Ambitious Adventures With Greg Rollett

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All right, welcome back to the show. This is Brad. Not sure if you were expecting somebody else though. I mean, the jingle did have my name on it, right? So this is Bacon Wrapped Business. And if you are a longtime listener, big virtual high five to you. Especially if you're a subscriber out there like my buddy Josh Jordison, jj who's on his way down here today. I know he's listening to the episode and hopefully this little Easter egg, he'll hear it and be like, hey, listen to, listen to Brad say my name. If this is your first time stumbling across this episode, maybe today's guest shared it with his following and you're like, what is this bacon and business? How do these things go together and why should I listen? Well, I am Brad Costanzo. This is my platform for picking the brains some of the most successful, inspirational and ambitious entrepreneurs that I can find. It has been an amazing way for me to tap into their expertise and then share it with that of my own consulting clients and the clients that I work with, my business partners and also use it on my personal businesses. It's been an amazing way for me to access people that normally I wouldn't be able to get to. A lot of people you might not be able to get to, but by being a fly on the wall and eavesdropping on our conversation, it's I like, I like to think that you can pick up a lot of the great stuff as well. Obviously this is a free podcast, but the best way you can repay me is if you like this, share this on social media. Bring more attention to my guests and myself. And at any point, if you have any questions, if you have any, you know, questions or recommendations for other guests or other topics that you want to hear about, send that email to ask bradaconrapped business.com that is my personal. I read every single one and I'd love to hear from you. Now that being said, I want to bring on today's guest, Greg Roulette. Greg is the founder of or at least co founder of ambitious.com, which is such an awesome domain and URL and it's such a Cool media property. But he's also done quite a bit in the marketing and entrepreneurial space from working with other business owners, especially financial advisors and people who are looking to build credibility and authority in the marketplace and really take their personal brand and their business's brand to the next level. I've known Greg for several years. We are good friends. And I really wanted to get him on the show today to find out about one of the coolest things he's got coming up, which is a reality TV show. And I think it's going to be different than anything else you see out there. So I want to welcome Greg to the show. Welcome, buddy.

What is up, my man? Super excited to be here. I am wrapped in bacon, mostly just because I'm in Florida and it's 100 degrees out, but regardless, it feels like the bacon sizzling. So I'm excited, man.

That's awesome. Yeah, this is cool. So, man, you've done a lot. You've got a lot going on, and you and your team are always up to some really cutting edge, cool, fun stuff. Gotta admit, a little jealous about some of the stuff you're doing right now. And I wish I was involved. But before we dive into the whole reality show and everything else, give me the quick backstory or, you know, give the listeners quick backstory so that they're like, well, is Brad just bringing on a buddy? Or, you know, who is this? Who is this turkey? He's.

He's really just a buddy. No, the super fast Cliff Note version. I was in high school. I joined this group. I forget the name of it now, but they allowed me to get out of school at noon every day my senior year of high school to start a senior project. And I started a record label because I wanted to be like Master P. I thought that hip hop moguls had the greatest.

You guys do look a lot alike.

We look very similar. We both got the gold grills and the big chains dangling around our necks, but really wanted to be Master P because I saw with all the hip hop moguls were doing, not just Master P, what was happening with Cash Money, Dame Dash, and Rockefeller Records, which was Jay Z's label at the time, what P Diddy was doing. And they were comparing them to entrepreneurs today like they were the Zuckerberg of today, like they were the moguls. And I thought it would be really cool to start my own record label. And obviously I signed myself as the first artist because why wouldn't you sign yourself as the first artist your own record Label.

And was it hip hop and all that?

Yeah, so it was hip hop. We were actually. It was me and my best friend at the time from the football team. Together we named ourselves the Burglars with two z's at the end. Because, I mean, that's obviously the coolest name ever. And. And we call ourselves that because at the time we were the poor white kids at a very wealthy white school. And we would go to these parties at these very wealthy houses and. And we would take insignificant objects like a cue ball from their pool table and we would leave the party and be like, ha, ha ha, they can't play pool anymore.

You know, gangster.

You know what I love about this? It was like, so hood.

You are like, also one of the whitest guys I know. And I have now I can officially say that bacon rap business has had to count them two white rappers. Jesse Itzler was on the show back in January, a great episode. He was a white rapper before he, you know, ended up becoming a billionaire and buying the Atlanta Hawks and all this. And now I got G. Rolay.

Whoa. And it was actually G. Rowe. That was the name. Yeah. So you're. You're darn close. So parlayed this fantasy into actually touring the country. Played everywhere from Madison Square Garden up in New York City to the Knitting Factory in la, you know, traveled in vans, ate ramen noodles and heated them up at truck stops in the middle of the night and, you know, live the glamorous life of a hip hop mogul for about a decade. And got out of that, found information marketing, as many people do, and started teaching musicians what I'd learned about how to book yourself some shows, how to make a living being a musician, and built a nice info business selling musicians, Basically Internet Marketing 101. But very niched into the music industry. Met up with my partner, Nick Nanton, who Brad, you know, and you guys have hung out at some events with.

Like X Prize, X Prize foundation thing together. Nick's great.

Yeah, Nick's awesome. And so partnered up with him and he said, hey, instead of teaching these musicians all this awesome stuff, why don't you teach people that have money awesome stuff? And I thought that was a. It was a. It was a genius idea and it changed the course of my life. And, you know, we've partnered up and we have a. We have a couple businesses together from the celebrity branding agency, which we. We brand people much like companies brand brands. So instead of branding Coca Cola, we brand guys like Brad or we ban guys like Joe or Susie, or whoever it is, and we help them to become the celebrity in their marketplace. And then about a year ago, because we were bored with building that business, which we're not at all, it keeps us very, very busy, we ended up acquiring ambitious.com and we've built it into a very nice media platform right now where we bring in some of the world's top experts into our studios in Orlando, Florida, and they teach free live classes, all centered around starting a business, growing a business, and using that business to live a more ambitious life. And it's been really cool because it's kind of a freemium education model. And you and I both are from, you know, we know about, you know, buy my $2,000 course and buy my, you know, and we're really trying to break down the walls and you people to see the good content. And we do it in a freemium model where it's free if you watch it live, and then people actually purchase access if they want to own the course. And it's been huge. We've had some amazing people. We got a course coming up next week with Alexandra Wilkins Wilson, who's one of the co founders of Gilt Group, who just valued over a billion dollars. She sold her interest a couple years ago, and, I mean, now she's just teaching women how to find their passion and grow their business. So just mega stars like that coming down and teaching, and it's. It's been a fun ride. And yeah, now we. We're bored with that, so we're going to do a TV show, you know, so.

Yeah, you know, so you haven't. You basically haven't been doing anything in your whole career. You just been sitting around in your ass.

Exactly. You know, and I got a wife and two kids, and I do like to see them and hang out with them.

So, you know why that's so weird?

It's crazy. Why would you do that?

I know.

So we could go in a lot of different directions. I definitely, in a moment, I want to get to the TV show that you're going to do because especially because you and your team are like, Emmy winning, like Emmy legit Emmy winning, you know, filmmakers and all this. So that's one of the most exciting things. But before we get into that, let's talk a little bit more about the personal branding thing, because I especially think that that's something that I know I'm interested in, and I believe that much of my audience would be as well. So tell me, tell me about some of the strategies and some of the really cool bacon wrapped strategies that you guys have used to help your clients just rock it up, brand themselves personally, totally be different than everybody else in their market, folks show.

So the biggest thing that we fundamentally believe in is that the only true USP is you. Right? At the end of the day, the biggest differentiating factor and the thing that you have going for you is you. Because fundamentally people buy from people and they buy from people that they know, like and trust. And the more someone knows you, likes you and trust you, the more clients you get, the higher fees that you can get, the better business you're going to have and the better life that you're going to have. And the easiest illustration of this is why does a guy like Tony Robbins get a million dollars a year for coaching? Why do his events cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars to attend? And Joe Schmo down the street who teaches very, very similar strategies. Goal setting and power, positive thinking and mindset and beliefs. And he can't get $30 for his book. Right.

Obviously it's because Tony's a lot taller.

Tony's a lot taller. Huge hands. It's the hands. You know, you pay the guy, you know and you know, at the end of the day, it's because he's Tony. Right. He's larger than life. He has a presence, he has a personality, he has something infectious about him. He makes more money because of who he is, not necessarily what he does. Now he's good at what he does. I'm not taking anything away from his magical abilities. But at the same time, there's a lot of personal development teachers and trainers out there who will never get to the Tony Robbins level because they're not Tony. And so what we really try to do is we try to do everything in our power to help our clients who are in very competition, heavy, very commoditized markets to have that, to have their personality shine and be that the reason that people work with you. So we work with a lot of financial advisors, financial services and a. No one trusts a financial advisor. Right. Because they got. They've screwed people out of.

Nor should they. No, I used to be one years ago. So I don't know why anybody ever trusted me with money.

Exactly.

I lost all my own.

So let me give it to you to manage mine. And so no one trusts financial advisors, financial advisors in the first place. Two is they're all hawking the same product, especially if they work at a big house. You know, everybody at Merrill lynch is just selling Merrill lynch products Right. And then you get on the insurance side and guys selling annuities and things like that, I mean, they're all selling and hawking the same stuff. So why should I go and trust you? And so you have to make a case for your story. You got to make a case for who you are. You got to make a case for why should I trust you? And the best way that we know how to do that for people is through media. That is how we trust people. Again, for better or worse, that is how we make those decisions. So a financial advisor hates Dave Ramsey, and they. Susie Orman. Right. They don't like their strategies. They don't like how Dave Ramsey tells you to, you know, pay off your debt and do this and that. They hate Susie Orman because she thinks she's crazy, whatever it is. But guess what? Dave's got a much bigger business than you do. Susie has a much bigger business than you do. They're making more money. They're helping more people. They're selling books, they're selling out arenas all across the world. And the real reason that they do that is because they have media.

No, it has to be luck, right?

Oh, it's got to be luck, you know, because again, his strategies aren't incredibly amazing like Dave Ramsey. I can summarize. You know, keep it really simple.

That's actually one of the keys, is they keep it super simple and pedestrian and able to. Then everybody goes, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Oh, without a doubt. And then they do that over and over and over again. So Dave Ramsey is still on the radio five days a week, three hours a day. So think about that. If you're a financial advisor and you send one email to your list a month, right?

Yep.

That's the only attention that you're getting from that list and only from the people that open it and pay attention to it. Dave Ramsey's on the radio 15 hours a week. I don't think most of you listening right now. Talk to your wife for 15 hours a week or your husband or your girlfriend or your best friend. Right. So think about the mental space that Dave Ramsey takes in your head. Susie Orman. If you watch her five nights a week, you know, for an hour, you.

Will go crazy and hate yourself.

Exactly. I would, but her raving fans love her, and they know her more than they know their best friends. And so they use media to do that. So not only is Dave on the radio 15 hours a week, but guess what? He's got multiple New York Times bestselling books. So Now I'm spending weeks with you in my bedroom or in my bathroom or on the beach, wherever you are reading his book. So now you're reading my book. And now I go to his seminar. Now I'm getting his books and tapes and CDs. I bought financial Peace University. He has all of these ways that he has taken up such mind space and such attention from you. And so we really try to help our clients. And so as you're listening to this, think about how often are you using media to tell your story, to tell your positioning, to tell your point of view, to tell your perspective on things to your marketplace. And so we use books, we use tv, we use major magazines, we use newspapers. You talked about the Emmy Award winning side. So we've done 30 minute short documentaries on our clients. I mean, imagine a financial advisor, instead of coming in to one of those dinner seminars or come into my office for a free consultation, says, you know, why don't you come to my movie premiere? I'm actually having a movie premiere. An Emmy Award winning producer came and did a movie on my life, and not just my life, but the impact that I have on people just like you and the significance that I've given to you. Come in and watch the movie premiere. I'll give you free tickets, some free popcorn, some sodas. Think about the positioning from that. And the whole 30 minutes is telling that story and telling that positioning. And so we believe that it's your personality and then you have to get people to know who you are. And we do that through media. So that might send us off on a spiral, but that at least gets us started.

No, I love it. I mean, and it sounds like a lot of work, like what you just said, but for your clients, it's a lot of work. For you guys, not for them, right?

Yeah, 100%. So we know that most people won't do anything that we tell them to do. It's just the reality of the world. So we do all the heavy lifting for them. So on the book writing services, you know, everything from, you know, helping them determine what their framework is to writing it, to editing it, to doing the covers, to publishing, to even doing the marketing, guaranteeing bestseller status, all that fun stuff, stuff on tv, you know, show up, we'll ask you a couple questions and, you know, we'll make you look great on tv. And we've really taken the hard work out of getting a lot of that media attention and really allowing you to do what you do best, which is to work with your Clients and to get this information in their hands so you can spend more time doing the thing that you've trained your whole life to do, whatever that is, whether you're a coach, whether you're an author, whether you're a real estate agent, a chiropractor, doctor, you know, if you're a great chiropractor, your time is best spent being a chiropractor. And so we take a lot of the hard work out of your hands so that, you know, we got the book, we got it published, we get it in the hands of your clients, and then they come into the office saying, Dr. Brad, Dr. Brad, I just read your book. I'm so excited. And now they're talking to you about your book, not about, you know, the $10,000 spine adjustment you're about to sell them. And they're super excited to pay you the $10,000 because they're like, oh, my God, my chiropractor is a bestselling author and he was just on TV and they made a movie about him. And, you know, it is a three ring circus. But it is very, very powerful positioning because now they don't see you as the chiropractor down the street with, you know, trying to get you in with a coupon or a bait and switch. They're excited to work with you because their chiropractor is a ro. Are. And that is a completely different position in the marketplace than someone who's peddling products and services. Yeah.

You know what my favorite part of that whole part was is when you were saying, Dr. Brad, Dr. Brad.

Imagine if someone actually made you a doctor.

That'd be like, honorable, scary. Anybody out there, Anybody listening, have the ability to bequeath me a doctorate? If you are in a university, just send me a doctorate in the mail. No, I. Dude, it's awesome. I'm a big believer in personal branding and, and using the media that we have at our disposal. Like you said, from books to books to video. I mean, podcasts. Why do you think I do the podcast? It's really for two reasons. It's one, the selfish reason is to jump on the phone with awesome people like yourself and talk about this stuff and.

Have a reason to record it and have a reason to share it out there. But it's also to build a degree of thought leadership and exposure for myself. So, you know, people are coming across me, they're like, wow, yeah, listen, I've heard the past two years of podcasts. You obviously know what you're talking about. Et CETERA So there's so many opportunities for professionals out there. And the bad part is, you know, people like ourselves, we get exposed to all of these awesome strategies, the things that work, the things that the top level people are doing, but the, you know, the other ones who are just struggling are either afraid to do, they don't even know it's possible. So it's cool that you guys are out there as a resource, helping them, saying, listen, we'll do this for you and you'll see results.

Kind of. And so, by the way, if anybody listening is like, this is awesome, I want to find out more about that aspect. Where would you direct them at the moment if they want more about the authority positioning?

Yeah, totally. That's just a celebrity brandingagency.com and they can see all of that, all of that fun stuff there.

Nice. Cool. Moving on. Not too long ago, you founded ambitious.com. tell me about that.

So the idea for this came from Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize. He's written two incredible New York Times bestselling books, Abundance and Bold. Everyone who's listening right now, just go to Amazon and just give that guy 40 bucks. It's so worth it. And so Peter has this whole 10x thinking type mindset. And I know there's a lot of coaches out there that they do the 10x your business. You got a 10x your business. But. But when you actually look at growing your business exponentially, he actually has frameworks that are put in place that allow you to grow exponentially, which are companies like Instagram, which was like, what, 18 months old when it got bought for a billion dollars from Facebook. I mean, imagine zero to a billion in 18 months. That's exponential growth. And so he has a real framework for that. And so we were at his office at the xprize. Nick and I were doing a full day consultation with him there and he challenged us. He says, what does 10x ing your business look like? And we were in the context of the company, I was just talking celebrity branding agency. We at the time, we had about 2,300 clients in 38 different countries. And 10 Xing, that meant, you know, 23,000 clients. And Nick and I both looked at ourselves and we go, oh, shit. Like that sounds hard. Like that sounds like monumentally hard. Because it's not like we could do 10 times more webinars, 10 times more, you know, ads that we were doing. Like, it's not the same. And so it made us rethink how we were going to have more impact how we were going to have more significance, all that fun stuff. And so Peter kind of opened us up and says, well, why don't you just own a network? Instead of renting time on all these networks and trying to get ABC to put on your show or trying to get the Bio channel is now sold and it's being compartmentalized, why don't you just start your own network? And we were like, oh, my God, that sounds like genius. And it was just one of those moments because he who owns the network, he who owns the platform, has all the control. Apple has all the control right now because they own the platform. They own the platform for itunes and the App Store, and they have the platform. So what if we built that platform? And so the idea for that, that's really where it came from, was that type of thinking was looking at, well, hey, maybe we don't want to grow this business 10 times, but we want to have 10 times more impact and significance and help more people and all that. So we were perusing an auction one day, and ambitious.com just happened to come up at an auction. And I'd had ties to the word before. I had a podcast called Radically Ambitious with my buddy Brett a while ago. I had a couple other, like, ambitious dad.com and some stuff like that in the past. And so I had an affinity towards the word. It came up, and it was the last day of the auction. It just, you know, serendipitous. And we, We. We pulled the trigger and bought it. And then we were like, oh, crap, now what do we do? And, you know, and so we've gone through some different iterations. Right when we launched, we wanted to be like a buzzfeed, Huffington Post for young entrepreneurs and build out the content market, and decided that just wasn't us. And now, you know, I kind of explained what we did at the beginning of the call. And, you know, it's kind of my info product roots. I am an info marketer. I'm also. I do a lot of hosting of TV shows, carpets of kickoff events, launch parties. You know, I'm very Ryan C. Krustian in that role. And so, you know, and just like you, selfishly, I wanted to bring in all these awesome people because I get to learn from them. You know, I get four. I get four hours of their best stuff where I get to ask them questions, you know, in front of a live audience. And then we also get to sell it and monetize it. And so it allowed us to create essentially our own TV network. It's a, I call it like part Good Morning America, part qvc because we really run it like a morning show, like a four hour morning show. But we are also doing live pitches for the products and services that we do. So it selfishly serves and it's built as a TV network where we're not ad dependent. I don't have to have a sales team going out there and trying to sell Coca Cola on 32nd spots and all that crap. We monetize with our own products and services and that we own our audience, we control our audience. And I think that's really big for everybody listening. Brad, your subscribers, they're your subscribers and every time you have a new episode like they get notified and they're like oh cool, new episode from Brad. And having that kind of control today is just, it's so important and we wanted the appearance of a network but the control to own our customers, own our data, know how long they're watching stuff. And that's really what we've been able to build over the last, you know, 912 months.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I mean I just watched the, I just watched the, the one on PR and publicity that you guys did.

And it was really cool.

You know, I tuned in for as much as I could live and then afterwards I was like, I really like this. But I didn't have a chance to watch like all four hours. So I purchased the, you know, the, the recordings and I mean you guys did a great job. And I actually even filmed a short 17 minute episode. Not quite a course, but an episode over in, at the ambitious studios when I was down there in May. And I may even link to that little bad boy here on the show. Notes.

So little gem. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, absolutely. Now.

What before, before we move on to the TV show.

You guys have the ability to work with some awesome people, you know, some awesome, you know, people who have the intellectual property people have the expertise, etc. Tell me about those ideal folks. That might be a perfect opportunity for you know, you to have as an ambitious, as an ambitious course creator, etc. Like who, who are the people you're looking to meet? Because there may be some listeners to the show.

Yeah, totally. So I mean right now we are really focused on helping people to start a business, grow a business and to use that business to live a more ambitious life. So our next vertical we're going to jump into is health. So like my bigger term vision is like we can do live cooking classes and like imagine like doing P90X live every day, like, that's just insane. But that's where we're going. But currently our audience and who we're looking for are people that help entrepreneurs start a business or grow a business or the personal development side, which is the more ambitious life side. So everything from travel hacks to goal setting to productivity, that whole nine. But the focus is on entrepreneurs because I believe that the quickest path to living your best life, we call it an ambitious life, is through a business. Right. If you have the business, you can buy yourself freedom. If you have a job, very difficult to have that freedom and to have a completely ambitious life that we believe in. So that's really where we're starting. And so if you, you know, are talking about those kind of subjects, if you're a subject matter expert, everything from like deep diving in, you know, we've had a course on like a deep dive into Facebook ads and the power editor. But then we've had, you know, we're bringing in Alexander Wilkus Wilson from Gilt, who I mentioned earlier, and it's really more about idea validation, just validating your idea. You know, we have other, you know, women entrepreneur classes. We've had, you know, YouTube advertising. We've had. Yesterday, we actually just did one on crowdfunding and real estate. So after you got, you've got your business and you've started to accumulate some assets and you're now an accredited investor, what do you do with that money? And so now you can invest into shopping centers and retail centers and hotels and major chains. And it was really freaking cool. And it was a way to now start to create some passive revenue. And who is that one with? That was Heather schwartz. She owns property.com and earlyshares.com they're down in Miami. And, you know, over a billion dollars in commercial real estate they do, and really freaking cool.

So that was property.property shares property.com, property.com and which is.

Which is another fun domain. And then early shares dot com.

Okay. You know, I also, just to sidetrack a little bit.

I'm interviewing another guy tomorrow. He's actually a former business partner of mine. I've known him for over 10 years, named Dale Hensel. And yeah, and Dale has been, I mean, every, he's been involved in every type of business model, much like me. But one of the things he's doing right now is real estate deals and assisted living centers. And he was, he called me up because he heard my most recent episode or one of my recent episodes with David Metzler. About equity based crowdfunding. And he called me up, he says, hey, maybe we can do some work together. I may want to crowdfunding fund some of my projects, etc. So we are currently exploring that. Especially if she is a expert in the real estate side. I would absolutely love an introduction.

Yeah, that'd be huge. I mean she was, it was one of the most eye opening kind of courses we've done in a long time.

Yeah, so, yeah, so is the one that I did on this, on this stuff. I've been diving into it big time.

Yeah.

Now the world's leading expert. But according to me, well, I mean.

I mean, again, just kind of sidetracking. But I mean, you were at that X Prize dinner, I think over the holiday holidays with Nick and Peter. And I mean just this whole idea of being able to crowdsource and crowdfund really anything that you want in your life. And what's interesting, it's almost like a nice segue into the TV show is that if you want something, there's almost no excuse to go out and do it. Now I know, it pisses me off.

I love excuses for my family, everybody loves excuses.

But like, so Peter Diamandis wanted to go to space. Like this guy wanted to go to space and NASA was never going to let him go to space. And so he was like, screw it, I'll turn to the private sector and I'll crowdsource my way to space. And that's essentially what the first X Prize was. It was a $10 million prize that he put up that he would pay $10 million to the winning team that could build a rocket ship, a spaceship that could take humans into suborbital flights two times and land successfully within. I don't remember if it was 10 days, 14 days, whatever it was. And so he privatized, he started the privatization of space flights. And now that technology was bought by Virgin, it's now Virgin Galactic. That's what got Elon Musk into the game. That's what got, you know, all these other folks in the game. But he was like, screw it, I'll just go to the private sector and I'll make other people do the work for me. And you know, and so now that's obviously in crowdfunding, that's happening every, I mean everybody knows Kickstarter, Indiegogo, but with the real estate side, with the equity based stuff, I mean companies can raise real money without going to the stock market, without going to the traditional route, without having to deal with that. You know, jerk over at, you know, you know, Charles Schwab or whatever. Like, just turn to the people who are actively interested in what you do, and you can get funding from them, and you can get them to build your. And I think that we're living in a really cool world where that's possible and so on a more of a micro level. So if you're not going to make spaceships, which I implore everyone to do, but if you're not going to go that crazy and build spaceships. I always wanted to host my own travel show, and I live in Orlando, Florida, and there's not many talent agents. Even with our business and the things that we do, I don't have Hollywood agents knocking on my door saying, greg, let's put you on the Travel Channel tomorrow. And so we kind of said, screw it. Let's go find the people who would be interested in sponsoring the show, being a part of the show and funding the show, and we're doing the show ourselves. And so that's kind of how ambitious Adventures was born. I went out of my pocket, my own money and filmed the pilot. And we've now sent the pilot out to, you know, into investors, to sponsors, to people, to be featured segment people. We've got some producers on board, and we're about to launch on Kickstarter and Crowdfund, basically the creation of a TV show. That is so cool.

When does that. When does that launch, the crowdfunding campaign?

The Kickstarter officially launches on July 11th.

And I'll make sure I get this episode. I'll bump this up so that we can get you.

Some bacon.

Nice. But so. And so here's. And so I want to give, like, some actual, like, teaching points, not just, like, talking cool stuff about that I'm doing, but, you know, so a couple of things, A is that if you want something, there are people out there that will fund it or they can build it, right? And that's crowdsourcing, that's crowdfunding. I think that's really, really important. The second thing that we're doing with this Kickstarter campaign that I think is very. I don't necessarily know if it's unique, but we are treating it, you know, like a major product, a major, you know, sales event. And so we are getting pre commitments from people. So day one, when we launch, we will, you know, our goal is to hit the funding, you know, level by noon of the first day because we are working our butts off, you know, pre selling producer spots, segments, you know, some of the higher ticket pieces in the deal. And basically we know that we're going to almost guarantee our funding on the first day. And then we got some really cool stretch goals and things like that. But, you know, we are working really, really hard. We're not. Not hoping that Kickstarter virally sends us stuff. I mean, we are working our tails off to hit that. And so, you know, there is opportunity out there if you have a great story to tell and you tell it to the right people. And it kind of goes back to that usp, the personality driven stuff. I talked to a guy from Denver last night and he's got the University of Denver. Denver University. I just butchered that. So hopefully they're not listening, you know, involved, because I told them a really good story. I told them this incredible story about, you know, when someone watches your episode of Ambitious Adventures and I can go into what show's about in a second. But, you know, I was like, when someone watches this episode, you're going to have, you know, VC money, you're going to have young entrepreneurs who are going to say, you know what? I'm not going to San Francisco, I'm not going to Silicon Valley. I'm moving to Denver because I watched that film, I saw the story of what's happening in Denver. And I want to take my business there, I want to put my money there, I want to put my employees there. And we told that story to these guys and, you know, you know, we're working on a sizable investment, a $25,000 investment, you know, to be a featured sponsor of that episode. And. And it all goes back to my personality and telling my story. And so if you do that, you tell your story enough times, you have a compelling enough story, people will buy into it and they buy into the hype and they buy into, I gotta deliver, I gotta create a damn good episode. Right? But if you can tell that story, it allows you to have those conversations.

Absolutely. Stories drive everything. I mean, it's one of my favorite things to do in marketing and in business in general. I think people fall into kind of two categories, either more creative or more quantitative. And I'm definitely not a quant. I love the creative side, I love the storytelling side. If I know what the hook is, if I know the story, etc. That's when I get really excited about a business project. And that's why I think the stuff that when I do it like that, it always ends up more successful than if I just try to do just a very quantitative based Marketing campaign. It's just a. Not what my strength is. And I mean, you know, stories are becoming more and more important throughout. You know what, in marketing, what we're doing now, a lot of the old school direct response and advertising stuff is just not getting through to people. It's not engaging. And there's so much attention, you know, or competition for their people's attention. It's, you know, stories have engaged us throughout, you know, human history. So. And I think that's awesome that you guys are continuously telling the story and telling the story of ambitions and what entrepreneurs can do.

Really exciting. So the way that people can help you out there is if this resonates with them and they want to, you know, find more. You're going to be launching the Kickstarter campaign, and I'll make sure that this. That this episode goes live, like right after or the day that it launches so that we can put a link on there and they can go to it.

What else, you know, what else have you seen out there that you're really excited about that maybe a lot of people aren't kind of noticing or any trends that you, you know, that you see, like, this is really cool. We're going to try to capitalize this, or somebody should capitalize on this.

Yeah. So again, most of my life is spent in media, either talking on a microphone, like we're doing now in front of a video camera, things like that. And with. With as much saturation as we think is out there, there, there is still a huge opportunity for people to start blogs, start podcasts, start a video show, do live video. I mean, live video is. I mean, Facebook's pouring so much money into Facebook Live, YouTube Live. I mean, Periscope's not dead, but, you.

Know, that's going to be long, though, before it's not dead. I never use Periscope.

I don't. I think it's YouTube and Facebook win. I mean, they just have the money and they have the audience and, you know, their technology. I think it's just going to be leaps and bounds better.

But. But I still think there is plenty of opportunity for great storytellers to get involved in utilizing this incredible technology, the incredible media that we have in front of us. What I think is. Is going to happen is, is there is a bubble of crappy podcasts. There's a bubble of. I mean, it happened with blogs, right? Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think that blogs are dead. I think that crappy blogs are dead.

Exactly.

You know, like, I Mean, you know, people can still write, you know, a 5,000 word piece. I mean, look at Neil Patel. This guy writes fricking monstrous posts and he has a larger audience than most people on the Internet. You know, it's not that blogs are dead. Your crappy writing sucks and doesn't pull people in. You know, same thing with video. Like, you can become a YouTube star still today. You can go on YouTube, do some videos and get a ton of audience, but if your videos suck, you know, no one's gonna watch them. Same thing, a podcast, you know, if you, you know, I mean, this happens to me, right? So I've been on a couple larger podcasts and legit, the day after the podcast episodes airs, I get from all these copycat daughters, I get 30 emails and saying, hey, and they asked me the exact same questions like, your podcast is dead, bro. Like, find a way to stand out and tell the right story. But they're silly.

Wait, so back up. So you say you'll do like a big episode and then you'll have other podcasters contact you.

Yeah. And say, what?

Do you want to be a.

Do you want to be a guest on my show? And of course, I'm a media whore. So I'm like, of course I'll be on your show. But then they ask the same, you know, so what's your biggest fear? What's the best marketing book you've ever read? And it's like, you know, yeah, they bought a podcast course and they said, ask these seven questions to your guest. And like, like, there's no originality. There's no. I mean, I know you and I were going a little off the cuff today and stuff like that, but that's freaking entertaining.

Like, my game too. Like I've legitimately said on other episodes, and my loyal listeners will attest to this. Like, listen, I just interviewed so and you know, so and so guest. I'm trying to think who this was was just recently on this other show. And I'll put a link to that other show if you want to go hear that. The basic stuff. I've got a lot of follow up questions that I want to ask.

Totally right.

And I'm like, you can go listen to that stuff and if you wanted to learn the real basic stuff, buy this person's book or this person's course. Because I have, you know, my time is the most precious thing in the world to me and I have limited time. And if I'm talking to somebody and taking, you know, an hour out of my day, to jump on the phone with you or somebody else. I want to talk about stuff that really interests me, not something that I can just go Google and find out the most basic. And I actually, to some people, I've asked them to share a. Like a strategy, share something that it actually hurts them a little bit inside to share because, like, it's so valuable. Like, I don't really want to share this to non paying customers, but that non paying customer is me. It's like, no, tell me the stuff that I would normally have to pay for. So I agree, that's. But to any other podcasters who are probably listening to this show or whatever, take advice on that, like, be a little bit original. Just don't ask the exact same questions. Otherwise, you know what you could do? I thought about this. This would be a fun little software. If somebody wants to take this software and run with it, which is like, if you get a lot of requests for podcast interviews, right, just answer the 20 most frequently asked questions and create all these little MP3 files. And then just have somebody go to your site and say, okay, question one. And then they read and record the question. So, Greg, tell me about your backstory. And then now read question two and then compiles all of them into like this master spliced up interview.

That's the. That sounds genius. Because that's the interview I do. You know, I'd say 30, 40% of the time, that's the interview that I have. And it kind of, you know, it's not good for the guest. It's definitely not good for the audience. You're not being unique, you know, like, no one wants to hear the same six things that I like. It's already there.

Yeah. But the flip side of the. That really is the fact that you've heard it all before. Like, you may have a podcast listener who's only. They've only heard you once. So hearing that backstory. Yeah, it's a. You know, it's new to them every time. Like they hear it. It's new to them the first time. So I get it. It's hard to be totally unique. And that's why I do ask a little bit about the backstory.

Well, I think you need that. Right? It creates context. So if your listeners have never heard of me, now they're like, oh, another. Another freaking white rapper.

Like.

I just don't know the same stuff as I said that I can Google you and go to your bio page or if I can buy your course and learn the exact same thing. I don't really care to ask that as much as I do the stuff that I, you know, could only get as if I was sitting down, having a cup of amazing indulgence. Stiletto coffee brought to you by stiletto coffee.com.

Exactly. So let me bring this. Let me bring your listeners. I guess the value bomb out of that would be, you know, it's not about the new shiny object, right? So just because Facebook Live, if you suck at live video, don't do live video. If you're great at writing, there is still room to create a killer blog, to do guest posts, to write for Medium, to Write for the HuffPo, and you can build a huge freaking audience that way. If you're a darn good writer, if you suck at writing, don't force yourself to blog because some guru sold you a course on how to blog. Find what you're kind of good at, right? I'm naturally good in front of the camera. It's probably just. It's the being on stage thing and the lights and cameras, it doesn't affect me. But the other thing is I've been doing video for 12 years, right? So I'm very comfortable now in front of the camera, very comfortable in front of a microphone.

You don't pee yourself nearly as often, I've noticed.

I don't what.

You don't pee yourself with nerves nearly as often.

Very, very rarely these days. And so a. I think it's a. It's play to your strengths, right? If you are scared out of your mind of video, don't do video. Do a podcast, right? Hide behind, you know, the Skype screen. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but like, you know, it allows you to be silly. You don't have to worry about your facial expressions when the other person's talking. Like, just, you know, do it that way. Way. And so that's piece one of it, piece two. Spend some money on some production, spend some money to make it unique. And then part three is don't be scared to put your personality into it. So in a lot of the ambitious videos, things like that, like, we have very, like, you know, very deep rooted into hip hop. Like, we have a lot of hip hop music, hip hop intros. My video editor and I make him watch, like, hip hop music videos. And luckily he's into hip hop as well. But we very much have that, you know, hip hop music video feel for our videos because that's who we are. It's the slang that we use. It's the Terminology and. And so we let that personality really come out and it's what builds an audience. Because if you're just like everybody else, you're going to get the same results as everybody else.

We don't need any more Gary Vee's and Grant Cardones. The world doesn't need any more. I love both those guys, but we don't need any more. The world needs more Brad Costanzas. The world needs more John Smith and Sally Hughes. We need more of you to be who you are. And the good news is the tools, the access, the availability, the audience, all of that is there. But if you sound like everybody else, you just get muddled. If you are unique. I learned this from Sally Hogshead. You know Sally?

I know of her. I've bought her books and stuff.

I cool. She's a rock star. She has this great, great line in the second book. How the world sees you about opinions of authority is we respect people that have opinions of authority. And these are things that at the root. Cause they're opinions, but we take them as fact. Right? So that could be, you know, bacon is the best food for you in your diet. Diet, right. That is, you know, 100% an opinion. But Brad thinks that's fact. That you don't have an ADA diet unless you have six pieces of freaking bacon every single day. And if you blow and if you get that into people's minds, they're going to start taking it as fact. Like Dave Ramsey, the reason why he's so freaking good is because he has opinions that people really think are facts. You got to pay off your debt, you know, make sure you pay off your credit cards, like. But people see that as gospel. They don't see it as an opinion. They see it as gospel. And that is really what builds his Persona. It builds his brand.

It attracts and then it repels. You can't help everyone. You can't save everyone. But you can save the people that really resonate with your philosophy. So as you're building media, really think about what are your opinions of authority? What are the things that you uniquely believe as facts, but they really are opinions and beat them into people. Like, it's a religion. Your business is a religion for the people that you serve. So. So hopefully there was a little bit of value into that as people, like, start going and thinking about creating media, you know, spend some time on that.

Tons. Yeah, no, it's. I agree completely. You know, this is one of the problems that. Not problems, but one of the challenges I've had is you do see the most vocal authorities out there, people like the Gary's and the Grants and you know, they're just the most in your face and people either hate them or they love them. And it's great because, you know, they're polarizing and there's some other polarizing figures out there. And sometimes they're, they're polarizing because they're, I mean, maybe instead of being so hard, they're just super soft and they deliver this software.

Your Glenn Beck's, your Rush Limbaughs, your Sean Hannity's, you know, they're radio guys, but they are very, you know, right winged and they're very pro gun. I mean, this isn't political at all, but that's their opinions and you know, they attract a certain amount of people and they repel a whole heck of a lot more.

Yeah, exactly. And I know I've had, I mean, I've given some actual thought to this, like, how can I be more repellent?

I'm sure my wife would be like, oh, honey, you don't need to be any more repellent than you are. But there are, there are, there are ways to do it. And a lot of times it doesn't have to be the force of your personality. It can just be like you said, the opinions you form and the things that you believe in and, and the things that you stand against as well. So, so that's really an important point that you bring up. I'm glad you did.

Man, this is awesome. I love this. And there's so much to learn from the stuff you've said from building the authority to. I love the fact that you guys are, you're just jumping in and saying, yeah, let's go do the TV show, let's crowdfund this bad boy and let's see what we can create. And that's really what it takes. I mean, it's, it's having that goal and not knowing exactly how you're going to do it but say, look, there's got to be a way to do this. And the thing I like about crowdfunding, and to this day, I have not personally done a crowdfunding campaign that may change before too long. But it fits directly within my mode of operation, which is that I don't have to have every resource as long as I know the people who do. I just think that's such a powerful thing. And I love that you guys are doing that. I'm going to be watching closely to see what you're Doing Ryan and, and, you know, listening carefully to the things that you could have done better when it's all said and done. But man, it's gonna be fun one to watch.

So, yeah, I'm totally aware that we're gonna screw up a lot of stuff, you know, like that that's just, you know, we're all making it up as we go. And I've, I've, I've talked to a few, like, billionaire names that you guys would all know. And the two things that they say, one is they're, you know, you think of a billionaire, like, they can do whatever they want, but they're just as cash strapped as well we are. Right. So they're just, you know, even Branson. So he said this in the Visioneer movie we made for Peter Diamandis, he passed on the original $10 million prize for the X Prize because he said he didn't have the cash in hand. You know, he's like, we're all cash strapped just like everybody else. Ended up costing him an additional $90 million because he ended up paying over 100 million for the technology after the prize was won. Right. You know, and so, you know, just a guy like Branson, you think, oh, he's got, you know, 10 million to him, no big deal, especially to invest in like space technology. But at the time it was a, it was a little bit of a risky investment. You know, he just, you know, he doesn't have 10 million in his bank account to just. Here you go, Brad.

Like, that's the problem is everybody looks at, you know, the super wealthy. And it is true a lot of them do have some, a bunch of cash on hand, but a lot of them don't. They're not liquid assets. Just because you're worth that much money does not mean you have that much money to just make it rain, you know, in cash. So it's, you know, it's probably a topic for another, for another day still. I love it. So this is the time on the show I like to turn the tables to see if there's any other way we can help you besides the, you know, supporting the Kickstarter. But what are some nuts you're trying to crack? What are some resources you're trying to gather, some people you're trying to hire, some skill sets you're trying to learn just, you know, anything out there that, you know, the, My bacon wrap listeners can.

Yeah, I love that. So we talked earlier about, like the course creators for ambitious.com, people that want to come into our studios. We're in Orlando, Florida, and teach these live classes. But the bigger play of that for me is I'm looking for folks that can break us into international markets. Because. Because I would love to go into, like, a country like Venezuela. They are in a load of crap right now. You know, inflation's through the roof. There's curfews, there's governmental restrictions. And the only way that they are going to get the help that they need is by helping to teach the concepts of entrepreneurship and building new businesses and, you know, having those entrepreneurs and business owners take those risks, hire new people and get that current regime out of place. I want to go teach classes to the them. I want to go. I was just with Jeff hoffman, founder of Priceline.com we were speaking together at the United Nations a couple weeks ago.

Look at you and your big fancy self.

You like that name drop?

But I was with him, and he was talking about, you know, the only way that, you know, in the Middle east, the Middle Eastern countries, the only way that they're going to have peace is to teach entrepreneurship. Because if, you know, Jihad Johnny, instead of, you know, blowing up a building, has a business, and now he's got a family and he has employees. Well, now when someone says, hey, Jihad Johnny, do you want to go blow up a building? And he says, no, why the hell would I want to blow up a building? I got. I got this. I got a business, you know, yeah. Like, I have. I've got an enterprise going on here. And so I do believe that entrepreneurship can really help people. And through, you know, the free education that we give at Ambitious and our business model, I think that we can really help people on a global scale. So if there is anyone that has ties to entrepreneurs that have, you know, openings at an international level, like, that is a bigger game. That's Peter Diamandis. Bold, big thinking. But. But I think we can make a huge, huge impact. Impact on the world, on the economy, on peace, on, you know, making the world a better place to live if we teach more people about the opportunities through. Through starting businesses. So that.

I love it.

So that's my piece for the day. Oh, and just. And pledge on the Kickstarter campaign, you know, you can pledge a dollar, you can pledge $10,000, you know, whatever. Whatever you want to do.

Nice. I love it. Well, I'll definitely be supporting you guys and helping out, and I encourage my listeners too, as well. Greg, you dropped a bunch of awesome tips and tricks and bacon bits for us. And I encourage Everybody to go check it out. You can go to celebritybrandingagency.com right is one. You can go to ambitious.com is another. And then I'll have the link for the upcoming Kickstarter campaign that you can go support Greg and the, and the programs, etc. And I highly recommend you guys follow closely what they're doing. Ambitious also has a podcast, right?

We do.

I think that you got one of the. You guys had a couple guests on there or a couple episodes that I really liked. It was with this Brad Costanzo guy. Amazing topics.

Episodes did really well too.

Yeah, it's amazing they didn't sink, but.

You know, hey, we'll take it.

I heard he brought the heat, so. Yeah, but you get. You guys can go subscribe to, you know, I know Low Silva is the host and then you may be on there as well. Sometimes I'm not 100% sure, but go subscribe to the ambitious podcast as well. All these links will be in the show. Notes, notes, guys. But Greg, man, I really appreciate having you on the show today. For all my listeners, go check out the links that we've shared and shoot me any questions, topic recommendations, guest recommendations, etc. Especially, especially if you are a business owner and you know, your profits have kind of plateaued, you're stuck, you don't really know exactly what you should do next and you'd like a second opinion on that. I am happy to give you a second opinion, but you'll know need to email me at askbradakenratbusiness.com I believe you can also go to baconrapbusiness.com help and I'll see if I can help you.

One of the benefits to reaching out to me on this is not only do I have a great background in building a business, selling businesses, doing all different types of marketing campaigns, managing millions of dollars worth of media buys, and creating millions of dollars of worth online, both for many of my clients, some for myself. But I've seen a little bit of every business model out there. I've seen a lot of the campaigns at work and which ones don't. I'm really good at putting a finger on the ones that are most appropriate to you, but I won't be able to help you unless you reach out. But in addition to all that experience, one of the cool parts, if I don't mind patting myself on the back a little bit, is because over the past two years at this point I've interviewed, I think, just about 80 or 90 guests on the show. I've got a lot of contacts, a great Rolodex and I pick up a lot of cool tips and tricks from each and every one of them. And if there's a chance that I don't remember exactly you know the ways that for instance like Greg could help you out but I remember that Greg is somebody you may be able to meet. I can make introductions if it's appropriate for you but you've got to get in touch with me. Ask bradbaconrappbusiness.com and if you don't want to do that just share the show on social media with your grandma, grandma with your mom, with your family members if you don't have big social media following.

Equal Opportunity Podcast I am an equal.

Opportunity self promoter so I appreciate everybody and appreciate you Greg and I look forward to seeing you either in O town or out here in San Diego sometime soon.

Sounds great man, thanks.

Alright brother talk to you soon and my podcast listeners. See you next week.