Meet the man behind footballers’ lavish holidays with rags to riches tale

As a kid growing up in Ethiopia, Yohanes Zewdu didn’t have shoes and fresh clothes.

When he moved to America as a teenager, he grew up dreaming of being a professional footballer.

Little did he know that he would eventually be enjoying the glitz and glamour lifestyle of a sporting superstar – but without stepping foot on the pitch.

Nowadays, Yohanes is widely known as ‘Johnny Vegas’ and runs Kloudout, a company he describes as a “global lifestyle management company”.

Essentially, he works as the man organising high-end holidays and getaways for superstars ranging from F1 icon Lando Norris to star footballers such as Ayoze Perez, Adnan Januzai, Weston McKennie and Curtis Jones.

“What we do is we engineer and structure their holidays when they are ready to go on the road and get away,” Johnny explains.

“Our job is to make sure they aren’t stressed and they don’t have to worry about anything, because they don’t have that much time to research and plan all the details.

“That’s where we come in – my brand and my team will make sure everything is convenient for them and everything is easy for them. We basically just make life a lot easier for them.”

A quick scan across his Instagram feed shows an enviable life.

Whether it’s flying in a private jet, partying with footballers or relaxing on a yacht, it’s fair to say Johnny is living the high life.

But the lifestyle that would be the envy of many is a far cry from his early years growing up in Africa.

“I grew up in Ethiopia and it’s a third-world country,” the 34-year-old admits. “Life is not as luxurious as it is on this side of the world.

“In Ethiopia, I was living with my mother and my father was living in Russia, going to school there, and I had nobody around because my mum was just hustling to get by.

“I grew up on the streets, I didn’t have shoes, my clothes were torn and we lived in a house like a closet sleeping eight people.

“The lifestyle was not something that I’d want to go back to, but it’s something that motivates me every day and makes me who I am now.

“It was a very tough time, I come from a very tough background, but I think being in Ethiopia shaped the way I see things.

“I see everything that I do right now is a blessing, I’m thankful and grateful for everything I get.”

Whilst his early experiences shaped his drive, Johnny could never have envisioned the area in which his success would come.

“The funny thing about it is I never thought I would be doing this in my life,” he admits.

“I always thought I was going to be a big soccer player – I was really good in high school but unfortunately I had a knee problem, had a lot of surgeries and wasn’t able to continue the dream.”

After injuries derailed his playing dreams, he obtained a degree in aviation technology but decided that path was not for him.

Eventually, he jumped into the casino business in Las Vegas and started working as a valet attendant at the famous Bellagio Hotel.

“That’s when I found out who I really was,” he recalls.

“By doing that I was seeing things that I couldn’t imagine – Mayweather coming in with all his cars, big actors and athletes like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Leonardo Di Caprio, those types of people coming and going. It was just unreal.”

Amongst the star-studded visitors, a French customer called Kamal arrived at Johnny’s desk and he took the chance to have some fun.

“As soon as he hung up I just said, ‘Bonjour’!” He recalls.

The man replied in French looking to strike up a conversation to which Johnny replied: “No, I only know bonjour, I can’t reply to the rest!

“He found that funny and we got talking a bit,” he continues. Eventually, the topic turned to football and Johnny pointed out his love of the French side, in particular Franck Ribery.

“He said to me, ‘are you kidding me? Franck Ribery is like my family, he’s like my brother! He said, ‘listen, next year when I come back to Las Vegas I’ll bring you a signed shirt’.”

“I was like, ‘OK, that’s cool’, but I didn’t really think anything of it.”

A year later, Johnny was working across Las Vegas in a new hotel when he heard Kamal was looking for him.

“He came back with a signed shirt and he was looking for me in town because I was not at the Bellagio any more,” he recalls.

“He found me and I was shocked, I couldn’t believe people like that actually keep their words and that moment shaped who I am as a person as well.

“It just shows how you feel when someone actually does something for you and keeps their word. I applied that emotion to my life and always practice that with others.”

As well as shaping his outlook, that encounter also proved the moment which changed the course of Johnny’s life.

He explains: “When he left I told him, ‘listen, if you need anything in Las Vegas, I’ve got you, don’t worry about anything’ and he just said, ‘yeah, sure’.”

A few weeks later, a text came in and Johnny was asked if he could help find a room for some friends coming to Las Vegas.

He booked a room at the hotel where he was working but used his staff discount, convinced his bosses to look after an upgrade then covered the cost of the room from his own pay cheque.

“When they found out I took care of it, they were shocked,” he recalls. “He couldn’t believe it. He said ‘in a few months, I have another surprise for you, so I’ll get back to you’.

“A few months later, I was sitting in my house with my mother, just drinking a coffee and watching Oprah, and I get a call from an unknown number.

“I didn’t pick up at first, but my mother told me to pick it up, and finally I did.”

When Johnny answered the phone, he took another call asking him to arrange a Las Vegas trip – but it took a while for the penny to drop as to the identity of his latest customer.

“I said, ‘yeah, sure, no problem man, all OK, all good’,” he says. “But I didn’t know who was talking to, I was being really nonchalant about it and at the end he asked me, ‘do you know who I am?’.

“Then he said ‘Samir Nasri’. It just clicked, because I”m a huge Arsenal fan. I was like, ‘THE Samir Nasri?’. I was shaking, sweating, it was unreal. I was speaking to someone I grew up watching.”

There was only one small problem – he had little idea how to go about sourcing the very best hospitality for one of the world’s top players.

“After I hung up the phone, my mum thought I was going into shock, but I went to my hotel, spoke to my managers,” he recalls. “I didn’t really know how to do it, so they connected me with the concierge team, the hotel management and all the right people.

“We arranged for them to come and stay and the next thing you know, it was just a domino effect and from one to another, more players start coming into Vegas and I start connecting with them.

“The reality of my current life started in that moment. Now, we cater for many athletes, footballers, celebrities and now we’re in Dubai, doing things globally as well, but that’s how it all started.”

Johnny’s client list is impressive, from Premier League stars such as Tyrone Mings and Theo Walcott to England rugby internationals Kyle Sinckler and Anthony Watson as well as UFC fighters Jorge Masvidal and John Jones.

Asked why he is able to secure the custom of such well-known and in-demand clients, he explains: “I think it’s just that genuine emotion and connection you have with people.

“That honesty and the fact you deliver to people. At that time, I was able to deliver on what they wanted and I was able to connect with them, so they trusted me.

“It wasn’t that I was a big company or anything like that, it was more, ‘we can trust this guy’ and ‘this guy offers what we want and he delivers’.

“Most of these people don’t have any people they know personally in those types of areas, so I was able to be trusted within that community and people came to me and spread my name.

“Word of mouth was the business for me – I didn’t have the cash flow to advertise myself or anything like that, it was just word of mouth, it worked and now here we are.”

Having been entrusted amongst their inner circle, Johnny caters to the every need of his big-name clients during their getaways.

“They want all sorts of things,” he reveals.

“For example, they want a barber – they have to look good when they go out.

“You have the night life, the day life, the luxury cars, activities they want to do. Sometimes they want to do meet and greet with some people, other times they want to arrange a fitness coach to maintain their fitness.

“Every person is different, everyone has different needs so it’s a personalised service we offer.

“The most common things are just the hotels, villas, cars, the yachts – they’re on a holiday short term, five or six days, so they want to squeeze in as much fun as they can and have the best possible.”

Asked what the craziest request he has fulfilled is, he tells a remarkable story about arranging a 45-minute trip to Los Angeles in the middle of the night.

“One thing I did that I thought would never be possible was back in Vegas,” He begins. “One guy met someone in Vegas, and the person he met had to go back to LA to work.

“But the person was really keen to see him again, really keen, so he promised, ‘I will come and see you in LA’.

“He said, ‘OK, we need to go LA right now. Like, right now, at this second’. I said, ‘how is this possible? We can’t go’. It was 1am in the morning.

“I had to arrange a private jet and wake up people from their sleep to arrange a private jet – the stress to make it happen, with a lot of procedures it goes through to take a private jet from A to B.

“Somehow I was able make that happen, then we were in LA for about 45 minutes then came back!”

There are plenty of perks to the job for Johnny, too

“Going to Ibiza, for example,” he says when asked about moments which made him pinch himself.

“Being on a massive yacht, just having a great time, cruising on the sea, eating phenomenal food and just having the time I could never imagine having, that I didn’t even know existed.

“Experiencing those sorts of things just made me see things I never knew existed, and through these guys I’ve been able to shape my life and learn what else is out there, how you can improve it.

“I remember one time, one of the players came to Miami, then from Miami he said, ‘OK, I’ll meet you in LA in the summer’. He came to LA, we had a great time, then he suddenly said, ‘can you book two tickets to Ibiza’.

“I booked them, asked for the second person for the name for the ticket and he said, ‘you, you’re coming’. When someone just says, ‘right, we’re going here’, the emotion and excitement is phenomenal.

“It’s something I’ll always remember, having those experiences.”

It has been a wild few years, but things are only getting busier in the coming weeks and months.

Having been heavily involved in hospitality services for the final two races of an unforgettable Formula One season, Kloudout will now experience a hectic spell arranging trips for players ready for their leagues to take a winter break.

“We have a couple of players already booked and ready to go, and we have many more coming as well,” he says.

“It’s always last minute that everyone books, but we’ll be ready. We’ve done this many times.”

Currently based in Dubai, he is also looking to play a major role in arranging tailor-made travel packages for fans wishing to attend the Qatar 2022 World Cup.

“Being in Dubai is phenomenal,” he says. “The opportunities are everywhere and we’ve definitely taken advantage of those.

“Travel and tourism, lifestyle management, that’s where I shine the most so I created another brand called Koobtravel to be the bridge between the North American and European markets and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), which is the Arab world.

“Most people from North America don’t have that confidence to come towards this direction and they don’t know anything about this area.

“What we want to do is be the ambassador between the North American fans and individuals that want to come to the World Cup in Qatar in 2022.

“Right now we’re really putting in hard work in terms of doing our research, networking with the right people to make this happen.

“At the moment we’re focused on making sure people who are coming to the World Cup, we can give them a package where they feel they have someone that can guide them and look after them in this region.

“We’re giving a lot of options so they can see the region, whether it’s Abu Dhabi, UAE, Dubai or straight to Qatar, when they’re here.”

Whilst he is now living the high life, Johnny Vegas will never forget his humble beginnings when he was simply known as Yohanes Zewdu.

“The smallest things still make me happy,” he says. “Because I remember what it was like not having those things and I know that back home I have people I know who would appreciate the smallest thing I get here.”