What Ambition Without Limits Really Looks Like

The Playbook With David Meltzer

In today’s episode, I sit down with James Maslow and Owen Hanson, a former USC walk-on who once brushed shoulders with Heisman winners and ended up running a multimillion-dollar black-market empire. Owen shares how ambition and access turned him from sports agent to international drug trafficker, and how a stint in federal prison sparked a new kind of hustle. From mop-bucket ice cream experiments to launching the first 20g protein ice cream bar from a halfway house, his story is as surreal as it is instructive. What started as a bet for fast cash became a lesson in patience, reinvention and the real cost of unchecked ambition.