How Brian Cristiano Went From the Brink of Bankruptcy to Managing a Multi-Million Dollar Agency

Brian Cristiano, founder and CEO of BOLD Worldwide, got his first job when he was15 years old, workingas a busboy at a restaurant in the Hamptons. His goal was tosave enough money to buy a video camera. At 16 years old, he used that camera to shoot a skate video that he sold for over $40,000. Not a bad start!But ashe'll detail in our interview, he'd eventually experience many of the ups and downs that are associated with entrepreneurship.

Today Brian is the founder and CEO of BOLD Worldwide, andis also the executive producer and subject matter for the docu-series, Growing BOLD. Brian shared his journey from kid with a camera to working with suchprominent brands as pepsiCo, UFC Gym,Jennifer Lopez andAlex Rodriguez, and the lessons he's learned along the way.

Learning the hardway

"My entrepreneurial spirit was always strong but I didn’t come from a background of business and had no one to learn from. I made some really big mistakes in my first company and nearly drove the business and myself to bankruptcy. I was a quarter million in debt, loaning out my apartmentto strangers and sleeping on the couch to make rent.I hit that point where I felt it was the end and was floating on the mix of freedom and hysteria that sneaks up on you when you know you truly have nothing left to lose. I could have laid down and died. I could have become a passive observer to the end of my life as I had known it, but something deep down inside me refused to accept that option. 58003

Taking control

"I started reading self-help books, went to seminars, and realized I was the one completely in control of the outcome, and that I had done this to myself.I had decided to fight instead of fail, to do instead of die. I had to accept and own the fact that I was the root of all my problems, and I had to cobble together a work ethic to match my new revelation. So I pushed, I hustled, and I worked with the knowledge that I could failand lose everything. Success wasn’t assured.I climbed out of debt and towards my first million dollars. If I could cause my own demise, I could also achieve my own rise. And I want to pass that message on."

Do what's possible

"Everyone wants success, and yet so many people are holding themselves back. They don’t give themselves permission to follow their dreams. They get stuck when they hit a roadblock. Everyone has more to give, they just don’t know it. They need to maintain a mindset of doing what’s possible, even doing what’s impossible if they really want to succeed. Being an entrepreneur is seductive. A lot of people aspire to build something from scratch but they don’t have the mental stamina to stay with it when things get hard, and sometimes they can’t even imagine what’s really possible. My own success has surprised me at times, not because I didn’t think I could do it, but that I was able to attain more than I thought possible."

BOLD University

"Most companies struggle with slow growth, uncertainty around what strategy to implement first and lots of ideas, but a lack of resource or time to accomplish them. To solve these problems, youneed two things: 1. Access to real professionals that have been in your shoes before, have seen it all and can advise you. 58003

The future of entrepreneurship

"We are living through a time right now where anyone can slap “entrepreneur” on their LinkedIn bio and lease a car they can’t afford and pretend to play the game. That will change. It’s cool right now, but the hard work isn’t cool -- it’s work. I think the future is where people realize that they have to create an enormous amount of tangible value in order to grow a business."