way to make a biometric either h or biometric gun where you know it you the cop could not worry about that because the gun is literally not going to fire unless it's them right obviously you had to make it fast and you'd make it reliable because it is not reliable it's not fast it it's gonna get thrown throughout the window right away so give a fast reliable and some of type biometric data where it knows them and you know that's not my feel not engineer i don't how to do that stuff but that would be interesting because that i think that would solve a lot of issues because it it'll alleviate a lot of the worries from cops because listen the last thing cops have a tough people people are really shitting on cop they have a tough job and the last thing you wanna do is go to work as a cop and get shot like you wanna you wanna come home to your family every single day when you go to you wanna come back to your family and it it's a tough job people are making like they're just much assholes and listen i'm i'm sure there's some really terrible cops but there's probably a lot of really great ones too and it's a tough job i i think if that invention was made it would number one make a lot of money and number two it would make their jobs a lot easier i don't know anything about that space other than touch id for the trigger i like that there's what's the you you do you know that you guys know that taser is a business like taser it it's like the word k x it's like its own thing it's a brand yeah yeah it's it's a brand massive thing i mean billions and billions of dollars and can we do a quick speed round that's yeah m mma mma related alright so rapid fire answers then then we could hop off alright so who is your favorite you have fighter to watch oh gosh hey it's just gonna be just kind of a friendship but i would say tyra which has been frustrating lately or daniel cor alright what what percentage of fighters do you believe are on pet oh now i don't think it's that high i would say two twenty at twenty five but pre you saw i would've have said sixty to sixty to seventy who wins a fight with you and cab be at one seventy you and your prime and could be as my prime well i i think i went my prime but i'm i'm far past that alright i love it sam you gotta besides dc and tyrone wood favorite u guy well you know i favorites me and me and sean and nate diaz fans i i you know who doesn't enjoy the diaz brothers so i coach mac so obviously i'm cheer for her every time and then i you know another guy was really close with because he was kinda helped me with all my chain was jill me sharp and he's been he's six in three or six and four at middle weight so but obviously the again those are personal relationships and could you and george mas mas we'd all be friends you think in a couple years i don't think so i mean like if we say if we're in the same gym from when we were younger we probably you know i i got along with everyone right so we probably would have been friends but you know we're not gonna have our paths cross oh well thank ben this is best what's the url gonna be of your course it's it's not gonna be live when this goes live but no will nine at dot com correct ben ask dot com and that that site is getting updated right now it redirects you a constant dot com but we will it will it will be updated probably within a week or so so follow ben on twitter and you'll definitely those launches yes alright cool man thanks for calling that a lot of fun thanks for i appreciate it sweet