The Blog Of Greg Rollett

That seems to sum up the world I’ve been living for the past few months. I’ve been able to relax for about 4 hours in the past 3 weeks and I spent them at the movies watching Wall Street and the Social Network. Both could not have come at better times in my life. Seeing the lifestyle from the young moguls depicted on the big screen is both inspiring and interestingly dangerous at the same time.

I mean, come on, I like to party - as my bank account shows like 40 shots of ghetto juicers from a Friday night binge. But they are showing these guys doing some crazy stuff, the coke, the 24 hour binges, the hookers, the deception, the back stabbing - it’s a rough ass world. If you really want to read about it grab “The Wolf Of Wall Street” by Jordan Belfort (amazon aff link). I’m a few chapters in and can’t put it down. If half the stuff is true, then man-o-man, it might be a crazy ride to the top.

But it’s the real world. One I get to see and experience everyday (no I’m not doing any coke or hookers, beer is still the substance of choice). And it is fun as hell.

Messing with VC’s, investors and Wall Street types is something that I never envisioned 6 months ago. I wanted the million, but never knew I could do the $100 million. Who knows and who knew.

Mix the 2 movies mentioned above and mash them up like Linkin Park and Jay-Z Collision Course from a few years ago and you have my new lifestyle. I was asked today if I was excited about this journey - I said I have never loved Mondays more than I do now.

The No Sleep Week

Last week we spend Monday hanging with super affiliates at Sea World and spent a nice 5 star dinner with the king and queen of the affiliate marketing world at the Affiliate Summit unConference. Brett jumped on stage and got to chat about data feeds and it ended up being a great conversation and led to an amazing partnership for our company (we had another presentation on outsourcing that we didn’t get to speak on, but we are going to record it this week and share it with everyone asap).

(the homie Brett Burky lounging onstage at #asun10)

The Affiliate Summit unConference was one of the most successful events I had been to in a while. Maybe we had more purpose there, maybe the people were sipping some strong coffee and wanted to spew out golden nuggets, or maybe it was just the people themselves - all taking a Monday to come to Orlando and give back their slice of brain power. Check out a full recap here.

Then it was on to Miami Beach for Murray Newlands’s Social Media and Advertising event. After sitting in traffic for 30 minutes and almost missing my speaking time, we jumped in to see the homie John Chow warm up the crowd. After that I got to rock the mic and talk about P.Diddy, writing for Mashable and driving a ton of traffic through things like guest posting, JV’s and email relationships. You can see some photos and the slides below:

Leveraging OPA - Social Media And Advertising Miami

At the event Murray sent over John Chow and I some bottles of wine to start the afternoon. So we proceeded to pop bottles…

From there I got to spend some time with the Tim Ferriss of the wedding photography business - Taylor Jackson. I have been working with this guy for a few months now and I’m really stoked we got to connect. Taylor is a super in demand photographer for both weddings and corporate events and makes serious dough that rivals most of my Internet Marketing friends (and he works only 1 day a week!).

(Taylor is on the left, Mark from Constant Contact in the middle and his parter on the right)

(Murray Newlands, me, Brett Burky and EJ Garcia)

I shot a really cool video with Taylor that I will rock out later in the week.

Taylor, Brett and I then sped over to South Beach to see the sand and grab some dinner. Ironically we had a Russian waitress serving us BBQ, the sweetest iced tea I’ve ever tasted and some good ass Latin inspired wings. Would have tried the beer, but I still had to drive back to O-Town at some point in the night.

(The Good Life)

To round out this 24 hour whirlwind, we headed to a gentleman’s club to, um, talk to one of the biggest domainers in the game. He was even behind the t-shirts.com sale that went for a few million last month. Pretty sick way to end the night and the week.

At the 1am hour it was 5 hour energies, supersized Arizona Iced Teas and Brett keeping me awake with stories of augmented reality and nano technology. The stuff the History Channel has our kids thinking about. Just absolutely insane. I hit my pillow as my wife’s alarm went off for her to get to work.

The Moral To The Story

I don’t think there is one. Wait, I take that back. Life has moved faster in the past 3 months that at any point in my life. In those 3 months I have managed to release a sold out coaching course, which is the best work I have ever done and took a position as the CMO in what could be a game changer in the affiliate world if all goes right.

The real moral is to stop for a second. Enjoy the moment. Stop thinking about checking your email or the report that is due on Monday. Yea that shit is important, but so is right now. The person talking to you, the people around you and the situation that you are in right now. Take it in, take a deep breath and don’t let life pas you by - no matter how much you are going through.

It’s not the money that we will remember. It’s the people and the moments. I forgot where I heard that the time it really stuck in my head. Then they proceeded to say that the money sure as hell helps to have some better moments. I couldn’t agree more.

So here’s to the people that work hard and party harder. Cheers.

-Greg