Quitting A Successful Real Estate Business To Create a Life of Impact & Fulfillment

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Giovanni Marsico is the founder and president of Archangel Academy and the Gifted Entrepreneur, which is a coaching and mastermind organization that shares marketing, innovation, and revenue generating strategies with big-hearted entrepreneurs all around the world. Giovanni’s dream is to solve the world’s biggest challenges like poverty and hunger by empowering other gifted entrepreneurs who want to do the same.

We’ll be discussing how he shifted from a life of chasing money to a life of impact and bliss. Gio shares how he plans on growing his Archangel Summit to over 10,000 attendees. We discuss how first being an employee for a company that serves entrepreneurs can be the absolute best way to get started and learning about business, and of course, much more..

Key Points From This Episode:

• Giovanni shares about where he started producing events at the age of 16.
• Learn why working at Strategic Coach was the best way for Giovanni to learn about business.
• Understand why four years later, Giovanni left Strategic to venture out on his own.
• How friendships and fitness helped Giovanni get through some of the lowest times in his life.
• Find out why Giovanni went from working in real estate to starting Archangel.
• Hear more about Giovanni’s vision for Archangel and the Archangel Summit.
• Understand how leaving real estate got Giovanni back into alignment.
• Find out why Giovanni says that all or most growth happens outside your comfort zone.
• Learn about how Giovanni explains having ‘new firsts’.
• Discover how Giovanni reframes negative thoughts regarding entrepreneurship.
• Hear more about Archangel and getting into Angel Investment.
• Find out what guidance Giovanni gives to people wanting to take the first step in business.
• Understand what failure means to Giovanni and how he sees it as a learning opportunity.
• Hear what’s next for Giovanni in terms of dreams and growth.
• And much more!

Tweetables:

“All or most growth happens outside your comfort zone.” — @GiovanniMarsico

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[0:26:07].1]

“Don’t look at things as problems but think of them as puzzles.” — @GiovanniMarsico

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[0:29:23]:0]

“Do whatever it takes to uncover your gifts or strengths or superpowers.” - @GiovanniMarsico

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[0:33:13]:0]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Giovanni Marsico — http://www.giftedentrepreneur.com/

Giovanni on Twitter — https://twitter.com/GiovanniMarsico

Archangel Summit — http://www.archangelsummit.com/

Dan Sullivan, The Strategic Coach – https://www.strategiccoach.com/

Workopolis – http://www.workopolis.com/shared

Kris Simpson – http://www.bodiesbydesign.ca/

Peter Diamandis –http://diamandis.com/

Ray Kurzweil –http://www.kurzweilai.net/

We – https://www.we.org/

Lisa Ferguson – http://1000wattlife.com/

Phil McKernan – http://philipmckernan.com/

Gary Vaynerchuk – https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/

Real Talk Summit – http://realtalksummit.com/

One Last Talk – http://onelasttalk.com/

Naveen Jain – http://www.naveenjain.org/

James Altucher – http://www.jamesaltucher.com/

James’s Book, Reinvent Yourself – https://www.amazon.com/Reinvent-Yourself-James-Altucher/dp/1541137132/

Strengths finder test – http://www.strengthsfinder.com/home.aspx

Kolbe test – http://www.kolbe.com/

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 008

“GM: 2012 I joined the Genius Network, Joe Polish’s $25K group, and at my very first meeting they sat me next to Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil and [V. Jane]. I was like at the genius table, I was the dumbest person. But that was fun.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:22.1] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:50.0] RN: Hey there and welcome to the podcast that believes, if you desire to create the life of your dreams then embracing failure by taking urgent and bold action is the only way.

Today, we are sitting down with Giovanni Marsico. He is the founder and president of Archangel Academy and the Gifted Entrepreneur which is a coaching and mastermind organization that shares marketing, innovation, and revenue generating strategies with big-hearted entrepreneurs all around the world. Giovanni’s dream is to solve the world’s biggest challenges like poverty and hunger by empowering other gifted entrepreneurs who want to do the same.

We’ll be discussing how he shifted from a life of chasing money and unfulfillment to a life of impact and bliss, how he plans on growing his Archangel Summit to over 10,000 attendees, and how first being an employee for a company that serves entrepreneurs was the absolute best way to get started and learning about business, and of course, much more.

But first, to stay up to date on all fail on podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:08.9] RN: All right, hello and welcome to the fail on podcast, today I am sitting down with Giovanni Marsico, welcome to the show.

[0:02:15.5] GM: Thanks.

[0:02:18.4] RN: Just for a little context, tell us about your entrepreneurship background, what did you get started in when you first got into business and kind of take us to the timeline of then to what you’re doing now?

[0:02:29.9] GM: Awesome, my first venture was when I was 16 and my best friend Steven, I used to go to parties for teenagers and dance parties and we thought, we love this but we can do something better. I don’t remember, have a vague recollection but I couldn’t believe how much we accomplished our — were able to do at 16 years old but we — Our first event that we produced was in a banquet hall, we were negotiating contracts at 16.

[0:02:57.8] RN: Sure.

[0:03:00.6] GM: We managed to have a thousand people show up.

[0:03:02.1] RN: No way.

[0:03:03.1] GM: Which for a first time event at 16 years old.

[0:03:05.4] RN: That’s nuts.

[0:03:06.0] GM: It’s crazy.

[0:03:07.1] RN: For 16, that’s nuts now.

[0:03:08.5] GM: Yeah, it’s nuts now. Pre-internet, pre-social media, pre cellphone.

[0:03:12.9] RN: How are you doing that, how are you getting the word out?

[0:03:14.7] GM: We actually had an affiliate model which is hilarious, we didn’t know that’s what it was but we had friends in all kinds of different schools and we said, we want you to sell tickets in advance. If people buy a ticket, they get a discount so now there’s value there and we’ll give you a dollar per ticket you sell.

[0:03:30.4] RN: That’s awesome.

[0:03:31.7] GM: We had this crazy affiliate model before that was even a thing. Old school. We had a thousand people show up to the first event and it was one of the best days ever for us.

[0:03:40.7] RN: That’s so cool. What were you charging for a ticket?

[0:03:45.0] GM: 12 at the door and 10 if you…

[0:03:48.7] RN: Pre paid? You had that model down. Pay in advance, you get a discount. You guys didn’t do any of the promotion? You just had affiliates go do everything?

[0:03:58.0] GM: Pretty much, we had an army of promoters.

[0:04:01.9] RN: Their sole motivation was just getting a buck per…?

[0:04:04.2] GM: They would have done it for free because — yeah, the idea that they took ownership of the event as if it was their own so they felt good saying come to my party.

[0:04:13.5] RN: Got it. You’re okay with letting them take kind of ownership of it, it’s all good, we’re all partners in this kind of thing? Got it, was that the first time somebody ever had given you money in exchange for something that you created?

[0:04:26.2] GM: Yes.

[0:04:27.0] RN: Okay, cool. What made you guys even think about doing it or wanting to do it? Had you always looked for different ways to make money?

[0:04:38.1] GM: That was our first experience creating something for profit or for money or for exchange of value. I’m sure the seed was always there and we just felt, this was a thing we could do.

[0:04:50.9] RN: Nice, is this something that you did year after year there on out? Because you saw that it worked, let’s do this again.

[0:04:57.9] GM: No, right after that, we planned our second event and it went really well and then our third event we got crushed.

[0:05:03.1] RN: What happened?

[0:05:04.7] GM: We were renting banquet facilities or banquet halls and giant restaurants and it worked but there were also night clubs in the city that would maybe one day a week or one day a month allow teenagers to throw parties.

[0:05:17.2] RN: Got it.

[0:05:19.5] GM: On our third event, we were selling out, going really well but then one of the huge clubs in the city was closing down and they were having a last party ever event and they promoted it two weeks before and completely crushed us, we had to deal with failure at 17 years old on a bigger scale.

[0:05:38.4] RN: How much did you guys end up losing on that?

[0:05:41.5] GM: We managed to break even.

[0:05:43.0] RN: Okay, so it wasn’t necessarily a huge financial failure but it was at that time, it was…

[0:05:49.4] GM: It felt like it though because we would have had, we would have had…

[0:05:51.9] RN: You would have made a lot of money right? and breaking even was basically a loss because you put a lot of time and effort into it.

[0:05:56.3] GM: Correct.

[0:05:56.7] RN: Got it. After that one, did you do any after that? You kept going? Got you. How frequently were you hosting these things?

[0:06:07.7] GM: During high school, it was probably two or three a year.

[0:06:10.0] RN: Okay.

[0:06:10.7] GM: And then after high school, when we got ourselves into night clubs, the biggest venue, our biggest event had 5,000 people inside a 2,000, in line that couldn’t get in because we were over capacity.

[0:06:22.8] RN: No way.

[0:06:23.3] GM: That place, we’re doing weekly.

[0:06:25.2] RN: Got it. That’s kind of your first world of entrepreneurship is hosting events right?

[0:06:34.7] GM: I’ve been an event producer my whole life. It is one of my gifts to create immersive experiences, I didn’t understand it back then but I was just so passionate about it.

[0:06:44.4] RN: How did you transition out of that? I know you did real estate, is that where you went directly into or is there stuff in between?

[0:06:49.6] GM: In between, I eventually listened to my teachers and guidance counsellors and parents who kept bugging me that this is not a real thing, you should go to school, get a job and that’s when I quit doing events to go back to university, that’s when my depression started because I was not aligned.

But I went to the university for first engineering and then I dropped out of that because I didn’t want to be an engineer but my guidance counselors would say, get your engineering degree first and then get your master’s in business. Which was the programming, they will put it to every — it’s terrible.

I did go to business school and after that, I had the best job which was my last job ever but it was running the marketing at strategic coach.

[0:07:34.3] RN: Nice.

[0:07:34.6] GM: Dan Sullivan.

[0:07:35.7] RN: Yeah.

[0:07:36.2] GM: I was there for four years and it was life changing.

[0:07:40.2] RN: In what way? Did you have exposure to Dan and like his teachings, his philosophies, all that stuff?

[0:07:44.8] GM: Well, if you’re entrepreneurial, having the opportunity to work at a place like that. Being behind the scenes, seeing how teams are structured, seeing how operations work, all accounting, all those kind of things with a company doing really well.

And then, being exposed to the type of people that are clients are…

[0:08:02.6] RN: Yeah.

[0:08:04.3] GM: I volunteered to sit at every workshop they would allow me.

[0:08:07.9] RN: that’s awesome. Smart.

[0:08:08.8] GM: Right. For most people who were team members or employees, you know, 5:00, whatever the time, they would go home and I would stay and go into the stock room where all the products were and read for hours.

[0:08:22.2] RN: that’s amazing.

[0:08:22.7] GM: Because I was like, this is the best stuff ever.

[0:08:24.6] RN: Yeah. Within that, did you actually have the awareness when you were working there to actually start like you said, you could see how the business was run right? Not necessarily in the client side but you could see how marketing worked, how operations ran, how customer support rant, all of that.

Did you actually have the awareness to so call that in and see how, okay, this is how Dan runs a company, from the inside.

[0:08:49.1] GM: It was the best entrepreneurial school ever and part of me felt like I was cheating because clients were paying a lot, investing a lot of money to be clients there and I was making a lot more than that to sit in the same room and to learn and be behind the scenes.

[0:09:04.4] RN: I think it’s one of the best ways to get into entrepreneurship without just jumping in. You know what I mean? Going to work for a company that you find really interesting, that you can — that’s a small team right? He doesn’t have a huge company in terms of 500,000 employees.

[0:09:21.2] GM: At the time, it was 120 I think.

[0:09:22.9] RN: All in Toronto? Yeah. Small enough to where you can have exposure to almost every department right? I think...