CB3 Media handles Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, paid ads, and video editing for a client list that now includes three companies that have pitched on Shark Tank, plus features on Good Morning America and QVC. None of that existed three years ago. Before the agency, before a single client, Christopher Bustamante was a football player working out what came next — and the answer turned out to have nothing to do with the sport at all.

Part 1

Before the agency, football

Christopher moved from Wichita, Kansas to El Paso, Texas at four, started playing football at eight, and by high school was juggling three sports — football, basketball, track — on his way to a scholarship at Lakeland University. A strong showing at the Spring League turned into a pro contract with the San Antonio Gunslingers. Somewhere inside that college run, almost as a side project, he started a YouTube channel under the name @cb3_era: vlogs, pranks, challenges, storytimes, his football journey documented years before any of it looked like a business.

The spark, and the unglamorous part

CB3 Media didn't come from football. It came from a mentor's YouTube videos about running an ad agency — that was the entire origin, no team, no clients, no plan beyond starting. What followed wasn't strategy. It was volume: cold calls, DMs, emails, hundreds a day by his own count, the same pitch on repeat — work with him for free for a couple weeks, no obligation, just let the results talk.

The first person who said yes was a client he calls Klay Griffin, brought on for Shredskinz — one of the Shark Tank companies CB3 Media still works with today. The pay started at $300 a month. Griffin raised the rate himself, unprompted, the moment he saw what the work was actually worth.

Part 2

One event, five or six clients

Shredskinz opened the door to a networking event for Shark Tank entrepreneurs. Christopher walked in with exactly one client's worth of proof and walked out with five or six more. CB3 Media is heading into its third year now, running a roster that includes Shredskinz, Nightcap, and The Scrubbie — all Shark Tank companies — layered with Good Morning America and QVC features. He's since added CB3 Performance on top of it, training athletes from the pro level down to youth.

The number

Christopher's best month to date sits around $56,000 — and by his account, it's not a spike. That number has held for six months straight.

Business and marketing aren't the same skill

Ask what running an agency taught him that school never did, and the real answer isn't about school. It's about whose advice actually counts.

"I don't want to be taught how to run a business by someone who's never run a business himself. I'd rather get advice from someone actually driving a nice car, running a six-figure business."

The other lesson runs underneath everything: business and marketing solve two different problems, and neither substitutes for the other, no matter how good one of them gets.

"You could have a business, but if you don't have the right marketing, you're never going to grow. Vice versa — you can have the best marketing, but without a business, there's nothing in the market."

Part 3

Watch the full three-part conversation for more from the street interview.