0:01 Hey, welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm your host Dave Martinez. Today we have a special guest, Tom Antion. If you haven't seen his other episode, go check it out. We've covered a lot of cool stuff. But this episode is specifically called deal breakdown recovery. Cool, interesting stories. This could be business related. It could be life related. Who knows? We're gonna find out today, Tom Antion what colors the story we have today? 0:23 Well, you know, I'm kind of known as a Mr. Big Shot, the internet guy and all that but, but a long time ago, and I've always worked for myself that's, you know, never had a job. And so I was watching candidate camera. One time I got out of the nightclub business, I got injured no health insurance living on credit cards. I'm laying on a mattress in a vacant house. I used to be Mr. bigshot of the state. And now I'm nobody. And I'm watching a black and white TV, which you and probably most of your listeners have never even seen, let alone heard of one. Okay, so I was watching a black and white TV. And I was watching a show called Candid Camera. It's still around. People love it. And it's prior to punked and all these other practical joke shows. I thought you know, this is great. People love the Candid Camera. But unless you live in California, you'd have to get caught by the camera and then what's the chances of that you can't really participate. So I was doodling and I doodle this little devil sticking his tongue out at you. And I came up with the name prank masters which is my federally registered trademark now where I custom design practical jokes. And I did 4000 of them in and around Washington DC I moved out of Morgantown after I got up and about after my injury, moved to DC opened up and starved to death for six months put in in the only way to advertise the Yellow Pages in those days with no internet. This isn't the early 90s. And so, so starved to death in chicken dogs, whatever and had been rent, culture shock from the rents in those places. So So anyway, I had this crazy thing where I had bought two fiberglass caskets at a flea market. They're actually called pauper's caskets where if somebody didn't have any money, they would show them in the casket. And then I guess apparently dump them in the hall and keep the casket to reuse the reusable cat. I still have in my garage over. So I came up with this act called an over the hill preacher. So if you turn 3040 or 50, over the hill was a theme park. And so I would do this comical will last will and testament I'd learned all about you then I'd write I was like a professional comedy writer for six years that we did this. And so I I was doing these casket jobs and setting the casket up with an old looking dummy at the house and everything. But I was I didn't have any way to haul it. So I got this little travel trailer. And remember, I'm in DC, that's one of the busiest roads in the world. And I've got a little Nissan Sentra with a travel trailer with a casket on it. And I'm dressed like a priest. And I've got these little magnets that they have at funerals. And it said Tom's discount funerals shot down like this. And so Washington Post No, The Washington Times picked up and did a feature story on me and I started getting really busy pulling all these practical jokes. And then the Washington Post picked it up and then I got really busy. And then associated press picked it up and I got it was on radio and TV all over the world with these crazy jobs I was doing, including the Tokyo today show. And I had all these crazy characters. I had 35 people working for me, including a guy that weighed 450 pounds. He did an app called a Munna grant, the message was actually written on his behind. It was one of the most popular exit Tokyo today show said What does the moon have grammar? They didn't really understand. But you know, Daniel, every business has his technical difficulties, you know that. So if he had two jobs in one day, somebody had to erase the first message and put on the second. So, so I had all kinds of crazy I had midgets and I had all these characters we did 4000 practical jokes and around Washington DC. One of my favorites was I had this dog. There was a mangy mutt. He was untrained he blamed himself all summer and patches a hair missing and it was terrible. And so this lady called me up on a Saturday morning And she, she said, Oh, I'm desperate. I forgot my best friend's birthday. And my bet her best friend had owned a really exclusive hair salon in Washington DC. I'm talking he won a Rolls Royce for hair design. This is really hoity toity stuff, right. So I said, Okay, I'll call you back as a Saturday morning. I said, I'll, I'll think of something and we'll we'll do it for you. So I'm taking my dog out on his walk. And I'm seeing this mangy mutt and I'm thinking in his hair patches, the hair missing, I'm thinking here hair salon. So I got an idea and I said, I cleared it with her and I went down, I hauled this dog down to this fancy hair salon, and I barged in claiming that my wife had had the dog groom there the day before, and his hair was full of people. And the dog is totally untrained run around circles, just he's not dangerous, but he's just running around. He doesn't know what to do. And so I'm given the owner a bunch of crap about this, and I'm Clint threatening to sue them. And so after a while, I pulled out the business card that has the devil sticking his tongue out and just says prank Masters on and he was so flustered. He said, okay, but I said, I'm gonna take this dog out. I called the dog Farnsworth, to be a good dog for a fancy place. And I took the dog out. And I came back in and, and I did a singing telegram for and so everybody's laughing that big joke, you know, but my favorite part of it is there was a lady in the lobby, who was a dog room. He said, I can't you know, I know every type of dog there is. I said, Yeah, I couldn't imagine what kind of show I claimed the dog was a show dog and that his hair was falling out. And I demanded the Federal Express the canine to pay kid in a free show. And she says, I know every kind of dog there is. I couldn't imagine what kind of show dog Batman did 4000 of those over six years. Yeah. 7:02 It's doing that kind of stuff. It makes you really devoid of embarrassment. 7:08 Oh, exactly. I mean, I did all kinds of crazy stuff. I did. You know they have male dancers in these clubs and stuff. Well, I did a get dressed dancer. I'd come with these goofy boxer shorts and giant wingtips and they'd be yelling get dressed get dressed. My one of my favorites is I was doing one of these over hills. I was in one of the fanciest malls in the world Tyson's Corner mall outside of DC and you still there you locked up on me Hulu 7:44 hello hello calling all Daniels 8:23 Hello Hello 8:39 Hello Hey You disappeared on me? 8:44 Yeah, they my brother in law pulled the internet cord on accident. 8:50 Maybe he said this guy's crazy. You get off again. 8:54 That's crazy. You wanted to pick it out? I 8:56 mean, does that record up to that point? It's still recording. Oh, okay, so you'll be able to cut that out that said if so recording. Okay, so I know exactly where I left off. 9:07 Although once again make sure my background is Ken that's crazy. My brother in law's mess with me 9:21 I'll be back in one second. I don't want my green screen isn't picking up anymore 9:37 fancy one things I love about the story. Is that you you was there cameras around 9:47 in those days? No, you had giant VHS cameras so you didn't have any hidden cameras. 9:52 I would love to see these crazy stories because I think it's one of those things where like all the stuff that you did, like 9:58 ingrained in here. Yeah, yeah. 10:00 It's all in good in here. And I'm glad you got an opportunity to tell it out. Because like I said, I don't know if you ever said I don't know if somebody ever asked you about that. And 10:07 oh, yeah, I've been lots of people like that. And when I do speeches, a lot of times I tell him about my humble beginnings as a crazy practical joker. 10:18 Yeah. Do you overcome your fear of looking like a moron or put your foot in your mouth when you especially stuff like that? 10:26 Oh, man. Yeah, the some of the things I did the way I was dressed, I've done more. Oh, and I was also, I bet you, you haven't had any guests on here that have been to Santa school. I've actually went to San Fran. Because I hated my mother so much. I didn't want to go home on Christmas, I went to Santa school. And then I said, I can't come home, I got to do the parties for the kids. So I did a regular party for the kids. And then they go to bed. And then I did a naughty Santa for the adults and had all these one liners. 10:59 One thing about you that I really appreciate is you almost like a you've lived your life, like a whole kid mentality. Like you're not afraid to try new experiences, you're not afraid to learn and get down to the whatever the basics of whatever it is, I think it's a very good quality that you have 11:17 just 67 going on 12. 11:20 And you said that and I really didn't understand that. Now you said the year and I'm like, okay, it literally nothing can stop you and nothing can deter you from doing what you want to do. And I think it's a great admiration that a lot of people should find nothing you can do all the time, because I think it's really your personality, but just find some way to kind of let it all go and not be so serious about life. 11:45 Well, it's on both ends of the spectrum, Daniel, because yeah, I did all that fun made all those people happy and all those parties. But on the other hand, I have a TV show and development called scam brigade and Hollywood. Because I'm as tough as nails on one hit from being through gunfights and bikers trying to kill me some scammer, you know, behind a computer is not going to scare me that much. Alright, so I've got that in development. They're doing a documentary about my life. And my dad's life called the American entrepreneur should be should be out this summer. So yeah, it's called, you can see the trailer at facebook.com/american entrepreneur film. So Hollywood company came up to me and they had been following me for a while and they asked me if they could do a documentary. I'm thinking, I thought you had to be dead before the documentary. That was some kind of Omen, but they said, no, no, no, we've been following you for a long time. And so Hollywood production company is has got it almost finished. And they're making deals with I don't know what Netflix or somebody I don't know. So, so yeah, so I can have fun on one end. But I'm tough as nails on the other hand, and I hold your feet to the fire if you're in my mentor program, because if I just pat you on the back for doing stupid things, I can't help you. You know. So having a wide what I call dynamic range, can really open up lots of lots of things for you. 13:08 Yeah, and like I said, I appreciate your, your candidness and praise. As I said, a lot of people that are just they don't actually live life and enjoy life. And they don't do crazy things like making a hen thing. Like start starting a little hen farm to get eggs like crazy and it brings, I can tell you enjoy your life and you've enjoyed your life as a whole. 13:36 It's still it's still going every day that goes by doing something to to go forward. And that and so a lot of times, you know, I do remember a lot of stories, but a lot of times somebody asked me what I did yesterday, and I never think backwards. I'm always going forward, forward forward, you know, so I learned from my mistakes, but you don't dwell on them. 13:57 Don't dwell on them. And any final thoughts like that, because that was a good one. Oh, there's this is this is what I always asked. I didn't ask you the other episode, but what's the quote that somebody yours or somebody else's that you resonate with? 14:10 Okay, I don't know if you understand this, but or not, but this was I think, Mad Dog Mattis is the was one of the generals in the past administration. I think it was him. He said a sucking chest wound is God's way of telling you you need to slow down suddenly gets shot in the chest. So that's a little odd ball and other ones with Oh, who's that? The greatest martial artists of all time? I can't think of his name right now. Yeah. Bruce Lee. Yeah, yeah. He said, Don't fear the man who has 10,000 techniques, something like that fear the man that has one technique that he's practiced 10,000 times. You know, so, so you Yeah, it's persistence consistency will get you where you're going and, and fail fast is another one that I like, because I don't want to, you know, in the old days, it would take months to do a test on a mailing. Let's say nowadays, you can do it in hours with the tools that we have like split testing and improving your sales copy and everything. So fail fast, you know, and another one I don't know who said this is all great people have a sense of urgency about them. Get it done. Don't sit around do nothing. Go go go something good will happen if you if you if you go, but if you just sit there, there's no chance of something good happen. Yeah, maybe there's no chance of anything bad happening, but there's no chance of anything happening. Unless you go. So go, gee, oh, man, 15:49 this has been a good episode. I man I really appreciate you having me doing the second one to go. There's a lot of good stuff in excellent two men, screening committee.com Where else can people find you and tell them about your podcast and want to hear? Yes, correct 16:01 me if.com. And they can. My mentor program is the longest running ever in the field of internet digital marketing, Great Internet Marketing. training.com also have the school the only licensed dedicated Internet Marketing school in the country two imtcva.org. 16:19 There you go. Thank you, Tom, for coming on. I appreciate you giving up your time today and appreciate showing early. We were finishing right on time. And we said we were and I appreciate your time and your your life stories that can help make an impact on people's lives. My pleasure, Dan. All right. Y'all Hope y'all enjoy this episode? Go like, share, subscribe, share with a friend. Tell Tell tell your buddy. Don't tell you don't tell your neighbors downstairs that could be 16:47 like you're in the strip club, right. That's how you neighbors downstairs of the strip club. Right. And you know what? We're talking about your watch episode. See 16:57 ya. 17:00 Thanks, guys. We'll see you next time on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in.