Unlocking the Secrets of Marketing Celebrities Made Easy with Chris "Vo" Volo
27:38 Share

The one thing I've come to understand is anyone could get anyone a deal if you have the deal. Yeah. If you have someone willing to put up money for a deal. Sure.

Anyone's attainable. You want to get Billy Joel to do a private concert at your wedding? He'll do it. Six million dollars. He's going to do it. And you could get that money. You could get to him. It's attainable. It's all attainable if you have your pieces right. And I think if you could do that and really get that in your head that it is attainable, you go after trying to get it.

My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.

Guys, what's up? Back for another episode. Super excited for today. We're here with a celeb agent for stars that you know and have probably watched. Hulk Hogan, Dennis Rodman, many others. And we shared a lot of cool stories and we share a lot of similarities in like our mindset around hustle, making stuff happen, figuring it out, not being afraid.

And even some of the ways that the people you represent have built their brands is so in sync with what I teach, what I've built on a smaller scale, of course. Maybe I'll be the next Hulk Wanda, who knows? But welcome. Thanks for being here. Pleasure to be here, brother. Pleasure to be here. I love this office, man. This place, this setup looks unbelievable, man. You're rocking and rolling. We try and stand out just like you guys are, right? And the guys you're representing, they've done an amazing job of building that personal brand.

And we were just talking like, Hulk, he's 40 years, right? He's gone. There's not many people in his space that have survived that long. That's unbelievable. Maybe let's start with that. What have you watched from the outside representing him for so many years? How has he been able to do that? I think just the energy that he's always brought to the ring. As we were talking before, he realized that

It wasn't the body slams. It was how he interacted with the crowd, looking at the crowd, getting their passion. As soon as he slammed someone, you turn the head and look at the crowd and the crowd would go wild. And I think that's the most important thing he's done to really get his brand so solid over the last 40 years. He's the type of guy, we were in San Diego

Um, and we were stopped at a light and this, this lady was walking her son who happened to be in a wheelchair. And he goes, brother, stop the car.

He gets out of the car and he goes to this kid in the wheelchair and he hugs him and he goes, just give me your energy, brother. I just need your energy. And everyone on the street went wild and he really needed it. And when he got back into the car, he said, God, God put me in this position. That's why I was here. And I was just like, and that was early on in my relationship with him. And I was like, this is why Hulkamania is what it is today.

Yeah. So like one thing that, I mean, it's great. A lot of my listeners, you know, they're entrepreneurs, business owners, influencers, or people trying to build an online business and start out in this realm. And I

I talk a lot and you know, obviously I have it here, right? Like the uniqueness, the standing out, building the personal brand. And I mean, we talked earlier, which I want to move into a bit. It's like people I think are in, I always say in society, at least you're ingrained in your brain as a child to do the opposite. If you stand out, you be loud, you shout, you're different. You want to dress different. You're a bad person. You get told off in school. Your parents say, no, you can't wear that. Everyone else wears this. You can't say that. You know, like, but yeah,

Everyone that's achieved greatness in life is different, right? Amen. So, and you, we were talking about, you went out and figured it out and that's where you are today, right? You created your life too. Yeah. Like saying, why can't I do it this way? So what's your take on that? Absolutely. I mean, I'm 39 years old right now. When I was 27 years old, I had absolutely nothing. And I was helping a friend of mine with his son's rock band.

And I knew of Darren Prince, who's our CEO of Prince Marking Group. And I set up a meeting with him and I brought a promotional deck of this kid rock band. They were called Going Dark at the time.

So Darren says to me, he goes, I really want to try to send this to a daytime show like an Ellen DeGeneres or Wendy Williams. Just so happened I knew exactly where Wendy Williams lived. She lived right across the street from a friend of mine, John, that Wendy's son used to play basketball with.

So I told him I'm going straight to the house and Darren was like, you can't do that. Like, that's not the way this business is. But 27, when you have nothing and you're trying to make your mark in life, you go after it. So I took the promotional deck. I put on a suit that didn't even fit. I was busting out of it. It was the only suit I owned. And I went right to her house and I knocked on Wendy Williams' door and she answers on intercom. She goes, hello. And I said, hi, Ms. Williams. I'm here with a promotional deck. I have to...

I'll drop off to you. And she goes, what? Hold on. She waits about five minutes. She opens the door and she reams me one. She destroys me. What are you doing at my house? Cursing me off. I had to think quick. And I did not even meet Hulk Hogan yet.

And I said, oh, I represent Hulk Hogan. I work for Prince Marketing Group. I didn't work with this company yet. And right when I said that, and also I did say, I play basketball with your son across the street. You know, I never met her son before. She started to take steps back. And then all of a sudden she started apologizing to me. So I'm like, this is working.

So she goes, this is not the way it's done. She goes, but I will look at the deck. She goes, if you want. She goes, I'll send my son over across the street. She goes, to play basketball if you're going over there. And I was like, oh, no, that's okay. Tell him I said hello. I got in the car and I left.

So I told Darren and his business partner, Nick, what I did. That was a Friday night. Sunday, Nick calls me up and basically says to me, he goes, go to the office tomorrow and just tell Darren you're an agent. And I'm like, what? He goes, yeah. He goes, trust me. He goes, it'll, he goes, I know him. He won't know what to do. He'll just invite you in.

I go, okay. So the next morning, like a little kid, nothing to lose. I knocked on Darren's door and at his office and I go, hi, Darren. I'm here to be an agent. And he was just like, all right, well,

Come on in. Here you are today. Here I am today. I've been with the company ever since. Well, so there's three things I want to like break down here, which I mean is like super cool when you step out of it. Number one is there's a ton of people listening right now that they just need to go and knock on that one door that could change their life and they're too afraid to do it. Absolutely. You know what? And I guess I did understand this, but then when I got to my early 20s, when I started getting 27, I was like, you know what?

If I have nothing to lose and I have nothing, there should be nothing besides not having anything at 27. There's nothing else I should be embarrassed about. I shouldn't be embarrassed about asking for something. I shouldn't be embarrassed about going after something. Um,

If you're the smartest person in the room, find a new room. I never want to be that person ever. And I started to learn that, that I said, you know what? I'm going to go into rooms that people could outwit me, could outdo me in every fashion. I'm going to try to learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And I think that's where we get held up. And I think that's a more...

adolescent thing that we get stuck in from high school. The embarrassment side, right? Absolutely. Fear of rejection. Fear of rejection. That's a drug in itself. That could really compromise what

It ruins a lot of people's lives. 100%. So many people, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection is stopping a lot of people that are listening today and thousands of people that could be great, whether it's sport, whether it's

finding their perfect husband or wife, whether it's taking the risk, right? It's like, whether it's asking their boss to move into a different role that they know they could love and instead they just quit because they're too scared to ask. Absolutely. The fear of rejection turns into regret later on. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And I think the second thing that I pulled out of that that's kind of hidden in that is I teach in a lot of marketing and business, find familiarity. Familiarity.

you knocked on that door and figured out how do I create some level playing field, right? Absolutely. And when you did that, everything changed. You said, I just took a step back and now it was an even playing field. And I think that's so key in business and in marketing and entrepreneurship. And even when I'm working with big players, I find for me, how do I level the playing field and find that middle ground? So it's like, hey,

Hey, we can now connect versus it being this big disconnect. And I think that's super important. Absolutely. Steven Tyler from Aerosmith, you know, said, you know, be that person until that person becomes you. Yeah. So I gave myself the illusion. That was my number three. My number three was going to be that, that figure out, act as in the person you want to become. There we go, Sid.

It's a synergy, brother. I knew it when I walked into the office. Yeah. You know, be that person until that person becomes you. I gave myself the illusion and I gave Wendy Williams the illusion. I was sort of on the same level, which I was nowhere near at. And once she thought I was, then it all got even. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, absolutely. So, number three, act as who you want to become. I always teach people in business. I'm like, hey, you want to know the reason you're not a millionaire, right? Right.

Right now, it's because you're not doing millionaire stuff. You're still doing $6 an hour stuff, trying to be a millionaire and trying to run a million dollar business. The minute you start acting like you're a millionaire is the quicker you'll start the journey to become it, right? If you're still trying to edit your freaking blog post,

There ain't millionaires ain't doing that. I'm not doing that, right? I'm figuring out how do I land a 50K deal, a 100K deal, a million dollar deal? How do I buy this business? How do I hire this rock star, right? Like start living the life that you want to become versus living the life that you're already in. Absolutely. Can't say it enough. And I think I...

I was aware of that young. When I started to believe in that, my life changed. Well, and that's the cool thing about being with a celeb, right? Because we talked about character. So I think there's a good transition into that. Especially, you know, the ones that you represent, you know, Dennis, right? They've created some of the best characters in the world, right? And that's why their legacy is so long. So what have you seen spending years with them?

And behind the scenes, if someone wants to create a character for their self, their brand, their online business, what have you learned from them? I think the biggest thing with that character is it's not a character. It's who you are. It becomes them. It becomes them. Hulk is Hulk Hogan. Dennis Rodman is Dennis Rodman. Charlie Sheen became the biggest, highest paid television actor ever.

being Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men. That's basically how he dresses. That's basically how he is. And he's an awesome guy. And that's who he is. It's the same with me in the red. Absolutely. That's who you are. So we put blue on you, you're not going to have the same vibe. It's team red all the way. And when it's who you are,

It's easy. It's not a character anymore. Like Hulk Hogan, like we were talking about before too, like Macho Man. Macho Man Randy Savage was Macho Man 24-7. I was saying this to my wife. I was like, she was asking about the red. Like, hey, because at first it was like I was filming in it and then it became everyone in the office is wearing it and now it's the whole brand and the personal brand.

And she's like, why? And I'm like, the best way I described it, which is going to sound weird is if you've watched Spider-Man. Right. And it's like, you don't put on the suit. Eventually you got bit by the spider. And now that's part of your DNA. Yeah. And I feel that's how it is with Hulk and Denny. Absolutely. It becomes a part of your being. Yeah. It's, it's like, it's two different guys. The, the,

the character to who you are, but it meshes. It's such a, it's such a, it's such a mess. Like I, everyone, everyone in the business, Volvo, I don't even think half my clients know my real name. It's Chris, by the way, but out of there, but when people call me Chris, besides my parents or girlfriend, it's, it's weird. Right. Yeah. Like I, yeah, it doesn't bother. It doesn't get my character out. Yeah.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm gonna interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money

into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes,

and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram @rudymorelife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30 second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode

I appreciate you guys, and let's dive back in. And I think another piece there, too, like, there is some strategy involved, at least in my world, right? Like, Hulk, like, there was some strategy in the early days to figure that out, I feel, and that's why he's different to many of the wrestlers that didn't become the next Hulk, right? Like, figuring out, like you said, it's not the move so much, it's the character, the brand, the signature. It's the charisma. It was everything...

outside of wrestling. Everyone's body slamming, everyone's suplexing. It's the look of the fans. It's the promos. Especially back then, staring at a camera and cutting that promo like never before. That's what got the fans. Macho Man with the, oh, the cream always rises to the top. It was a different level. Yeah.

And I believe that cream always rises to the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the same in marketing. Like what we teach is there's a lot, like for me, right? I started in Facebook ads and became famous as the ad guru and doing that. And now I'm here and that was my kind of old, my start. But there was a lot of people that teach Facebook ads, run marketing and are becoming marketers. But there's very few that get to my level. There's like five or 10 of us, right? That are this successful now. But it's because...

I took a basic concept, like there's a lot of wrestlers that don't become the Hulk, right? There's a basic concept, but then you have to go and like, how do I stand out? How do I create that uniqueness? How do I differentiate myself from everyone? Say, what about Dennis with basketball? Yeah, I mean, with him...

It was the hair and tattoos. No one did that at that time. He was a pioneer. Now everyone has tattoos. No one cares what you do with your hair. But they had billboards in Chicago where...

the hair would change colors every week or whenever he was doing, like they would change the color. So it was that worm character that he made. And I watched some stuff of him like traveling as well, international. He was so famous around the world. Even now, we go to Beijing. It's like he just won the championship last night. They go insane. And obviously with the North Korea situation, all of Asia, they just, they still love him.

So, yeah, it's unbelievable. And what about...

you've spent a lot of time with high profile people. And I would say the top 1%, there's so many similarities. My mom was a gold medalist in triathlon. So I went to Olympic games and out with Olympians and pro athletes my whole life. And people interview me a lot and say, how have you got this mindset of elitism? And it's like, I grew up in it. And people always say, I want to be a billionaire. And I share that. And they say, why? And I go, well, if you're playing in the NBA,

none of those guys go on there and go, I don't want to win. It's like, why would you show up if you don't want to win the championship or whatever, right? So what have you seen amongst all these celebrities, the top 1%, what are some of the common traits that they share? I think the common traits they share is they all took it upon themselves to,

to change their lives. Love that. Each one said to themselves at one step or another,

I'm not going to be poor because I have to do this. I am not going to be ordinary because I am going to do this. And they all did. I love it. No one told them what to do. No one told them. It was they all made that decision to themselves. And they flat out all told themselves that that was what was going to happen. And that's what happened. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

And there's so many people watching this or listening to this right now where it starts with that decision. I say you've got to take the first step. You might not have like Dennis Rodman, Hulk Hogan, all these guys. They didn't have the plan mapped out for 40 years. They you know, no one does. Right. I don't. I didn't know I'd be here doing this with all this red, blah, blah, blah. But I took the first step. Yeah. And that's why I'm successful. But most people are like just they're so back in the fear. What will happen? I need to figure it out. I'm not ready yet.

But these guys took the step. Absolutely. And I think where I sort of gel with them sometimes is it's hard to pick out a certain situation. But I know I've done this before where certain things would happen. And with, you know, whether it's a media, you know, something, some type of whatever's going on. And a lot of people on the team would be like, oh, we need we need to fix this. We need a quality. We got to fix this.

And I'm like, no, we got to double down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no fix. Let's double down on it. Yeah, I love that. And then that's when they light up. Yeah. They're like, yeah, I'm with Vo. Let's double down on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's their mentality. I like it. Go after it. Go after it. See what happens. Stretch the limit. Yeah. That's the only way something's going to happen. If you stretch the limit, you stay in your comfort zone. We all know what happens. Nothing. So I say something that you'll like then. So I say play into your extremes. Love it. Right? So that's that. Yeah, absolutely. Just play into the extremes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

100% play to your extremes you said? Yeah, play into your extremes. Unbelievable. Yeah, absolutely. Let me ask you this. What was your... I'm about to reverse the interview. Sure, sure, sure. There had to be a moment for you where you're like... Am I allowed to curse on here? Sure, go for it. Where you're like, fuck.

I got it. I remember it vividly. I know you do. Yeah. So for a long time, like we had, I had more capital. I had the brand, the company, we were all doing well, but we have a meeting every single week. I don't share this publicly normally, but internally it's one of my secrets. I mean, I have a meeting every single week and it's called Billion Dollar Brand.

and it's all my executives and me and it's the only meeting in the hour of the week where we can be stupid we don't have to leave with a ton of stuff it's not like going through project lists and we have eight pillars I created eight pillars that I think are needed for me to be a billionaire and a billion dollar brand and it's all these different pillars of success like famous tv new you know like pillars of relationships and every week we meet on there and we just talk about big

big stuff, big crazy ideas. And one of the eight pillars is the tribe and community. And I couldn't quite, I couldn't put my thumb on it, like exactly what it stands for. And the red kept compounding. I was doing the red ads. Everyone knew me with the red. And after COVID, events stopped and then restarted. And I speak at a lot of events. And I said, and I was always in the red, right? And people even knew me at the events because they knew my brand. I was well known in the space.

Or if they didn't know exactly who I was, they're like, you're the guy with the red ads all the time and the red everywhere. And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And I was in Cabo Airport, right? Cabo about 18 months ago. And events had restarted after COVID.

And I'd been to a few of them. And every time I went, I kept hearing this thing. It's like, Rudy, I love all your red stuff. I'm not seeing you for a year. You're crushing it. You're everywhere. Or it's like, hey, you're the red guy, right? And I had heard it a few times and we were on this billion dollar brands meeting. I was doing it from Cabo Airport. I was stood in line to check in. And I'm like, guys, I got it.

it's the red like we just gotta go all in on the red and here we are and you know then like a big part of the red for me was a play on the matrix take the red pill and live in wonderland build your dream life and screw the norm like get out of the matrix you know live in wonderland right build your dream life but that was the moment and that's when and it just keeps compounding now and it's like it's

it was like annoying me in my core because there's just something missing there was like one piece of the puzzle you know yeah something and you're like freaking one piece missing what is it yeah and then i got it oh it's great that's great and i think that's the same for a lot of people like they're doing pieces of it and then it likes it like it go it clicks at some point and then it goes absolutely absolutely again back to hulk it was that look he talks about it all the time it was

wait a second, me looking at the camera is what people are going nuts for. I wonder if he has that moment when it clicked. You know, yeah, I don't know if he says it sort of like an overtime thing he started to realize, but I'm sure I have to ask him. Yeah, ask him. It's probably like lying in bed at 11 p.m. all night, although it's like a

an article on the news, like the famous look. And he's like, that's it. That's it. Right. So yeah, let me know. Let me know. So let's go back to, I love like the being extreme, taking the risk, making stuff happen. You know, we spoke offline. I'm like, Hey, unless you're going to go to jail, hurt someone or hurt yourself, you've got nothing to lose. Absolutely. Right. So what would you say to people listening now? They want to be successful. They want to change their life.

but they've been ingrained in society to not take risks, to not do that, to be normal, to be like compressed down, like cheap. What would you say to those people? I would say nothing embarrassed and don't be embarrassed about anything. Go after it. If you're the smartest person in the room, find a new room. That's not the room you want to be in. If you're the smartest person in the world, then don't get stuck in that old high school mindset of you gotta be the coolest one there. You gotta be the coolest one there. Like that will,

will lead to disaster later on in life. And you want to surround yourself. I know it's very cliche. You surround yourself with people that have done it before, but how many people don't do it? So, you know, you really have to do it and you have to force yourself to do it. Yeah. Um,

Because, yeah, no one's going to do it for you. And again, with me 27 and having nothing, when I realized that's the only thing I should be embarrassed of, I said to myself, okay, I'll knock on every Wendy Williams door there is until someone answers the door and it's the right door for me to walk through. And that's sort of what I did. And I would tell anyone to keep doing the same. I love that. So-

Final question is like we talk, you know, our whole brand is take the red pill, live the dream life, you know, or the blue pill. Team Red, brother. What's the moment you took that red pill? I would say when I was dealing with North Korea and getting...

Ron men over there on those trips and meeting with Kim Jong-un and just trying to improve dialogue and realizing that there's two things in the world that bring people together, sports and music. If Pearl Jam plays in China, everyone's singing the words. They don't, whether they know what they means or not, it brings people together. So we said, let's try to, let's start there. Let's start with sports. They like basketball. We like basketball. It would be dialogue. If,

both parties leave with smiles on their faces it's a step in the right direction and that's when we that's what we did and I think I didn't realize the the whole premise of what I was doing nor did I realize people were looking until my moment that I knew I I made it or I did something was I was at

J&R Cigar Lounge in New Jersey, big giant cigar lounge, just having a cigar. It was right after one of our trips. And this lady comes after me and she spits on the ground and smacks me. And I'm like, well, my cigar. And I'm like, fuck just happened. I'm thinking to myself, like I'm in shock. She goes, you scumbag should never have went there.

And we had a documentary that was on Showtime. And that's when I knew, I'm like, oh my God, I think I made something of myself. Yeah, yeah. I just got smacked by a random person. I was like, so I was pissed off for a second. And then I was like, I guess this is pretty fucking cool. That was my moment. And I love that. That's pretty cool. Cool. So any final, you know, to wrap up today,

Any cool story of the celebs, any final words for people that are trying to build that dream life and live the red life? What would you say? I would just say, go out, try everything. Go after it. You know, the one thing I've come to understand is...

Anyone could get anyone a deal if you have the deal. Yeah. If you have someone willing to put up money for a deal, anyone's attainable. You want to get Billy Joel to do a private concert at your wedding? He'll do it. $6 million. He's going to do it. And you could get, you've got that money. You could get to him. We were talking about that. It's attainable. It's all attainable if you have your pieces right. And I think if you could do that and really get that in your head that it is attainable, you go after, you know, trying to get it. I love it. So summary,

Take the risk. Don't be afraid to ask. Build the character, right? Become the character. Find your uniqueness. Play into it and never give up. Amen. Be that person until that person becomes you. Thanks, buddy. Great to have you here. Same here, pleasure.