There’s no doubt—90%+ of success is just showing the fuck up.

The story I’m about to tell you is living proof. One random night, one amazing Vegas party, and one spilled drink literally changed the course of my life—and the lives of others—and helped lead to one of the top exits ever in marketing agency history.

Let’s rewind to 2015.

I was running an agency called MuteSix, and it was a struggle. Every day, we were either one step away from crushing it and hitting over $100k in revenue, or one step away from going out of business.

Power Editor (remember that thing?) was constantly breaking. Facebook's tools were buggy. Our clients—and even our employees—were getting locked out of ad accounts, and Facebook support was nonexistent unless you had a direct rep, which we didn’t. Things were breaking down literally every day. None of the Facebook tools worked.

Everyday clients were pissed—not at Facebook, but at MuteSix. They were specifically angry with us for not having the right contact at Facebook to solve their problems. After all, they were paying us to scale their business. We were supposed to have a contact at Facebook… right?

I’m stressed out every day, worried about one of many problems including our employee’s dogs pooping all over our tiny office, clients visiting and getting dumped on by the aforementioned dog, somehow making payroll since the idea of a client paying on time is unrealistic, and, lastly, how to stop clients from leaving us because we don’t yet have a contact at Facebook.

In my head, I’m thinking, “WTF do I have to do to get these people to respond to us?” We’re on the front lines, convincing SMB clients that Facebook is a platform they can scale on, that it's worth their investment—yet Facebook just keeps leaving us hanging. It fucking sucks.

I had just finished watching The Social Network. I get it—these people at Facebook are really, really cool. I, on the other hand, was not cool at this point in my life. I was barely getting by. I didn’t even own a decent pair of dress shoes. Honestly, I kind of looked like a homeless guy who found $100 bill in a sewer. When I went to events, people would start talking to me out of curiosity—wondering how I even got into the networking event. I was getting better, slowly. But I still wasn’t the polished, productive member of society you’d expect to be running a top-tier marketing agency.

So now it’s 2017. I just got back to LA from Jersey. It’s that weird part of the year—right after Christmas but not quite New Year’s—and I’m on one of our weekly client calls. One of our clients, who used to work at Facebook, asks me, “Are you going to Facebook’s party bash at CES?”

It was almost as if he were speaking French—a foreign language I knew nothing about. I was like, WTF is CES? But then I paused for a brief second and, in the most confident, cocky voice I could muster, I said, “Yes, we’re definitely going to the Facebook party. We never miss those events.”

After the call, I jumped on Expedia, booked the 45-minute flight to Vegas, and put myself up in the nicest hotel I could find… which ended up being the deluxe room at Circus Circus. I loved that room. It kind of smelled like Kool-Aid and urine, but I was just happy to be there—happy to be out of Jersey and escaping my crazy past.

Now the question was: How do I get into this Facebook party? Growing up, when you’re a chunky kid without cash or good looks, you learn to get resourceful. I still have vivid memories of cutting buffet lines, stealing school lunches, and paying off NYC security guards to sneak into the hottest clubs. But this? This was way, way different.

I found out through my client that the party was at The Wynn. The Wynn had just recently opened and was an incredible hotel. The night of the party, I put on my best button-down—fresh from Burlington Coat Factory—and headed over.

When I got to the party, I noticed two people guarding the door and a table with name tags that, strangely, wasn’t being guarded at all.

I walked up to the name tag table and literally just swiped a name tag without looking (big mistake). I realized I had grabbed one for a woman named Victoria. Definitely didn’t look like a Victoria—so that wasn’t going to work. I quietly swapped it out for one that said "Richard," without anyone noticing.

Then I walked right in, and nobody even looked at me. First thing I did was hit the “free food.” I stacked my plate with everything—burgers, fries, pizza, you name it. I acted like I owned the place—cocky and confident. Then I put the food down and made my way over to the never-ending open bar. By now, the party was filling up, and a huge line was forming.

I didn’t know a single soul there, but I wanted it to look like I did. So, I ordered two vodka sodas from the bartender. I mean, they were free—why not?

I did this weird 360 spin move and double-turn (because I wasn’t used to wearing dress shoes), grabbed the drinks, and immediately spilled both of them all over the guy standing behind me. He looked and sounded British, but turns out he was from New Zealand.

Instead of getting pissed off or trying to fight me—like most people I knew from New Jersey (my ancestral home)—he just started laughing his ass off. I was stunned.

From there, we ended up cracking jokes for the next hour or so. This dude was so fucking cool—like a brother from another mother. I don’t even remember what we were laughing about, but it was hilarious. At the end of our conversation, I said, “WTF are you doing here?”—those were my exact words.

He replied, “I’m the Chief of Creative at Facebook.”

In my head, I was like fuuuck, I’ve gotta “BFF” this dude. I shifted the conversation to creative and started passionately talking about how seriously we take creative and performance at MuteSix and talked about our “not so secret sauce” that made us unique even though we weren’t that unique.

I don’t know if he was impressed with what I was saying or he just thought that I was strange and funny, a killer combination,  we ended on a high note. He insisted on visiting our chicken-scratch office to meet the creative team. I got his email, and we kept things moving.

Next, like a giddy school girl, I emailed him the minute I got home. The next day he responded and in as many words communicated the executive decision to fly out the following week to meet the team.

When he arrived, he brought along one of the members on his team. They both seemed genuinely fascinated by what we were doing with creative and performance. They spent nearly the whole day with us, it was incredible.

He became our Facebook contact and told us Facebook would do better at helping us with support.

When he left that day, I was so pumped. Well… for like 24 hours. We literally never heard from him again. We still didn’t have a Facebook rep. Like, why did we spend all day with this guy and order him cheeseburgers from Plan Check? That was like $125—WTF?

Fast forward to late 2018. Carlos from Dentsu slid into my LinkedIn inbox. I didn’t know who he was, but he said he wanted to learn more about MuteSix.

Later in the conversation, we found out that Nick —the CEO of Dentsu and a great guy—was friends with Mark, the Chief of Creative at Facebook. Nick had asked Mark which companies Dentsu should consider acquiring with a goals of strengthening their DTC marketing offering and Mark recommended that Dentsu look at MuteSix.

Literally, it all came full circle. That one day, at that one party, changed the course of my life. I mean, how else would Dentsu have found out about MuteSix? There are thousands of marketing agencies out there that all do something similar.

The advice is simple: Show up, and be real, I was on a mission to get a Facebook rep. I was fixated on the mission and I ended up eventually accomplishing my goal of getting on they’re radar and finally getting a rep.

I told the guy from Facebook the truth—that I’d snuck into his party and that my clothes were from Burlington Coat Factory, and that the Circus Circus is low key an underrated hotel.—and he burst out laughing. 

That honesty created an unexpected moment of trust. At the end of the day, it’s not about playing some perfect game. It’s about being proud of who you are and owning the wild, scrappy, and amazing stories you collect along the way.