JOEL RESNIK

Nurture Loyalty and Respect

Joel Resnik

CEO,RUFF China - Mixed Martial Arts

How long have you been living in China?

Fourteen years.

Can you briefly describe your company? Ranik Ultimate Fighting Federation is the first and only company to have ever received a combat sport permit from the central government. We hold boxing and fighting matches in large venues.

What is your job at RUFF?

I oversee everything. It is a family business.

My job is to make sure that everything runs smoothly, that the fights are fair and that the fights are good fights. We work on TV deals to broadcast our events.

Can you tell us more about your industry?

It is a sports entertainment business. The idea is to build this sport in China. Keep in mind that in China, martial arts is already in the top 10 sports. So when you put something exciting like MMA in the mix, it is going to grow very quickly, but people have to be educated about it. That is our primary goal.

Is this sport more targeted towards a young audience?

Actually, we found in North America, the core target is 18 to 36 years-old men.

In China it is completely different, ihe mix is 70% men and 30% women and a wide range of age.

Can you describe a typical day at work?

We build a new business, with a new sport. It is not soccer, tennis or baseball. It’s a fighting sport. Everything is new, from getting sponsors to dealing with government issues and more importantly dealing with the fighters. There are not many managers here. The managers are usually the coaches. We have to organize live events, search for venues, sign deals with TV stations, build our internet presence strategy, sign contracts with all the fighters etc.

What is your biggest challenge working in China?

It’s like any business here. Business is tough; there is a huge culture and language barrier.

We try to build this sport organically but only soccer is big for now. We have challenges because we need to build a brand new sport. We need to make everyone in China aware that there is a whole new entertainment side to this business!

How do you manage your teams?

We live in China, we need Chinese employees who understand well the market opportunities.

We need to adapt on how they are thinking and how they look at things.

When we do our ads, our posters, we have a Chinese person designing it. Obviously, we need to approve the material but Chinese people are our audience. The most important thing I learn is: reward your employees and reward them quickly. Do not assume that because they are not saying anything that they are happy. Some of our employees we have at RUFF have been working with us for over 12 years.

Loyalty is everything. If you find and nurture someone who is loyal, you can teach that person any job. So when you find someone loyal, find a way to keep him.

What are the lessons you have learned from some of the mistakes you made?

I made too many mistakes to name a few!

Being in China, it is all about mistakes. Hopefully you make mistakes that you can recover from. The most important is not to repeat mistakes… Here, the mistakes are more attached to the culture, and how you handle issues, or the way you say things. Sometimes, you can say something and it is taken completely the wrong way. Or you talk for a long time to someone, and at the end you realize they have no clue what you are saying. So three days later, you ask for your report, and you come to realize that the person did not understand at all your expectations. So you really have to make sure that the people you work with understand you well.

We always have an open door policy when it comes to communication. We all work very hard, and as the general manager, I have to lead by example. We sometimes work until 5am to set up events and it is important for me to be there with the team.

What are your golden rules?

The number 1 rule is: Respect. You need to respect the people you work with, and you need to respect the people you are planning to work with.

Another rule is: Protect yourself, and don’t ever get caught in a bad deal. Be smarter, you will always have to assume the other people are way smarter than you.

According to you, what is the biggest change in China when doing business?

People are much more straightforward now and there is a better common understanding. The new generation is more open to the world thanks to the internet.

Work communication is changing quickly. Companies hardly use emails anymore. They prefer to communicate via Wechat.

How did you adapt your company to the Chinese market and culture?

That’s pretty easy for a fighting company. Chinese people love fighting and gambling! You can go to a street corner and always can find someone playing poker. The key is to educate them. People are beginning to know more and more know about what that sport is. Here, everybody knows about martial arts, and they know it’s a great sport. So it is just important to re-introduce them to Mixed Martial art fighting.

What advice you wish someone had given you when you first started RUFF?

China is a long-term process, and if you are not prepared for a long-term investment, you better go to another country. You have to build trust here, and it takes persistence and time.

How did you manage to build RUFF successfully?

It’s all about persistence. You need to keep going, especially for the fighting business. When building a new team, we try to teach people and it takes time to gain experience.

As a teenager who is finishing high school in China, what advice can you give me?

As you speak Chinese and you are passionate about sports, China is the place to be.

In the next 5 years, the sports management in China will be a huge business. It’s going to be big especially for agents and managers. So the key is to speak Chinese and be involved in China’s growing market.

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