Started From the Bottom Now Im Here
Transcriber: giulia tornabene
Reviewer: Daniela Pardo
We live in a world where it seems like
success can only be achieved by a few.
I’m here to tell you that just ain’t true.
If it were, my story wouldn’t exist.
Success, however you define it
for yourself, is attainable.
It’s just a matter of how focused you are
and the level of determination
and willingness to make sacrifices.
My name is Johnny Marines
and I’m a music executive
and a serial entrepreneur.
I was raised in the Jacob Riis projects
in the Lower East Side of New York.
I grew up in a time and a place where
drugs and violence overtook my hood.
And in the absence of jobs and support
many of the friends I grew up with
became products of the environment.
They sold drugs, they became junkies
or they died an early age.
And I understood from an early age
that life is fragile.
We don’t get so many chances,
especially as a minority in this country.
I wanted to do something different.
I wanted to become a cop.
However, at the time, only about 10 %
of the NYPD force was a minority.
And not to mention
I wasn’t the best student.
If I didn’t want to be
just another statistic,
just a product of my environment,
something needed to change.
My life depended on it.
Don’t ask me how, but God must have
been listening to my prayers.
I passed the police test
and I entered the force.
I got my chance.
Becoming a NYC police officer
is probably the best thing
that ever happened to me.
Being a cop provided me the discipline
and work ethic that I needed.
It helped me fuel my life ever since
and it opened doors
I never could have imagined.
I spent 16 years on the force
and I reached the level of sergeant,
but more than halfway
through my police career,
another opportunity
crossed my desk, and I jumped at it.
So in 2002, with little to no experience
I entered the music industry.
I became the manager
of the Bachata group Aventura.
Now, for those of you who know
who Aventura and Romeo Santos are,
you know they’re some of the biggest
Latin stars in the Latin music today.
But at the time
bachata was a son genre.
I made it my job
to get the genre of my home country,
the Dominican Republic,
accepted by the mainstream.
One thing that made my job easy
was thar Romeo and the rest of the band
were musical geniuses,
a once in a generation talent,
and they put out hit after hit.
However, making great music
in this industry, it ain’t enough.
I needed to find a way
to make this music blow up.
And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.
If you want to get a crash course
into the music industry,
what you got to do is follow my career
and you’ll see how I came
in such an unorthodox way.
But it was a blessing in the skies.
You know, so here I am,
a New York City cop,
just patrolling the streets of New York
and I get this 911 call.
Now, you know,
we get 911 calls all the time.
But this one changed my life.
And I remember going to this call and
I have met the manager of the restaurant,
he was the witness to a crime
and I ended up making an arrest.
About three days later,
we’re going to the Grand Jury
and we are going to testify.
But they have us waiting hours and hours,
which is typical in New York City courts.
And during the time while I was waiting,
this kid, J.Z. ,
who was the manager of the restaurant,
he was really an aspiring bachata artist.
So he started telling me about
this group he was in
and, you know,
how much of a fan he was.
And he invited me
to the restaurant again in the future
because Romeo was scheduled
to go to the restaurant.
And I didn’t really know
too much about Romeo at the time,
but I knew about the name Aventura.
And when I looked into it,
I started to listen to music.
I familiarized myself a lot more
with the genre.
And I go to the restaurant
one day and Romeo is there.
I meet him and I’m about
to leave the restaurant,
and as I’m walking out, I tell J.Z.:
“Hey, you should actually speak to Romeo
and see if I could do security
for the group.”
Now, here’s the funny part
about the whole thing, right?
So we go back,
he tells Romeo the idea.
Romeo likes the idea and he steps out
of this whole booth that he’s in.
And remember, I asked to be security.
When Romeo steps out, he’s 6,3 ft.
Now, anybody that knows me
knows I’m like 5,7 ft.
So this dude is towering over me,
and I’m looking at him
and he’s actually asking
me questions about
the security stuff that I’m gonna do.
And all I could see was his mouth moving,
but I really couldn’t hear anything.
It was one of those moments
when the whole thing didn’t make sense,
but to him it still makes sense.
And luckily for me,
I was given the opportunity
and shortly after
I became the manager of the group,
and that’s when I took on the task
with no experience.
Just putting all my power,
my determination,
all my hard work into it,
believing in the band,
knowing that they had a chance.
First of all, they were doing great music,
now I was like this
transformed hip hop fan
and I had a new genre of music
that I actually enjoy listening to,
and I remember taking on the task
of taking on this position of manager.
I have to be honest with you.
Me knowing I had no experience,
I knew that the challenges
were going to be pretty big
and all I could remember
the first time that I took
the position was:
“What am I going to tell the
first person that calls?
Because no matter what they ask,
unless it’s my name,
I’m not going to have the answer.”
And sure enough,
that’s exactly how it was.
I had my first call
and It was one of those
I’ll call you back moments,
because I had to try to figure it out
and give it some thought.
And, you know, as anything
that you do in life, when is new,
a lot of times it comes with challenges.
Anything that’s hard comes with obstacles.
And I was able to just apply determination
to what I wanted to succeed,
and that was to help them succeed.
I was in a position
where they gave me the trust
to put their careers in my hands
and now I needed to act.
There was no time to play games,
there was no time.
It was to be 100 % focused
and to make this happened,
to go out there
to get their music listened to
and to push all the barriers
that were placed in front of them.
And that was my job.
And I took it very serious and…
I remember one of the first barriers
we had was how do we get this, you know,
bachata music programmed into the radio
because at the time
they weren’t really playing bachata.
Forget about on the radio,
they weren’t really playing
in a lot of clubs.
A lot of people don’t know
that Bachata came with
the genre of music that was frowned
upon from early on,
only because it came with a bad stigma
that they believe that
for you to listen to Bachata,
you had to be low class.
And that was a stigma
that we had to break.
You know, we had to make it cool.
And luckily for me,
we have Romeo there.
We got the rest of the guys.
And you’re talking about
not only that they’re talented
but they’re innovative,
they’re pioneers of urban bachata.
They created this movement.
It wasn’t like they went somewhere and
they heard someone doing it.
This was them in a room creating music.
And this is what happened.
And they made history.
I had the task of and the joy
of bringing this music
that they created to the world,
and I have to tell you, in the beginning,
I had these challenges
I had these obstacles
like everything else,
but after the people adapted to it
and started like really, you know…
People became fans and they just
started adapting to the music.
And everywhere you went,
you started to hear it in the streets.
This made the job of getting
it in the radio easier.
And at the time there was
an up and coming talent
who today is a famous radio personality.
His name is Alex Sensation.
And Alex had his ear to the streets.
So from early on,
he had that talent that
he was going to play
what people wanted to hear.
And him seeing that the people in
the streets started to play Obsesión,
which is the song that broke
Aventura into the mainstream,
he started to play it on the radio.
And from there we were able to form
a relationship with him.
It was kind of like
a strategic partnership.
This is probably whre I have
my first strategic partnership
with someone who is in a position to help
what I’m doing at the moment grow.
And not only that, I developed a great
friendship with him throughout the years,
but if you want to look at it
from a business aspect,
this was my first strategic partnership
and I’m very proud
of all the work that we put in
to create one of the most successful
Latin music groups in the world.
And, you know,
taking those experiences from early on
and adapting a lot of the things
that I learned from being a police officer
and all those years
in the music industry
and from just watching
my father from when I was young,
I always had entrepreneurship in my veins.
So the transition from going from there,
music, to being an entrepreneur
for me was actually natural.
I always felt more like an entrepreneur
than a music executive,
because that’s what I learned early on.
That’s what actually gave me
the hustle that I have.
From the very beginning,
the entrepreneurship mindset
of being around my dad,
seeing him own his own business,
seeing him move around and just like
make something out of nothing.
It made me early on recognize that
if we wanted to do something in life,
it was up to us, we had to do it.
Each and every one of us, individually,
needs to make our own moves.
We can’t rely on the next person.
However, when you create a business
and it becomes big,
you also have to understand at that moment
that no one man is great enough
to make a company great.
You have to build a great team.
You have to have people in your
team to have the same passion.
You have to have the vision
you have that want to succeed,
like you want that business to succeed.
You can’t hire people who just wake up
and want to show up to work,
because if you’re hiring those type
of people, you’re going to be limited.
Your growth is not going to be
where it should be as a company.
And to be honest with you,
you’re never going to get to those levels
that you probably envision.
Now, the one thing that I also learned
about entrepreneurship,
as you build your team,
you need to trust them.
You have to understand,
when you bring somebody on board,
you brought them on board for a reason.
If you’re doing the right vetting process,
if you’re interviewing the right people
and you’re making the right decisions,
once you hire that person
is because you trust them,
because you believe that they have
the capability of helping
your company grow.
And I was able to apply that
and understand that from early on.
And that is why today
I can successfully say that
I own very successful night clubs
throughout the Northeast.
I’m in the tech business, you know,
I’m in the gaming world.
I have my own publishing company.
I’m in real estate
and I have great business partners
that allow me to have my input
and I also respect their input
and that’s what allows us
to grow as a company.
I would say the biggest takeback
that I’ve gotten
from all my success is that
no matter how much I accomplish,
I never really feel complete.
I always feel like
no matter what I do,
I still have more to go.
I’ve still got more to do.
I’ve never been like the type
of person I ever woke up,
looked at myself in a mirror,
like, look at me.
I’ve always been a person that,
I can make history the night before
and when I wake up in the morning
is like: “Ok, what’s next?”
What do I have to do?
And that’s what probably
separated me
from a lot of the people
I’ve seen around me.
I’ve seen people who accomplished
20-30 percent of what I have
and I’ve heard them
loosely use the words “I made it.”
And I look at that person
and I say to myself,
that’s kind of interesting
because he thinks he made it,
or she thinks she made it,
and they only accomplished that?
And you know what I say?
That’s one less
person I have to worry about.
They made it.
I’m still trying to make it.
You know, the biggest piece of advice
that I could give someone
who’s trying to be successful
is that they have to first believe
in themselves.
A lot of times
we come from difficult places
we don’t necessarily have
the best people around us,
and we kind of fall into that trap
and we use that as an excuse
and it really isn’t.
You see, in life,
you go as far as you want to go.
Now somebody tells you
somebody helps you get there.
You need to make those moves.
You’re the one who decides how
far you’re gonna go.
There is no real formula for success.
It just doesn’t exist.
There’s no overnight success.
Anything that comes
fast is going to leave fast.
There is no cutting corners.
There is no shortcuts to the top.
Forget about that.
That’s all an illusion.
You know that
that stuff is out in social media
because people want to believe
that is easy,
but believe me, it’s not.
If you’re not willing
to give something 150 %
then don’t expect it to work for you.
It’s just not gonna work.
It’s not going to be long term.
You’re not really going to achieve
the things that you want to achieve.
You have to give everything you are
so you can get back
what you’re looking for in life.
And that’s just the way it works.
You know, there’s
a famous saying that says:
“Follow the process, not the proceeds.”
And it’s true.
If any time that you decide
to do something,
then your main focus is the money,
you lost right there.
It’s over.
Game over before you even started.
You have to do stuff that you’re
passionate about, that you love to do,
that you’re proud about and happy about
getting up every day and doing.
And if you do it and you do it right,
everything else follows.
The moral of my story, I would say, is
if you come across an opportunity,
hold on to it for dear life
and don’t let go.
Work like hell to make sure
that that opportunity
turns into what is supposed to be.
Because, as I’ve always liked to say,
history repeats itself,
but opportunities don’t.