The Wolves and the Mandolin: Celebrating Life's Privileges In A Harsh World

by Brandon Vallorani

  Something clicked in my mind at that point. I knew I was ready to go off on my own. If I could achieve this success for other companies, why not for my own?

  In 2008, just as my success at AV began to pay off, the banking collapse sent the economy spiraling downward. Our donations all but vanished, as did our sales. As a nonprofit we had to retrench and tighten our belts. I offered to take a $10,000 salary cut, and Gary took one too.

  It was going to be tough. I had five kids now. Thankfully, my Bible publishing company, Tolle Lege Press, brought in a little extra income each month. But I had a premonition that AV had reached its zenith. If I wanted to continue to grow my income and create a new world of possibility, I needed to strike out into unchartered territory, this time completely on my own.

  Just as my great-grandfather Luigi had, I needed to put my family first and do whatever it took to take care of them. As with every major decision I made, this decision was made during a convergence of factors.

  I took the pay cut to help the company, despite the personal stress. The good news was that I had already seen what e-mail marketing and a big mailing list could do. Simultaneously, I was broadening my marketing strategies beyond the limitations of the Christian right to a wider-ranging, more mainstream Republican market. I was leaving the nonprofit world behind me and heading full-speed into capitalism.

  Lastly, I knew in my heart that I could be successful on my own, and frankly, I was weary of justifying my decisions to those in authority over me. Though I was the executive vice president and had a lot of authority, I still answered to the president and the board members every six months on financial matters and operations. They’d tell me what they thought I needed to do, and while that was helpful, I felt I was already putting enough pressure on myself to perform. It wasn’t always as simple as it sounded.

  It was time to face the wolf of risk and step out on my own. All I needed was the right product. It was late in 2007. The presidential election was coming up in 2008. It seemed at that point that the Democratic nominee was going to be Hillary Clinton.

  An exposé film titled Hillary Uncensored came across my desk, and I wanted to market that DVD. But I knew I could not do so through AV. As a 501(c)3 organization, AV was not legally allowed to involve itself in politics in such an outright manner. We would have been liable to lose our tax exemption if we had promoted or assailed specific candidates or legislation.

  It was my opportunity! I told Gary I wanted to sell the DVD on my own, outside the nonprofit. He told me to go for it.

  I’d never been anything less than upfront with Gary, and I would never have considered going behind his back with this idea. Much of my success with my own entrepreneurial endeavors has been because I have sought to do business with integrity. Gary’s attitude of support and encouragement without hesitation when I told him I wanted to branch out on my own and sell the DVD was terrific. He’s one of those people who is happy for others to succeed.

  It was time. Now ready to take the risk of climbing out of the tree, I found my way down the path on my own, with a product that wouldn’t compete with AV.

  What I Know to Be True

  An entrepreneur’s life is a series of death and resurrection experiences. Jobs and products die, and new and better ones take their place. We should not be afraid of wolves masquerading as change or risk. I hit my ceiling at WVU and left for AiG.

  I hit my ceiling at AiG and left for AV. Now I had hit my ceiling at AV. What was about to happen next was a risk. I could fall flat in my attempts to build my own business, or perhaps, my future would be even bigger and more exciting than I had imagined.

  It was because I was willing to take that risk that I now enjoy the freedom created by owning my own business. I am able to focus on developing my brand, Vallorani Estates, into a household name as I help others join me in enjoying the privileges of life and provide for my family well above basic needs.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  An Entrepreneur’s Dream

  If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big.

  Donald Trump

  In order to sell Hillary Uncensored, I needed to form a legitimate business. I have a vivid memory of December 7, 2007, when I walked into the courthouse in Dallas, Georgia, to get my business license. That same day I opened up a bank account, created an online store, established my merchant account to take payments, and uploaded the product information to begin selling that DVD.

  I moved quickly. I had to! Money never sleeps, and every day I waited to get started was another day my growing family would feel the sting of my pay cut! Taking good care of my family motivated me to succeed, just as taking care of his family had driven Luigi.

  For two reasons, I named my business Discount Book Distributors. First, I didn’t want to limit myself to any particular ideology. This name sounded official and unaffiliated. Second, I had discovered that I could get sharply discounted backlisted and discontinued books from publishers for pennies on the dollar.

  For $2,500, I could buy ten thousand books the publishers found difficult to sell for whatever reason. The title might not have been catchy, or the marketing copy might have been subpar. Whatever the case, I planned to craft and send an eye-catching e-mail advertisement to a mailing list I had rented using my five tips for selling any product. I would establish a need for this title, listing the full retail price to demonstrate value, and offering a discount for a limited period: “But wait! The price has been slashed for a limited time. Order your copy now before it is out of print and you can’t find it anywhere.”

  Though I might only sell the books for $5 or $10 each, I was still making a lot of profit and building my own e-mail list with every purchase. That was the first major business that I started, with the same idea I had brought from AiG to AV: transitioning from making a modest impact with a small mailing list within a small organization to making a big impact with a large mailing list promoting a broad array of products.

  I attribute much of this big-picture thinking to my mother and father’s encouragement, inspiration, and insistence that I do my best during my formative years. Okay wasn’t good enough. Enough wasn’t enough! I could do more. So I did.

  My business, at that time, was run out of my basement office. My garage was the warehouse. I created and marketed products each evening, and my wife, Jan, would pack and ship the orders in between homeschooling the kids. I remember looking at my bank account one day and seeing that over $40,000 had amassed. Wow. It used to take me eight months to make that much money!

  Then the 2008 election season heated up. It was looking as though Hillary was going to be eclipsed by Barrack Obama. Hillary’s radical leftist agenda concerned me, and while I loved the idea of Americans electing minority candidates, I found Obama’s socialist politics even more detrimental to the freedom our forefathers had fought so hard to gain and had crafted so carefully for the generations to follow.

  Have you ever had a moment when you realized you had to try to do something, anything, if it meant preserving something for future generations? Every time we take a family portrait or save some heirloom for a child or grandchild, we are taking action to ensure what is important to us is passed down to our descendants. I knew I had to take action to try and preserve our conservative values for generations to come, like Luigi had sought to do by sending Eugene back to America. In just such a moment I had a radical idea: I wonder if my mailing list would want a “NObama” bumper sticker.

  That night I designed the sticker and crafted the e-mail ad. Once again, I walked through the door labeled “risk” and decided to give the sticker away, completely free, to anyone who wanted it. All I asked for was a nominal fee to cover a portion of the shipping costs. Of course, their e-mail address would now be a part of my growing mailing list.

  Entrepreneurs don’t always have venture capital before they start, or angel investors as we so often hear of in miracle s
tories published in business magazines. My family was surviving on my recently cut salary, but my fledgling business could only grow if I had money to rent e-mail lists and buy product in order to use that revenue to swing to the next product and next e-mail-list rental.

  Swiping a personal credit card for this latest ad to give away a sticker—a moment rife with risks—left me pacing the floor waiting for my ad to be sent to the e-mail list I had rented. The wolves of doubt started to crowd around me. I fled to the highest branches of optimism in my mind and waited.

  The ad was sent.

  Ding. An order.

  Ding. Another order. Ding ding. Ding! Ding! Ding!

  Orders started pouring in faster than my wife and I could process them. One night I went to bed and woke up a few hours later to several thousand orders. Customers began to get upset as we struggled to keep up with the demand. The risks I took paid off in a big way, as many do. The Olympic wrestler and head coach Dan Gable said, “If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never succeed.”3 How true I have found this to be.

  I’ll admit, I’m also an opportunist. I guess I get that from Luigi too. After experiencing this kind of success, I thought I could make a living in the political world. If an opportunity vine presents itself outside your wheelhouse, grab it and swing to the next opportunity vine. Staying in your comfort zone can be less stressful and possibly require a lot less effort, but it often limits your ability to grow and succeed. Don’t be afraid to latch on to a new idea or completely change your entire corporate mind-set if it could mean improvement.

  It was time to rebrand because I had determined to become exclusively political, and I needed a politically oriented store, not a site that sounded like a book club. I rebranded the name of Discount Book Distributors as PatriotDepot.com, which still does very well. Today over one and a half million dollars in retail sales and thousands of orders pour in annually for our resources, which range from T-shirts and bumper stickers to novelty items to philosophical books and educational DVDs.

  PatriotDepot.com quickly became a critical force in propelling the Tea Party movement to the forefront of media attention. Starting in 2007, I had begun to build the infrastructure that would allow us to be a massive force in the conservative political arena, and we did so with such success that we have been recognized as a key player even by those associated with the left side of the aisle.

  Cars bearing our numerous bumper stickers appeared all across the country. We started having meetings with people who would become media giants in the political world. One such person we were privileged to give a donation to went on to create the Tea Party Patriots, a well-known grassroots watchdog movement.

  We’re the ones who determined to deliver over one million tea bags to Washington, DC, in 2009, a nod to Boston’s biggest moment in history. By working with Reagan.org, we obtained a permit to conduct a peaceful protest by delivering the tea bags to an area near the White House. The truck was being unloaded at our chosen spot when NPS agents stated the permit we had obtained was not the “correct” one, technically a violation of our First Amendment rights.

  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.

  We were told to remove the boxes of tea bags. Rather than admit defeat, we coordinated with another local Tea Party-friendly group that allowed us to place the tea bags on its private property. Bumping into wolves along the way can’t stop you from getting home. You simply have to figure out a way to survive the moment. Even this story has a lesson that reminds us to never accept no as an answer.

  Many people vilify the Tea Party, accusing it of things that have nothing to do with the truth about the movement, which was first, last, and always about unfair taxation. I was proud we were part of bringing the message of fiscal responsibility to a government that seemed to have forgotten just whose money it was they spent so freely.

  I was coming up with new stuff every day, trying to keep up with demand. We were selling “Don’t Tread on Me” flags, and “Come and Take It” caps. Every political phrase you can imagine we printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers. The more Obama talked about big-government policy, the more followers—and sales—we made. It was fun!

  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances.

  I’d get an idea for a bumper sticker in the morning, design it myself (my graphic-design background really came in handy), and put the product online by the afternoon. I wrote the advertisement and sent out the e-mail blast myself—simple as that. I created a machine that just got bigger and bigger and bigger, but it also got hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. I had to keep feeding it. The monster was growing, and now I was getting to the point where the tail was wagging the dog.

  We always needed more customers, more products, and new places to advertise. My staff was growing to meet the demands, and I now was responsible for their livelihoods. Management and executive leadership is not just a fun job in which calling all the shots gives you a big salary.

  What so many don’t understand is that CEOs and other executives get those big salaries because they have so many hard decisions to make and a huge amount of responsibility on their shoulders.

  For example, my brother-in-law Kenny left a successful career in another state to become my business manager. His loyalty and attention to every detail drives me to succeed even more. It’s not just about my family being taken care of now. I am also responsible for the families of every single person on my team. If I fail, they fail.

  Frankly, at a certain point, purely online retail became exhausting, even with the success I was enjoying. By the time I paid for products, advertising, and labor, the margins were too thin. Something had to give to keep us growing, and I didn’t want to be just a peddler of goods for the rest of my career.

  One day, I was reconciling my bank statements and noticed Google had sent me $100. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I got $100 from Google. I went down the hall to my web developer, Jonathan, and said, “Hey, what is this money for?” He told me, “You have some Google ads running on one of your websites, and they finally paid you because you hit $100 in earnings.”

  I scoured my various websites and found where AdSense was set up. I said, “Do you mean to tell me people come to a page and click ads and I get paid?” I was scouring my various websites to find where Google AdSense was set up. He said, “Yes, you even get paid a little just from people seeing the ad.” Another vine of opportunity drifted in front of me, so I reached out and quickly grabbed it.

  Building on what I had learned, I started up a news website, PatriotUpdate.com, where we posted news articles every day. We started sending newsletters with snippets of these articles to our mailing list every day, and hundreds of thousands of visitors started flocking to the site.

  We hired qualified writers to produce original content and aggregated news from other reputable news sources. We considered ourselves Drudge on steroids. Our subscribers read a preliminary paragraph in the email newsletter, and click to “Read the rest of the story.” That click sends them to our website, where they read the article, and they see and, possibly, click on the ads. We get paid. Immediately, the advertising revenue from Google started pouring in. That created two revenue streams in my business—and advertising has much higher margins than retail sales.

  Keep in mind that I was continually working to build my mailing list because that was what allowed us, effectively, to print more money, which, in turn, allowed us to grow even further. We were constantly renting other e-mail lists like Newsmax, Townhall, Human
Events, and GOPUSA, and we always offered something free, such as my first bumper-sticker ad that launched the entire company: “Free bumper sticker. Just pay shipping and handling!”—literally in minutes, I’d have ten thousand orders. The shipping-and-handling costs basically paid my expenses for printing and mailing, so I wasn’t making money there, but I was growing my mailing list.

  During this time, I worked with a terrific guy who is a list broker. He helped me find lists to rent. One day I asked Steve, “Can you rent out my list?” At that point, I had about eighty thousand unique e-mail addresses. He said, “Get it to one hundred thousand, and I’ll rent your list.”

  That was a powerful incentive for me. We tripled our efforts and finally got to one hundred thousand names. I said, “Okay, Steve, here’s my list. Rent it.” So he got in touch with his customers, brokered the deals, and wired me the proceeds, which were just ridiculous amounts of money—$20,000 a week. I started making more money in a month than I used to make in a year.

  Now I had three revenue streams: retail, advertising, and allowing political candidates and organizations to rent my e-mail list. I realized I was making some good money on one site, and I wondered whether creating another website would mirror this success.

  We created another website and another e-mail list, and again, the same thing. So now we had three streams of revenue coming in from two sites. Then we did it again. We replicated this strategy three or four times, and the business grew exponentially.