Turning Adversity Into Opportunity: My Story

This is my story is about hitting rock bottom as an intravenous heroin user, 
but eventually getting sober and finding success in running Facebook ads, 
generating billions of dollars in revenue for clients around the world, 
and living a life beyond my wildest dreams.

Before finding my passion, I had various jobs, including being a Little League Umpire, a pizza delivery man, a touring musician, and a Sirius XM radio personality...which came to an end due to Hulk Hogan's sex tape. 

After moving to LA, I started my own organic social agency, won the business of 1-800-FLOWERS on AMC's show The Pitch. and got fired from my own agency due to a contract written by their lawyer/banker/vice president. Later on, I landed a job at an agency promoting actors and movie roles, where learned to use Facebook to sell speaking events at Comic-Con and movie premieres. I learned how the audience, bidding models, and tools worked differently than Google and Yahoo Gemini. 

Soon, I was offered a job at Omnicom's LA office as a supervisor of Paid Social, even though they only had nine months of experience in advertising. All of a sudden I went from getting paid $200 a week, to getting paid $75,000 a year with benefits and a retirement plan and all sorts of other perks. And I didn't even know how to use Outlook

I was responsible for managing advertising campaigns for clients like Nissan & CBS, working with Apple, Activision, and Levis... and spending a million dollars a day. It was terrifying to make mistakes, but I enjoyed the challenge of defining best practices for using Facebook, which nobody knew how to use properly at the time.

Nissan had a contract that required them to provide four cutting-edge alphas (digital marketing innovations) each year. With only 10 days left to launch an alpha, I was in a bind. The Tep from Facebook offered a lead-generation ad that no one had used yet. The ad allowed people to submit their information to a business with just a click, using the information they had already provided to Facebook.

I had an idea of using national campaigns to collect localized information and give it to tier-three dealerships. This allowed them to use Nissan USA's money nationwide to provide test driver information to every dealership. This campaign turned out to be extremely successful and helped sell a ton of cars.

It ended up costing $50 to get someone to give their information, but one out of every two people who signed up bought a car. This meant that the campaign had a 250x return on a seven-figure budget. Now while of course return on ad spend (ROAS) is a bit of nonsense, this success story was presented to every car company in America running ads on Facebook. Within six months, nearly every single one of them had started using lead-generation ads.

Working with Macy's on a test for dynamic product ads (DPA), we had to input 50,000 product SKUs into an Excel spreadsheet to upload to Facebook. The test was successful, and they believe that every store on Facebook now uses a product feed. I also was involved in the development of CBO & Advanced matching, and dynamic creatives... Which is now the backbone that everyone should use for running Facebook campaigns.

I consider myself extremely fortunate and blessed to have been present at the inception of several things that have revolutionized the world. This was made possible because I was fired by a client who invested just $100 in Facebook ads.

The turning point in my life came after the release of the Hulk Hogan sex tape. The fallout from the scandal was immense, as Hogan withdrew his funding, and Howard Stern followed suit. Consequently, the radio network where I worked transitioned from Bubba the Love Sponge to a Howard Stern replay. This was a huge blow to my career, and it pushed me to rock bottom, where I faced the options of jail, institutions, or death. The experience led me to quit my heroin addiction, and I am proud to be sober now.

I am grateful for all the opportunities that have come my way, even though so many things had to go wrong for me to get to this point. I am now in a position to create opportunities and help others achieve success and independence. My passion for Facebook ads has enabled me to drive over a billion dollars in revenue, and I am truly grateful for this.

I want you to know that this is achievable and straightforward, and you too can do it!