Carbone - Ready, fire, aim: how I turned a hobby into an empire

Praise for Ready, Fire, Aim

Melissa Carbone is passionate, funny, and really smartbut most of all, inspiring. This book will give you the confidence to get to the next level in your career and your life.

Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation

Melissa Carbone has wowed people with her talent and guts. Ready, Fire, Aim is bold, actionable, and a rare opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs to get personal mentorship from someone who has really walked the path.

Jason Blum, CEO of Blumhouse Productions

Ready, Fire, Aim is a refreshingly candid and real approach to making bold choices, relentlessly activating and fearlessly daring to capture the dream life. Its approach is accessible to everyone and incredibly inspiring. This book will become a bible to the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Jillian Michaels, New York Times bestselling author, leading fitness expert, and life coach

Melissa Carbone really breaks down success into an actionable process that is both inspirational and vulnerable. In Ready, Fire, Aim she allows her personal stories to be shared as examples of her topics and makes the content so impactful. This book is a beautiful example of entrepreneurial inspiration.

Marty Singer, entertainment power attorney

READY, FIRE, AIM

Copyright 2017 by Melissa Carbone

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

10440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 800

Dallas, TX 75231

www.benbellabooks.com

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First E-Book Edition: October 2017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on request.

ISBN 9781944648961

eISBN 9781946885050

Copyediting by Scott Calamar

Proofreading by Greg Teague and Cape Cod Compositors, Inc.

Text design by Aaron Edmiston

Text composition by PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Cover design by Emily Weigel

Jacket design by Sarah Avinger

Cover photography by Chelsea Lauren

Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

www.perseusdistribution.com

To place orders through Perseus Distribution:

Tel: (800) 343-4499

Fax: (800) 351-5073

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This book is dedicated to my mom, Cathy Derench,
for being the example of a strong woman
that every kid should be lucky enough to have,
and for your relentless belief in me.

It was a perfect Los Angeles night in early June when the crunch-time pace of the Ten Thirty One Team started to escalate. The amount of banter I heard over the walkie-talkies was getting so excessive that the crews frustration of not being able to get their sentences out was also escalating. A line of almost a thousand people stood waiting, with sleeping bags under their arms and packed coolers by their feet. As I walked toward the gates to open up camp, I jumped up on the back of a golf cart to gaze out at what looked like a massive crowd of people who had come to spend twelve hours of what we promised to be sheer terror. This was our most extreme attraction. An attraction that promised a level of interaction that would leave campers vulnerable to being bagged, caged, tied up, and more.

Who would want that? Plenty of people.

Welcome to the very first Great Horror Campout, campers, I exuberantly announced through the megaphone. Screams and cheers, as if this crowd of people had just won the lottery, came right back at me. Camp is open.

As the gates were unlocked the campers funneled their way inside and checked in to their assigned tents, setting up their home away from home for the long, dark night ahead of them. From there, it was a waiting game until it became completely dark. Nothing would start until then. Finally, over the camp loudspeaker came: Well, howdy do, Camp Creepers. This is your friendly camp headmaster requesting the honor of your presence at the base camp flagpole for mandatory camp orientation. That means right the fuck now.

As if the headmaster had a leash on their necks, the mob of campers happily obeyed and marched to base camp. The headmaster was salty, vile, and offensive, from the way he lookedsporting his perfectly tailored tuxedo and shined shoes with a skinned and charred faceto the F bombs and off-color jokes coming out of his mouth. He made it clear there was no room to not listen to him. The first rule of camp is that I can change the rules at any time for any reason and without notice, he said, letting campers know he was in charge. And finally, thirty minutes after he started his insanely entertaining and colorful orientation, with a David Lee Roth high kick to the air, he cocked his head back and held the microphone over his mouth as he screamed, The Hell Hunt starts NOWWWWW!

A legion of campers jumped to their feet and went running into the dark to start what was going to be the game that would leave a few lucky ones crowned Hellmasters in the morning. They would dive for ribs in cadaver bodies, clip fingers off live characters, get kidnapped in vans, find themselves caged, and everything else a reasonable person would be terrified of. But these people paid for it.

The empire was born.

The Ready, Fire, Aim philosophy is one that dictates immediate action. It means you must take that shot instead of thinking yourself into inaction. It means that you should take many shots before someone else even has their gun out of their holster. Once an idea has grabbed you and your belief, its out in the world and, if you dont capture it, someone else will. This philosophy is about jumping and jumping first. Its not void of direction or aiming. Its about starting and aiming as you go... Its about guts.

I wanted to create these very immersive worlds around the horror genre because I wanted more of it and loved it and was already involved with it as my hobby. There was nothing like it in Los Angeles at the time, so I decided to start firing. This book is a detailed view of my thought processes, lessons why they worked, and why you can do it too.

As an adult Ive really started to recognize the impact my mothers choices regarding her own life have had on me. As a kid Id see her making bold move after bold move even when the choice would throw her into the abyss of uncertainty and discord. Ill get more specific later, but the deeper I go into my reflection of where the Ready, Fire, Aim in me actually started, the more acute the consciousness becomes that growing up watching that kind of tenacious bravery was a big part of the foundation.

That realization has come to me many times, but never more loudly than on the day I appeared on Shark Tank and secured the largest investment in the history of the show.

The LARGEST investment in the history of the show.

It is already an extraordinary experience to get on that show, and an even more extraordinary experience to secure an investment from one of the elite sharks. But this was the largest investment ever given from the most elite, most influential, and most successful shark on the show. Why? Was I lucky?

No! I chose it.

Even in the confines of an extraordinary experience, you can choose to act commonly. It is more usual for aspiring entrepreneurs to appear on