Sean Kelly: The Unstoppable Auctioneer Who Raised Half a Billion

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. All right, guys. Well, these are the moments that I love because I got introduced to my next guest through my comedy instructor. I'm in a standup comedy class right now for the, I think, fourth time. And this guest actually was speaking to the group, and I wasn't there during that time. And it was great because the comedy coach knew that I wanted to have him on the podcast without us even meeting yet. And then I actually heard a friend of mine who heard him speak and said, oh, my gosh, you have to have him on your podcast. And so, anyway, I am so excited. He is somebody that raises money for charity. He started a TV show. He has literally done everything related to doing the thing, and he's going to get to talk to us about it today. So I cannot wait to introduce you guys to Sean. Hi, Sean.

Hey, Stacy. Thank you so much for having me on today. Thank you for that wonderful introduction.

Thank you. I am so excited. We did a little pre call, and now I'm even more excited. I'm already excited. Now I'm really, really excited.

Good.

So I'd love to have you start off and just share about you and your story.

Yeah. So, like, you touched on. What I do now is I raise money for nonprofits. As a fundraising auctioneer, I've raised over $500 million across all the years. I've been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of different nonprofits, everything from little tiny schools to giant hospitals to giant nonprofits. So I do that most Saturday nights. I'm somewhere in the United States, mostly on the west coast, raising money on stage. And. And when I say auctioneer, of course I'm an auctioneer, and I do all the bid calling and all that. But a big part of it is also really inspiring the audience and giving a passionate talk for people to just donate money. And then I'm also out there doing some speaking and speaking to different groups, which I absolutely love. Some Motivational topics, those types of things pretty much in line with what your podcast is about. Just getting out there and doing it and doing that thing. So that's why I'm so excited to be here today. And then also I'm currently pitching another television show. So I had one TV show on TruTV that lasted for six seasons. Then I moved to the UK and I had one on a BBC owned channel for another six seasons. And then I created another show that I wasn't even on, that I just, I loved the topic and I got that on that Geo. And now I think I've come up with my next TV show and my agent concurs. He just emailed me back and he's like, okay, I think this is it. So I'm excited.

Oh my gosh, it's incredible. And I want to hear about that too. First, I have to start off with the raising money because we were talking a little bit before and you had said you had even raised $5 million in one night.

Yes. That was for a hospital that they wanted to buy these robots that do cancer surgery. And these robots are very expensive, upwards of 2 million a piece. And they wanted to buy at least two of them. And. And it was a team effort. It was me and another auctioneer who unfortunately, who's also a comedian like myself, a really wonderful guy by the name of Russ Bolnak. Rusty Nails is what everybody in San Diego knew. He has since passed away. So as him and I, and then. And it's about three or four other guys, we really worked that room that night. And 5 million bucks for the hospital there in San Diego. And it was wonderful.

So with the right audience. Right. And then your voice.

Yeah.

And having other people that are synergistic with you.

Yes.

You raised $5 million.

Yes. So let's just use an average one. I just did one just a couple nights ago on Saturday night for an organization called Corazon de Vida. They support orphanages down in Baja, Mexico. There's 10 orphanages there, an average of 50 children each orphanage. So 500 kids. So Saturday night at the U.S. grant in San Diego, they had 270 of their supporters come in. They fed them a nice dinner. And then while they're eating dinner, I get up and I auctioned off these packages. Experience experiences and stuff like that. It would be like, oh, here's a trip to Hawaii, or here's go stay at this vacation home up at Big Bear, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I opted off about 15 different packages and that raised about a Hundred and thirty thousand dollars. And then the rest of the money that was raised of the remainder of the 400,000 was strictly through the paddle race. So you show them a very emotional appeal video, and that's usually about three to four minutes long. Then I get up, and I basically give my emotional appeal to it. And a lot of times, I work with organizations where I have a bit of a connection. So in this particular case, I was not an orphan, but at 16, I was abandoned in Germany by my parents, and I didn't go into foster care. Instead, I got my own apartment, and I got a job driving a forklift at night. So I know what it feels like to be abandoned. I know what it feels like to want that love, and I know what it feels like to just want to feel safe and to feel like someone else is helping look after you at a young age. So I was able to get up and share that with the audience about my own personal experience. And then I start my ask off really high, and I'll say, like, does anybody want to give a gift of $100,000? Or does anybody want to give a gift of 50,000? And I work my way down. So as I do that, I build a lot of enthusiasm in the room. And in the end, you look around a half an hour later, and in that particular case, I raised an additional $270,000 just asking for street donations. And so whenever I do these, I always put myself in the shoes of whoever it is that's benefiting from the money. So two weeks ago, I did a fundraiser for a wonderful organization called Saddles and Service. They raise money for disabled veterans and for first responders who have PTSD that have been through, just seen horrific things. And these are people who, a lot of them have been suicided. And so Saddles in service, they have a ranch in the East, San Diego. They have 30 horses. They bring the veterans and the first responders out there, and they let them work with the horses. There's no counselors or anything. It's called equine therapy. They just work with handling the horses, and the horses are these amazing healers. So with those guys, I think we raised about $300,000 when it was out at Viejas Casino, something very similar. I did the auction. In that particular case, they got auctioned off, like, 19 packages. And then I did the ask. And then the week before that, I did another organization. A week before that, another organization. But I've been doing this for a long time. And so the word gets around. People are like, oh man, you got to get Sean. But I think what happens with me is that I've got the perfect storm of experience for this stuff. One, I worked in sales for many years. I started and launched many different magazines. And I also used to be the sales manager for the San Diego Reader back when it was a big newspaper. Matter of fact, when I left the newspaper in San Diego, the San Diego reader, it was 350 pages. It was, it was a monster. I had grown it from. It was doing 3 million annually and when I left it was doing 26 million.

Oh my God.

Yeah. So I'd really grew their revenue. So I'm really good at sales. And then I did stand up comedy for many years and I loved it. And matter of fact, my last stand up comedy tour was in 2017. I did a 122 city standup comedy tour in the UK where my wife and I, we had a tour manager that drove us every day. But we did 122 theaters around the UK. So I did stand up comedy for a long time and then I learned how to become an auctioneer. So all three of those things kind of together have led to a life of raising a lot of money, which is really rewarding considering like I mentioned before, that at 16 I found myself living on my own in a foreign country. And on top of that, I was an illegal alien at the time. We had moved there when I was a kid and. And we didn't have papers or anything. We went there, we went to Germany on a 90 day visa and I ended up living there for 11 years. So I was there as an illegal alien. So not only did I get abandoned, but I got abandoned as an illegal alien at the age of 16. So that come full circle and to be able to raise money for all these children's charities or veterans. And I'm a veteran too, and I served in Iraq and I'm a disabled combat vet. So whenever I stand on stage and I'm raising money for other veterans or whatever, I'm standing on stage and I'm raising money for children. It feels amazing, right? So of all the things I've done, I'd say that raising money for nonprofits has been extremely rewarding. And I'd also say that the TV shows were just like a dream come true.

Yeah. And I want to talk to you more about that. But before I go there, I wanted to ask you. So you mentioned the people that are at the auction. What you're thinking of is not even them. You're thinking of Which I love this. You're thinking of the people that are going to be helped by this money. So you're kind of getting to this different state in your mind, which then is able to magnify what you say and how it goes.

Yes. And it gives me the power and the energy to do and ask for things that maybe other people couldn't because it would be awkward for them. Right. Like how do you put someone on the spot for a hundred thousand dollars? How do you put someone on the spot to increase their bid by another $5,000? In my mind, I'm seeing the kids that this is benefiting, I'm seeing. Back in September, I did a fundraiser for an organization called Team Parker for Life. And Team Parker, Parker is a young man who had brain cancer when he was 12 years old. His mother was a nurse at Children's Hospital. When Parker got brain cancer, they took him to the Children's Hospital. Her coworkers came to her and said, no, you got to get him out of here. Because our protocol doesn't work on this type of brain cancer. You keep him here, he's not going to live. And so Children's Hospital gave him a 20% chance of survivability. She kicked into action. She pulled him out of the hospital, she flew him to New York, she got him all this experimental stuff. Anyway, he's 17 years old now. He's cancer free. He's a championship surfer in San Diego. And his mom saved his life. But now that could have been the end of the story. But what his mom did was about five years ago, she decided that she wanted to start her own nonprofit and help other families that are facing their child. Just got diagnosed with brain cancer. She wants to show them how to get them out of the normal system, change insurance companies that won't drop them, how to get all the right experimental treatments and to help save these lives. So she called me up, we did our first fundraiser together. It was out at one of the casinos there in San Diego in the ballroom. Her first year, we raised 350,000. Then the next year I raised 550,000. Then the next year I raised 750,000. And then this past September, I raised $916,000 for her. And she's helping hundreds of families all across the United States. And as soon as someone gets diagnosed. So a friend of mine calls me up a couple of weeks ago, he goes, sean, he goes, one of my best friends here in Michigan, their son just got diagnosed with brain cancer. He goes, you know, a lot of Nonprofits. What should I do? I immediately put them in touch with her. She immediately helped them switch insurance companies. She immediately helped get them into these special treatments. So it's just. It's amazing. I'm getting goosebumps telling you this right now. It's amazing. There are so many wonderful normal people, like regular, everyday people, who, like, this lady just said, no, my son's not going to die on my watch. And then after she saved her son's life, she could have easily said, okay, well, that was just emotionally draining. I just want to go back to my old life as a nurse at Children's Hospital. She's like, no, there's too many other families going through what we went through, and I know how to help them now, so I got to do this. So it's kind of cool to see. I work with these people who have. They have a calling, and there's this calling that just tugs at their heart. And a lot of times it's not even in their best interest. It's just. It's in everybody else's best interest. So it's kind of cool to work with special people like that.

I mean, it's incredible. I am just in awe because this is what I love about doing. The thing is, I just never even imagined this world. And now all of a sudden, you're exposing me and I'm like, I want to see this.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Very cool. How do they fill up the room? Are these just people part of their class or.

These are people who have supported. By the time they're getting to the point where they're going to do a gala, they have already done a bunch of small little fundraisers. They've done PR out in the community. One of the things that I do for my clients is if they're not good on. Because I spent 12 seasons on television, six seasons in the United States, six seasons in the UK I did lots of promos and lots of PR to promote my television shows. I did hundreds and hundreds of radio interviews. I was on the BBC morning news, I was on talk shows and all. Everything was to promote each new season of my television show. So one of the things I do for my clients is if they're not good with media, I'll go out and do those interviews for them. It's something that I just absolutely love, and it's a way to attract a lot more people to their cause, and it's a win, win. So for some of them, I'll go on local news or I'll go on radio shows or I'll do interviews for them and if I can help get more seats, more people, more seats filled. Yeah, yeah, it's great.

So you just call the new station and you're like, hey, this is what's happening.

Yeah. So basically, let's just say that. So I learned this initially when I had the Comedy palace in San Diego and there were certain special shows, for the most part, we were papering the room and mailing out free tickets. That's how we would fill the room. We brought in 217 people every show. Seven shows a week, one on Thursday night, three on Friday night, three on Saturday night. And I put myself on as the headliner of every show. Seven shows a week for eight years. And we pretty much papered the room. But occasionally we would get a headliner come down from L. A and we'd want to sell tickets on a Saturday night. And so then I made relationships over at the different news stations like KSI Box, all the different ones locally in San Diego. And then you can go into those producers and you can pitch your story to them. And so I got really good at that. And then when I was on the television show, not in the US so much because they had a really well oiled machine in the United States, but when I went to the UK they asked me, hey, would you be willing to do the PR force? So they hired a PR firm and the PR firm would go out and line up everything. So I would just show up, I'd go into like a radio booth. And I remember sometimes, like I remember one week they sat in a radio booth for 10 hours a day, for four days, so 40 hours. And as soon as I was done with one radio interview, the next one was in my ear and I was just. And I was all on every single BBC radio station all over the UK doing every little town has their own radio station. I was doing radio interviews. It was cool.

I want to notice something for the listeners because what you're saying is each skill that you built has now helped you with each thing you're doing. You were talking about how you have this. What was the word you use? Oh, the perfect storm. I love that. With the comedy, the auctioneer, the sales comedy, all this stuff all mixed together. And then now you're talking about how this thing you use during Comedy palace, you built these relationships that your network, I say this a lot, your network equals your network because the more people you're able to be in relationship with, it helps you as you want to expand and grow. But also you flex the muscle of using the skill of learning how to fill a room. So now if one of your people that you're doing a show for, for the nonprofit needs help, you're able to just jump in. And it's natural because you've been doing it this whole time.

Yeah, that's right. And I'm able to guide a lot of those clients on marketing and stuff because I manage the newspaper in San Diego, the San Diego Reader. I managed that for 11 years. So I know marketing and advertising frontwards and backwards. I know direct mail, I know all that stuff. So I'm able to consult. But what's crazy is that I used a lot of these skills to achieve my own personal dreams. Because then I realized, oh, all this stuff that I've learned, all these things that I've done, I. I can apply this to my own life and go through things. So I shared with you in the pre interview where we talked about when I was 40 years old, I woke up and I just thought, okay, I'm 40. And I had always wanted a TV show since I was a little kid. I had watched the Andy Griffith show when I was a kid and I used to watch the little character, I can't remember his name. Ron Howard played the character. I saw a little kid on TV and I thought, oh, I could do that. And I thought, someday I'm going to be on TV or. Well, I was 40 and I had never taken an acting class, I had never done anything to pursue tv. And I thought, okay, I'm running out of time and I've already run out of hair. How am I going to get myself on tv? So that's when I realized, okay, I have a face more for radio than I do for television. So if I'm going to do tv, I'm going to have to create my own television show and it's going to have to be under the genre of non scripted reality television. And so I made up my mind and I announced at my 40th birthday party to my friends and family, I said, hey, listen guys, I'm going to have my own TV show. And everyone's like, wow, that's awesome. What's it going to be? Because they all knew I'd been doing stand up comedy for a while. They go, what's it called? And I go, oh, I don't know yet. And they go, oh, okay, but what's it about? I go, I don't know yet. They're like, what? They go, what are you talking about? I go, no, I just. I'm just going to have my own TV show. And they're like, okay, yeah, right. But I knew something that they didn't know, which was you have to announce it to the world, first of all. You have to be able to dream it up in your mind and see it. And then once you see it in your mind, then you have to really believe it, that it can come true. And then you have to get really detailed about what you see, and you have to visualize yourself actually doing that thing, the thing that you want to do. And that's why I'm so happy to be on your podcast today, because everyone that's listening to this, they want to do that thing, right? So that that thing has to first live in your mind. So once you conceive in your mind and you can believe it, then you have to take action. And the easiest, best action to take the quickest is you just have to start telling friends and family, this is what I'm going to do, okay? And you already know that you're going to get tons of rejection. People are going to laugh. People are going to be like, are you crazy? You're not going to do that. Because it's that whole crab in the bucket thing where everyone's trying to pull you back down. But you do it. You say, this is what I'm going to do. And so I announced that at my birthday, which was on a Wednesday night. And I thought, okay, I'm going to start looking for opportunities. And I had this theory that once you know what it is that you're looking for, it's there. Opportunities are passing by us every day, all day long. We just don't recognize it because they're meaningless to us. But until we have attached meaning to them, what we're looking for, then when we go, oh, my goodness, there's an opportunity, there's an opportunity. So I call it the yellow bug effect. So if you've ever bought a car, it could be brand new to you, but let's say you buy a Volkswagen Bug and it's a yellow Volkswagen Bug, and you get out on the freeway and you go, there's another one, there's another one. There's another. Those yellow Volkswagen Bugs have been passing you on the freeway all day long every day. But until you owned one, it was meaningless to you. It didn't mean anything. So once you own the vision of what it is that you want, then you're going to start to see those opportunities, right? So I announced this on a Wednesday, that Saturday I'm doing a charity auction in La Jolla. This guy comes up to me afterwards who happened to be one of my clients from the Reader. It was called Big Box Storage, and his name's Jeff. And he walks up and he goes, dude. He goes, I didn't know you were an auctioneer. And I go, yeah, we've been raising money for nonprofits because I know you did comedy, but didn't know you were not.

He goes, you're pretty good.

I go, oh, thanks, man. He goes, you should come to my storage auction. I go, storage auction? What's that? And he goes, oh. He goes, if people don't pay their storage bills, we're allowed to auction their stuff off. I go, really? And this was before any TV shows. There was no Storage wars or my show Storage Hunt. There's nothing on tv, right? There was no way to be aware. It is. So I go, that sounds awesome. I go, how does it work? And so he's explaining to me, so I go into your next auction. He goes, Tuesday. So I go, Tuesday. I'm there.

What time?

Because it starts at like, 8 in the morning. I'm not really a morning person, but I'm like, okay, I'm there. So I go that Tuesday morning, and there's like, I don't know, 25, 26 guys standing in a parking lot. They've got, like 100 of these big box storage units out in the parking lot. The auctioneer comes, he opens the door, he gives everybody a minute to look, and he starts auctioning these units off. And he's selling them for like, 20 bucks. 25 bucks. I'm like, what? This whole storage unit for 25 bucks? This is insane. So I said, okay, I thought, this is my TV show. I'm going to do this. I'm going to be that auctioneer, and I'm going to bring a gigantic crowd. I'm going to get people to fight and argue. I'm going to turn this into Antiques Roadshow meets wwf. And that's going to be me. Because my specialty as a comedian was I used to always do crowd work. Hey, where are you from? What do you do? Make fun of people, blah, blah. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do crowd work and storage auctions. And this is going to be Antiques Roadshow means wwf. And this is going to be my TV show. So my wife and I, we go into. My wife is with me going to the office, and Jeff's brother Brian is the one that needed to Be convinced. So Brian's like. I'm like, hey, I'd like to do your next one. He goes, because have you ever done any of these before? I'm sure. And then Jeff's looking at. His brother's looking at me like he knows the truth, right, that I had in. Because he's the one that invited me. And I go, oh, yeah, I've been doing lots of auctions. I left it at that, because that was true. I had done lots of pretty auctions. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done a bunch of auctions. He goes, okay, you know what? I'll give you a shot. So, worked out a commission. I wasn't going to get paid anything but a percentage of what I sold. And I agreed that I would go in and raise everything that the other auctioneer had raised. And they didn't have to pay me if I raised the same amount. They only had to pay me if I raised more. So I put the pressure on myself. I went and asked these guys, hey, where do you sell this stuff? And they were all like, oh, this swap meet, that swap meet. So my wife and I went to the swap meet every weekend for, like, the next five weekends in a row with our clipboards, and we just met guys, and we got there. Hey, would you want to come to our. We're going to have this giant storage auction in April. Do you want to come? It's going to be one of the biggest of the year. We got their names, their email addresses, their phone numbers. We built this huge marketing list. I hired a camera guy who I'd met. He was at one of my charity events. He was. He specialized in doing wedding videography. But I didn't know anyone else. I didn't know any other shooters. So I said, hey, would you. I'm going to try to shoot this and create a TV show. Do you want to go in on it with me? He goes, no, man. He goes, it's too hard to sell a TV show. He goes, but I'll come do it for you for fifteen hundred dollars. I said, okay. So I thought, if I can make enough money from the auction, maybe I can pay for his fee, right?

Yeah.

So my wife and I, we sent out our emails, we blasted out our phone calls, we did everything. And the day of the auction comes, and 800 people showed up. It was a madhouse. And it was awesome because 800 people this. They'd never had more than 25, 26 people one of these things. So now 800 people. I've got a. Brought my own speaker microphone, like a mobile speaker, right? A battery operated speaker microphone. So it was just like being in the comedy club. So now I'm just, we're cutting the locks open, I'm making fun of people, I'm encouraging people to. And we're getting all these. And I told the, the shooter exactly the shots that I wanted. I said, look, I want giant reactions, I want me cracking jokes, I want you to get shots of all the cool stuff coming out, all of that. So at the end of that, that day, he said, okay, I'll have your reel done in three days. So three days later he calls me up and he's like, dude, he goes, I want you to come watch the reel. I went and watched it. It was so amazing to watch a half minute reel. It hit all the beats of the idea that I had for the show. Yeah, eight again. And we watch it again and I'm like, play it again. We watched again. So I wrote him a check and I called into my boss and I said I was working at the San Diego Reader, the newspaper. And I said, I want to take a couple of vacation days. He goes, no problem. So I took two days off of work. This was like a Thursday and a Friday now. And I got on the phone, I thought, I'm going to sell a TV show. So I get on the phone and, and I started calling. First I googled all the TV networks and I got all their phone numbers and all of the TV networks on cable, I got all their phone numbers. So there was like 100 channels. It started with the big ones. ABC, NBC, CBS, box. Then I would just work my way. All country music television. I worked my way all the way through, right? So I had them all. So I get on the phone and I just start cold calling. And I'm like, yeah, I got this new TV show idea I needed to talk to someone about. And they're like, yeah, it's doesn't work like that. Click. Thank you for calling NBC. How may I help you? I'm like, yes, I need to talk to someone. I got this great new TV show idea and I want to come in and sir doesn't work like that. Click, click, click. So I get hung up on by every television network. So I think, okay, I gotta, I gotta change what I'm saying here. So I called at the top of my list again, NBC. So then I'm like, hey, listen, I need to go ahead and speak with someone in charge of the new TV shows. And she goes, development I go, yes, I need to speak with someone in development. I did not know what development meant. So next thing you know, I get through the development, and I get to a personal assistant, and I said. And they're like, da, da, da, da, da. Says, office. I go, oh, please let her know that it's Sean. And she goes, okay. And she put me through. And this lady gets on the phone and she's like. She was the head of development for NBC. So I said, my name's Sean Kelly, and the reason why I'm calling is because I think I've got your next big television hit, and I just want to tell you about it. She goes, oh, hold on. Wait a minute. Who are you? Sean who? And I go, this is Sean Kelly. She was. I don't think I know you. And I go, no, we haven't met yet. She goes, well, hold on. Wait a minute. Okay, wait. You got past the gatekeepers. Congratulations. She goes. But she goes, please stop. Don't talk, don't tell me anything, because legally I'm not allowed to listen to it. I go, what do you mean? She goes, we can't listen to any unsolicited ideas because we might already be working on a similar idea. And it doesn't work like that. But she goes, but you sound very tenacious. She goes, you sound like you got some great energy. I love it. But she goes, if you want to get a meeting with me or any of the networks, you got to go through an agent. You have to have an agent represent you. She goes, that's the only way to get in and to present your ideas. And I said, oh, okay. I said, agent, like. She goes, boy, you really are green. She goes, you don't know. And I go. I go, what? And she goes like, wme, you know, William Morris, caa. And she starts naming off agencies, Bookworld, all of this stuff. And I go, oh, okay. So thank you very much. I hang up and then I start cold calling agencies. Same thing. I'm like, yeah, I need to speak with an agent. They're like, who are you? Were you referred by anybody? It doesn't work like that. Click, click, click, click. I called every major agency. They all hung up on me. Then I went back and I started calling and I started getting like, hey, I need. I looked up who one of their top non scripted agents were, and it was this guy like Jeff something or other. And I'm like, hey, yeah, this is Sean for Jeff. Dah, dah, dah. Okay. So then I got to the gatekeeper, the Gatekeeper. She goes, who is this? And I saw it. And she goes, and who are you? And I go. And she goes, were you referred by anybody? I go, no, but listen, I got this great TV show idea. I've already spoken to the head of development over at NBC. She wants me to come in. I just need an agent. And she goes, okay, look. She goes, it doesn't work like that. She goes, I love your excitement, your enthusiasm. Sounds like a great idea. The fact that you on your own got through to NBC, that's incredible. She goes, but is what you do? She goes, my boyfriend's in your shoes. He's trying to produce TV shows. He's pitching to production companies. I go, production companies? I didn't know what a production company was. She was production? She goes, yes. She goes, you know, production companies, they make TV shows and they have agents and they go and pitch and all that stuff. And I go, oh, what are some of their names? She goes, man, you really don't know anything then. So she lists off a bunch of names. She goes, labyrinth, Santa Monica. So I said, okay. So I started Googling all these places. I started cold calling. I don't get through to any of them. Same story as, like, TV networks, agencies, now the production companies. Finally, one lady at a production company, she goes, hey, listen, if you hire an entertainment attorney, you can pay them. They'll introduce you to production companies, and then you can get in that way. I said, great. So I started calling all these entertainment attorneys. None of them called me back. I was willing to pay, and they're expensive. Not one of them called me back. So then I'm just sitting in there, I'm like, oh, my goodness, how do you break into Hollywood? How do you do it? It's so hard if you don't have an agent, a manager, if you don't have contacts like me, but you just have a dream, how do you do it? So this is what I end up doing. I took the reel that I shot. I bought a domain name from GoDaddy for $15. I put up a little tiny website that said, this is your next hit television show. I put the reel there. I bought Google AdWords, and I targeted them towards Santa Monica. I bought 80 search words and phrases that I thought production companies, someone looking for a new TV show might type into Google, right? So I bid up the pay per click really high, 25 bucks a click because I wanted to be number one. And three weeks go by. Not one click, no, nothing. On the end of the third week, I get A phone call. I get one phone call on my cell phone. I'm like, hello. This guy's like, yeah, is this Sean Kelly? And I go, yes, it is. And because my name's Tobin. And he goes, and I just saw your reel online. And I'm like, oh, I got my first click. And he goes, hey, man. He goes, we think this might make a great TV show. And I go, yeah, that's why I made it. He goes, well, would you like to meet with us? I said, I would love to. He goes, okay, well, listen, we're not a production company. We're a motion graphics company. We make motion graphics. He goes, but the owner of our company recently was at a dog park walking his dog, and he met this woman walking her dog, and she owns a production company. And they struck up a conversation, and she said that we have an open door to come pitch ideas. Are you still interested in talking to us? I go, yes. So my wife and I drive to Santa Monica. A couple of weeks later, we have lunch with these two guys. They were super nice. And so they set up the pitch with this lady at this production company. I go in, we picture the idea. She loves it. She goes, this is spectacular. I just love it. I end up signing, doing a deal with them. I still couldn't get an attorney. Huge mistake. Don't ever do a television show without an attorney. It was a huge mistake. I made every mistake in the book. I didn't know what I was doing at that point. I should have just demanded to get an attorney. But I was getting a development deal, which isn't a guarantee for a television show. And it's no guarantee towards any money. But it's a first step, is your development deal. But I couldn't get anyone to call me back. So I end up doing the deal myself. And it was not a good deal. I didn't negotiate because I didn't know how to negotiate. That kind of deal I'd done sold lots of advertising, but I didn't know how to negotiate a TV deal. And that was a gigantic mistake. Who would have known that my first television show was going to last for six seasons in the US and six seasons in the UK. 12 seasons. That's more than iconic television shows like Leave it the Beaver. We did more episodes than most on a TV shows. Huge mistake not getting an attorney. So anyway, so she goes out, she gets the first deal, and A and E says, yes, we want to make it. And my show was going to be called Storage Wars. And I'm like, all Excited. I'm going to be on A and E. It's a respectable channel. I'm going to be the star of the show. And then what ends up happening was a couple weeks later, A and E calls back and they go, ooh. Our sister company, the History Channel, already is in development for a similar show. They signed their contract first. They're going to become Storage Wars. We're not taking yours. So I went, I lost my TV show right there. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. She goes, don't panic. We're gonna pitch. Next thing you know, we're talking to TruTV. TruTV says we love it, but we just want it to be more over the top and crazy. And I'm like, yes, that's me, the comic that does the work. I want to be over the top and crazy. And they had, like, back in those days, they had shows like Lizard Lick Towing and all the towing shows and stuff. They're like, we need it to be nutty. Not even like quasi real, but just crazy, right?

Yeah.

So perfect. So we shot a pilot, and at the end, they said, nope, we don't like it. And the reason why was the people that they hired to make the pilot kept telling me not to be myself. They kept saying, tone it down, tone it down. And then the people from the network's like, hey, where's the big guy that we wanted? The big explosive guy? And I'm like, are you guys not talking to each other? So then we reshot the pilot. Once the network realized that the first two people messed it up and that they were the ones telling me to tone it down. And so then the pilot aired, and it was the highest rated show on in TruTV's history. The very first night, just in the first hour alone, they got 1.3 million views for TRUTV for the first hour. That was amazing, right? And it went on to do millions. So they quickly ordered two seasons of the show. So two 13 episodes. So immediately 26 episodes. So that first year I was in the TV business, and here I had no agent, no manager, no contact, no experience, had never been on tv, had never been on an audition, nothing. I'd only done stand up comedy and charity auctions. And then now. Yeah.

And the thing for everyone to really notice is, had you sat down and made this plan and done all this research and all this stuff, you'd be nowhere. You'd be years later trying to.

Oh, gosh, Stacey, I'm so glad you bring that up, because that's What? Where a lot of people get lost. Yeah. They have to do all of this. Oh, I got to do all of this stuff before I can do the thing. Right. And the truth of the matter is, if you listen to me, I had my birthday party on a Wednesday, did this, did the charity auction on a Saturday, went to my first storage auction the following Tuesday. So one week later, and then a few weeks later, did my first storage auction, filmed it. And from the time that I placed the ads on Google Ads In June of 2010, I was on TV starring on my own show. January 2011, which was what, eight months later.

Wow. There's so much that I love about this. From you hearing the no. And then to you hearing the oh, you must be really new. Oh, you're really new. And then they're giving you information. And I love that because I don't think people realize by you asking for help. Right. You're able to really learn what to do. And people are actually pretty good about whether they want to or not, giving you information to help you move the next step. But I'm really curious how you kept going at each point from you contacting the TV shows directly to you contacting even the legal, the attorneys that you actually wanted to pay them, not calling you back to the production, all these no's that you're getting. How did you actually not just give up at any point?

Yeah. Great. So I created this video about this topic and I haven't released it to the world yet, but I feel like it's such a powerful video because it was a lesson that I learned when I was 11 years old and it was something that dramatically changed the course of my entire life. And it's exactly with what you said. How do you blast through all of that rejection? Because the thing is that people, we constantly in our minds are living in a state of fear of rejection. It holds you back from going out there and doing things because you're afraid of being rejected. So I want, I created this wonderful video on this topic on how to blast through the fear of rejection. I'll give you the highlights, the overview of what I learned. And it was a lesson that I learned from my father. When I was 11 years old, we were living in Germany. We're illegal aliens. My dad was selling life insurance to American GI stationed on army bases in Germany. You weren't allowed to go into the housing areas and knock on doors and solicit business. But my dad came up with this idea. He's like, well, my kid's 11. If he goes and knocks on doors. He's not going to get arrested. They just tell him to leave, right? So my dad created these little lead cards that people could fill out where they'd get a free brass plated Social Security card. And underneath it, it said, are you interested in money for college, retirement, life insurance? Because that's what he sold was life insurance. And so my dad convinced me. He said, look, I'll pay you $1 for every lead card you get filled out. And then at night, you'll go back with me on the sales calls and sit down there because I'll be like, hey, this is my son. He came to your door and he goes, you'll go with me, you'll sit there quietly, and if I sell them life insurance, I'll pay you an additional $25 commission so you can make $26 off each card. I did. It was. I was not convinced and I was scared and I didn't want to do it. But my dad's like, please, please do this, please do this. The family needs it. We need the money. Please, please, please. So my dad takes me to the housing area and he drives me and he drops me on me, says, I'll meet you back here on this corner in two hours. Go see what you can do. So I go in, I start knocking on doors. I'm getting rejection. People are like, kid, what are you doing? Get out of here. You're not supposed to be knocking on doors, you know. And people are screaming at me, and people are just short. People are closing the doors in my face. So a couple of hours later, my dad comes back and I'm just standing there and I'm just crying. And my dad looks through the windshield of his car and I'll never forget his face. He just had this look of disappointment as he looked through the front of the windshield. He motioned me to get back in the car. And whenever my dad was unhappy with me, he'd always call me by my middle name. And he's like, brandon, what's going on? And I'm like, I don't like this. People yelled at me, they were mean to me. And, you know, he's like, oh, stop crying. So we went across the street to the army base and there was a burger bar there. And he got me a hamburger and a soda and sat down. My dad says, hey. Goes. He goes, sean. He goes, let me tell you this story about this casino where you can place bets, but if you lose the bet, you don't lose any money. And I go, no, I go, that. That doesn't exist. He goes, no, no, it does exist. It's a real place. He goes, you can go there. You can place all the bets you want, and if you don't win, he goes, they don't take your money. He goes, but if you win. He goes, if you win the bet, you actually win money. I go, no, no, that. That doesn't exist. Because if that existed, everybody would go there and everybody would gamble. He goes, yeah, you would think so. He goes, but they don't. And I go, but why don't that. He goes, because they're afraid. And I go, what are they afraid of? Because they're afraid they're going to lose. I go, yeah, but you just keep playing until you win, because you're not really going to lose. And my dad goes, yeah, yeah, that's right. He goes, and did I tell you kids can go to this casino? And I go. I go, no, there's no casinos that kids can go. He goes. He goes, son, I'm telling you, kids can go to this casino. He goes, do you want to go to this casino? I go, well, okay, yeah, I want to win some money. And he goes, okay, do you want to go? And I go, yes, I want to go, well, okay. And he goes, well, when do you want to go? And I go, I don't know. And he goes, well, let's go now. I go, now. I go, right now, this afternoon. We're going to go to this casino? Yes. Yeah, why not? Let's have fun. So we drive off the army base. He drives right back into the housing area. He hands me the lead cards, and he goes, okay, go on into the casino. And I go, the casino. I go, this is a housing area. I go, what are you doing? He goes, no, son, listen, this is the casino. I go, what do you mean? He goes, every time you're knocking on a door, you're placing a bet that you're going to get that card filled out. He goes, if you don't win the bet, you just go to the next door. But if you win, you automatically win a dollar. And if I go back and sell him life insurance, you win another $25. And he goes, and here's the thing, son. The better you get at what you say to these people, you increase your odds of winning the bet. I go, that's amazing. I go, okay. So I go and start knocking on these doors, and next thing you know, a couple hours goes by, I come back, I'm smiling. My dad looks through the window he sees me smile. We're both smiling now. I get packed in the car and he goes, so how did you do in the casino? And I said, I won 27 bets. And I handed him 27 lead cards that were filled out. So starting at that day forward, I started going on sales calls with my dad at night because I had a vested interest. So I would sit there and watch my dad pitch and sell these guys when I was 11 years old and he was selling these families. So here I was going door to door during the day and going on sales calls at night. And in Germany, German school gets out at 1:00'. Clock. So that's how I was able to do all this, because I would work afternoons and evenings with my dad. And that's how I got really good at selling and sales. And that's how I realized how to overcome the fear of rejection. And there are things that I learned later as an adult, which is fear of rejection is all primal and it's hardwired in our brains. And it's in the same center in your brain where you feel physical pain. But we have this other system in our brain called the reward system, and that's where you feel endorphins and you feel good and all that. So what happens is, is that your brain will release more endorphins for anticipating a reward, not getting a reward, but in the anticipation of a reward. And a reward could actually be just learning something new. So as you're learning something new before you have mastered it, but on the path of learning it, your body's releasing more endorphins because it feels good. What I learned to do was to shift the fear of rejection from this, from the pain center, and to move it over to the reward center so that it felt good. So now I've eliminated all that fear of rejection, and I've used that. I'm 53 years old. I've used that lesson my entire life because people are always like, hey, how did you start this magazine? How did you do this? How did you do that? How did you do all these things? And the number one way is one of the most important things was eliminating the fear of rejection and to put it over to the reward system in my brain and did not see rejection as rejection, but to actually make it feel good and realize, okay, I'm one step closer to winning my bet, because I know that after so much rejection, I'm going to win because I'm going to get better and better and better at what I say and how I do so as an example, as I was calling all those networks, as I was hearing keywords like development, oh, I wrote it down. So instead, production company, I wrote it down. As I learned all the different key words in this new industry, I started to get a picture of what it was. So instead of using all that and viewing it as a rejection, I used it all as a learning experience and it felt really good. So when you say, how did you sit down and go through all of that? It actually felt really nice to talk to all those networks and to talk to all those production companies and to talk to all of those, because I was learning every step of the way. You're releasing those endorphins in your brain.

Wow, that is so powerful. I say this a lot too, where I have a weird thing with rejection. It's an adrenaline rush. When I do street interviews. If I'm getting too many yeses, I'm like, what's wrong with you guys? Someone say no. And it's fun, right? Because it's more that curiosity. But I love how you worded it with number one, the visual of a casino is so fun when it makes, makes it this playful game. And then the other thing is how you're actually loving it because you're learning from each thing and that's what's giving you feedback to get better and better and to know which way to go. And I love that. So you're not just mindlessly, and I think this is something I'm learning today too, is it's just not going mindlessly and getting rejected. You're actually learning and evolving each time you're getting rejected.

In sales, it's called active listening. So when I was a sales trainer and I would teach people to sell, I would teach them the five steps of selling. You basically, you build rapport, you identify needs, you present your product, you overcome objections and you close the sale. And in the identifying the needs process and the building the rapport, it's a series of asking open ended questions to get the other person to speak. And when they're speaking, instead of thinking about what the next question is, you're taking notes about what they're saying. And it's called active listening. And then what that does is that helps you identify what's important to them and you're able to go back and meet their needs with your product or your service, or you're able to be completely honest with them and say, oh, what I have is not going to meet your needs. But I think what you could do is, and then Maybe you give them your best advice of where they could go find their answer. And so through learning that, I've applied that. That's the tactic that I was using when I was talking to all those networks was I was active. So as I'm talking to everyone, just I have my notepad and I'm just every little word that's coming out. Plus what's interesting, a good training for that was I used to work for military intelligence. When I was in the army, I was a German translator and we used to listen into the East German communications and you learn to listen for key words and write the key words down because you're listening for artillery attacks and you're listening for different things, all these key words. So you get really good at writing down the key words. So I kind of trained my brain for that. So when I would talk to people and I'm asking these open ended questions as they're speaking, I'm just taking these keyword notes and it's helping me rapidly learn a new industry, which is cool.

I'm really curious, how come you haven't released the video yet? Is there something holding you back?

Oh, no, no, no, I don't think so. I just haven't found the correct format for it. Initially what I thought was I wanted to put this out to the world to teach people in an online course that they could sign up for to teach them how to create and sell and star on their own television show. So that's why I created it. It's very comprehensive. It's not just a couple of videos, it's hours and hours of multiple videos. But the more I thought about it, I thought, wow, this content could really help people. It doesn't just have to be about creating a television show. The television show is really just a model that you're using it under. But really you could take this and apply it to any aspect of your life. So I've just been rethinking how I want to release that. I know I want to go out and speak on these topics. I want to go and speak to as many groups as possible. I think there's a lot of companies where employees could benefit. I think there are a lot of associations where they have people that could really benefit from some of these messages. When I was in the UK, I got an opportunity to go and speak to 400 kids at a high school in Bradford, which is in the north of England. And it's kind of like a poor area. And I was able to go up and share a story with those kids about how I had been living on my own since I was 16, and then how I went on to do all these things and I was telling the kids that you don't need any permission. You don't need anyone's permission. You just need to give yourself permission and you just need to be willing to fail and you just have to have a dream and you can just go do this. And so I want to get out and share these messages with more people. So I've just been trying to figure out how I want to release that. I think initially it would make sense to put an online course on how to create a television show up there, but I think the content could also be applied to so many other areas.

Yeah, well, that's exciting. I can't wait to see what happens with it. Oh, mentioned the new show. What is that your new show going to be about?

Well, I can't really talk about that, to be honest with you. So the thing is, is it's in the pitch phase right now. And so the thing that you'll learn when you're trying to create a television, okay, it's one thing to tell the world, hey, I'm going to be on tv. That's great, right? But the next thing you don't really want to do is you don't want to release your idea to the world until you already have your deal and it's going to be on tv. And the reason why is because unfortunately, what I've learned in this business and people, whether they're being malicious or not, people will go, oh, that's a great idea. And then they'll take it and they'll maybe put a little twist on it or something. So it's not exactly the same, but it's similar. And next thing you know, you're sitting there and you're seeing your TV show. I have gone out and pitched multiple ideas that are currently on TV and have been on TV that wound up not being mine. I pitched them and then people said, oh, I love that. They did a little twist to it and they ran with it and they did it. So when you're talking about an industry where you're creative and it's ideas and stuff like that, you do have to protect your ideas. So I learned. Now I have an agent. He's the head of non scripted at a big agency. He was at the world's largest agency when I first went, and then he moved agencies for other reasons. And he's my agent. He's wonderful. So I don't go and pitch ideas without him anymore. I don't do development deals without my attorney anymore because I technically, from that first television show, I should have been set up for life financially, and I wasn't. I'm not. I still have to get out and hustle and work really hard. So there's the exciting side of just jumping into something and getting traction with no experience and got myself a TV show idea. But you don't know what you don't know until you learn. You go, oh. So I knew I should have had an attorney, but I just didn't know how to make. It seems crazy that you can't get an entertainment attorney to pick up the phone and call you back.

And again, we don't know what's going to happen with this show, but it's almost like you got the training wheels and if you would have been stopped and now you know all the stuff. So now this one can be your whole thing. So it's kind of. That's kind of.

Yes, it's taken a while, but let's hope that. Because that first television show got on TV in2010, I think it was. So I first was on TV in 2010. I'm pretty sure it was 2010, Jan. I think it was January 2010. And so here it is 13 years later, and I might get another shot at being able to do it right. Although a UK version was better by that time I had agents and attorneys and everything. And the television show that I created for Nat Geo, which was called Church Rescue, where there was basically the concept of bar rescue, but churches. And we would go in and teach the ministers, we'd go in and help them fix the church up and help them with their marketing to bring more people into the church, which I'm good at, bringing more people in. And so we did that for one season where we helped turn around seven churches that National Geographic for a season.

So amazing. Okay, Sean, the time is here. I would love to hear what your number one piece of advice is for people on doing the thing.

Yeah. So I think my number one advice is do it. There is power in trying to get a lot accomplished in a little window of time. So think in your mind what it is you want to do. Visualize it. See yourself doing it. Believe that you can do it down to every little detail. Before I had even my television show, I used to visualize myself on set with cameramen and someone calling action. And I'm standing there and I saw myself doing the whole thing. And then at one point I remember one day, it was like first season filming in the uk. I was in East London. I'm standing out there. It was a July day, it's raining, and there's three cameramen facing me. There's a whole bunch of crew. There's hundreds of people out there, plus all the bidders. And the British guy goes, and, all right, shown action. And it was literally like what I had visualized years earlier in my mind. And that's the power, is visualize it, believe it, go do it. And listen, don't be afraid to ask for help. Reach out to people like me. There's something that you want to do or whatever in a certain area. I tell people all the time, if you think you've got a great TV show idea and you want to pitch me, don't just send me your idea, but reach out to me. Because I have an agent, I have a manager, I have an inn in Hollywood, and if I like your idea, I'm a producer now, I might partner with you. I might. In some cases, I've done that. So I would just say that for those people that are sitting there and they're on the fence and they're watching your podcast, and they're like, oh, and they're hearing this story, and they've heard your last guest story, and they're going to hear your next guest story, but they still haven't taken action. Take action. Get out there, Go do it. Because you'll look back and you'll go, wow, the trajectory of your whole life will change. I heard this analogy last night that if you're a golfer, and I'm not a golfer, but if you're hitting the golf ball with your golf club, and if your golf club's off by 2 millimeters, your ball downrange is going to be way off. But all you need is to correct by 2 millimeters to straighten your ball out, right? So do it. Just. Just get out there and just start taking swings at the ball. And then you're going to look back, and what happens is, is that if you do this, you'll look back and your entire life will change. My wife and I have had an amazing life. We've been married for 31 years. We started off completely broke. We had no money when we were first married. And now we've gone on to have this amazing life where we've traveled to over 80 countries around the world, we've seen and done everything. We've had this amazing bucket list of things that we've done, and it's because I took action, because I did it. And I didn't know, but just jumped in with both feet and did. And that's what I would say. Go do it.

Please share with everyone where they can follow along with you or if they're interested in you being a speaker or any of the things you've mentioned.

Yeah. So my Instagram is Auctioneer. I think it's like Auctioneer underscore Sean se A n. So at Auctioneer underscore Sean, I think that, I think that's the double check. And then my, you know, then I'm on Facebook. Sean Kelly on Facebook. I've got a charity auction website. You can see videos of me and you could contact me through there if you want. It's the charity auctioneer dot com. Let's see. On Facebook, I think I've got like three accounts because once you hit 5,000, they don't let you have any more friends. So I've got two that are maxed out and then one, they're still the one you can follow me on. And I'm on Twitter and my Twitter handle is at Sean Kelly Comedy.

Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. This has been unbelievable.

Easy. It's been my pleasure. Yeah. And I hope it helps some of the listeners. It's been great. Thank you.

I can only imagine, by the way.

The service that you're providing all of your listeners and viewers by doing this is spectacular. And I wish I had had it available when I was 40, because when I was 40 and I made that decision, I didn't take it lightly because at the time I was managing the San Diego Reader, which is a big. At the time was a really big newspaper and I was in charge of the entire sales department. So I was going to have to quit my day job, no health insurance, no giant salary, no benefits, no nothing, and jump out into the wilderness and do this crazy thing like try to create a TV show. So I wish I'd had your podcast to encourage me. So congratulations for creating this and sharing this content with your listeners.

Thank you. And for the listeners, do the Thing, don't wait for opportunity. Create it.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show.

But even more, we hope you'll be.

Inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear from. Hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at dothothing Callcast co or email us at hello atdothethingpodcast.com.