Los Silva Part 1/3: Inside The (Sometimes Dark) Entrepreneurial Mind

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to bacon wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Do you have any idea how often I sit here thinking of the perfect intro to this show and just pull my hair out and I just decided to say hell with it and get going. This is Brad Costanzo. You're listening to bacon wrap Business. If this is the first time you've heard the show, I encourage you to subscribe on itunes. Get back in it and listen to all the episodes. Today I have got one of my besties, Los Silva on the line. What's up, Los? How you doing, buddy?

What's up, man? How's it going?

It's going good. We are going to strong intro. You like that? Wasn't it like radio DJ style?

Yeah, what's up everybody?

Was do the. What was that? The Bud Light commercial? So if you guys don't know Los, first of all, what's wrong with you? You don't know Los Angeles. I mean, if you're on Facebook, you might not know Los, not at all. But if you're on Twitter, if you've been around, if you've been in the world of startups, marketing, business development, etcetera, you've probably seen Los. Either the content he's created or you've seen him at an event or you've seen him doing some pretty big deals. Los and I have been friends for several years. We hit it off immediately. Kind of cut from the same. Cut from the same cloth. We use each other as a sounding board when we're highly frustrated in life and we call each other going, I just suck at life and I hate business and people. And we always bring each other back from the brink of entrepreneurial sadness.

But Los is continuing on with your intro. Los here.

Los is one of the most skilled and brilliant business minds that I've met. I'm fortunate to call him a friend. He is a king of creating really authentic business relationships that produce huge opportunities for himself and his partners. And it is one of those things. Like, it's not that Los knows everybody. Everybody knows Los. And I'm just, I'm fortunate to have you as a friend, brother. I appreciate your friendship and business advice and all the times we spend talking on the phone Business pillow talk.

Thank you, bro. I'm gonna find a way to edit all this and just make a video and just throw it out into the universe since I can't use Facebook for it. But thank you, bro. I appreciate you too, man. I gotta say, I love our talks. As deep and dark as they go. A lot of times there's light to them. Absolutely.

Well, there's usually light. And when I say this, just being real vulnerable like, you know, entrepreneurs have. Everybody has their problems. Everybody's dealing with that. What do they say? That quiet battle of desperation. And that's one of the things I know that you and I have noticed when we're talking to other business owners and entrepreneurs and people out there who look like they have it all. I mean, how often do you not only feel, but here like I am a total feeling. I am just. I hate my life. I have this big business and I hate every minute of it.

Yeah, man. It's calls that I have, I have those calls all the time with people. So, you know, in one of our groups, we have black label, we have high level seven figure plus entrepreneurs in there, and we have calls consistently with them. And a lot of times people are just busy being busy being inside of their business. And really you get caught up in this because you start online marketing or you start your business because you need to, right? No one just starts their business. Well, a lot of people at the beginning don't start their business going shit, you know, it'd be fun. More money and they just build more things, right? Like they suck it, they suck at life or they're just stuck in a trap of their business or life or whatever and they're like, I need to, I need to get out. So that's why you start. Then you make more and you grow and things happen. And then you kind of hit a point where you're just rolling and then you kind of lose yourself again and you get caught up in being in a job, I guess, and just being stressed out and trying to meet numbers. Instead of like the cool part of when you started to coast and it started to make money and you were great and you were kind of free of time and things like that. And we deal with that all the time. I deal with that internally all the freaking time. Can you cuss in here? You.

You can cuss. Go for it, girl.

Because I almost pretty much feel like I can't not drop it. Yeah, right.

Drop it like it's hot.

So, you know, you get caught up in all the, all the daily Shit of your life and your business, and you kind of almost forget why you start things. It's definitely one of the things that you and I talk about all the time in our calls, right?

Absolutely. It kind of comes up that be careful what you wish for. You may get it. I know that.

I know that you just put on the big Build Grow Scale live. So I didn't mention this earlier, but Los and his partner Tanner are the co founders of Build Grow Scale. You can go to buildgrowscale.com and it's business and marketing, education and events, etc. And it's an amazing, amazing event. And just recently you had. I think it was your second big one, and.

You wanted to fill that room with so many people you really stretched out of your comfort zone.

Yeah.

And as awesome as the event was, I know daily you were like, man, this. I don't know if I like this.

This is. So what we decided to do was three times the size of it for next year, right?

Exactly. Because get out of that lazy boy life. Right?

Yeah.

This is 100% Vinnie Fisher's fault, who I know has been on your podcast. He was like, hey, guys, you gotta go big. And I mean, he's got the best mindset and, you know, he's a mentor to myself and Tanner and stuff like that. And he always helps. But yeah, when you're. When you're going through it, it sucks. And as entrepreneurs, you know, it's become really hard. And this is something I personally deal with a lot and I'm working on it, but it's hard to pat yourself on the back. And that was good. That was solid. I mean, we had a 500 person event. We had about 400 people there.

Oh, you're such a loser, man.

We fel like shit. Like straight up. Like, I'm not even gonna lie, like, we felt like shit. Also, I made the mistake of throwing it on Memorial Day weekend. So, you know, there was a. There was that, hey, hey, hate your.

Family, come hang out with us.

Well, dude, I didn't. The hotel kind of like bent us over. They're like, this is the only day you can do it. Blah, blah, blah. You know, it's my first time doing an event that size, so it just happened. It's not happening like that next year.

But yeah, you know, we were unhappy. I mean, we do a lot of things. You know, we're decently successful in business, and a lot of times we'll have a success. And it is almost immediate how we're both instead of being like, hey, great job, bro, I gotta call you. So you can be like, hey, bro, that wasn't bad. Because I will call you. Instead of being like, hey, man, we made X amount. Or this happened. I'm like, hey, man, this. This happened. I don't know why I'm good at life. I hate myself, you know, and it's just you. You run. We run in these circles of people just succeeding aggressively every day. You feel like your achievements sometimes are like, meh, I should have done that. And. But you shouldn't have. Like, it's still a great success. It's just. It becomes hard. You know, LeBron James has a good game. Not at all that I'm LeBron James or you or any of us are friends, but LeBron James has a good game. And he doesn't go, man, that was a great game. He only sees what he sucked at. You know, Kobe Bryant, same thing.

Was it.

Was it.

Was it Jordan who After, like, winning games or even a championship or something? I think it was after winning games, he would. I think it was Jordan or one of the other top, top basketball players where he would stay in practice. Maybe it was Kobe. He would stay in practice after the game, constantly shooting free throws. Everybody else was going and party. He'd stay for like an hour later and keep practicing. You know, a. That's kind of one of the characters of greatness, which, by the way, I don't have. I would be out getting drunk. But it's also probably beating yourself up, like, not focusing on the shots you make, but focus on the shots you missed and getting really mad that I'm never missing that again. So I'm gonna work harder. It's a dangerous slope, too, to go down, because I know when I'm talking to other really high performers, those people that we look up to, and we're like, man, I want to be like him when I grow up. And, you know, when you get deep and you go, you know, you have a conversation that's really authentic and you're not talking about the small talk. You're not just talking about business. You realize that we all share this.

A similarity of feelings. Like, nobody's out there feeling like, man, I'm just killing it and I'm awesome. Like, I love me and everything that I'm doing. Everybody has that. Every high performer that I've met has a little bit of that, either insecurity, sometimes a feeling like I'm a fraud. They're going to find me out. So I've got to work Harder So it can drive them. I know, it drives me.

It drives the shit out of me. Right?

So it's, you know, for the audience. One of the things that I want you to kind of get from this, the point being that, you know, no matter where you are, whether you have a 10 million, $50 million business making 100,000 a year, or you're stuck in a job that you hate and you're thinking about getting out and you're thinking, man, you know, the gap between me and Brad Loewe or me and Donald Trump, I don't even know I mentioned him. He's like off my radar now. But the most high performing of the high performing people is so great.

I'm a loser because I'm comparing myself to them.

You know what's helped us, man? Me and Tanner, specifically.

When we stopped giving a crap about other people. That's key, dude. I mean, straight up, I am a masochist. Well, not anymore, but I was a masochist at the beginning of the year on, like, oh, Johnny, Jim and Jake are doing these things. We've got to be similar because we're in a similar place. I remember, you know, and just running ourselves and I mean, we were crushing it, but we were adding so much overhead and this and that, and it's just like, whoa, you know, we stopped. Tanner and I stopped after the event. After the event, we had our Miami mastermind, and after that, just had a conversation. We're like, what do you, what do you want to do, man? You know, because the truth about ourselves is that Tanner and I are, you know, extremely great friends. Like, we're best friends and we love each other, we love our family and we love doing business together and we love certain parts of our business. We were getting into all these other facets and things that we just saw other people do. And we're like, we should do that too, because they're doing it. Once we stopped, we were like, well, I like this and I like this, and this is what I want to focus on. And me too, on this other thing. These are the things we're going to do instead of listening to so many people's. You know, I love mentors and I love, you know, people shooting for the skies and stuff, but sometimes just look at your own shit and be like, what do I want to do? What's my goal for right now? And what do I want to be? And what do we want to achieve in the next six months? We kind of slowed things down.

And it's just been amazing. I mean, we're running at the same rate, but I don't know, we're doing less things, but we're effectively growing bigger. So it's weird how that happens, but it's because we're worried about ourselves. Not in a conceited way, but in our business. Like, we're not looking at anyone else's business anymore, not going through anyone else's funnels. I'm not doing any of that stuff. I'm just doing what I think is going to give value to, to the products and services that we have. And that's doing very well for us.

Yeah, that's so important. And I think a lot of us have faced that. And when you kind of break through to where it's almost like you get out of the noisy room and now, boom, you're in silence. You're like, okay, I'm just gonna do me. I'm the only one I have to compete with. A mentor of mine years ago said the only competition for me is myself. I don't worry about what other people are doing. I don't worry about if my competition is creeping up on me. I'm competing with me because, you know, I am my biggest enemy sometimes. I am my biggest competition. I'm competing for couch time. I'm competing for wanting to be lazy and not wanting to have to do all this work. I'm competing with me and not comparing myself to what everybody else has got. So, you know, we could sit here and do, you know, sit here in the, in the, what do you call it, the psychologist chair forever. And, you know, explain all the things that we go through, that is.

The.

Frustrations, the fears of failures, etc. Toward blue in the face. What are you really proud of that you've done both professionally and personally?

Personally, I am proud of my family. And I know this sounds super cheesy, but I'll give you. I guess I'll give you context, right?

But by the way, if you didn't say that, then people would be like, oh, he's not a fan.

That guy's a dick.

Yeah. So, you know, four, five, five years ago or so ago, I had another business. We started an E Commerce, built a electronic business. It's a long story, but from there we were doing a bunch of homes and stuff like that. I was doing home automation for companies for home owner builders, and it went down the tube. So I had just got married a little while ago. We were kind of having. Around the time our first daughter was born. And we went from having money to like literally eating waffles and cottage cheese and that's like what we could afford. I lied to all my friends and I was like, no, everything's going great. Like you know, you know how it is, whatever. And like super, super broke. I lied to my wife, lied to everybody because I was like super embarrassed. And honestly, no one would take me. I tried to apply like everywhere, even serving jobs and I just didn't have experience because I had my own business. And they're like, well, you don't have any experience, which is ridiculous to me. But anyways, you know, and I was able to get us. I told my wife, who is my partner and I love her to death. I told her, I was like, listen, I'm going to go back to online thing. I'll figure something out. And five years later, we live in the house of our dreams. We have two beautiful daughters. We have all the time. I do everything I can to spend all my time with them as much as I can. I'm taking one of my daughters on a daddy daughter date night tonight. The other one still poops herself and is 3 months old, so can't do much with that one. So. My wife takes a lot of care of her. But you know, I hang out with my family every. I swim with my daughter Sienna at least like two times a week. And you know, I'm big into spending time with my family and I have that and I have that freedom and just I feel blessed to have all the, all the things that we were able to re achieve and stuff like that and the support that I was able to have with her. So that's one of the things I'm super proud of because I kind of went from nothing again to being able to give them that more. So for me to acquire, it's not something I care that much about, but for me to give my wife all those things is something that I'm proud of.

Nice. What about professionally? Let's go more specific on professionally because you've done some awesome things. I know, you know, just coming off the build, grow scale, coming off of some deals you can't even talk about right now because they're so big.

That's probably the biggest thing I've ever done in my life professionally. That deal that you know about that is, you know, worth. It's just a very, very big deal. It's the biggest thing we've ever done. Tanner and I deal wise and stuff like that. So that's, that's huge. But to, you know, to be able to Talk about something just because that's super vague. People are gonna be like, you sucker. You just didn't even say anything specific. I'm really proud of the group that we've been building with Black Label, which is our high level entrepreneur mastermind for media companies, direct response marketers, and up and coming apparel people. I'm really proud of the people that are in there. I'm proud of the value that Tanner and I are giving the people inside, the changes that people are having not only in their business, but in their life. We've even had it's a business mastermind, but we've got people losing weight in there. We've got people doing massive joint ventures. We've got people just growing new companies, new businesses. So that's exciting. That's something that really my heart is involved in and I want to continue to grow and in the next few years, be the top mastermind that focuses on those three categories.

Yeah, that's awesome, dude. And I think you're doing an amazing job. As a member of Black Label myself, I can attest it's amazing. Masterminds are a big part of my life. They're a big part of your life. I am in multiple. I know you are as well. We've formed multiple. We've got multiple ones. And it's going to be a much bigger topic on the show here as time goes on, because it's also an area that I feel very strongly about is connecting and helping to grow entrepreneurs and business owners.

In a way that really shortcuts. And like our friend Ed o' Keefe says, leapfrogs the entire learning environment, surrounding yourself with the right people.

I don't think it leapfrogs the learning environment because you still got to learn. What I think it does is it leapfrogs your. The position that your life is in, you know, because the reality is people give you the opportunities that happen for the majority.

But here's where I disagree with your disagreement. So you said it doesn't really leapfrog the learning environment. It does, because when you want to. When you want to learn a new skill set, you can go buy an info product and sit through the whole thing, or you can do one of the things that I'm currently doing right now with our buddy Matt, who we met in a mastermind, and I said, this is an area. This is a business venture I want to.

Pursue. This is another avenue I want to do. You own a company that does this. I need your help. And let's get on the Phone and talk. A part of it is because of the relationship I've built with him, and then part of it is because of the mastermind we're in. And he has been amazingly helpful saying, do this, do this, do this, don't sit through a 20 hour info product to do this. Let me just tell you exactly what to do and what to focus on. That has been so, so valuable so far. So now when I go back and if I want to look at books or info products on it, I already know the 20% that brings the 80% in. And the rest of it is just. The rest of it is the filler and the details. And so that's what's so awesome. Actually, it's one of the awesome parts about this podcast too is I can get experts like yourself, like anybody else, to get on and I get to pick their brain clean on, you know, what should I do, how should I do it? Give me the most actionable steps and forget the rest. Because that allows me to leapfrog over hours and hours alone in front of a computer or a book. So.

Not to.

I agree with you.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's hard not to because. Pretty smart.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. You know, and obviously I love masterminds, but the biggest. And we've even had conversations about not starting a mastermind, but throwing dinners for people, just buying people food. I think that's the biggest thing in, in the world that you can man breaking bread with people. It's just such an experience of really letting everyone's guard down and just kind of being yourself. You know, you go to an event, you go to whatever everyone's postured, everyone's trying to position themselves, everyone's some sort of thing. But when you just sit down and eat and have drinks, you're just dudes or people just hanging out. And that's where the great relationships and things like that really kind of start to form.

Let's explore that in the next episode, which we're going to film, right. Or we're going to record right now. But one of the things I'm trying to change up on the show a little bit is the podcast episodes. I want to keep them to right about 20 minutes. So really interesting. By the way, I've done most of my inter. Most of my episodes are about an hour long. And I interview somebody and we go and that's great. And just recently I did a solo cast which was 20 minutes long. And I got like triple the listeners because people, you know, want to listen for 20 minutes or so and you were vulnerable. Well, that's true, but they didn't know that.

Well, they did once they started listening.

Well, and you know, we've obviously been vulnerable on this, but I want to continue this conversation. So this is going to be a multi series. We may end up talking till for the next eight hours. We'll see. But I know we could.

Strong chance. Yeah.

So here's what I want to encourage you to do. If you're listening to this on itunes, is go to the very next one. If you're listening to it on the website, just go to.

The next audio on this. If you're not a subscriber to itunes, to the show on itunes, click that little subscribe button. And while you're at it, leave me a review. Let me know. By the way, Los in case they don't do that, we're gonna wind up this episode with how they can get a hold of you. What's the best way to get a hold of Los Silva?

You can send me an email at workwithlosmail or you can just hit me up on Twitter and it's loesssilva. Cool.

So guys, once more we're gonna pick this up right where we left it off. And what I wanna talk to you Los here in the next.

Episode is about building these authentic relationships. And some of that is through creating experiences for people, whether they're a huge event, a formal mastermind, or dinners for folks. I've got some stuff to talk about that as well. And I know you do too. So let's pick up where we left off, guys. If you have any questions for me, if you like this, if you want more of this, leave a review on itunes. I read them all. Or send me an email to askbradaconrappedbusiness.com by the way, I'm putting together a really cool special bonus only for people on my newsletter. So you can also get on my newsletter@baconratbusiness.com or if you just email me at askbradakenratbusiness.com, i'll make sure and add you to that. So go listen to the next episode in 3, 2, 1.