The Laws of the Ring (18 page)

The 23rd Law of Power

Connect the People You Trust

S
hortly after Dana helped me buy my first house, she told me I needed to meet her chiropractor friend Matt Fisher. Matt was an ex-wrestler who followed my wrestling career through UC Davis before becoming a fan of my MMA career.

Initially, I was flattered. Not many people follow college wrestling, and my MMA career was pretty new and definitely under the radar. But I lost Matt's number just as quickly as Dana gave it to me. It was nice to have a fan, and while, of course, I didn't have any contempt for the suggestion, I was pretty content with my community as it stood.

A week later, Dana called and asked if I had gotten in touch with Matt. The tone of her voice told me she knew I hadn't. I started rifling through my brain for my list of lame excuses, but before I could summon one, she continued: “What are you waiting for?”

“It was just crazy busy this week,” I replied guiltily.

“You guys will
really
hit it off,” she interjected. “Worst thing that can happen, you might get some free chiropractic work out of it. People in your line of work probably need it.”

I knew from my experience with Dana that she wouldn't push like this if she didn't see the potential for something special.

When I finally got around to calling Matt, I found out why Dana had been so intent on brokering a conversation. We hit it off immediately. He had been following my career because he had graduated from Lincoln High School ten years before I did and was a wrestler, too.

After about fifteen minutes on the phone, Matt said, “Hey, have you ever thought about opening a gym?”

The timing of this question was uncanny. I
had
been thinking about it for a couple years, but I never mentioned anything about it to Dana—actually, I had barely mentioned it to anyone at all. I dreamed of a place of my own, where I could grow my team and combine all my training under one roof, but the amount of work and funding needed to get it off the ground seemed daunting.

“I want to do it eventually,” I said. “Right now I don't think I have the time or the money to pull it off.”

Matt said he thought he could help me get this going faster than I had planned, and he wanted to meet in person to talk more about it. My sense that we were both spur-of-the-moment, do-it-now-or-regret-it-forever people was confirmed when he suggested we meet at seven-thirty the next morning— about twelve hours after our first conversation.

So the next morning I gave Matt the short version of my vision. I told him my gym would be a place where I could have all the MMA disciplines under one roof. It would be a place where I could bring fighters in to train and develop the camaraderie that would lead to the success of an Alpha Male team. It would be a place to sweat, learn, teach, inspire, and grow. I came into the meeting with Matt having crunched some rough numbers the night before. I knew it was a good business opportunity. There were enough people doing what I was doing—wandering from gym to gym to get the proper training—that I knew we could put together a solid customer base quickly. But I did have a big reservation. Having recently read Robert Kiyosaki's
Rich Dad, Poor Dad,
I was adamantly opposed to becoming a slave to my own business. Basically, I didn't want to own a gym that worked only when I was there. I needed a network of people around me—
other
teachers and
other
administrators who would allow me to continue to train and focus on becoming one of the world's best fighters.

“This is a good idea,” I told Matt. “And when I come across a good idea, I'll do anything to make it happen. But I know what I can and can't do, and I don't want to get in over my head and feel like the place can't run without me standing in it.”

Matt didn't seem fazed by this concern and said he would provide the initial funding for the gym and handle the business side of the operation (payroll, insurance, etc.), allowing me to provide the sweat equity (teaching, etc.) and the talent. I would teach all the classes to start, and I would be responsible for hiring other instructors and trainers.

I got a good feeling about Matt's intentions, and from our conversation, it was apparent to me that he was not only smart, but serious about his side of the bargain. So we shook hands and agreed to pursue it immediately. We had a partnership drawn up—Faber/Fisher LLC—that defined our responsibilities.

We then set out to find a building, and after seeing a few places that were either too big or too small, too expensive or too run-down, we found an empty building on Seventeenth and I Streets in midtown Sacramento. We couldn't ask for a more centralized location. The building was rough around the edges, but it was warehouse-style, large, open. I definitely saw what it could become—what it is today.

I leaned on my sense of community to see the solutions to the structural problems. My father is a general contractor, my uncle is a plumbing contractor, my stepdad Tom is a handyman, and Matt and I were more than willing to dig in and do as much as we could ourselves. I had all the tools I needed at my disposal, and I knew that if we all banded together, this shell could be something great.

The bureaucratic process was an enormous eye-opener: a barrage of neighborhood meetings, city hearings, construction inspections, and heavy-duty planning sessions, but after a year of unrelenting persistence and incredibly long hours extending beyond our already demanding lives, our gym—Ultimate Fitness—was up and running. Matt had his chiropractic office set up inside, and I was teaching classes and signing up members at a rate that exceeded my predictions. We took a chance, had a plan, executed it with persistence, and made it happen.

The opening of my own gym—the end result of Matt's and my mutual credibility—changed my career. It gave me a one-stop shop for my training, brought in money to assist my thrifty lifestyle, and offered me the opportunity to help others pursue their dreams.

But let's not forget that none of this would've happened had I not ultimately heeded Dana's suggestion. The big lesson here is that if you trust someone enough to let her into your network, she presumably has enough personal credit that you should listen to her when she makes a suggestion.

Connecting people is something that has helped me to do more in my own life. Don't be afraid to connect the people you trust.

The 24th Law of Power

It
Is
Who You Know—and More

T
o put a finer point on the idea of personal credit, consider this expression:
It's not
what
you know, it's
who
you know.
This is superficially accurate—and seemingly cynical—but there's more to it than meets the eye. It's not only who you know; it's what those people think about you, how deeply they want to be involved with you, and if they believe you are a credible person.

You build this credit by utilizing the Laws of Power. The network of people surrounding you is not meant to simply improve a business or maximize profits; it's a means of growing as a person and helping those around you to do the same.

When everyone contributes to the success of the whole, the individual grows along with it. The power derived from the network creates a system where people catapult each other to greater heights, which is why rigid hierarchies are often impediments to success. Cooperative hierarchies open opportunities to employ the Laws of Power to gain the kind of credibility needed to make “who you know” count.

I
n late 2005, my career was still new. I'd been fighting for two years, but the only people who knew who I was were a handful of die-hard fight fans. One person who had been watching from a distance was my old friend Jaimal Yogis, who had continued his journey through life at Columbia University in New York, where he was studying for a master's degree in journalism.

M
y upbringing was focused on education for education's sake, not education for a future salary's sake. My brother and I were taught to set our sights high, but there was no decree about what those sights should be. If we were happy and productive, we were successful.

Not coincidentally, I attracted people who had similar backgrounds. My best friend growing up was a kid named Jaimal Yogis. After my family moved from the commune and before we moved to Lincoln, Jaimal and I were outliers in the mostly conservative Sacramento suburb of Carmichael. His upbringing was similar to mine, which means his refrigerator was also filled with tofu and soy milk and his parents grew their own vegetables. He was taller than me (not surprisingly) with curly brown hair and a big smile. The hippie mentality he'd always been surrounded by was evident in his demeanor.

From fourth through sixth grades, Jaimal and I were inseparable. I was a permanent fixture in his house. Until the seventh grade, when my mom moved to Lincoln. But even though our lives physically drifted apart, our perspectives and philosophies were too similar for the friendship to dissolve and we stayed in touch as best as we could.

During his junior year in high school, Jaimal got mixed up with the wrong crowd and got himself in trouble. He got a DUI, and he was so disgusted with the social scene he had become a part of that he decided to run away. He had saved quite a bit of money from a part-time job, and he fortified that with an unauthorized cash advance from his mother's credit card and hopped a plane for Hawaii. His idea was to escape his problems by living on the beach, surfing, and studying Buddhism.

You might think that this is the place where I impose my limits on my philosophy of following your passion. That I'm going to say that running away is a bad idea. But you know what? For Jaimal, the entire experience didn't turn out so bad.

Perhaps without even knowing it, Jaimal was running away in order to inject some discipline and order into his life. He was pretty resourceful, too. He found a place to stay and was doing everything he set out to do. He sent a letter to his parents, telling them where he was, apologizing for taking the money, and letting them know they didn't have to worry about him. He had a job and was getting his head straight.

After reading the letter, Jaimal's father devised a plan of his own. He flew to Hawaii, checked into a hotel, and found Jaimal on the beach. Instead of demanding that his son come home, his father hung out with him. He surfed with him and took the time to understand where his son was coming from and what was going through his mind. They spent countless hours discussing Jaimal's future, and they reached a consensus: Jaimal could spend his senior year of high school as an exchange student abroad if he agreed to come home. This allowed him to escape the high school environment he had grown to dislike, and it enabled his parents to impose some level of structure in his life. And so Jaimal spent his senior year of high school in France, where he was able to satisfy his wanderlust and leave the bad influences behind.

Clearly, this is a great example of love, patience, and compromise, similar to the way my family has treated Ryan's illness. Jaimal's ability to follow his passion is an inspiration to me, and the story of his brief stint as a runaway pops into my head whenever I think about sticking my head in the sand and ignoring a problem I know won't go away. Jaimal made the wrong choice for the right reason, and his father was there with the guidance and wisdom that was needed in order to find a solution. Jaimal went on to get a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, one of the most prestigious programs in the country, while still retaining his individuality. It's hard to imagine his career following a similar route had he been allowed to stay in Hawaii and carve his own path.

I
t had been a few years since Jaimal and I had talked, but we picked up right where we left off. He had been following my fighting career and was intrigued enough to want to write an article about me for one of his class assignments. It was good enough to be published in a major paper in New York, and that's when my relationship with Jaimal—a like-minded, passionate individual—transformed into something more.

The article caught the eye of Morgan Hertzan, a producer with MTV. He called the wrestling coach at UC Davis, Lennie Zalesky, who put him in touch with me. Morgan was impressed with the article and felt I had some marketability as a young, good-looking, well-spoken fighter with a passion for his work. Even though I recoiled at the notion of being considered the pretty boy of MMA, I wasn't blind to the benefits that such an impression provided. If I could be a championship-level fighter
and
be in demand as a role model/spokesman for the sport, I could create more opportunities for myself and use my passion to explore different avenues.

Morgan had an idea for a reality show:
Say Uncle
would find guys who were jerks, roaming through life picking on people for their own amusement. Over the course of the program, we would show their personalities, and at the end I would fight them in a challenge match.

Morgan pitched the show a few times and got no takers. (The same concept mysteriously ended up being the basis for a popular show called
Bully Beatdown.
) Morgan wasn't discouraged enough to drop it entirely, though. Instead, he turned his idea into a documentary that depicted me as an up-and-coming fighter in a sport that was beginning to gain traction.

This hour-long documentary,
Warrior Nation,
was filmed in September 2006 and was quickly sold to MSNBC. The documentary brought further credibility to me and the sport. It came during a busy and important time in my career. The gym had recently opened, my management team was in place to capitalize on the publicity, and my skill level was getting better and better. The documentary brought all of this into wider focus, and my career was ready to explode.

The catalyst for this was my long-standing friendship with a like-minded person who saw the potential in me and was interested enough to share my story with the world. Jaimal's writing, and the documentary that arose from it, changed my life. That's not an exaggeration.

Over the course of these pages, we've looked at how business relationships can become personal relationships, and in this case the reverse was true: A personal relationship became a business relationship. Jaimal was pursuing his passion and I was pursuing mine. We were both doing what we wanted to do, and our lives converged.

The positive energy that flowed from that documentary had far-reaching impact. In the year before
Warrior Nation,
I was a free agent. I was competing in a number of up-and-coming shows, getting belts in a number of organizations, and attempting to establish myself as the best featherweight fighter in the world. One of those organizations was World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC), which allowed me to fight for a title belt without locking me into an exclusive contract.

The UFC was not an option for me; they had yet to offer fights in my weight class. I was gaining notoriety, slowly but surely, through the small following of the pay-per-view
King of the Cage
fights, the coverage of WEC on HDNet Television, and MMA Web sites like Sherdog.com. My management team was still looking for the best way to capitalize on this growing attention to position me for long-term success.

At about this time along came an organization called WFA. It was the brainchild of a former fight manager named Jeremy Lappen, who believed he could create a competitor to the UFC. I liked his approach: He was paying three times what any other organization was offering, and he had already signed up big-time talents such as Rampage Jackson, Matt “The Law” Lindland, and Bas Rutten. Lappen had Hollywood connections he was determined to use to promote the sport. It sounded promising.

My negotiations with Lappen occurred at the time Hertzan was pitching
Say Uncle.
I enthusiastically sold myself to Lappen, telling him I was going to do my part to blow up in the sport.

“My plan is to build stars by highlighting personality in addition to fighting skills,” he said. “I want to be the first organization to highlight the lighter-weight classes, and you have the star power to push those lower weights to new prominence.”

I couldn't have said it better myself. The contract he put in front of me called for fifty thousand dollars a year—double if I won all my fights. This was the huge opportunity I was waiting for, and I eagerly signed.

All that promise, all that buildup, and then . . . the WFA tanked after just one show. Gone, poof—just like that. Their live gate was minuscule compared to their projections. Their pay-per-view attempt completely flopped. There were a lot of great fighters in the show, but they couldn't make it work. The rumor was that they had lost thirty million dollars and that all their investors had bailed, never to invest again.

The quick demise of the WFA taught me the importance of brands. The brand wasn't established, and they tried to do too much too soon, so the entire operation flopped.

This development had unexpected consequences, though. The UFC swooped in and quickly moved to continue its quest to corner the MMA market. Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta bought both the WEC, for which I had two nonexclusive fights remaining, and my liquidated contract from the WFA.

Eventually, I got what the WFA promised: I became the face of the lightweight divisions, but it happened under the WEC and the leadership of Dana White and the Fertitta brothers. Jaimal's story and the
Warrior Nation
documentary provided me with an avenue to exhibit my personality and marketability to a wider audience.

The evolution of my friendship with Jaimal, from childhood buddies to aspiring authors, shows that relationships don't always fit in tidy boxes. Your personal credit defies categorization and compartmentalization. It seeps into every aspect of your life, for better or worse, like ink through cotton.

O
n Christmas Day 2008, I received one of Jaimal's sporadic phone calls. Like most old friends who don't live in the same area, we've managed to remain close without frequent conversations. This time he was in town for a few days and wanted to get together.

Jaimal came over to my house, and even though we hadn't seen each other for a while, I could tell he was eager to relay some important news. He said, “I'm writing a book on Buddhism and surfing. I've got a publisher and I'm really stoked about making this happen.” When I asked him to describe the message of his book, he said, “It's about following my heart.”

I was really excited for him, but my mind couldn't shake the irony of the situation. “You're not going to believe this,” I said, “but I'm writing a book about passion and my path to fighting.”

From there, we started discussing where we'd been and how we'd reached this place. We reminisced about our days in Carmichael and the freedom we'd had to explore life mentally and physically—benefits not many kids today are given in the culture of helicopter parents, playdates, and overscheduled lives. What started as a random coincidence—two old friends writing books—became less random the more we talked. Jaimal's book—
Saltwater Buddha
—is a wonderful and well-reviewed look into his philosophy and soul. And it is my humble hope that the book you hold in your hands—although it comes from a far different place—achieves the same goal.