Marcello Foran Interview Part II With Jenny Woo
Gambling911.com's Senior International Correspondent, Jenny Woo, continues with Part 2 of her two part interview with Marcello Foran.
JENNY: The things that you guys offer on your website is impressive.
Where do you go to get these connections? Who do you go to?
MARCELLO: Keep in mind when we were building the website and then my tech guy said, "Marcello, you know you can only build this thing so big or else it's not going to function from a technology stand point."
The whole idea of the website is so that you get an idea of the level of what we're capable of, obviously we can't put everything that exists in the world on the website. We kind of put a limit on it so people could get an idea of the wide range. However, there are things that we don't put on the website that are so exclusive and private we only offer to our private elite clients. I have a client that came on board and his mother's life long dream was to meet Oprah; they had spent two years trying to get her on the show. I had her on the show in two weeks and a meet and greet with Oprah. I have a list of things like movie premieres, award shows, and after parties for the award shows. What I have done is I've created a network of people and for confidentiality purposes I can't tell you who the people are but let's just say that there are a lot of important and powerful people out there that get invited to things and they don't go. So they have personal assistants who may pass those events on. In a round about way, if enough money is involved you can get access to anything.
There are a lot of levels and more levels of things going on through the Ultimate VIP network. You see Ultimate VIP as a luxury lifestyle company/concierge. A lot of companies that are in that preferred network they have to pay us. It's a non-intrusive way and not a "in your face" advertisement. However, if you want to be in the
Ultimate VIP network then there has to be some benefit for us to endorse your product and to send our business to you. For example - I get paid a percentage from certain casinos and hotels (without naming anyone in particular). I get paid a percentage of everything my clients do at the casino or hotel. The Ritz Carlton is a huge brand so they're not going to pay us to bring them clients for the most part but we do get benefits by working with them. We also negotiate appearances for celebrities and for clubs as well as endorse products through the Ultimate VIP network. I have companies on a daily basis contacting me. For example, there was a new resort in the Dominican
Republic that approached me and said, "If we put together this ultimate weekend will you endorse us to your clients and they come down and buy real estate then you'll get a percentage." We have exotic car companies who approach us to endorse their product. It's direct marketing. You can put an ad in the "Robb Report" or "Luxury Lifestyle Magazine" and you have to hope that the right people buy the magazines and turn the right pages. Instead, we're very selective on how we do it because we don't want our clientele to feel like we're pushing every product in the world on them. We have companies that we agree to market out their products through our clients and then we have the other ones that we just put on the website.
You can go to the website and if you're an Ultimate VIP member or you want to use Ultimate VIP and you want a trip to Vegas then you can call us and we can do an "al a carte" type thing. We try to stay away from that because we're looking more to just service our members.
When you call the company "Ultimate VIP" you have to provide that level of service or else its not going to mean anything. The perception has to meet the reality. We don't do commercial air travel; we don't do regular hotels or suites. The only thing we book, for the most part is the very best. It's only private jets; it's only the penthouse or presidential suites at these places. When our clients arrive, not only do they get their ass kissed they are an UltimateVIP client which means they get that extra ultimate VIP service.
JENNY: Do you think that separates Ultimate VIP International from the rest of the VIP services countrywide or even better yet - worldwide?
MARCELLO: I think absolutely because there's no question that our clientele is in the top one tenth or the top one percent. I'm not saying that every single one of them uses us for every single thing but it's a one stop shop. You don't have to have a relationship with a private jet company, a limo company, a vip host in every city and it doesn't matter what city you go to. You call us and we've already made the relationships with people and it's all about the relationship. It's who knows who and who can get to high powered people faster. You might know everybody in Miami, you might be able to walk up to all the hottest clubs, you may know the doorman, you might know everybody at all the hotels and get into the best parties; however, the ego and the mindset of those people is that they want to be treated that way everywhere they go. If you go to Vegas, it doesn't matter if you know everyone in Miami; there are a hundred people like you in Vegas. There are probably a thousand people who go to Vegas that know everybody in their hometown too. If you get to Vegas and you're an
Ultimate VIP member it doesn't matter because you're an Ultimate VIP member not the guy that knows everybody in Miami.
What separates us is that we've created a network and it's more like we're brokers of these services. We sell, market, and service these people's product because we do it better than they do. The whole concept behind Ultimate VIP is that we're providing a level of service that is based upon traditional and high end values. The problem is that a lot of companies can't provide the service that they sell. We keep it to a minimum. That's not to say that if somebody calls us and says, "Hey we want to use the service for the weekend", we won't do it. But we do try to shy away from that because if we spread ourselves too thin then the service level isn't as high. From the client standpoint we provide luxury lifestyle management services to the businesses that want to get in front of our clients. We are a network where they can have their thumbnail in our websites as if they would in a magazine advertisement but we do it more non-obtrusively. We just make it a part of the network as a service where the Ultimate VIP clients can go to the website and see a wide range that they can choose from. But most of the time we tend to continue to use the strongest relationships that we have. If there are hotel chains, casinos, and clubs where our incentive is greater and the service level is greater then we tend to use a lot of the same vendors more times than not. We are only as good as the people we partner with as a broker. We use the businesses and services that understand our philosophy because they know that our clients require this dedication and level of service and need to be treated a certain way. They know that we need to do this or else we can't use them. They like it when our people go in and drop 25K - 30K on bottle service and of course they want these guys back. That's one aspect of Ultimate VIP is the branding and the growing of the brand to where it's synonymous with the highest level of VIP.
My ultimate goal and what I'd like to do is actually change the standard in the world. I want there to be the Ultimate VIP section in nightclubs. I want there to be the Ultimate VIP magazine. Right now we have parties and we get clients access to "Fashion Week", "Sundance", "Cannes Film Festival" and those type of things; but what I ultimately would like, as we build the network, is to have our own Ultimate VIP "Fashion Week" party. Right now we get our clients into other people's after parties and high end parties. As we grow it, I would like everything "Ultimate VIP". I'd like to change the standard in the world to be remembered as the person who created another level. By owning that trademark, that term is going to become very valuable.
My whole goal is to be very careful, to grow it correctly, to make sure that the brand stays respected in a way that there's nothing higher as far as a VIP is concerned. The more we continue to brand products and we continue to show value to companies that want to get their services in front of our clientele the more valuable it becomes. We've got the luxury lifestyles clients that we do services for and we've got the companies that we match up the clients with and endorse products. Anytime you have people that you can do a service for and they respect you, then you obviously are going to have companies that want those same clients. We're putting that all into a brand and marketing out there to the world as the ultimate VIP service. That's pretty much the business aspect of it.
Some other interesting things that we're thinking of doing are making a loyalty rewards program. I have a couple of clients who are billionaires and they had said, "Hey this would be a cool thing to give as a loyalty rewards to your biggest vendors. Send an
UltimateVIP card with $250,000 on it as a reward to XYX company." Now this company can use their $250,000 anywhere they want in our network but they get that extra Ultimate VIP treatment too as they become clients. There are a lot of different levels to what's going on and
Ultimate VIP has been a great thing to create to gain creditability in other business circles. I've met a lot of interesting and cool people.
Then there's this other company that I'm involved in and partner in is called "Fast Track Online Marketing" and we actually concentrate on building social networks. Right now we're building a website called
"FighterLink.com". There's other MMA websites out there right now like Sherdog.com and MMAJunkie.com and MMAWeekly.com but nobody has ever built anything like I'm building right now with FighterLink.com.
It's a compilation of everything to do with the MMA world and it's going to provide a level of information; not just of news but it's going to be databases of fighters, promoters, managers, fans and it's going to become an opportunity network. It's not just a social network but it's going to become an actual opportunity network. It's going to allow people to associate with each other in the MMA community in a way that they've never been able to before.
I just did a deal with Sherdog.com to start airing all of our shows live around the world streaming video. Sherdog is the number one MMA news source and MMA website in the world; they do a hundred million page views per month and two hundred and fifty thousand unique visitors a day.
JENNY: Online?
MARCELLO: Yes, online. So we're going to be the first Mixed Martial
Arts organization to build a worldwide fan base through the internet.
(You can read and watch more at http://www.uwcmma.com/).
JENNY: I've checked out both http://www.ultimatevipclub.com/ and
http://www.uwcmma.com/ and I have to say I definitely got into the
Ultimate VIP International website. I really like how you can interact with the site whether it's changing the music from easy listening to techno-club to rock, etc or being able to see what you guys have to offer by land, sea, air, etc.
MARCELLO: I'm sure you watched the Impact movie
(http://www.impactmovie.com/ultimatevip/uvip.php)
JENNY: Yes.
MARCELLO: Well this is my life long entrepreneurial challenge. This is where I want to make my mark on the world. So I'm being very careful on how we go about doing this. A lot of people don't understand that this isn't what I make my living at for the most part.
This is what I want to be remembered as; this is who I am; this is a culmination of my life. Everybody has a gift in life and my gift is intuition and perception; my gift is finding the chemistry of things.
I'm the creator, I'm the visionary and once I build things then I usually like to move on a create something else. I usually build something and then I bring people in to run it or I sell it. I get bored very easily with things after I create them. With that said, I'm being very careful because I don't care if it takes me another 10 years with Ultimate VIP. It's like fine wine - you have to cork it and let it breath and evolve. So that's what I'm doing with Ultimate VIP. I'm very selective about the people becoming members; we turn down membership all the time because we are very careful to live up to our name. Our credibility is everything to us. That's why I say, "it's kind of science project," because it's the chemistry of the people that will also make the outcome of what the company becomes.
It's going to be based on the chemistry of clients and the evolution of business as an entrepreneur. There are just so many other levels going on besides what you see.
JENNY: So in a sense - you consider this your baby.
MARCELLO: Right, it is for sure. The beauty of it is Ultimate VIP is a good calling card. People see that and it gives me credibility as an entrepreneur and as a businessman. I've gotten into other ventures because of just building this company. We've gained a lot of business in our web development company and in our "Fast Track Online
Marketing"; people see the level of how this is built. Forget about the service - just looking at the logo, looking at the design, looking at the concept; that impresses people enough to want me to work for them. That's helped my other businesses grow and it's helped me with other opportunities. It's really the main thing that got me involved in MMA to begin with.
One of my good friends is a guy named John Lewis who was an original
UFC fighter. He has a school called Jsect Jiu Jitsu in Las Vegas and he was the original trainer of Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell. He was training them before Dana White and the Fertitta brothers even knew what UFC was. John to this day still does most of the after parties for the UFC. John had a show called the World Fighting Alliance and he partnered up with a guy named John Huntington. The party guy, Huntington and Lewis created the World Fighting Alliance and they called it the "Fight Club meets Night Club". That was the first show at places like the Hard Rock and the Aladdin. They brought MMA or Ultimate Fighting from the underground into mainstream in Las Vegas.
"Playboy June 2006" had "20 questions with Dana White"
(http://www.bodybuildingdungeon.com/forums/sports-chat/14279-playboys-20-a.html) and in that article it basically says what I'm telling you; that Dana White approached John Lewis. John started training them and that's how they came to see what MMA was all about. John had Bruce Buffer, Rich Franklin, he had a bunch of the people that you see today in the UFC that started out on his show. John, Dana White and the Fertitta brothers, from what I understand they were all good friends; and that's how they came to see the UFC and then bought it. Anyway, that's how the whole thing got started with them getting involved.
What a lot of people don't understand is that I'm just not another guy that decided to get into MMA because he thought it was cool. I'm not that guy; I'm not just a fan; I'm a big fan of the sport because it's doing something innovative. It's making history and that's what I'm the biggest fan of.
JENNY: But you have personal ties to the sport and please correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't your brother a fighter?
MARCELLO: Right and that's actually how I got into it. When my brother was in the Special Forces in the Marines for many years he lived in Okinawa and he was training. He got a black belt from a Japanese family who took him in while he was in Okinawa. It was like he became part of their family; he married a Japanese girl and he spent a long time there. They don't just bring Americans into their families and train them in traditional Japanese kung fu; it's something you have to be brought in to. He's been a fighter, wrestler, etc all his life anyway. So it was natural for him to go in the direction of the Special Forces because that's the kind of stuff he enjoys. When he came back about three years ago to Albuquerque,
New Mexico, I had been a friend of John and I knew nothing about the fighting thing. John had trained Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz he and brought B.J. Penn to the UFC, introduced Randy Couture to his wife Kym and on and on. I think this guy is probably one of the people in the world that should really be given the thanks for bringing MMA from the underground to the mainstream. Not many people have relationships like that at least at the top of MMA and so I already had something to start building with. I have never taken advantage of that because honestly I never even talked to John about the fighting. He had been doing this for years and I never had any interest in it. I never knew what he did, who he knew in the MMA world, and it just didn't mean that much to me.
When my brother came back he said, "I'm going to do this cage fighting thing." I was like, "Yeah, cool, whatever. I'll come out and support you." I went out there, watched and I was like holy s**t this thing is going to be huge. At this point, Dana White and those guys had already owned the UFC for a few years. I called up John and said,
"Hey you know that stuff you guys do. My brother's doing that."
JENNY: Haha - That stuff you guys do?
MARCELLO: Yeah, that's basically what I said. At the time I didn't know very much about it. I would say, "Hey that fighting stuff you teach." John has been a Brazilian black belt for 15 years so he's not onlybeen involved in it but one of the people responsible for bringing it from the underground to the mainstream. He's trained some of the top fighters in the world and he still trains a lot of those guys at his school. He's got one of the longest running jiu jitsu schools in Las Vegas. He's knows everybody. He's worked for Pure and now he has
John Lewis Entertainment Group.
I called up John and said, "Hey my brother is going to be in the next champion of the world." And he said, "Oh Marcello I hear that s**t all the time." So I started thinking that I've done some of the biggest events; I've done some of the biggest parties; I know celebrities; I know people in MMA so why not get involved.
I went and talked to my dad about it and my dad thought it sounded cool.
My deal is that I'm a marketer; I'm a promoter and entrepreneur. I was thinking that I could do this and that I could put on these events. Of course the first thing I'm thinking to do is that I'd put together a show and we would do like we do with the clubs; we'll bring out a celebrity to get people out. At this point, Chuck Liddell was the biggest name in MMA by far; he was the biggest there was. I called up John and said, "Look I'm going to do a show in Florida and we're going to start out kind of small and with your help I'll have my brother fighting on it and my dad will be one of my partners and it'll be a big family affair." We did a show in Florida. My brother fought and John called up Chuck to be the special guest. At our first show, we had Seth Petruzelli as the main event. The guy that just recently beat Kimbo Slice. We also had Chuck Liddell slated as the special guest. All we were really doing was kind of a club thing but with a small MMA fight with four thousand people showing up.
JENNY: How big was the venue? Could you fit all those people in the space?
MARCELLO: Yeah, it was a convention center but it wasn't set up with bleachers; all the seats were on the floor for the most part. I have a picture of four thousand people sitting around this old rickety cage blown up and framed on my wall as a reminder. On our website, you can see in some of the older video the difference in the cage and you can see some of the first shows that we did. We learned pretty quickly.
We had gone and bought our own cage for the second show.
Being from D.C., I was thinking that it was time to move on to bigger things and we knew a whole lot more people from going up there. We went up there April 26th and I had Rampage, Arlovski, Shogun, Brandon
Vera, and Carlos Condit. I've had Urijah Faber and a lot of big names. It's kind of like it's a means to an end just like it said in the article. It was a way for us to get people out to see our show.
I've been very careful to watch the evolution in the business of MMA and try to grow our show based on where the business of MMA is going and to constantly evolve the product. The show that we're doing
February 21st is our biggest show ever. I have components of our show we have learned from some of the people that really made MMA what it is today. We have some tools that nobody else in the world has and the reason why I say that is because someone like
Steven Spielberg or somebody else like that could come in and try to direct the show but there are only a handful of people that have the knowledge of how to do it the way that the UFC does. I've been building my team based off of the people that have the greatest knowledge out there in the world and there's only a handful of those people because the sport is so new that you can't just find somebody that's been involved in doing this at the highest level. I think that the success from our show comes from a lot of different things. I still have these unusual connections that 99.9% of the world doesn't have and won't have because of where I've been previously to meet these people and get to know them. That's what makes the difference; you're not going to find to many other shows out there having that many UFC stars at their show. Like I said, it's been a means to an end and my goal isn't to be the UFC. My goal is to be a positive productive part of the sport, help grow and build MMA and be part of history and to uncover the next great champions of tomorrow. I want to help people gain awareness of the sport, help put on a good quality show and be part of the history of growing the sport. Through all that, I'd like to uncover and create one of the great champions that this sport has ever seen. It might not be this year; it might be next year or the next five years. Now that I've gotten the show to a point where it's creditable and it's part of MMA, I'm now going to concentrate my efforts on finding and building a champion.
JENNY: You had listed seven UWC rules in your recent interview with
Kelly Crigger. I like all of them but one that stood out for me was "financial efficiency" and how you had mentioned the waste of money.
Do you think that has put you ahead by not wasting on unnecessary costs?
MARCELLO: First of all, when we did the article it wasn't based off of those seven rules. When we sat down, he didn't tell me that this was the format that the article was going to go. I was really surprised that it was "our" recipe for success. I'm a smart enough person to know that regardless of what my ego is or whatever else it is, the way you want to perceive yourself to the world is of a humble and non-pretentious way.
JENNY: But it was also mentioned in the article that you're not trying to be UFC - you're not trying to go out there to be the biggest.
MARCELLO: Yeah, he said that he was going to compare us to Strike
Force. I said, "I don't think that we've earned that and deserve that yet." He didn't tell me that he thought that we're doing such a good job that we're going to tell everybody your rules to success. I didn't know that that was the whole idea of the article. We were just meeting and talking about everything that you and I are talking about. It was cool the way he did it and I never thought of it that way. I only thought this was the way were doing it because this is the way me as a CEO feels the best way to go about it. I thought it was cool when he wrote it that way because it added another level. It was just another story about the UWC.
As far as the money aspect of it goes, I have always looked at these other organizations such as Calvin Ayre with Bodog. The key is that these people have spent money on things that have to do with everything instead of what they should of spent money on. You don't need office space in Century City in L.A. at $100,000 a month. The problem is that I like to grow things from an organic and natural standpoint; I like them to be earned through effort, blood, sweat, and tears and through paying your dues. Not only do I want to build a great MMA show but also want to be able to show people that you can do this and that it's not all about the money. It's about the people behind it; it's about the chemistry of the organization; it's about building natural champions because you've done it right.
JENNY: But it also seems like you build strong relationships as well - not only with your fighters.
MARCELLO: Well the strong relationships come from having a true purpose, a true desire for things to succeed. There are just some things that you can't go out there and buy. If something is going to be what it is because it's suppose to be that way it'll be that way by nature. If you try to force a peg in a square hole it's not going to ever work. That's not what nature intended it for it to do. I had some illusions of grandeur prior because I knew a lot of people (just like the original article said), contacts and relationships. I had thought that going out there and getting some of the top names in the sport would make a difference. I'm glad that people like Calvin Ayre and the Bodogs, the IFL's and the EliteXC's did what they did. Now that's not to say had I tried that it would still come out the way they did. Everybody's different. You can have a hundred journalists, a hundred lawyers, a hundred whatever and somebody's going to be the best; somebody's going to be number 2; somebody's going to be number
3. I don't ever like to compare what I do to what anybody else does because I don't know if the outcome will be the same; the chemistry is different.
JENNY: well while we're on the subject of Calving Ayre -referencing back to my interview with Matt Lindland - by had snubbed him
Calvin and Bodog in which Bodog still owes him money. That seems like bad business practices.
MARCELLO: Well Bodog had poor management and had too much money. It was big party thing. It was a way for them to advertise the gambling and the music. I think it was just somebody who had too much time on their hands and too much money. They spent money shooting some promotional commercials setting up actual movie sets that really didn't make a big difference that I think ranged from $250K to $500K.
Hey if I was him and I had fifty million that I wouldn't miss in my bank account, then hell why not. But I guarantee you had Calvin Ayre had hired me; it would have come out a whole lot different. As I get older, maybe I start to realize a little bit that I do play some piece or some role in the success of some of these things that I get involved in. I try not to sit there and think that it's all about me and it doesn't need to be all about me. I'm not looking for anybody to say, "Oh wow you've done such a great job." I'm looking to build a show. If somebody said, "you can never be known for the person who did this or that", then I'm not out there looking for some sort of credibility for it. It's challenging to me, it's exciting to me, and
I'm going to work my ass off to make it come to fruition. It's not for any other reason other than that. I want to be part of history.
JENNY: Your name is on this - and if my name were on something - I would want to see it succeed.
MARCELLO: Right. But if somebody else came to me and said that they wanted me to build an MMA organization for them or they wanted to invest in our organization or whatever, I think that the reason why this organization will be successful is because of the people and how passionate and badly they want it; how much desire, effort, and passion they're putting into this. That's why it's going to be successful. When you have too much money, have a lot of people on the payroll and you're not doing something for the right reasons then most likely it's not going to come out right either. The other thing is that the Bodog's, IFL's, and the EliteXC's have came in and tried their hand at something at a time the business of MMA was still growing and evolving. I think that if run differently they could have been very successful; I think that at least for Bodog and EliteXC.
I'm not sure about IFL because I don't think the world was just ready for that whole concept; I just never saw it working. I think that another organization could be very successful at this game and could be part of the history of MMA. Obviously with 50 million dollars I would take over MMA. I don't mean this in a bad way but I'm just saying from a confident standpoint I would be able to make it successful on a level that Bodog and EliteXC did not achieve; I would be willing to put everything on it. With twenty percent of what these organizations lost, you give me ten to twenty million to put into the organization and I can promise you that I would still be in business today. Not even the least hesitation to say their organizations would still be and they would be running neck and neck with the UFC.
JENNY: What's next for you with UWC besides the fight coming up on
February 21st 2009? What should our readers expect in the near future from you guys?
MARCELLO: I think that you can expect that we're doing very innovated things that haven't been tried before. We're utilizing the evolution of the sport of MMA. We're going to stick with our goals and that is to build MMA on the east coast. We made a promise to the east coast and to the mid Atlantic region that we are going to grow MMA. That's our promise and that's what we're going to do. We have offers from cities all around the country offering us so much incentive to bring the show there. I invest money on every show for the most part but I know it's an investment in something I feel passionate about. I could go to cities right now where I could basically be guaranteed to make money but I made a commitment to area that I'm from; the place that I grew up; the place that's the last frontier for MMA and that there's the least amount of it. I want to make the UWC the east coast destination for MMA. I want to bring Las Vegas to D.C. even if it's just for a night. I want the Washington D.C. metro area to be the home of where we do all of our title fights and I want to bring that kind of excitement in sport to the east coast and
D.C. That doesn't mean that we may not go to other cities but I want to make D.C. the east coast destination for MMA. I also want to continue on my search for the true warriors. When I called the show
"Ultimate Warrior", it was because the first thing I wrote in the mission statement was, "The Ultimate Warrior Challenge was created on the premises of a select chosen few who possess certain innate characteristics, quality and traits that have been passed down through time that distinctively make them a warrior". After I saw my brother's fight on the plane ride back, the first thing I wrote was the mission statement. Our quest is to find, challenge and expose those that feel the ultimate warrior lives in them. I wrote a mission statement that basically says that I believe that these guys are ultimate warriors; they're ultimate modern day gladiators. It's the next sport that's going to be global, that's going to be bigger than NFL and it's just the tip of the iceberg. The NFL is 90 years or
100 years old now or at least professional football is. This sport
(MMA) is just now starting to catch on to the mainstream and it's still not even legalized in every state. So you can't tell me that we have even come close to seeing the best that MMA has to offer the world. We haven't even seen a fighter that has started training like
Tiger Woods at a young age. Wait until we see a guy that started training MMA at 2 years old; he just might fly across the cage. It's possible. What we're doing right now is being part of history. My job is to be whatever I'm meant to be in MMA, to continue to be a positive productive part of the sport and to continue to provide a big stage for up and coming fighters that might be the next great champion of tomorrow as well as presenting them to the world. The UWC is going to continue to bring innovative ideas to MMA. It's going to continue its quest to uncover the next great warriors and champions of tomorrow and of the next generation and the evolution of MMA. My commitment is to continue to bring and be part of the history of the sport. I want to apply my (what some people seem to think) very unique gift of vision, creativity and passion. I'm going to see how I can apply the things that I've been able to use that to be successful in the past to MMA.
I'm going to keep applying what I do and who I am to different things and see if that does set me apart; if that does make a difference from
Calvin Ayre or Mark Cuban. I'm not a billionaire so I can't do things the way that they do them. I have to use all of and everything that I have in my heart and my soul and my passion. I have to use tools that maybe I wouldn't use if I were a billionaire. I'm glad that I am who I am and I'm building what I'm building. I'm doing it with what I have to work with because I want to be the guy that stands up there one day and says, "Guess what guys? I have been successful and I did it on a fraction of what you guys did and you're not even in the game anymore." That's the part that I think is going to blow everyone away; when we do become one of the best shows in the country and we do become profitable. Then we really are going to have proven that the model that works is this one.
I went on a small radio show the other day and they were so thankful.
I told them that I truly care about the sport; I truly care about making a difference; I care about being part of helping MMA. I told them, "You guys are out here doing your radio show however big or small it is. If I can help you grow your radio show then I'm going to do whatever I have to do or can do to help anybody that's trying to help anybody else." I've always been about the underdog. Like I say in the video on the Ulimate VIP site, "Why not shoot for the stars, why not dream as big as you can possibly dream, why, why not?" My life is completely dedicated at this point to the concepts, visions and the things that I want to be remembered for. I really don't go out much anymore. I really don't socialize very much anymore. If I do it's because I'm growing or building Ultimate VIP or UWC.
JENNY: I don't see how you'd find the time.
MARCELLO: Well not only the time but also I find that as I've gotten older and I'm starting to take on bigger challenges like Ultimate VIP. These are the things that I want to be remembered for and running other businesses on top of it.
People would be surprised that I do a lot of the things myself. I want to make sure that things are done correctly. I make the matches, deal with the promoters and managers and even book a lot of the plane tickets. People ask why I do it. I tell them because I'm going to do as much as I can do until this thing is successful and then when I hire people I will know every single job there is so nobody can tell me what is the highest level of expectation is for this job; whether it's booking the hotel room, booking the plane ticket, or organizing the video intros.
I'm traveling around the country right now producing and directing the fighter videos myself. I am doing some of the logistical work because there seems to be one thing that's been synonymous with the success we've had so far and that's my being involved in it.
JENNY: Would agree that the reason that some businesses fail is because the business owners don't even know what's going on in their own company? That these businessmen don't even know how to do half the jobs in their own company to make the company run?
MARCELLO: Exactly. I'm the type of person that can walk through the office, tell someone to get out of their chair, sit down, do that job and run circles around them. When we reach a certain point that our creativity has reached a plateau, that we have a foundation and infrastructure that we know that this machine is a fine tuned machine - then I have an idea of what to expect from every person because I've done it and I've done it to where I believe is the very best that can be done. As long as I understand and know that, I can know what to expect out of people too.
JENNY: For my own selfish reasons, you're going to hook a girl up with a couple of tickets to a future event. Right?
MARCELLO: Haha - I would absolutely have you as my guest and we'll put you close enough where you can take pictures and you can sit close enough to the cage to where you can get blood and sweat on you. You have never experienced anything like it.
JENNY: Nice!! There's nothing like the smell of sweat. (Haha)
JENNY: Thank you so much Marcello for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview.
MARCELLO: My pleasure. You're welcome.
---
Jenny Woo, Gambling911.com Senior Correspondent
