Ambitious Media Success with Guest Greg Rollett: MakingBank S2E39

Josh Felber:        Welcome to Making Bank, I am Josh Felber, where we uncover the success strategies and the mindsets of the top 1%, so you can amplify your life and your business today. I’m really excited and honored for today’s guest, Greg Rollett. He is an Emmy Award winning producer, best-selling author, as well is he the CEO of Ambitious Media Group.

They’re a media production company and TV studio created for entrepreneurs like you who want to use TV, video and other media to grow your business and brands. Greg is also the founder of ambitious.com, one of the top educational sites for entrepreneurs and emerging entrepreneurs, with more than 50 online courses from leading experts. Such as the New York Times best-selling authors, NFL Combine coaches, venture capitalists, and more.

His online TV show, The Ambitious Life, can be seen on Apple TV, YouTube, Facebook and entrepreneur.com. And when he isn’t in front of the camera you can also find Greg spending time with his high school sweetheart and their two boys [Colton 00:01:39] and [Ryder 00:01:40] at the baseball field. So, hey Greg, I want to welcome you to Making Bank today.

Greg Rollett:       Dude, awesome. I’m super excited to be here, thanks man.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, definitely. Great to have you on. Your guys’ show’s rocking. In a little bit here I definitely want to find about how you guys kind of created the whole process and got it to where it is today. But tell me a little bit about your background. I know you didn’t start as an entrepreneur. I think you were a rapper, right?

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, man. That’s how we always like to start this story, back when the White kid wanted to be a rapper. It sounded like a great idea when I was 16.

I always knew from a young age that if I wanted to get something out of life it wasn’t going to come from my parents. It wasn’t going to come as handout. That I was going to have to go and create it myself. I saw all these hip hop artists that I was a big fan of. I was buying their CDs, going to their shows, listening to them on the radio. They weren’t entrepreneurs. That’s what they are now, that’s what we consider them but entrepreneurship wasn’t a cool word back then.

But they were like these moguls. You had Master P and No Limit Records. You had Jay Z, Dame Dash and Cream Bigs at Rockefeller. You had Steve Rifkind at Loud. You Dr Dre at Aftermath. I could go on and on about all these dudes.

Master P is the one I usually talk about the most, because no one wanted to listen to his music, no one wanted to give him studio time, no one wanted to put him on the radio, no one wanted to give him a show. He just said, “You know what, I’ll just do it myself. I’ll go and work, and hustle, and do the things that you do in the Third Ward of New Orleans.” He took the money and he went and he recorded his own album, and he went to the swap meet and he sold thousands of copies out of the back of his trunk. He made so much noise that people had to pay attention to him.

My brain clicked. I was like, “Well, if this dude can do it, well so can I.” My senior year of high school they let me out of school at noon every day to do a senior project. I started a record label, and of course when you start your own record label you sign yourself as the first act, obvious. It’s the obvious thing to do.

So I did that, recorded my first album. We sold a couple thousand copies my senior year of high school. Spent the next 10 years touring, recording, doing all kinds of stuff. Played everywhere, from Madison Garden in New York City, out to Hollywood Boulevard in California.

Josh Felber:        Dude, that’s crazy. That’s so cool.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah. It super cool, and it’s all because I took control. I knew, again, it wasn’t going to be … My dad, he’s an amazing guy but he’s an electrician, works for a union, for a school board. He’s never going to make more than what he’s making now. If we wanted an extra hundred bucks, there was no way to make it.

So I was like, “Well, if I want the cool shoes, or the cool shirt, or impress the girl, or go on a date, I’ve got do something.” And so it was the hip hop route that taught me how to go out and take that kind of stuff. So those are the roots my man.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome. You know, the funny thing is, is … I can’t remember the guy’s name. There’s these two guys that are on YouTube right now. They can just drop some crazy cool sounds rapping. I don’t know if you’ve seen them, if not I’ll have to get you the link. But my kids love watching it, and so I used to rap as well. I used to drop the beatbox and all that kind of stuff back in the day.

Greg Rollett:       That’s awesome.

Josh Felber:        So I was doing that for them, and then I was showing them this. I’m like, “Here’s kind of like next level if you kept practicing.” That’s how it used to sound.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, and the crazy part, I always asked [inaudible 00:04:41] it’s like, “Can you bust a freestyle like that right now?” Well, A, freestyling is not like riding a bike. You can’t just pickup and do it. My skills are not where they were. And B, looking back, when you’re in it, you think the greatest thing ever, and you have to. You have to have that confidence. Like as an entrepreneur, you have to have that confidence that my product is the best and what I’m doing is really helping make a change. But now as you look back, you’re like, “I don’t think we were all that good.” We were good enough at the time but man, it’s kind of funny. I wasn’t like the battle rapper that was getting three million YouTube views for his hot bars. We make good drinking songs that made the bars a lot of money.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome.

Greg Rollett:       We served our place in the world.

Josh Felber:        Well, cool. So I guess, bring us up to speed with what you’re doing now. How did you make that transition from rap star mogul to Greg, entrepreneur with a media company and everything else?

Greg Rollett:       Yeah. It really happened when the band broke up. I had just gotten married and my wife’s parents thought, “Who is this degenerate that our daughter just married?” Like, “He dropped out of school to go tour the country, and now he’s got no job, and now he’s got no band, and he’s got nothing.”

They took me to what you and I would consider a fun Saturday now, which is going to an event and meeting people. But when you’re 20, when you’re 22, 23, and you’re wife’s parents who you just married, said, “Hey, come with us to this seminar this weekend,” and with your in-laws. It was the worst thing ever.

But it ended up changing my life because as this guy was up on stage, much like you and I see every day. You see like, “Oh my goodness.” It just unlocked my mind what was happening. At the time he was selling e-commerce type stores, this is way before Amazon and eBay and stuff like that. This was 15 years ago. I bought everything that they sold there and three days later I had a website called backyardhammocks.com. I was selling hammocks online.

I found this company in Canada that would drop-ship them to me, or allow me to do drop-shipping and all that cool stuff. Again, it’s so much easier now, but back then super hard. And so I started learning like, well, how do I sell this? I had to learn Yahoo pay per click, and AdWords and all that stuff. I started going online and figuring out, “How do I build my site?”

I saw these people that would sell information. They would sell like an eBook on how to do Google AdWords and it was a $100 for a PDF. And again, 15 years ago you were like, “$100 for a PDF?” So I started to see that the gold rush was actually in the guy selling the information, not in the guy buying the information.

I started discovering this information marketing world. The first product I ever created was actually for musicians to do what we did, was to make money, to tour, to do all that kind of stuff. I created a product and sold thousands of copies to musicians, everywhere from down the street to musicians in Japan and Australia, and just all over the world.

I was like, “This is powerful,” because now I’d shot four videos that were definitely not even the quality that we’re shooting right now. I shot them on a little flip camera, if you remember those white flip cameras way back. They had one button, record, stop. I shot four videos on that. I sold them for 47 bucks, and again sold thousands of courses.

That was kind of the kickoff. Met Nick Nanton, a friend of ours who came also from the music industry, from the attorney side. He was an entertainment attorney. He was like, “Hey man, I know we both have that music background and we’re doing all this cool stuff. But what if you took all that stuff that you were doing for musicians for 47 bucks, and sold them to real people that have real businesses?” Not that musicians aren’t real people or have real businesses, but most of them are broke, right? They want to go buy a drink at the bar or a new guitar pedal, they don’t want marketing advice.

And so, partnered with him at the Celebrity Branding Agency, and then we built the ambitious.com and Ambitious Media Group on the back of that, to really take the things that we wanted to do in the music industry, but now we do them for people like you, for people like me, for people that want to be on TV and write books and be part of a movies and documentaries.

You know, again, take that sizzle of the entertainment industry and bring it to entrepreneurs and professionals. That’s Cliff Notes the last 15 years, but it’s been a heck of a ride.

Josh Felber:        No, that’s really cool. Along the way, what were maybe two of your biggest life changing moments or transformations that really shifted your direction or pattern?

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, you know, I’ll talk about one of them that got me in gear. When I first partnered with Nick and them, we had some built in success because he already had a customer base and we kind of just leveraged that. Which allowed me to get over some of the typical startup pitfalls.

But the biggest things that happened to me was when my wife Jenn said, “Hey, we’re going to have a kid.” I was like, “Oh, all right. I guess I’m an adult now.” So from the time that we found out that we were going to have a baby till when Colton was born, tripled my income, really doubled down, really got focused and said, “You know, it’s not just about me anymore.”

I think that was the bigger thing. Before then it was all just about, “All right, let’s make money. Let’s buy the nice car. Let’s go on a nice vacation.” And now you’re like, “Now I want to provide value to this kid who’s about to come into the world.”

Not only did it flip the switch to provide for the family, but also it flipped the switch for me from as far as how I deal with customers. Is that it’s not, like yes we sell products and services. I have to make money in order to pay the bills and keep the lights on and have the fancy cameras and stuff. But I’m going to make more money and have more impact if I do better work for my clients, just like I want to have a better life for my kids.

And so having a kid was the biggest switch, because it’s no longer about me. I’m no longer selfish for the sake of let’s build the Greg brand, but the bigger I can build the Greg brand the more Josh Felber’s I can help, the more Joe Smith’s I can help, the more Joe Gleeson’s I can help, and the better I can impact my family.

So for me, it was flipping from being selfish to being serving, and coming from a place of service if you will. That was the biggest switch, and at the same time, like I said, tripled income, double down, business grew, because it wasn’t coming from a selfish place anymore. It was coming from a place of service.

Josh Felber:        No, I think that’s definitely key, because when we can actually then put in that position, we’re in that position to serve and to create that value and put that attention on somebody else, other than ourselves all the time. That now allows us to create that greater reach and be able to provide, I guess that connection and value for somebody else.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah. You and I see it all day every day on social media. It’s the entrepreneur who gets on his phone and his doing the Facebook Live and it’s just about, “I just closed another $10,000 client, and I just did this, and I just did that, and I just did this.”

At some point that bubble’s going to burst. I joke it about it. I call it, like it’s the new network marketing, to be an entrepreneur who is the coach who coaches coaches who coaches coaches, who only knows how to coach coaches. And dude, we despise network marketing. I mean, again, I don’t think network marketing is an evil business model but we despise some of the way that it’s sold.

I think that the coaches coaching coaches, the guy who bought a course about webinar on a webinar who’s now doing his first webinar where he’s selling a course on webinars, it’s the new network marketing, and it’s because it’s very selfish. I think that the people who are going to succeed over the next couple years come from the place of, “No, I’m doing this because I actually genuinely want to help you.”

Like your audience, I came on this podcast, obviously I’m telling my story but I’m telling it in a way where I want to help you. I believe that the bigger and better I tell my story with lessons, with points, with actionable steps, the more I can make an impact and help people.

It’s cool. Yes, we’re talking about Greg. Greg is cool. I’ve got it, but I’m doing for a point service, not for a point of, “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.” I think there’s a backwards things that’s happening right now, where it is people just being like, “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me,” and that’s not the way to build a long term business if you will.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, no, you’re 100% correct. Because you are seeing it, and like you said you have everybody becoming a life coach or a business coach. You can got get one for 997, you know, a certified business coach. Or, “Hey, cool. I ran one Facebook ad now I’m the guru. Come buy my course for 997.”

It’s like … I mean, I guess for me I have a lot of opportunity where I could push out stuff. I know I’m not the expert, which I probably need to put more stuff out there but I don’t. Because I know there’s these other people that are better and I’d rather send people their direction, and maybe at some point I’ll launch something where I, “I got skills here, so let me go ahead and push out my knowledge and my information and everything too.”

What I’d like to really start to dive into, you know as entrepreneurs, we’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs that watch us and everything. They’re growing their business. They’re trying to create and grow their brand. What are maybe three key successes or strategies, that you can say, “Hey cool. Here’s kind of step one, step two, step three that you want to go do to really start to get more brand presence out there?”

Greg Rollett:       Totally. The first thing is the mindset that you are a media brand, that everyone today is a media brand. If you posted about what you ate for breakfast on Facebook today, you technically created media. Was that the best media to create? I don’t know, maybe it is. Like, if you’re a health coach, maybe.

But if you are posting stuff on social media you are creating media and that becomes part of your brand. Because let’s face it, you and I, we’re friends on Facebook. I see what you post there. If you post something, that’s part of your brand, that’s who you are.

So the fundamental principle everyone needs to understand is you are a media brand and you have the opportunity to control that. Because guess what, I didn’t force you to post something on Facebook today, you chose to post it there. I didn’t force you to shoot that Facebook Live video with McDonald’s wrappers in the background, you chose to post that there.

So, fundamental principle number one is that you are a media brand. You need to own that. If you own that, well then that goes into the second thing I’d like to talk about, which is constancy and consistency. I like it so much that I created these iPhone cases for it that we have out there.

Josh Felber:        Nice.

Greg Rollett:       But constancy and consistency. Back in the olden days, you know I’m a big print guy. I like print newsletters. I love print newsletters. But here’s the fundamental problem with them, they’re great and I think they’re part of an omnipresent strategy, which I’ll talk about in a second, but if you only send it once a month and that’s your only point of connection with your clients, your customers, your prospects, your marketplace, well now you’ve got 29 days.

Dude, think about how much crap you get in one day. Now multiply that by 29. People don’t remember you. So constancy and consistency comes in. A friend of ours, John Lee Dumas. Entrepreneurs On Fire is his show. Seven days a week, 365 days a year he puts out a podcast. Consistency is there every single day.

So he reminds you that he exists. Every day when you log into your phone, you check podcast, there’s a new one from John Lee Dumas. So there’s the consistency. Constancy is constantly being in front of your marketplace.

The reason why … I know you’ve had him on the show. Gary V, the reason he wins is because he doesn’t just put out one thing. He puts six videos every day and 13 … Now for many of us that’s unrealistic. It’s unrealistic for me, it’s unrealistic for you. But guess what? He’s on every single person mouth right now. He’s on their mind. He has their attention because you can’t get away from him.

Constancy and consistency, you’ve got to find the balance of what works for you. Is that once a week? I think that’s, if you’re doing a show, whether it be a TV show, a podcast or whatever, at least once a week. Because again, if you’re once a month you get 29 days worth of other stuff to pile up.

It’s not that your core market is going to listen to you every single day. We’re lying to ourselves when we think that they’re going to listen to every episode of The Ambitious Life. That they’re going to watch every minute of every episode of Making Bank. We want them to. Of course, we create great stuff. But it’s unrealistic to think they’re going to.

But they’re like, “Oh, Josh just put out another new video.” “Oh, Josh has interviewed another cool guy.” It’s mind sharing its attention, so constancy and consistency.

Third tip with that is this concept of omnipresence. I learned that from Dan Kennedy, and he’s not the first one to talk about but he’s big on it. If you look at the biggest celebrities in the entire world, so we’ll use the Kardashians because they’re an easy one to pick on.

Josh Felber:        You hear it all the time.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah. So they have a TV show, they have multiple TV shows now that are once a week. Every week there’s Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Khloe does something silly or whatever they are. But every week they’re on TV. Then they’re in reruns and syndication.

So now seven days a week they’re actually on TV. Then you go to the newsstand and they’re on the cover of US Weekly and People Magazine, and something else. Then they’re on the cover of Cosmopolitan Magazine. Then they have an iPhone app, so every time you open your iPhone they’re on your iPhone. You have their perfume in your bedroom. You’re probably wearing a Kim Kardashian shirt, because I think one of them has a clothing line.

Josh Felber:        Not today.

Greg Rollett:       So you [crosstalk 00:16:43] for the actual fan … No, not today. But if you’re a fan of the Kardashians, you can’t turn around on a 365 degree angle and not see something from the Kardashians.

Gary V has done this really well. He’s got five or six videos that go out on Facebook every day, one or two that are on YouTube. He’s on Instagram. He’s coming at you from every single angle from a digital perspective.

And so thinking about that, how can you be in as many places? Again, I like the newsletter strategy. Be in the mailbox once a month. Maybe be in the mailbox twice a month. But also then be on Facebook, also then be on YouTube. There’s a repurposing strategy, right? You don’t have to create 7,000 videos. Even Gary doesn’t. He takes an hour long keynote and makes 40 videos from that hour long keynote. But this omnipresent strategy of being everywhere, because you want the mind share of your people.

So, the three things that I just covered, as a recap because I know I machine gun talk really fast, is that. The principles that you are a media brand. Like, you are. There’s no doubt in my mind that every single person listening to this is its own media brand. Even if it’s on a personal side and you’re just sharing what you’re doing in your daily life, you are creating media and that’s part of your brand. That’s what your customer see, it’s what your prospect see, it’s what your family or friends see.

Thing number two, constancy and consistency. Constantly be in front of your marketplace and do it consistently. And then think about the strategy of omnipresence, being everywhere, and I’ll stop talking now.

Josh Felber:        Cool. No, no that’s awesome. So question, when were talking about the consistency and [constanty 00:18:01] and everything. We were talking about putting out content, putting out content. So, Gary V has six a day and stuff. Do you say, okay, do we only maybe put out one a day at a lot better quality? Or put out eight things of so-so? Where is that line at do you think?

Greg Rollett:       That’s a great question. I’m a little biased because we have a production studio and we do that. But at the same time, I do believe, going back to my, this guy proposition who’s doing that, that at some point good stuff always rises to the top.

So great content is always going to rise. I think production value is showing that the more highly produced your show, the more serious people are going to take you. Silly things, like you have an intro to your show, like you have all these flashy cool graphics. That means this is a show. You put thought and time and effort into it. This isn’t just a rant where you went on for 10, 20 minutes, or something.

I do believe that quality is going to win out over time over quantity. If you can balance the two, then you really, really win. I was just hanging with you Jake Paul. For us older folk, who have no idea who he is. But if you’re younger right now, he has the fastest growing channel on all of YouTube. In the last month he put one million new subscribers onto his YouTube channel. He was the number one guy on Vine when Vine was cool. He has his own show on Disney Channel called Bizaardvark.

So if you’re eight to maybe 16, he’s like, I don’t know, the Jonathan Taylor Thomas of the generation. He’s like the guy who would have been on TigerBeat, or Teen-Beat back [crosstalk 00:19:22]

Josh Felber:        I had no idea how he was in your photo, and then I looked him up and I’m like, “Dang, he’s got a lot of followers.”

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, dude. We were talking about this. He does a daily vlog. Every day he has a cameraman follow him around, does a daily vlog, similar to Daily V if you’re watching what Gary V is doing.

He told me that A, production quality is the game changer that YouTube is looking for. So YouTube itself is looking for higher quality content and they’re preferring that over iPhone generated content, over quick stuff.

The second thing that he told me is, live video is not going to be the future for big content creators. I thought this was really interesting because everyone’s saying, “Do Facebook Lives. Do Live.” What he said is that when you do things live, it gives people a chance to tune out, because there’s no beginning, middle and end. If you do a seven minute Facebook Live and I show up at three and half minutes, you didn’t get the beginning. You didn’t get that flow.

If you’re thinking about what to say next, it gives people a reason to tune out. But when you can edit and you can make every single second count, you don’t give people a reason to leave. You’re always sucking them back in. You’re going to another angle cut. You’re going to something.

He was like, “Dude, live video is not going to be the future because people tune out.” So they might get the numbers but people are leaving as fast as they are coming in. This is a guy who’s the number one guy on all YouTube, so I kind of … Even though he’s only 20 I still respect his opinion on that.

The third thing that he said is, and this goes against everyone’s advice, and I believe in this. Is that long form content is going to win. It’s because the platforms prefer long form content. His daily show is about 15 to 20 minutes long every day.

The thinking is, if I’m watching Jake for the first time and I watch all 15 minutes, and I’m like, “Wow, this is awesome.” And then I watch another 15 minutes, and another … and all of a sudden I’ve watched six 15 minute videos, I just spent 90 minutes on YouTube. Guess how many ads YouTube just served?

Now, YouTube is in a war with Facebook. You just stayed on YouTube for an hour and a half and you weren’t on Facebook. So they prefer the long form content but I think it’s got to have production quantity. It’s got to be good.

All right, so now I’m going to take a step back and give a practical answer. Because what I just gave you was real world, production quality, you’ve got a video guy, got an editor. If you have that, you should do it. If you don’t, find somebody to do that.

Do what you can do at a quantity level. If it means that you can only produce one great video a week, just produce one great video a week. If you can have the capacity to do five then do five. But if you do five and only one’s good, it’s like the musician thing. I think musicians should be putting out new songs every day, but if your song sucks don’t put it out.

So do what is practical to you. The other thing is, video is the hotness, everyone’s talking about it. I think you should do it. We’ve recording this on video. But if the camera scares the living daylights out of you, don’t shoot video. Do a podcast. Podcasting is great. If you’re the best writer in the world, write a blog. Blogs aren’t dead, crappy blogs are dead. Blogs where it’s like, “Five steps to success. Step one is have beliefs,” that’s dead. But if you’re a great writer and you have great … Reading isn’t dead. People are buying books. It’s, you’re a crappy writer. Videos are great but if you’re bad on camera don’t be on camera.

I think the goal is to start with what you’re comfortable doing. Whether that be audio, whether that be video, whether that be writing. And I think the end goal is to get good on camera. The only way to get good on camera, and you know this, is to get on camera. If you look at back at [crosstalk 00:22:39]

Josh Felber:        I know I didn’t want to.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, well Making Bank episode one to wherever you’re at today, you’re 100 times better. You’re more confident. You’re doing it unconsciously competent. You get better by actually doing it. I went with a big picture, a little more practical. Hopefully that’s helpful to everybody watching today.

Josh Felber:        No, that’s awesome. Quick question to circle back. You were talking about production quality and making sure it’s [inaudible 00:23:04] What are maybe, I don’t know if you mentioned them, three higher level production quality pieces that we want to make sure, “Hey, our video has this and this and this?”

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, so story arc. Beginning, middle, end. Everything should have a beginning, a middle, an end, just like this interview. This interview, you started out with the beginning, where you kind of told my story. It’s going to have a middle where I’m teaching content, and it’s going to have an end of, “Hey Greg, if people want to learn more about you, where do they go?”

so there’s a beginning, a middle and an end. I’m assuming that’s [crosstalk 00:23:31], I have no idea.

Josh Felber:        Thanks for setting it up.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, exactly. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. So when you’re thinking about concocting it, what’s the beginning? What’s the intro? It could be as simple as, “Hi, I’m Joe Smith and in this video I’m going to talk you about X.” That’s the beginning.

The middle is the meat. So now, “So in order to X you need to do thing one, thing two, thing three,” which is what you’re asking me to do right now. You’re like, “Share three steps to this.” That’s the middle. And then the end is, “Hey cool. If you loved this video and you want to do one of those three things, here’s how you can work with me, or here’s what to do next.”

So beginning, middle, end. I think that’s big. Second thing is, I do believe if you want to be seen it shouldn’t be just a web video, it should be a TV show. In order to position it as a TV show you need an intro. As silly as this is, you need … I always talk about Friends. When TV show Friends came on and that music hits and it’s like (singing), you know that it’s Friends.

So when Making Bank comes on and the music hits and those graphic hits, you’re like, “All right, it’s time to watch a show,” not another video. Because the world doesn’t need any more video, like the world doesn’t need any more email, but now there’s a show. So beginning, middle, end, and then having the show.

The third is every video that you do I think there should be some tight editing. We go on and on and on, this is unedited ranting interview, but if we were going to tighten this up into a five minute video, cut out all my um’s and ah’s, cut out where I space out, cut out … Tighten it up.

Again, I learned this Jake Paul when we interviewed him for out Ambitious Adventures Show a couple months ago. It was just like, if there is one second of footage that doesn’t move it forward, get rid of it because that is one second where someone can go, “I’m bored. I’m out.” Every second that you have a part of the plot that doesn’t move the story forward, get it out.

Actually, we’re filming the Nick Nanton Show right now, One-On-One with Nick Nanton. He did his beginning, he did his middle, and he did his end. His end was like seven minutes long. He was like, “You know, in order to do this you’ve got to do this. In order to do this you’ve got to do this.” He kept going in circles. And Nick’s awesome, we love Nick.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Greg Rollett:       But we took that seven minute piece and made it 30 seconds, and we didn’t give any room or gaps for people to leave. So don’t let them check out, because if they check out, there’s no shortage of stuff to watch, things to do, people to talk to, especially when you’re online. Don’t give them a reason to leave.

So three tips, have a beginning, middle and end, production quality on the intro, and then third, any second that isn’t progressing the video forward, get rid of it. That would be where I would focus my attention right now.

Josh Felber:        No, and that’s fantastic, just from the fact that I’m always thinking, “Okay, cool. How can I make my show better? What can we do to amp it up?” As well as, as you mentioned we have a, and he’s here today, several times, three times a week. He follows me wife around for her skincare company and she did a Daily V, called the Daily Me, because it goes with her Healthy Me blog.

Anyways, cool, how can we tighten these up a little bit more and keep them flowing and keep it faster and stuff. I don’t know, I was talking to somebody and they were talking about editings. There’s edits every four to eight seconds, so you’re always … And I don’t know what your thoughts are on that?

Greg Rollett:       So the true honest answer from me is, I don’t have the mathematical solution to that. I just know that as soon as it starts to feel long to you, it’s going to feel long to somebody else. So as soon as it starts to feel long, move. Get motion in.

I think B-roll is underrated. So there’s A-roll and B-roll. A-roll is what me and you are doing right now. I’m on the camera, you’re on the camera. B-roll would be if I was talking about driving in a car and it actually showed me driving in a car. It took me offscreen and it was showing that scene.

I think that B-roll’s underrated. A, because it’s not difficult to do but it takes some plotting and some planning. But it sets the scene, so if you’re talking about skincare, things like that, you can, as your wife is describing it you show someone actually in the product touching it and putting it on their face and this that, as you’re describing it.

Well now there’s emotional connection, there’s movement, there’s something’s happening. So I think B-roll is underrated and underutilized for most folks. You just spent an hour shooting an interview, spend three minutes getting some B-roll behind it and it will completely change. Again, it’s the production quality, because if no one’s doing it, it just raised you up so much more than what other people are doing.

Josh Felber:        Definitely. Cool. That’s awesome. We have a few minutes left. I want to dive in a little bit about your Ambitious TV and what all went behind the concept and all the cool stuff you guys are doing with it. I know you’re all over the place. I think, are you guys going on TV with that or?

Greg Rollett:       Yeah. So, Cliff Note version, again. Going back to my music roots. No one wanted to give me a record deal. No one wanted … So I’m like, “I’m just going to do it myself.” Same thing with TV.

I’m in Orlando, Florida. It’s not the hotbed of the TV industry per se. It’s not Hollywood. So there’s not TV producer who just came down and they’re like, “Yes Greg. You are experienced, you should be on TV.” There’s no magical fairy that will come down and tell you that. But I wanted to create my own TV and so I met a guy, Brandon T Adams, who did a lot of crowdfunding campaigns. Tthe Freedom Journal for John Lee Dumas. He just did the Think and Grow Rich documentaries. Some of the largest entrepreneurial crowdfunding campaigns.

He was like, “Dude, I love the concept for your show. Can I help raise some money for it?” Long story short, raised 53,000 on Kickstarter to shoot five episodes. We shot five episodes last year in Hollywood, California. Where we had Jake Paul, we had Lewis Howes on the show, Jack Canfield on the show. You know Carlo, Carlo was on the show, one of our film guys. He’s now the star of All The Pizza. He travels around the world to do a pizza show. Talk about dream job, he lives the life.

So we went out there. We went Des Moines, Iowa, we went to Lacrosse, Wisconsin. We were in St Petersburg, Florida. We had Kevin Harrington, Caleb Maddox, just some incredible people, and then we did Winter Park, Florida. So we shot five episodes.

We are in the shopping phase right now. Where we’re talking to a lot of places. The ultimate goal is, yes, get on mainstream TV, get on a CNBC, get on a Bravo, get a BBC, get on ABC Family. But we have some alternative distribution strategies that could be a show in and of itself.

Again, you don’t have to wait for … I want CNBC, right? That’s like the blatant transparent truth. But if I don’t and they say, “No.” Cool, guess what, I have Apple TV, I have Roku, I have Facebook, I have YouTube. I could probably get more people to see it on Facebook, buying Facebook ads and get the right people to see it.

So we’re kind of in that phase and it was a fun, great experience. You know, I got to shoot my own TV show. I got to star in it, produce it. It doesn’t suck. There are worse things to do in life.

And then just like Making Bank, we created the Ambitious Life, which is more of like, we do it twice a week and they’re five to six minute webisode TV shows that we have on Apple TV, Facebook and YouTube. People started asking, “Can you just shoot that for us?” So we’ve evolved that into …

I’ve learned a lesson over time, that when people ask you continuously if you do something and you’re like, “No, no, no. No.” At some point you should say yes. So recently we just started opening up our studio and now we’re creating TV shows for everyone, from financial advisors. We’ve got a guy who’s running for state senate in Delaware and we’re doing his TV show for his senate campaign. To, this is a weird one but they do flooring and tile insulation just for restaurants, correctional facilities and cafeterias, and he wants a TV show.

So everyone, like I said earlier, everyone is a media brand, and using a visual medium like this is so powerful. That was the Cliff Note version of the evolution. TV is not going away. TV is changing but we’re always going to want a visual medium to watch it. Now that might be on Apple TV or Netflix or Roku or Hulu, or whatever it is. It’s changing how we’re viewing it but the visual storytelling medium is not going away. The faster you can get up to speed in telling your story through video, I think the better your brand’s going to be long term.

Josh Felber:        Awesome. No, and that’s great. So I mean, one of the big things that Greg is making a point of is make sure you’re getting out there, getting in front of the camera or getting at least audio out there and pushing what you do. Because you never know what that one little bit of information that you share could totally transform or change somebody’s life.

If you want help doing it, Greg and his team, Nick and those guys, they do an awesome phenomenal job. I was partners with them in a movie about Peter Diamandis that we got two Emmy Awards for, and they’ve won ton of other Emmy Awards and everything else as well.

Greg, tell us a little bit about where we can find out about you, what you’re doing. If you have anything you want to give to anybody that checks you out.

Greg Rollett:       Yeah, totally. So, ambitious.com is a great place to start, really cool domain name, kind of goes with the theme of my life of always having these grand ambition. So ambitious.com.

I am @GregRollett on all the social medias, and then we just put together a really cool video that walks people through the five steps to create a client-getting video, because it’s mostly what we want. They can just go to ambitious.com/5, the number five, and I’ll hook them up with that and we’ll do something cool just for your guys, for the Making Bank folk that come in.

Yeah, would love to hook them up with that because, again people make video really hard. They see the lights, they see the video camera, they kind of freak out, and they also think it needs to be perfect. I know I said earlier, if there’s a second of … But that can scare some people, they’re like, “It has to be every second counts, that’s what Greg said, every second counts.” So while there’s truth to that, there’s also truth to just being you. Just being uniquely yourself.

You attract at the rate at which you repel, and who you are is ultimately going to attract the people around you. So we created these five steps to make if drop-dead simple to have that beginning, the middle and the end, to go out and create video. Because there’s people watching right now, you know it, there’s tens of thousands of people, hundreds thousands of people watching your show. You don’t get 100,000 emails every time a show goes out. But there’s a silent majority that you know you’re helping, and that’s the person that really needs to hear your message, and they can’t hear your message if you’re not putting it out there. So, anyway, long winded way. Ambitious.com, @GregRollett, and I’m happy to help any of the Making Bank folk out with anything that we can do man.

Josh Felber:        Awesome. Greg, it was an honor, and really a privilege to have you on Making Bank. Thank you for your time for coming on today.

Greg Rollett:       Thank you my friend. I appreciate you having me.

Josh Felber:        I am Josh Felber. You were watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary