He’s lived life on “The Edge” through four different infernos, and now Eric Bolling is bringing this edge to a screen near you.
“[My new show] is about taking [life’s] fires, getting knocked down—[I’ve] clearly been knocked down a bunch of times—and what it takes to get back up,” the host boasted resoundingly.
The show is one Bolling wishes he had started prior to his June 2021 stint at a fringe network. “Wish I had done The Edge then [because] we’re servicing a lane that’s highly, highly underserved, and men being men again,” the former CNBC and Fox News host said. “I call it the pro-bro show.”
Launching in September, the podcast’s first 45 days on YouTube saw 3,504 subscriptions, which is 100× faster than the average new channel. Bolling also garnered over 50,000 views with more than 1,120 watched hours — meaning The Edge is outpacing 99.9% of YouTube channels in the same timeframe.
“So the people I have on are people like that: successful people who didn’t have the wind in their sails the whole way. They get knocked down, [and most importantly] they get back up,” Bolling added. “We’re growing at a rate that takes the average YouTube show two to three years to hit, and it’s because I bring authenticity to it, because I’ve lived it.”
“The Edge has become what my life was,” Bolling affirmed.
“I was drafted in college by the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I only spent a few weeks in the minor league system. I blew my rotator cuff out right away. It was a couple of weeks in, and you know, you’re a kid, your dream is to become a pro ballplayer — I made it — and it blew apart within weeks.”
The disappointment was just the first of many infernos Bolling would face in his life.
Bolling went back home to Chicago, down on his luck, when his father “threw a classified ad newspaper at me. He’s like, ‘Just get a job.’” He got a job as a traveling salesman and recalled, “I couldn’t be more depressed” during those few short weeks.
Turning the depression into something productive, Bolling said to himself, “‘Screw this.’ I just got up and went to New York.” He got a gig at the New York Mercantile Exchange [NYME], with no connections and no Ivy League degree. With just a resume and grit, he jumped into his second inferno: Wall Street.
By 2006, Bolling became Trader Magazine’s Trader of the Year and later helped bring the NYME public. “[It] was the largest [banking] IPO in the history of Wall Street at the time.” CNBC caught wind of his achievements, and as oil hit $50 a barrel, Bolling recalls, “Trish Regan stuck a microphone in my face and said, ‘What’s going on?’ I gave them a 60-second rundown—they liked it.”
Next thing Bolling knew, CNBC was calling him for a new show. “I became the fourth seed of what became Fast Money.” The rest is history. Bolling moved on to Fox Business before heading to Fox News, where he became a household name.
“I’m gonna make you a star,” Roger Ailes told Bolling when he joined the network. Taking center stage, Bolling became one of the network’s biggest stars, helping to launch The Five after Glenn Beck departed Fox in 2011. “Within a week, we were exceeding Glenn Beck’s audience.” Of his long stint on cable TV, Bolling called it his third inferno.
The fourth inferno, Bolling said, is the one “which is hardest to talk about”—losing his only child to an overdose. “[My son] thought he was taking the Xanax. He bought it on campus; it was laser fentanyl. He died.” Still, Bolling persevered, and he wants his viewers to know that no matter what you are going through, you can too.
Bolling loves the non-legacy media (digital) platform. It offers a better connection to his viewership, which is mostly men aged 25–44. “It’s straight-up YouTube right now. Who knows where it’s gonna go? I think it’s gonna become a platform more than just a show.”
This connection and prospective platform wouldn’t be possible without social media. “I spent probably six months understanding the YouTube algorithm,” Bolling asserted. “You can’t do the same things on X that you do on YouTube. There are just so many quirky, unique rules, tricks, and hacks within the digital world. I’m constantly working to understand how to cross-brand, cross-promote, and cross-pollinate content from social media to YouTube, and vice versa.”
This small learning curve is nowhere close to the infernos Bolling has faced in his life. More importantly, it is the culmination of his life’s work and could be the most rewarding for him personally. For those who are looking to follow in his footsteps—be it in baseball, Wall Street, or TV — his show will surely provide good guidance. But no matter where you’d like to go, Bolling believes you should always “make sure you love what you’re doing, because if you don’t, it’ll shine through, and you won’t be successful, you won’t be as successful at it, but certainly find your passion and pursue it.”
That being said, Bolling gives a caveat: “Just be realistic, whether it’s talent on the baseball field. Maybe you’re not great with numbers, but you really want to work on Wall Street. That door might be too heavy for you.” If the door is too heavy, there will be another passion somewhere—just as there was for Bolling, not once, not twice, but several times over his successful career.
For Bolling, this next career move is not for the money but instead for passion. “I made a lot of money on Wall Street. I’m not doing this for the money. I don’t care if it makes a dime,” he asserted. “I care that this is something I can deliver organically, because it means so much to me to put my life out here.”
“I adore the ability to show young, aspirational, aggressive, persistent guys how to make it — and to let them know that, no, you’re not alone if you just got slammed, or fired, or lost all your money on a trade, or made a bad sports bet.” Bolling’s latest platform is ensuring his audience hears this: “You’re not alone. I got a million stories. Sit down, let’s talk about this, and let’s talk about what it’s gonna take to get your ass back up and become successful.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
