Dana White

Edward Bernays, Dana White, and possibly you

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The UFC is one of the two sports promotions I follow. And so I know that earlier this week, UFC president Dana White teased potential fights that will happen next April at UFC 300, a milestone number for the monthly MMA event.

White says that UFC 300 will make fight fans “lose their minds” because of the caliber of the fights he will organize.

That’s the kind of problem the UFC faces these days: coming up with bigger and more exciting fights, and figuring out where to bury all the cash that these fights produce.

Today, the UFC is by far the dominant player in the sport of MMA.

​​The company is worth an estimated $12 billion.

But back in 2005, the UFC, already a decade old at the time, looked like it might have to fold.

They’d had a few successful fights that did well on pay-per-view. And yet, financially, the UFC was not successful or sustainable as a business. It looked like the company would go bankrupt if it had just one or two more lackluster events.

So how did we get from near-bankrupcy at UFC 50… to a $12 billion valuation at UFC 300?

I’ll tell ya. But before I give you the answer, it’s worth thinking about what you yourself — as a marketer, or a business owner — might do in the situation that the UFC was in back in 2005.

Would you run ads on TV hyping up upcoming PPV fights?

Would you send direct mail to subscribers of martial arts magazines, and try to sell recordings of your previous events?

Would you hire celebrities to come sit cageside to build up public interest?

None of those were what saved the UFC from ruin.

Instead, the owners of the UFC did something clever.

They didn’t try to sell their core product at all. Instead, they created a second product, and they promoted and sold that.

Specifically, they created a reality TV show, called The Ultimate Fighter. It showed a bunch of guys, living together in a house, training and bickering and competing with each other for the right to get a six-figure contract for the regular UFC promotion.

The show was a huge success. It drew lots of viewers. It became profitable in itself. It converted many of those new viewers into PPV customers.

The Ultimate Fighter saved the UFC. And then next year, with the next season, The Ultimate Fighter did it all over again.

Now, you are probably nowhere close to bankruptcy. But the point still stands:

You can tap into a popular format or medium. You can use that popular format or medium create a new offer that’s easy to promote… easy to sell… keeps people in the loop… builds your standing and reach… warms prospects up to your main business… and keeps them engaged even after they buy your core offer.

It’s a proven playbook to get traffic, conversion, and retention all in one.

Edward Bernays did it a hundred years ago.

Dana White did it 20 years ago.

You can do it today.

Now, if you’ve been reading these emails for a while, then you can probably guess the popular format or medium I would recommend for all of the above:

An email newsletter.

Odds are, if you’re reading my emails, and if you have a successful business, then you already have your own email newsletter.

But if you don’t, and you would like to, then hit reply. Because as of today, I’m offering a done-for-you newsletter service.

I will have more to say about it in my email tomorrow. But if you want to talk about it now, then hit reply, tell me who you are and what your business is, and we can take it from there.

Outrage with stupidity to milk info out of cagey or indifferent adversaries

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Two years ago, just as the whole world was shutting down due to the first wave of corona, the president of the UFC, Dana White, got trolled into revealing a highly guarded secret.

A bit of background:

The UFC hosts mixed martial arts fights, and in April 2020 they were supposed to host the biggest and most anticipated fight in their history, between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson.

These two fighters were both on 12-fight win streaks in the UFC, and they were scheduled to fight four times already. Each time, the fight was cancelled at the last minute for some reason.

This time around, as sports organizations around the world cancelled events because of corona, Dana White refused to give in. “We’re going ahead with the fight!”

The only problem was they couldn’t figure out where to host it. It was originally supposed to be in Brooklyn, but that was out. In fact, any other location in the US also became untenable.

“The fight is still on, guys!” White would repeat whenever asked, though he wouldn’t give any more details.

So as the fight date neared, speculation kept increasing. Fans were alternating between getting resigned to the inevitable fifth cancellation… and hyped when some new possible location for the fight surfaced.

Meanwhile, even Tony and Khabib, the fighters who were supposed to be fighting, didn’t know for sure if the fight was still on.

So that’s the background. Would the fight happen? Would it get cancelled a fifth time?

The answer finally came when somebody created a fake Twitter account, mimicking a well-known MMA journalist, and tweeted:

“#BREAKING: Dana White and Vladimir Putin have reached an agreement on travel arrangements for UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov to come to the United States. He will fight Tony Ferguson. It’s happening folks. #UFC249 will go on as scheduled April 18.”

To which Dana White, big goof that he is, immediately blasted out a Tweet saying that it ain’t so, that Khabib is not fighting, and then to prove it, he finally revealed the whole card that was scheduled for this corona-infested bout.

Which brings us to an eternal truth, something called Cunningham’s law:

“The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

The sad fact is that in business, in love, and on online forums, there are many times when people are unwilling to answer your questions. Maybe the person you’re talking to is indifferent, or cagey, or hurt, or they just don’t like the implied power dynamics that come with you asking and them answering.

So if you ever find yourself in this situation, swallow your pride, and publicly make a dumb, completely wrong assumption about the right answer. If Cunningham is right, and I suspect he’s at least a little bit right, then your outraged adversary will jump in and say, “No! You’re so wrong! Let me tell you how it really is…”

But I think this Cunningham and his law go even farther. If you just swap out “right answer” and you swap in “response,” you get a good recipe for how to get yourself publicity and an audience online.

Of course, unless you want to be just a troll, you’ll have to figure out a reasonable argument to justify a seemingly “wrong” opinion that you use to attract attention. But it can be done, and guys like Matt Stone (aka Buck Flogging) and Ben Settle prove it. Outrage and reason are a powerful combination. Aloe vera on its own is pretty bland and slimy, but it sure feels good once you burn your hand on the stove.

And if you want less outrage, not more:

You might like my daily email un-newsletter. I avoid outrage, even though I know it’s good for business. Instead, I try to make my ideas appealing in other ways. In case you’re curious, you can give it a try here.

Outrage with stupidity to milk info out of cagey or indifferent adversaries

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[Dear reader, in Hungary or elsewhere: In spite of saying I would quit it, I’m back posting my daily newsletters to this blog. I have two reasons. One, I never got going creating bigger articles out of these newsletters the way I planned. Two, I don’t want to kowtow to Google — they prefer fewer, longer articles — and I would rather write specifically for people like you. Thanks for reading. And now onto this inflammatory post:]

Two days ago, the president of the UFC, Dana White, got trolled into revealing a highly guarded secret. A bit of background:

The UFC hosts mixed martial arts fights, and on April 18 they were supposed to host the biggest and most anticipated fight in their history, between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson. These two fighters are both on 12-fight win streaks in the UFC, and they were scheduled to fight four times already. Each time, the fight was cancelled at the last minute for some reason.

This time around, as sports organizations around the world cancelled events because of corona, my man Dana White refused to give in. “We’re going ahead with the fight!”

The only problem was they couldn’t figure out where to host it. It was originally supposed to be in Brooklyn, but that was now out. In fact, any other location in the US also became untenable.

“The fight is still on, guys!” White would repeat whenever asked, though he wouldn’t give any more details. So over the past month, speculation kept increasing. Fans were alternating between getting resigned to the inevitable fifth cancellation… and hyped when some new possible location for the fight surfaced. Meanwhile, even Tony and Khabib, the fighters who were supposed to be fighting on the 18th, didn’t know for sure if the fight was still on.

So that’s the background. The update from two days ago is that somebody created a fake Twitter account, mimicking a well-known MMA journalist, and tweeted:

“#BREAKING: Dana White and Vladimir Putin have reached an agreement on travel arrangements for UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov to come to the United States. He will fight Tony Ferguson. It’s happening folks. #UFC249 will go on as scheduled April 18.”

To which Dana White, big goof that he is, immediately blasted out a Tweet saying that it ain’t so, that Khabib is not fighting on April 18, and then to prove it, he finally revealed the whole card that’s scheduled for this corona-infested bout.

Which brings us to the present day, and something called Cunningham’s law:

“The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

The sad fact is that in business, in love, and on online forums, there are many times when people are unwilling to answer your questions. Maybe the person you’re talking to is indifferent, or cagey, or hurt, or they just don’t like the implied power dynamics that come with you asking and them answering.

So if you ever find yourself in this situation, swallow your pride, and publicly make a dumb, completely wrong assumption about the right answer. If Cunningham is right, and I suspect he’s at least a little bit right, then an outraged somebody will jump in and say, “No! You’re so wrong! Let me tell you how it really is…”

But I think this Cunningham and his law go even farther. If you just swap out “right answer” and you swap in “response,” you get a good recipe for how to get yourself publicity and an audience online.

Of course, unless you want to be just a troll, you’ll have to figure out a reasonable argument to justify a seemingly “wrong” opinion that you use to attract attention. But it can be done, and guys like Matt Stone and Ben Settle prove it. Outrage and reason are a powerful combination. Aloe vera on its own is pretty bland and slimy, but it sure feels good once you burn your hand on the stove.