Episode 393: Billion Dollar Business Lessons From WWE
In an era where the landscape of wrestling was set in its territorial ways, one man dared to question the status quo and redefine entertainment: Vince McMahon.
In this episode, Adam dives into the billion-dollar business strategies of WWE (formerly WWF), inspired by Mr. McMahon’s documentary on Netflix. Adam talks about the powerful tactics used by Vince McMahon to transform a regional wrestling showcase into a global entertainment powerhouse, sharing vital lessons applicable to any business striving for growth and domination. Adam challenges listeners to rethink their business strategies by citing WWE’s groundbreaking practices.
Adam highlights Vince McMahon’s revolutionary approach to the wrestling industry, where he broke away from traditional territorial constraints to establish a nationwide entertainment brand. By emphasizing the power of storytelling, controversial branding, and strategic celebrity partnerships– WWE captivated audiences and expanded rapidly.
Show Highlights:
- Breaking traditional market rules and entering new segments can be a game-changer, as demonstrated by WWE’s national expansion.
- Storytelling is a powerful tool in business, crucial for building emotional connections with audiences, a strategy mastered by WWE.
- Partnerships with celebrities or influencers can expand reach and help capture new markets.
- Embrace controversy strategically to draw attention and engage audiences, as Vince McMahon successfully did with WWE.
- Continuously reinvest in improving products and services, following WWE’s successful model of innovation and expansion.
Links Mentioned:
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Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Billion dollar business lessons from the WWE is what we’re talking about today.
[00:00:09] WWF is marketing merchandise close to over 200 million last year alone. But into the World Wrestling Federation, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
[00:00:17] He’s a warhol.
[00:00:19] Everything did turn to the gold.
[00:00:23] Adam Stott: And maybe you’re a little bit like me.
[00:00:27] You grew up watching a wrestling and I certainly remember me and my brothers being super into it and everyone at school growing up absolutely loved the WWE. We called it the WWF back then, but we know what happened there. They had to change their name through a lawsuit. What we’re going to talk about today is we’re going to talk about the business side of this.
[00:00:47] I’ve just Come from watching the Mr. McMahon documentary on Netflix. And frankly, I thought it was an amazing documentary. I absolutely loved it. And it was filled with business lessons, masses of them. And whatever you think about Mr. McMahon is, uh, it’s fair enough, right? Cause he’s under a lot of, uh, different things going on, scandal and all these different elements.
[00:01:15] But there’s one thing that can’t be doubted that he was a shrewd business person. Certainly don’t look to learn maybe some of the personal side lessons from Mr. McMahon. But what we can do is borrow some of the business lessons from WWE for a Your own businesses to further it to grow it one of the quotes and if you haven’t watched the documentary, don’t worry There’s not going to be any spoilers here I don’t think for sure but you certainly should go and watch it What I really want to lean into are what the business lessons are the billion dollar business lessons that you can use for your own business.
[00:01:53] That’s what we’re going to jump into today. It’s going to be an incredible ride. Let’s buckle in and let’s get into the billion dollar business lessons from the WWE.
[00:02:13] So the first billion dollar business lesson from the WWE, which if you’ve watched the show, uh, Mr. McMahon, You’ll see what happened is he got into the wrestling world, and there were a lot of set rules in the wrestling world. People did things a certain way, and his dad had been in the business a long, long, long, long time.
[00:02:35] But he came in with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective, and he reinvented the rules. What did he do in that circumstance? Well, what was happening is at the time in wrestling, It was segmented across the United States where different refs and promoters had different cities and different states that they were in control of and they were in charge of these different areas where Vince McMahon, like him or not like him, it’s not a personal thing, had and made a decision that, hey, you know, that’s the way the old rules were.
[00:03:08] I’m going to do business the new way. And he came in and he said, I want to create it. A brand that is promoting nationally wrestlers all the way across the United States and he decided to start breaking into new markets.
[00:03:22] He then started promoting his own shows in what would traditionally be someone else’s territory.
[00:03:29] Adam Stott: Where is this important for you if you’re a small business owner and why does this matter? Well, this was the start. Of the empire that is the WWE WWF. This is the start of the empire. How did this start the empire? Well, by looking at the overall market and saying, I’m not afraid to go into these segments.
[00:03:51] I’m not afraid to go and enter into these new markets. It was able to create a bigger fan base across the country, break into new markets and start to attract and build his show. to be the main show you as a business owner if you’re listening to this what does it mean to you what it means is don’t think inside the box don’t think outside the box tear the box up and throw it away and that’s exactly what he did he just got rid of the box wrestling was boxed in this is how you operate this is how you operate this is how it’s done and he had the guts to question well you say this is how it’s done i don’t want to do it that way And you should look at your industry and your market like that.
[00:04:34] Use innovation and say, you know what? Just because it’s always been done that way, it doesn’t mean that I have to do it this way. And if you have that mentality, you can go in to your market, you can go out and win new market share, do things differently, and grow. And that’s the first early lesson that came out of that amazing documentary.
[00:04:53] Don’t be afraid to question the status quo. Go against the grain. Break into new markets and get new market share.
[00:05:02] My vision was to upgrade the product. My vision was to make this mainstream.
[00:05:08] Adam Stott: Now the second thing that happened in the journey from being a very, very small business to being a billion dollar empire was Vince McMahon and the WWE really understood the power of of storytelling.
[00:05:25] I realized that I’m
[00:05:26] the conduit to translate
[00:05:32] the story that’s being told.
[00:05:34] Adam Stott: Which is something that is underutilized by most businesses. They use story to create a connection with their audience. They use story to create emotions in their audience. And this ran all the way through The documentary, which I just thought was so fascinating to watch.
[00:05:56] They seem to have an inherent understanding that if you can create a motion within a prospect, within a customer, within a client, you can create motion, emotion creates motion. Why do you want motion? Well, motion means people are moving. And if you want people to move towards your business, then you need to understand the power of storytelling to create emotion.
[00:06:19] Now, the thing about storytelling is where can you do it within your business? Well, your business has a story. It has an origin, how your business started. You have characters within your business. Your business that could be highlighted, that could be profiled, that you could talk about whether that was you as the owner of the business, your character, the things you’ve been through, the ups and downs and the way that they did this in the WWE.
[00:06:45] is they went and found great wrestlers and they turned them into characters and they gave them a narrative. They usually did this in one of two ways. They either gave them a good guy narrative or a bad guy narrative. But what they understood is whether it was a good guy or a good girl or a bad boy, whatever it might be, they understood that good and bad both creates emotion.
[00:07:09] And they used it to really bring audiences in to get hooked into that character and stay around. Now, they were one of the pioneers of really understanding about grabbing attention. We talk about now all the time in social media, you’re fighting for eyeballs, you’re fighting for attention. Well, the WWE knew this many, many, many tens of years ago.
[00:07:31] And what they did is they used content. Characters and storytelling to grab the attention. How can you use this within your business? Well, you can use this by telling stories within your business. You can tell stories about you, the business owner, the business itself, the team that you have, the moves that you’re making, the case studies that you’re doing and put a storytelling narrative within your business and you’re going to create more interest, more intrigue, more eyeballs on your business.
[00:07:58] Don’t underestimate the power of storytelling. Name. What I found so fascinating about the documentary was taking people like Hulk Hogan and building a narrative around his story of being the American hero.
[00:08:20] And then they brought other narratives in of people being the bad guy and they had this good and evil dynamic that they were fighting across which really got more audiences interested, got more people wanting to be a part of their brand. Combining the power of storytelling and the breaking into new markets, they captivated the audience and drew them towards them.
[00:08:44] Now the next lesson, which is a very important lesson that you can use in your business right now. This is a billion dollar business lesson that you can use that WWE and Vince McMahon understood, and you can apply it immediately to your business. And that is the lesson of news jacking. Now, this is what.
[00:09:05] Vince McMahon did so well. He looked what was happening in the world and he took whatever was going on in the world and incorporated it into the stories he was telling in his business. So for example, when there was a battle going on with Iran and the USA, He made one of the bad characters an Iranian character.
[00:09:26] Now that is controversial but that’s another one of the lessons in that controversy creates attention and he used these different controversies and used the latest things going on in the news today to start to get Eyeballs on his products or services. This is something that you can do for your business.
[00:09:47] You can look at what’s happening in your industry right now. What’s happening in your markets right now. You can start to comment on the market, bring it into your marketing to grab traffic, grab attention and put it onto your business. So the next one, I kind of just said it, you know, cause I was getting so excited for you with these lessons, but the next one is controversy.
[00:10:10] He used controversy within the WWE in all, and he lent into the controversy. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, we just mentioned the Irani example that was going on in the news. It was very controversial that created a lot of publicity. It created a lot of PR, and it got many, many, many more eyeballs wanting to see what was going on.
[00:10:35] It drew attention towards the business. This is something that you can do, and you can use controversy. He also was not afraid to create. polarizing characters. He even took himself, which was a bold move and turned himself into the biggest baddie of all time within WWE, which was super controversial. But you know what he said?
[00:10:59] You know, I’m prepared to be the bad guy to bring the audience to actually create that polarization, which then allowed the WWE to grow. And he’s well known as being the biggest baddie. Probably the best bad guy that the wrestling’s ever seen, and he lent into that character again and again and again.
[00:11:17] Now you could argue in the comments whether you think that’s just who he was or whether that was character creation, but when he talks about it on the documentary he really leans into it and says I knew that people wanted someone to hate. I was happy to be that person that they hated to bring in the audiences in the masses, which also if they hated me.
[00:11:39] And they loved the other characters. It created that balance which allowed the promotion to grow and continue to grow.
[00:11:51] Okay, so another lesson that you can learn right now and apply to your business is brand marketing. Partnerships. Vince McMahon and the WWE realized that if they were to partner with celebrities that already had an audience and they were to bring them into their shows, they could cross pollinate audiences.
[00:12:14] So if you imagine this, you’ve got Cyndi Lauper. She’s got millions of people that love her. She becomes a character. On the WWE and she brings all her fans over to a new market. So they’re cross pollinating people that have never watched wrestling before. And now coming and watching it, which is a really great way for you to build your business and your brand.
[00:12:34] They did it with Mr. T when Mr. T was in Rocky, they brought him in as a character is another great way. to bring mainstream audiences over to the WWE. They even did it with Donald Trump. So they brought in these big celebrities and these big brand characters and they use that to drive traffic over to WWE.
[00:12:55] Now remember when we look at these in sequence, first of all this was a tiny little wrestling program to start off with the WWE. There were there were hundreds of them across The United States. And so as he started to build these characters, tell the stories, bringing these big Brad names, he started to dominate the competition.
[00:13:15] And this is what started to layer up the billion dollar brand building of the WWE. How can you use that in your business? Well, you’ve got to look at. What celebrities, what influencers, what high profile people, what people in your industry can you partner with, bring into your business and start to leverage traffic from their sources?
[00:13:37] This is something personally that we’ve done for years. You know, my podcast, I’ve had billionaires on it. I’ve had millionaires on it. I’ve had A list celebs. We’ve had people like John Caldwell, billionaire. We’ve had people like Tej Lavani from Dragon’s Den, Sarah Willingham from Dragon’s Den. We had Anthony Joshua, heavyweight world champion, and all these different people, hundreds of them, because it’s a great way to build and grow audiences.
[00:14:01] And no matter where you’re starting from, this is something that That you can do too. So you might be sitting there wondering, well, how do I do this? Well, you start small and then you build up and as you build up over time, you get bigger characters, bigger people to work with your business and your brand.
[00:14:16] And this is what creates a billion dollar business over time. And they did an amazing job of that within the WWE. I came
[00:14:24] back the next day and announced, we’re gonna have one big event a year, just like the Super Bowl, and we’re gonna call it WrestleMania.
[00:14:32] Adam Stott: On Sunday afternoon, March 31st, it’s WrestleMania!
[00:14:35] Mr. T risks it all, wrestling for the first time, teaming up with Okay, so the next lesson is a build up. Community. And this is what they did. So well, they built a community. They’ve got the storytelling. They’ve got the characters. What they started to do is they bring that loyalty and building that community again and again and bringing people back, which led to them bringing the next lesson in place, which was have a showpiece event.
[00:15:00] Have a way of bringing your community together. And this is where they created their showpiece, which was WrestleMania. So This huge, huge event when they brought all of their community together, all of their characters together, all of their storytelling together, they did it once a year and it was something that absolutely dominated their competition.
[00:15:20] Having these showpiece types of events really, really drive a lot of loyalty into a business. They drive a lot of excitement into a business and it really allows you to grow and get yourself out to New markets, which really powered up the WWE to become what it is today. Now, the first one that they did, which also leads into the next lesson from the documentary is Vince McMahon took big risks when he wanted to do this showpiece event because everyone’s like, well, it’s easy, Adam, you’re talking about a billion dollar brand.
[00:15:52] I’m just a small business. I don’t know. I can do this. Well, when he did WrestleMania for the first time, He re mortgaged his home just to get the event off the ground. And that’s how much he believed in the business. And you’ve got to take these big risks. And you saw him do that again and again and again throughout the documentary, um, taking these big risks, whether it was signing.
[00:16:14] Big talent, the big money. Sometimes when he had competitors like Ted Turner had more money in him, he’s signing big deals and big contracts. He’s remortgaging his house to pull off WrestleMania and he’s going all in, all in on making this dream come true. He also had an incredible amount of focus, focused on one thing for decades in order to bring it home.
[00:16:39] And that was some, some of the big, big lessons for me that came out. of this documentary, which was very, very important. So another lesson that I love, which is something that WWE, Vince McMahon, did very, very well, is they leveraged reinvestment. They did their WrestleMania, they, it was an amazing success, and it didn’t stop there.
[00:17:02] They said, how can I reinvest to make the next one better? And then they said, How can I reinvest and make the next one better? And they did the same thing over and over again, but kept tweaking it up. Kept reinvesting. Said, how can I make it better? How can I make my characters better? How can I make my stories better?
[00:17:19] And they kept investing in the business. They kept investing in the brand and they kept leveling up again and again and again. This is something that you can do with your business. The first time you do something, yeah, it can go bad, it can go well, or it can be okay, but the real rule is, if it wasn’t bad or it was okay, next time you do it, make it better, and next time you do it after that, make it better, and then let’s make it better, and before you know it, if you keep that focus and you keep getting better and better and better, you keep growing, and they did that so much that they did Wrestlemania after Wrestlemania after Wrestlemania, you know, Continually making it better to the point where it just become this huge spectacle that was seen all over the world, leveraging media and brand.
[00:18:06] And it really was the crux of, of the WWE, just becoming this huge, huge brand. And if you consider, Where it was in the beginning, it was just a small wrestling business. There were no shows like this. It wasn’t on mainstream TV, but they had a belief. They kept improving and they kept the patience and kept going.
[00:18:26] And that’s how it really became something very special, which brings me to the next lesson, which is merchandising. When you are in a place where you’ve got an audience and you’ve got lots of people and you’ve got revenue coming in, you’ve got to innovate and say, how can we take this further? What they did really well was they started merchandising this in a big way.
[00:18:46] They started creating the toys. Selling merchandise and really looking at other verticals that they could make money from within the business. Now, merchandising at WrestleMania three became 200 million in sales after WrestleMania three, which is incredible, right? So they’ve gone and found a way to make another 200 million from selling toys of the characters they created, which is, um, so smart.
[00:19:10] And that was the difference that really made the difference and put them on the So far ahead of the competition that no one could even compete. So now that they’ve done that, what naturally happens next? Well, they’ve gone and dominated a market. They’ve grabbed market share. They got the best characters in the world.
[00:19:30] They got money flowing in from everywhere from merchandise. They’ve created this amazing business and it’s got an incredible fan base all over the world. Well, what’s going to happen? Well, more than likely. You’re going to get a big competitor that’s going to enter the space. And that’s exactly what happened with WCW and a billionaire come on back to WCW to, to battle WWE, which is Ted Turner.
[00:19:58] Now Ted Turner, I’ve read Ted Turner’s book and I found it fascinating. Actually, it was a great book and I study. Billionaires is something that I’m, you know, fascinated about, about how they take the things they do. And he obviously saw a huge opportunity here, not just in the TV space, but in the entertainment space, in the merchandising space, and he invested heavily in competing very heavily.
[00:20:21] in competing with Vince McMahon and the WWE and actually they invested so heavily they went and they took the characters that Vince McMahon had worked so hard to build and they signed them over to the competition so you imagine that imagine that you get someone with a huge war chest that comes into your Business area and starts taking everything you’ve built.
[00:20:47] They start taking your staff, they’re taking your people, they’re taking your best assets, they’re taking everything out of your business and they’re just attacking you again and again and again and again. And you’re out muscled, you’re out financed and what do you do? You know, it’s going to be very, very difficult.
[00:21:05] And that had a massive impact on the WWE. and really caused it a lot of problems. So much so that it went from being the absolute dominant player to being beaten 83 weeks in a row in the rankings. They attacked every part, they looked at everything that they were doing and they tried to attack every part of it and it really affected them.
[00:21:29] Now what I really loved was the response to That competitor. The response to that competitor is they knew that they were out muscled. They knew they were out financed. They knew that they couldn’t compete in that way. So they went back to the one lesson that you really need to look at within the competition.
[00:21:47] your business, which was the product. And they said, great. Okay. We’ve got this person competing, they’re buying everything up. We’ve got to focus and hone in on the product and we’ve got to spend all our time making sure the product that we have is just unbelievable. It’s unbelievable. We might have lost the characters, but let’s make sure the product we deliver, the show we deliver, the razzmatazz we deliver is better than the competition, even if they’re signing all of our stars, they work very hard on the creation of new characters, which is the reinnovation.
[00:22:22] Of the business. If you lost five key members of staff within your business, what are you going to do? You’ve got to go and create new characters within your business that are going to add even more value. And that’s exactly what the WWE and Vince McMahon did. And by rebuilding in that way, he was able to eventually wrestle, excuse the pun, that market share back from WCW and become that dominant player again.
[00:22:47] And they did that by honing in and focusing on product. Excellent. Which is the lesson that you can learn. Now, this is a really cool thing that then happened next is they then bought WCW for literally pennies or cents on the dollar because the overall winner of that competition was the WWE and they won it through products.
[00:23:11] So there’s an incredible amount of lessons there. Whether you, you know, probably might get a little bit of hate on this video, right? I’m talking about Vince McMahon and Vince McMahon’s accused of this and this and this. Now I’m certainly not saying he’s a great guy, do not get me wrong in any way, shape or form.
[00:23:26] But what I am saying is there are business lessons here that can be used for your business that can help you to make money. Create more success steadfast in your pursuit of success and make sure that you build elements into your business that can see you go all the way to the top. So I’d be really fascinated to hear what your perspectives are.
[00:23:49] Did you watch the documentary? Tell me in the comments. Maybe you’re going to go and watch it. Now you can go and tell me perhaps you’ve got that you saw it a different way. Maybe you watched it. And you thought that this part wasn’t so cool. This was a mistake. I’ll be really interested to hear your perspectives.
[00:24:05] Hopefully you found a lot of value in the video. And of course, if you’re a business owner watching this, stay motivated, stay in pursuit of your success, adapt and adopt some of these business lessons that we talked about. And more importantly than any of that, Make sure to subscribe so you can get the next videos coming up because we are literally breaking down success here, delivering you the lessons that you can use to take your business all the way to the top.