Jeff Fenster (0s):I'm an ordinary guy and I figured out what extra stuff I need to do to have extraordinary results. And that means that everybody else can do those same things. I'm not Shaq, I'm not Zuckerberg or Elon Musk where I'm like, Minta smart, I'm a five foot nine guy who got the NFL missed on. But what I do understand is I understand scale and business and entrepreneurship, and there's a huge group of people who are trying to do that. So because I have a track record of being able to start companies in many different sectors, I think I can help them
Travis Chappell (26s):Welcome back to the show. I'm m Travis. Chappell and I believe that if you can connect with the best, you can become the best So after creating 800 podcast episodes about building your network of come to realize that networking is really just making friends for doing it the right way. Anyway, join me as I. make friends with world class athletes like Shaquille O'Neal, entertainers like Rob, Dyderck authors like Dr, Nicole, Lapera, former presidents like Vicente Fox, or even the occasional FBI hostage negotiator, billionaire, real estate mogul or polarizing political figures. So. if you want to make more friends that help you become a better version of yourself, then subscribe to the show and keep on listening cuz this is Travis makes friends. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Travis Makes. Friends.
Travis Chappell (1m 6s):Today I have the pleasure of sitting down and making friends with Jeff Fester. Jeff, what's up dude?
Jeff Fenster (1m 11s):What's up man? Thank you for having me.
Travis Chappell (1m 13s):Welcome to the show. First ever recording in Unevolved Studios here in sunny San Diego. Actually, it's not sunny right now, but in mostly sunny San Diego. Yes, dude, thanks for letting me come hijack your studio for a day and bring on the show.
Jeff Fenster (1m 28s):Thanks for having me and thank you for being the inaugural show in the studio. You helped us pioneer this thing and it's been an exciting day, ,
Travis Chappell (1m 35s):So it's been an exciting day. Yeah. Yes.
Jeff Fenster (1m 37s):Long day, but exciting day.
Travis Chappell (1m 40s):I do what I can man. I do what I can. Okay, so on the show there's a couple of things that I want to dive into specifically, but before we do that, let's rewind the clock. Go back in time and I usually go this route a lot because I find that when you were, , when, when you take these kind of eclectic career paths, you don't really go back in time and find that you're filling this out on like, , your college application or you're talking to your career counselor about how you want to start a franchise business and be in construction and do all the stuff that you're doing now. So let's, let's pinpoint a, , point in time and say 10 year old JEFF FENSTER, set the scene.
Travis Chappell (2m 20s):Tell me about your, , where you were in the world geographically, what your parents were like. What you're up to 10 years old.
Jeff Fenster (2m 27s):10 years old. It's a long time ago. Yeah. so I grew up in San Diego. so I was in San Diego. Yeah. Played a lot of sports. so I was 10. I was playing competitive soccer and baseball and being a rug rat, , pre-internet days, pre really on demand tv. so I spent most of the days outside and pre-videogames
Jeff Fenster (2m 47s):We had, we had Nintendo.
Travis Chappell (2m 48s):Which
Jeff Fenster (2m 48s):One? Nintendo Original, the sn, the n e s. And we, I think by Nintendo we might have even had Super Nintendo or just was coming out. Okay. I was a huge Nintendo fan.
Travis Chappell (2m 56s):Yes. Yeah, the Super Mario Brothers,
Jeff Fenster (2m 58s):Super Mario Brothers. And then actually Sega Joe, Montana Sports Talk football was like, oh, that one.
Travis Chappell (3m 5s):And RBI Baseball were my two favorite games. The genesis. The Genesis, yeah. I remember this game. Ready to rumble. Did you ever play that game? It was like a fighting, it's like a mortal combat type thing.
Jeff Fenster (3m 12s):I Played mortal combat. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (3m 14s):But either way you weren't doing a lot of that. You were outdoors most of the time, playing sports, doing stuff like that.
Jeff Fenster (3m 20s):It was pretty much get home from school, play outside till the, , the, the streetlights came on, mom yelled at us, get inside, and then it was video games, still bed
Travis Chappell (3m 28s):Siblings?
Jeff Fenster (3m 28s):One sister two years older. We were oil and water.
Travis Chappell (3m 31s):Just completely different.
Jeff Fenster (3m 32s):Yeah. She was a valedictorian of the high school, smartest person in the room. Approximately
Travis Chappell (3m 36s):The high school. Yes. How big of a high school are we talking?
Jeff Fenster (3m 38s):3000. Oh wow. Big school. Wow. Yeah, three, , she was the, the brainiac, not as many, she's not as big of a social side to her. Much more academic and I was the opposite. Hmm.
Travis Chappell (3m 49s):What did that mean for her? For you? In terms of career path?
Jeff Fenster (3m 53s):In the end or At the time? Yeah, yeah,
Travis Chappell (3m 55s):In the end. Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (3m 56s):I mean she, she's a judge. A judge. Yeah. She was a judge. She went to law school, was a lawyer, became a judge and , she was always judgey. So it makes sense.
Travis Chappell (4m 3s):You're the slacker.
Jeff Fenster (4m 4s):I was the, I was more of the slacker. Yes. I was more of the slacker. I also went to law school. Fun fact. So yeah, regardless of our two side approaches to the world, we
Travis Chappell (4m 13s):Why, why did you both end up in law school? Jewish
Jeff Fenster (4m 15s):Parents? Mm. , my dad was a doctor, my mom was a teacher. And Jewish parents, our Jewish mothers have a, have a rule. You could be anything you want as long as it's a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. So pick
Travis Chappell (4m 25s):Anything you want
Jeff Fenster (4m 26s):In this world and, and you could pick as long as it's one of those three, but it
Travis Chappell (4m 28s):Must be one of these three. so
Jeff Fenster (4m 29s):I, I went to law school actually be a sports agent, but when I was 10 I only wanted to be an athlete. Sure,
Travis Chappell (4m 35s):Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (4m 35s):I had the vision, the dream.
Travis Chappell (4m 37s):Did you, did you feel like you had a shot at some point of doing something professionally? Or were you always just kind of like, I wish I could just do this better?
Jeff Fenster (4m 45s):Both. Yeah. I thought because I had confidence and I was really fast, but I was really small. Hmm. I was always short, always little. So professional athletics, it limits
Travis Chappell (4m 54s):Your options.
Jeff Fenster (4m 55s):It not only just limits your options, but it limits the perspective of others. So yeah. A lot of people say if I would've been found. Mm. And I, I don't even get that story cuz I played high school football with Kel, Kellen Winslow. So all of the College scouts came to watch us play and I didn't get found. Yeah. So
Travis Chappell (5m 13s):You're being literally and figuratively overshadowed.
Jeff Fenster (5m 15s):Yes. I, I didn't get found their loss.
Travis Chappell (5m 19s):Their loss. That's a good way to look at it, Jess. Yeah. So in high school then, when you say that, , your mom said that you gotta be one of these three things, was this an actual conversation that happened? Oh, oh, sure. Or was it Oh, it was, oh, for sure. It literally just like, you can pick one of these three, but it has to be one of these three, well,
Jeff Fenster (5m 34s):You gotta go back to the nineties. Right. So back then entrepreneurship, that whole concept wasn't a concept.
Travis Chappell (5m 40s):Yeah. And it wasn't, it was absolutely not glorified at all. And, and
Jeff Fenster (5m 43s):The word, like it was business owners and employees and business owners usually had a, , a, a family business to go into. Yeah. Or a specific trade or skill that they had mastered. And so they started their own,
Travis Chappell (5m 55s):Like they were a plumber for 20 years. Correct. And then they, they decided to branch out and do their own thing.
Jeff Fenster (5m 59s):Correct. Or, , the family has an art gallery and you take over the art gallery. Right. So for me and my sister, it was just, you're gonna go to school, you're gonna get your college degree, you're gonna go to graduate school and you're gonna have a career. And traditionally those are kind of what's kind of forced down in our culture. And it's just, I, it kind of goes back, I mean, I've talked about this to some friends, , especially who have Jewish mothers and it's the same thing. And I think kinda goes back towards World War ii why that is such a thing these days, because when you make a lot of money, you have options. Yeah. And back in the early 19 hundreds, most people came from Europe that were Jewish, that made it outta Europe, survived.
Jeff Fenster (6m 39s):And unfortunately a lot of them didn't. So there was this whole thing about, hey, , if you don't have money, you can't leave in case you need to, you don't have those opportunities. And so there's a huge financial element kind of pushed down on us from young age. So it was really like, I was skating by, , getting by, by the, , skating by the skin of my teeth. Yeah. My sister was killing it. And so there was a lot of fear in my house of what, what is Jeffrey gonna do when he's grown up? Mm. And me saying professional athlete was never something that anyone but me believed
Travis Chappell (7m 7s):They weren't subscribing to that one.
Jeff Fenster (7m 9s):No. , my, my grandfather was a professional boxer. Oh. And yeah. And he had three granddaughter or three daughters. I was his oldest grandson. So when I became of age and I became 18, he was like, you're gonna box. so I boxed in college. And so I also had this other vision, oh, I'll be a boxer like him. And truth is, I'm five nine with short arms. So it's not really the ideal fit for that sport either. I got punched a lot and fun fact, I wasn't the best at it. So yeah. It was just figuring out what, what I was gonna do.
Travis Chappell (7m 41s):Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do at that point?
Jeff Fenster (7m 43s):No. No.
Travis Chappell (7m 44s):So like high school, you had no idea. I was just like, I guess I'm gonna go to college cuz that's what you're supposed to do, type of a thing. And then you were in college and you're like, I guess I should go to law school or like, what was the progression?
Jeff Fenster (7m 54s):I went to college, no idea what I was gonna do. I started in a business major, switched to regional development thing. I was gonna flip homes and do real estate. Oh really? Okay. I thought that that was the fun thing to do. And then I graduated at 21 a year early and I actually enlisted in the Marine Corps and applied to college law school at the same time. And I did, when I enlisted in the Marine Corps, I told the Marines, if I get into law school, I'm gonna go to law school. And I was thinking, few good men, I'll be a Jag Corps officer, it would be awesome. Really just trying to figure out what I was gonna do. Because also back then, figuring out what you wanna do for the rest of your life. Some people figured that out and knew I had no idea. I've always been someone who gets really into things. Yeah. And then get burnt out and wanna try something else.
Jeff Fenster (8m 34s):And I like starting from scratch and new things. So traditional path wasn't really laid for me in that sense. so I didn't know what I was gonna do. That's
Travis Chappell (8m 41s):One of the most wild things in our culture to, in my opinion, is we as adults will look at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year olds and call them dumb kids all day long. Oh you're just, , I was just so dumb. , like all these young dumb kids, I think they know everything and there's like all this, , like common knowledge that 17 year olds are dummies for the most part. Right. Sorry 17 year olds. But it's just facts. You just haven't lived that much life and unless you were like raised in a really tough environment where you had to grow up really, really young, then it's most likely pretty true. Yet at the same time, even though we understand this kind of like base level argument that you're not that smart at that age, we somehow expected them to have a clear idea of what they're gonna do for the rest of their life without ever having tried, , and like declare your major.
Travis Chappell (9m 34s):, it's like, well I didn't even know didn didn't even know who I am.  what I mean? Like, you're, you're all, you are at 17 is a collection of the thoughts of and and ideas of the people around you. That's all you are. You haven't figured out anything about you yet.
Jeff Fenster (9m 47s):And it was also part of a laggard system of education. Right. Because pre the internet, our, my entire world and access to knowledge was whatever was in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the house if I was willing to open it. And what my mom and dad told me is truth. Yeah. And that limits everyone's perspective and
Travis Chappell (10m 4s):Or whatever you were forced to read at school. Yes. Or not read
Jeff Fenster (10m 6s):Or my friends told me and I believe them more than my parents a lot of the time. Sure. Right. So your view on what is available to you, what is, , your options, et cetera. So this whole concept was very new. And I can tell you there was a lot of personal trepidation and anxiety around, I can't see myself doing any of these things the rest of my life. Mm. And so naturally, I'm, I love sports. Always did. And so I, , when I got into law school I said, okay, I'm gonna be a sports agent, so if I can't play sports, at least I'll get to be on the field and interact in the sports inter in entertainment environment. Sure. By being a sports agent. So
Travis Chappell (10m 42s):Did you take college more seriously than you took high school? In terms of like academics?
Jeff Fenster (10m 47s):I almost dropped outta college. So what happened was, after my freshman year, I went home, I went to University of Arizona, I got, , B'S and C's. Went, went home and told my parents I'm, I'm dropping out. I I just, these classes are boring. I, ,
Travis Chappell (10m 59s):After a year. After
Jeff Fenster (11m 0s):One year. Yeah. And my dad said, you're not dropping out.
Travis Chappell (11m 3s):He's like, actually you're not doing that. Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (11m 5s):He's like, no, but he's like, why don't you just put your head down and graduate early if you wanna get out, just finish sooner. And I was like, okay, I can do that. so I put my head down and I graduated in three years instead of four or the traditional five. That seems to be the norm these days. Yeah. And, and took some, , they, it's funny to say this out loud, but there was mailing classes so you'd get course material and information and you would mail it back to your professor over the summer cuz we didn't have online classes. Yeah. so I did those classes over the summer while I was home and graduated. Just cuz the parties were fun. I went to University of Arizona, I was in a fraternity. The the environment there was awesome.
Jeff Fenster (11m 44s):Yeah. But I just couldn't sit idle doing nothing for those years. And I was like, I want to be doing something. And I, I always had this, tomorrow is gonna be better than today mindset. Which is good in a lot of ways, but it's bad in a lot of ways. Yeah. Because I'm not always present. I'm always thinking about
Travis Chappell (11m 60s):Yeah. You can chase the future without ever learning how to engage in the present or
Jeff Fenster (12m 3s):Living Sure. In the, in the present. Right. So, no, I almost dropped out outta college. I then took it seriously graduated. And at that point, that's why I was like, okay, I'm gonna either enlist to the Marine Corps
Travis Chappell (12m 14s):Or I was saying cause getting law, law school is not like something that just anybody can do. Right?
Jeff Fenster (12m 18s):Correct. And I wasn't, I didn't get into a top law school. Okay. There's tears to this thing. Sure, sure. And I got, it's not Duke. It's not Duke. Yeah. Yeah. so I, I didn't get into, , Harvard law. Right. Their loss. I, I got into
Travis Chappell (12m 33s):Them and all the NFL teams that passed you up.
Jeff Fenster (12m 35s):Yep. Yeah. There's a theme, the underdog story. I got into two law schools, Barry Law School and St. Thomas Law School in Florida. Okay. One in Miami and one in Orlando. And they're proud tier four schools, but still law schools. Sure. Yeah. And I accepted them. I, I went to the St. Thomas. I got turned down from all the schools I wanted to go. I applied to like 30 law schools. Okay. But I wanted to go to law school and be a sports agent. So when I got there, I took that seriously and I finished top 10% of my class the first year and transferred to San Diego to a more prestigious law school and a law school that I wanted to be at. Okay. And graduated law school in San Diego.
Travis Chappell (13m 9s):Did you take the bar?
Jeff Fenster (13m 11s):I did not.
Travis Chappell (13m 11s):Okay. So by the time you graduated, you were still like, I actually don't wanna do this either.
Jeff Fenster (13m 16s):Well, so my third year of law school I met the woman who's my wife and had a daughter. So, and
Travis Chappell (13m 22s):She was also in law school? No. Or you met
Jeff Fenster (13m 24s):Her? No, I met her outside. So, so she had a kid already. She was an infant. Okay. Who is now my daughter. And so I met them when I was a third year law student and we fell in love. And by the end of law, my graduating law school, I had a job actually with Let in, in sports agency world and Lee Steinberg Sports Agency and realized I didn't wanna travel the world representing grownups and doing that I wanted to be a dad, be a husband, be present. Hmm. And so I finished law school with six figures in law school loans and no idea what the hell I was gonna do with my life.
Travis Chappell (13m 55s):Dude, it sounds like you've really mastered the idea of Pivoting. Yes. Which is something that, it's one of those weird things in life where it's necessary a lot of the times, but it could also be detrimental where you never see something through, or you never stick through the pain to, to, to get the reward on the other side because you're blinded by, , some sort of an immediate pain point that's preventing you from seeing the longer term picture. But other times it means that this is not for me and this is not serving me anymore. And even though it's gonna be uncomfortable to leave or change or do something different, I know that I have to do it. How do you view, how do you view that from, from your perspective?
Travis Chappell (14m 37s):How do you pivot correctly with the right information to know whether or not you're giving up on something when you shouldn't be? Or , hey, I'm hanging onto this too long cause of sunk cost fallacy. How do you navigate that?
Jeff Fenster (14m 48s):Well, I think that's a learned skill earlier in life. And young Jeff was terrible at it and I probably did quit things too soon. And the college example was what I finally learned, which is I wanna drop out outta college. It's a four year thing, why don't I just finish it in three and get it done and embrace the sucks, so to speak, but accomplish the mission and then I can move on to whatever I want with the pedigree of that. I've learned about myself, I, I operate in these three to six year focus windows. Okay. And then I kind of get ready for my next thing. Yeah. Works really well for my career today. Worked really bad for my future, , projections of what I was gonna be. Sure. But one of my five core values and one of the things that I really put into my success formula is change ready.
Jeff Fenster (15m 33s):And that is now a strength that I'm very good at. But it took years of probably that teeter tottering of learning. so I think to your question of how do  how to pivot or when to pivot and when you need to lean in, I use a a personal thing which says, okay, let's play out both sides. And I use the, which would you rather? And it's a very simple analysis you can do for yourself, which says, play out the end of both scenarios on which one would you rather live with. Right. So would I rather drop outta college and see what's next and never have a college degree and find out I didn't need college? Or would I rather go to college, have a college degree and find out I didn't need college. Yeah, right.
Travis Chappell (16m 10s):Especially when you are considering the other factors of going to school. Like you said, you had fun, you made good friendships. Correct. Had camaraderie, you, there was additional things that made it to where the worst case scenario here is really not a bad worst case scenario. And
Jeff Fenster (16m 24s):And I think most people, especially college aged kids, don't understand actually what college is. College is not to learn anything. It's just not my, my oldest daughter, she's 17, she's gonna college next year. Crazy. It's crazy as I tell her, you're not going to college to learn how to be some good at anything. Yeah. Because if you want a career, you're gonna have probably get a graduate degree. Otherwise you're gonna learn a whole bunch of classes that have no correlation and connection to each other. And then you're gonna go get
Travis Chappell (16m 49s):Outdated by the time you're working.
Jeff Fenster (16m 50s):Yeah. You're gonna take economics, you're gonna take literature, you're gonna take, , native American studies, you're gonna take Spanish and you're gonna take, , intro to photography. Right. Pair those together. You're gonna end up being a dental hygienist. I mean Right. Right. They're not gonna connect. But what college does do is it is a resume builder. It does show your future employer that you can start something, finish something and, and control your thoughts around that knowing that you're gonna be taking in these, in this information and all these different topics. Yeah. And get through it amongst your peers and amongst that environment of options. Right. Yeah. Parties, social life, et cetera. So that's what college is. And I think that what I learned during that experience of my mom and dad kind of being that in my ear, plus other mentors was just, it's always better to have more notches in your belt.
Jeff Fenster (17m 37s):More of a resume. Sure. More things to fall back on. I want more parachutes if I'm jumping out of an airplane. Sure. Le not less. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you look at those trials and tribulations that you're going through or that I was going through, like, college sucked, I don't wanna be in this anymore or college was great, but the school academic side sucked. I don't wanna do this anymore. Leaning into it for two more years gave me options.
Travis Chappell (17m 58s):Yeah. So here you are, early twenties. Yep. You get married.
Jeff Fenster (18m 3s):Yep.
Travis Chappell (18m 4s):And marriage comes with an infant daughter. So now you're a dad. Yep. And your husband and your early twenties, you have six figures in student loans and no prospects for a career.
Jeff Fenster (18m 14s):Yes.
Travis Chappell (18m 14s):Really, really good job, Jeff. Thank you.
Jeff Fenster (18m 16s):So mom and dad were proud.
Travis Chappell (18m 18s):I'm sure they were. I'm sure you, I'm sure your mom was really, really stoked about that. Yes. And
Jeff Fenster (18m 22s):I can tell you they were, they were extremely, extremely proud of the day I told 'em, I'm not taking the bar and not doing anything with this law degree.
Travis Chappell (18m 28s):Okay. So what was the next step from there?
Jeff Fenster (18m 32s):So I did what most people would do in that situation. And I got a job, my only job I ever really had as an adult and a friend of mine worked at adp, the payroll company. Okay. And so I had always done sales jobs, telemarketing jobs, , Dave Melter, mutual friend, I worked for a bunch of his companies in high school selling. Okay. I
Travis Chappell (18m 48s):Learned why, why sales?
Jeff Fenster (18m 49s):Because good sales people who are good in sales understand it's actually relationship building. I don't sell, , I, it's, I used a concept called solution based selling, which means I found people's problems and I identified solutions for them, in which case I was able to make some money by doing that. Acco accomplishing that and helping companies do that. So real
Travis Chappell (19m 7s):Quick before we move on to that, I completely subscribed to that because there's this kind of, there's this closer culture that exists inside of sales that I think I, I understand what they're trying to accomplish and I have a lot of empathy for it. I did five, six years of door to door sales, which is a different type of sale than, , like we're talking about selling studio spaces or , selling franchises, different buyer, different prospect, different process. I understand all of that. However, I think that there, there's this, this closer culture that exists that's just is really like alpha bravado type of a culture that discourages a lot of people who would potentially be really great salespeople from getting into the sales industry because they're the stereotypical, , bullshit used car salesman type sales that they teach and they train and they, , say that this is the way to be successful when there's just an entire world of, of this other culture inside of sales that's way more relational based selling that you can actually make multiples of what somebody selling used cars is, is making.
Travis Chappell (20m 11s):And it has nothing to do with, , use these three closing lines and techniques on the phone. Don't let 'em hang up, follow up every day. , like there's, there's this other world that exists where I try to encourage as many people as I can to, to, to start your career in sales or go into sales at some point and how good it is for so many other, , skill sets, but also good for your bank account cuz you can earn while you learn and you can earn a good amount. Oh for sure. You're earning, , you can outearn somebody 20 years older than you when you're in your early twenties if you learn how to sell and you have, and you get into the right selling opportunity to the right selling vehicle. so I mean good for you for recognizing that early on and then capitalizing on, on that early on in your career as
Jeff Fenster (20m 50s):Well. Well, and to your point, whether you think you're in sales or not, everybody's in sales. If you're working for a company and you're in the accounting department and there's a promotion opportunity and it's between you and three other people, have you sold yourself to your supervisors? Yeah. And selling means different things. There's the transactional based sale, which is more the used car style approach, which means I don't care about the longevity of this relationship, I want to get them from point A to point B, get 'em to buy something transaction and transact. Yep. That was never my bag. I did, I sold, sold for a company called Thermo View Industry, selling home improvement stuff over the phone. Telemarketing. Yeah. That was the closest to transactional sales. I
Travis Chappell (21m 25s):Would be really close to that.
Jeff Fenster (21m 27s):It was an adventure. I learned that. I don't like that. I'd rather make a relationship with you. and if you go through my career trajectory of all the different businesses I've had, they, they go together such in a symbiotic way because I can resell the same individuals, new services, new products, new opportunities, as long as I provided value along the way and they actually were happy with the transaction.
Travis Chappell (21m 49s):Value-based selling Yeah. Where it's built on Yes. The satisfaction of customers rather than you coming up with the win. Correct. It's like, that's what I'm like, that whole culture manages like beats it over the head that like if you win, the customer loses or if the customer wins, you lose. And it's like, well that's just not true if you're doing it the right way. Me winning is you winning. Correct. It's not me winning and then like, haha. Gotcha. , and it's also, that's not a way to treat people.
Jeff Fenster (22m 13s):It's also thinking about it differently. I think so often and we, we were talking about this offline, just about not having me toos. Right. And not being a me too salesman or saleswoman. Right? Yeah. So at ADP for example, we were selling payroll services, which means companies would hire ADP to be the back office and handle the paychecks and provide them to all their employees on a biweekly, semi-weekly or monthly basis. Well, okay, that's not very sexy. It is more transactional. So they had a model, it was called 55 and two make 50 cold calls a week set five appointments off those 50 calls and you'll close two appointments. You do that, you make s club congratulations. You do your job All. right. It seems very formulaic like who couldn't do that, but that's what everyone was doing.
Jeff Fenster (22m 53s):So what I did differently and, and this was allowed me to be extremely successful in, in six months there be the number one sales rep in the country. Hmm. Which was really awesome for a 24 year old in that situation. Sure.
Travis Chappell (23m 6s):When you have six figures in dad and your parents think you're screwing up your life
Jeff Fenster (23m 9s):And I have a kid and now a fiance. Yeah. Yep. so I started in, in August of 2007 and by January of 2008 I'd bought a house, I'd almost paid off a lot of that law school loan. And I had made over six figures my first six months outta law school. Wow. On a $38,000 base pay plus commission. I did it because I started to ask myself, well why do I want to go and sell one to one to one to one to all these business owners? How can I get them to come to me? I have a real solution. Everyone needs payroll and ADP was the market leader. Yes. Still is by far is still is. One out of five Americans got paid by an ADP check. Wow.
Travis Chappell (23m 42s):Yeah. That's pretty crazy stat. Isn't
Jeff Fenster (23m 44s):Didn know that isn't. And then we had a, a line, which is if someone was saying, well I'm choosing between you and someone else. Well you don't get fired for choosing adp. Meaning we all make mistakes, but ADP is the, the, we're the, we're the best. Yeah. So, , you should have the confidence that you're putting your payroll system and your employee's paychecks and their livelihood with a company that is the largest in the issue. Most
Travis Chappell (24m 2s):Reliable, most trusted,
Jeff Fenster (24m 3s):Easy sell. And it's cheap. so I said, okay, well who else needs payroll? Right. so I took a minute cuz this is a common theme for me and I, and something I think that people need to get better at is a skill I try to teach others, which is, when you have a problem, don't immediately solve the problem. Take a second and evaluate the problem and say, can I do something else which will make this problem go away. Hmm. So my problem was I had to find business owners and get them to buy payroll. So most people started 55 and two, ADP gave me the answer. Well, that's a lot of work and that's a lot of work to get two deals a week. Yeah. And that's just trading my time for the next however long to be average. Right. Well, people who need payroll tend to be new business owners.
Jeff Fenster (24m 45s):All new businesses need payroll. so I don't have to get them to switch payroll, which is a harder concept. I need to get 'em fresh. Well, what else do new businesses need? Bank accounts. Okay. Insurance. Okay. Accounting. Accounting. So what did I do? I went and made relationships in my territory with new business bankers, CPAs and bookkeepers and insurance agents. And my whole model was to spend my time building those relationships and say every business I meet with, I'm gonna tell 'em that by banking over here with you. In fact, then it was Bank of America was my banking partner. I'm gonna say by you banking at, with my partner, blank at Bank of America, I'm gonna have more access to your data and I can set this up even faster than I can waive your onboarding and initiation fee. And I'm gonna bring you Mr.
Jeff Fenster (25m 25s):Banker clients, who do you bookkeeper with? I use this bookkeeper By working with them, I'm gonna have access to all of your reports. I'm gonna make sure that your accounting and your payroll systems are tied together. So end of year, when it comes time for tax filing all so I started to build a dream team of sales reps where we're a partnership. Yeah. I'm gonna scratch all their backs. And guess what that banker saw eight to 10 new businesses a day. Who do you do your payroll? Oh, I don't know yet. Talk to Jeff at adp. Yeah. Talk to Jeff at, so every day I'm getting inbound leads of not people who are asking that I have to sell why they need our service. Hey Jeff, I was told I need to set up payroll with you from blank at the bank. Fantastic. I became
Travis Chappell (26m 2s):You're, you're a, you're a a box on the checklist. Correct. Instead of, , somebody researching to see what payroll they should use. It was like, oh, I've, I hear this is where I should set up payroll.
Jeff Fenster (26m 12s):Well, you, you trust everyone trusts friends and, and people that they do business with. Right. So your banker telling you do payroll with this company, they already are validating me. Yeah. Right. so I became a a order taker. Yeah. As opposed to a cold caller and pavement pounder.
Travis Chappell (26m 28s):Dude, it's so funny. The framework is there. It's the ability to pull yourself out of what everybody else is doing and figure out a different solution. Reminds me of, , John Ruland? No, it's a buddy of mine. I'd like to who? Yeah. He's a good guy who thinks very much the same way as, as both of us do. Very relational, , type of a guy. And he was, he became the number one salesperson in Cutco.
Jeff Fenster (26m 48s):Oh, I know. Cutco.
Travis Chappell (26m 49s):And largely doing the same thing. So he, instead of focusing on selling, , cutlery to his friend's parents, which is kind of like their, , whole shtick is like make out a list of your inner circle, , set appointments to demo, , whatever. He went and found the people who could use this for themselves to create more business for themselves, build relationships with them, and then just started selling a crazy amount of knives. So he went to like real estate agents and was like, Hey, do you get your clients something for a closing gift? What if we personalize this knife set to say their last name on it? So now he has relationships with whatever, dozens, hundreds, thousands of realtors with entire agencies and brokerages.
Travis Chappell (27m 31s):And he was the one that was providing their closing gifts to all their clients. And then all of a sudden in a short period of time, , again, , ADP's a massive sales organization for you to be number one is no small task for him. And Cutco for him to jump to number one in a small period of time is no small task. Like, it's not because you followed the exact formula that they gave. Correct. It was because you thought a little bit differently and thought about how can I utilize my strengths as a relationship builder and leverage other people's time rather than only going off of my hours specifically. Which is really like a big core concept I think that a lot of people miss. And most people go throughout their entire life never learning that one concept that like, stop trading your hours for dollars, learn how to leverage the time that you have as well as the time that other people have.
Travis Chappell (28m 19s):Yes. And think about how that can benefit everybody as a
Jeff Fenster (28m 21s):Whole. And that's how you identify those pivot opportunities and that's how you identify opportunities in general. Right. I think that there's a huge opportunity missed because as we encounter issues and problems and challenges Yeah. We blindly rush to solve them the same way how to, and you ask Google and you get the canned answer and you go, and I can assure you if the average person had the results that you want, you wouldn't be searching for the answers. Mm. Right. Outliers have outlier approaches. Yeah. And I think it's how we look at those things. And so I wasn't smart enough to know what I was really doing at adp, except I knew I didn't like making 50 calls a week. Sure, yeah. I realized that I don't like transactional sales. Yeah. I like to make friends with these people and I can do the same thing for them.
Jeff Fenster (29m 2s):so I was selling more banking services and spent more time of my day selling banking, accounting, bookkeeping and insurance, , products Yeah. Than I was selling payroll and I sold more payroll as a result. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (29m 14s):Right,
Jeff Fenster (29m 14s):Right. And and it's an, it's an analogy I use in sports, but it's like the best baseball players, the best golfers Tiger woods, he doesn't hit a golf ball like us amateurs do. Mm. He swings the golf club and the ball's in the way. That's what they all tell you. Like that's why they hit the ball further and better than us amateurs. Yeah. Baseball players, they have their swing, they're just hand eyes great enough to make that swing hit the ball, but we tend to look for the ball and hit it. And so there's a natural hesitation and reluctance when you do that. Yeah. But when you're swinging clear and the the balls irrelevant, you're swinging pure. It's your best swing and the ball just gets crushed as a result. And it's true in these situations in business. And so, , at the ADP side, I had a mission because when I started they offered me $38,000 in base pay.
Jeff Fenster (29m 55s):I couldn't afford to live and support my family with that. Right. And the commissions were cool, but it was a tiered structure and I didn't really start to make money until the back end of those sales. And I sold a lot of it. Yeah. I had an annual contract to sell about $180,000 a year in, in payroll. And in my first six months I sold over a half a million. It was the first to make presence club and all this stuff. Yeah. But when I took the job, I had negotiated a $17,000 base pay bump and I had to hit a metric to do it. And so I hit that metric and I hit that metric in December from August to December. And in January I went and asked for it. And the day that I asked for it, I said, listen, I, I earned a new bonus. And I went from what was called an ADM to an sdm and it was like a new position and I was all excited.
Jeff Fenster (30m 35s):Gimme my 17 grand base increase. They told me I had to wait till the end of the fiscal year and the fiscal year wasn't until June ended in June. So it'd be starting in July. And they were telling me it's annual goals, Jeff, you did it earlier. You're an outlier. Our systems are built on an annual basis. So in July you'll get the, you'll get the promotion, you'll get the base pay increase. And that was one of the worst days of my professional life. Yeah,
Travis Chappell (30m 56s):No kidding. And it was also probably one of the, their not best moments either, because the next step of the story is basically you were like, actually I think I'm gonna go just do this on my own.
Jeff Fenster (31m 6s):Well I actually asked, I threatened him. I I was 24 with an ego. Yeah. so I said, either give me the money or I quit. Quit. They're lost bro. They lost. They're lost naturally. Like the football scouts, they let me walk out the door. I could be a star football player or somebody. Yeah. Not
Travis Chappell (31m 21s):Too late. You could, you could be the number one district manager at ADP right now. But they said no, ,
Jeff Fenster (31m 25s):I would still probably be there had they given me my base. Isn't that wild? The job was so easy for me. Yeah. I was working three days a week, six hours a day. I was an order taker.
Travis Chappell (31m 35s):Yeah. And you were gonna make what, a couple hundred thousand dollars?
Jeff Fenster (31m 37s):Yeah. 300,000 that year probably.
Travis Chappell (31m 39s):Yeah. I mean, which is
Jeff Fenster (31m 39s):At 24 in 2007. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (31m 42s):Eight. I mean, that's more than you were gonna make it as a, as an attorney. Yeah. For your first decade plus
Jeff Fenster (31m 47s):At least. At least. And I was golfing a couple times a week. I was going out and, and taking people to dinners and lunches and being social and home anytime I wanted. And Yeah. Didn't report to a cubicle or an office. I mean it was a great lifestyle. Yeah. Pretty
Travis Chappell (31m 60s):Sweet gig. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I tell a lot of people, man, start in sales, do something in sales because like if you can figure out something like that, you get money, you get freedom and you improve on a bunch of skills that will help you later on in life anyway.
Jeff Fenster (32m 12s):Well it's a revenue genera. Like if you wanna make a lot of money, you have to be a revenue generator Yeah. For a company. Correct. And it's why, , oh, why don't policemen and teachers make more money? They deserve it. They do deserve it. Yeah. They deserve to make more than most professions, especially
Travis Chappell (32m 23s):Teachers.
Jeff Fenster (32m 24s):Yeah, of course. My mom was a teacher. Yeah. They just don't generate revenue. Unfortunately. They're a cost center to whomever is paying it. Right? Yes. There's, they're making investments that will generate revenue for the go, , our tax code, et cetera. Right, right. But they're not actually turning in an ROI that can be allow them to get paid more. That
Travis Chappell (32m 40s):Can be immediately
Jeff Fenster (32m 40s):Measured. Sales is immediate. Yeah. Right. If I sell a million dollars of your product and you have a 20% margin, I made you 200 grand. If you pay me 50 grand to do it, I can negotiate up to one 50 and you make 50 and I make one 50. Right. And you'll turn me over as many times as you can. Right. It's just a model. Correct.
Travis Chappell (32m 55s):Exactly. Yeah. Cuz you can tie it back to an immediate return. Correct. Yeah. So many opportunities inside of that world that I think, I think people just don't know that they exist. , like they just, they're so caught up in whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish or whatever it's that they're trying to do that they don't realize that that stuff is even possible for them.
Jeff Fenster (33m 13s):And it's such a valuable skill to learn how to articulate your thoughts and speak them to an individual while dealing with objections and objection handling. Exactly.
Travis Chappell (33m 22s):To communicate and persuade. Correct. Effectively will be a skill that will serve you for the rest of your life. Even if you end up leaving sales. A hundred percent. But especially if you get into entrepreneurship or being a c, like it's a core skillset.
Jeff Fenster (33m 34s):It's half the, I mean, half the job without the word sales is you're selling, right. You're either selling your company, you're, you're selling investors, you're selling employees to join your company. You're selling vendors to use you or to let you use them and to negotiate pricing. You're selling your products or services. I mean, it's selling
Travis Chappell (33m 48s):Your culture to, you're selling everything. Talent.
Jeff Fenster (33m 49s):You're just selling. Right.
Travis Chappell (33m 51s):Let ask you this, marketing or sales, which one is more important? O
Jeff Fenster (33m 57s):That's a great question. I'm gonna still go with sales. Yeah. I'm still go with sales.
Travis Chappell (34m 1s):I look at this pretty frequently because I obviously started in sales when I was in, when I was doing door to door hardcore. It was like, oh, sales, no question about it. ? But I didn't understand the world of marketing very well. And so now I look at it kind of like as far as a position at a company goes, I think marketing can potentially take you further or make you more money because it's, it's infinitely scalable. Sure. Marketing is right. Sales doesn't have as much potential to earn you as big of a paycheck as marketing does because marketing can be more responsible directly for bringing in X amount of dollars. Like if you're a brilliant marketer, you can get millions of dollars a year to write copy or, but I script VSLs,
Jeff Fenster (34m 41s):Whatever. I, I would just, I would only argue that part of that marketing term blends to sales in the process. Sure. So the marketing element of marketing that you're referencing. Yeah. There's a sales is selling, there's a sales part there.
Travis Chappell (34m 53s):Yeah. Copywriting is sales,
Jeff Fenster (34m 54s):Right? Sure. They're making the money because they're effectively selling through their marketing. This other medium, the marketing is getting it out to the masses. The selling's, the message that is being sold. so
Travis Chappell (35m 3s):I, that's, I I always go back and forth on it and go back and forth.
Jeff Fenster (35m 6s):I mean it's like, I would always say I would rather know how to sell than a market.
Travis Chappell (35m 10s):I subscribe to that. At the end of the day, I subscribe to that simply for the reason that if I know I'm not going to be the number one smartest marketer in the world, which I know I'm not, then it makes more sense for me to be a really good salesperson because I can sell a marketer on working for or with me. Correct. And that to me is the ability to sell or lead other people in a certain direction is more important in my opinion, long-term. Especially entrepreneurship, ceo, whatever, leading a big team, leveraging other people's time. I think we'll do better, , long term than anything else.
Jeff Fenster (35m 46s):And I think if you look at CEOs in America, if we just focus on the business sector, most of them are salesmen or women.
Travis Chappell (35m 53s):Yeah. Or started out that way.
Jeff Fenster (35m 54s):Well that that's what they are though. They're selling their company to the investors of the street. Sure. That's what they're doing. The culture, all those things. Yeah. They're, they're responsible for that.
Travis Chappell (36m 2s):They're getting investment dollars or they're getting dollars from customers,
Jeff Fenster (36m 5s):But they have a marketing department. Sure. Now the best marketers can elevate them to stratospheres higher than any individual salesperson can do.
Travis Chappell (36m 12s):Exactly that. Yes. Exactly. That's kind of, that's kind of my point is like, if you are one of the people working for the company, then like you might, you, you would probably be able to outearn Yes.
Jeff Fenster (36m 23s):Like
Travis Chappell (36m 24s):The top marketer at a big company will probably outearn the top salesperson. Correct. At the top company. Correct. But in terms of like a, like a skill that you're stacking in life, the ability to communicate and, and persuade effectively in the context of sales, I think still, still reigns supreme.
Jeff Fenster (36m 41s):It's powerful. I
Travis Chappell (36m 42s):Mean it's conversation though for
Jeff Fenster (36m 43s):Sure. It's, and it's and sales is the sales and marketing, but marketing and unless you're marketing yourself in the personal brand side Yeah. You intend, I al, prior to the personal brand movement, I always looked at marketing as the rocket fuel and sales as the rocket ship. And the marketing can only can, you need marketing to take the rocket ship in the air, but you can only go as far as the quality of that rocket ship. Yeah. Today with personal branding, one could argue they kind of start to go the same. But Sure. The personal brand is the selling cuz you're selling something about
Travis Chappell (37m 12s):Yourself. I think I was gonna say the personal brand is, that's why it's so important to build personal. That's why we're sitting in the studio right now, ? Yes. It's like the building of the personal brand is marketing and sales combined. Yep. You look, you take the, the biggest, most obvious examples of this, like the Rock and you look at the companies that he's started or even, who was it recently? Oh, Logan Paul started Prime. Yeah. The Killing Kitchen company. What was it? Eric? They get a two, 250 million year one. Is that what you sent me the other day? Yeah. It's 250 million. 250 million in their first year. Yeah. That sounded way too big. But that's it. That's insane. They're competing against Gatorade and they did 250 million their first year, like But that sales and marketing combined and
Jeff Fenster (37m 55s):He's one of the top marketers in the world. Absolutely. I mean him and his brother are
Travis Chappell (37m 59s):Phenomenal marketers.
Jeff Fenster (37m 60s):Yes. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (38m 0s):Brilliant, brilliant marketers and
Jeff Fenster (38m 2s):Then, and how they pivoted their careers and dominated on the, as a, as phenomenal marketers. They've pivoted from, , that homeboy house right. Back when, when they were just, , YouTubers and whatnot to athletes to now
Travis Chappell (38m 16s):Business
Jeff Fenster (38m 16s):People, business, business titans,
Travis Chappell (38m 17s):Ified business people. Yeah,
Jeff Fenster (38m 19s):Absolutely. Yeah. On multiple facets. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (38m 20s):They don't, they don't get enough credit for sure.
Jeff Fenster (38m 22s):They really don't.
Travis Chappell (38m 24s):But yeah, that version, that personal brand version is just like, it's, it's the marketing and sales engine one. Cause you don't really, you don't even have to sell at that point. Correct. It's, it's just like, hey, you want some of this stuff that's gonna fly off of your shelves. Yeah. Okay. How many do you want, , like the Rock with Teriana will make more on just that one company than all of his earned income that he's ever done. Absolutely. Acting movies, a 20 year career is nothing compared to how much he'll sell Teriana for.
Jeff Fenster (38m 49s):You can even going away from those two, cuz I would say the Kardashians are the greatest example of that cuz they don't, no disrespect to them, they don't have
Travis Chappell (38m 58s):Any other skill sets.
Jeff Fenster (39m 1s):An underlying service to offer. Sure. The Rock was a professional football player, wrestler and actor. Right.  Logan Paul is an athlete, a boxer now wwf.
Travis Chappell (39m 10s):Yeah. Entertainer.
Jeff Fenster (39m 11s):Entertainer. Yeah. The Kardashians were models that they made themselves into. Right. And then they
Travis Chappell (39m 17s):Became entertainers but they weren't famous for anything in particular. Correct. Except for, ,
Jeff Fenster (39m 23s):Reality TV
Travis Chappell (39m 24s):Shows
Jeff Fenster (39m 24s):Ish and creating reality TV show at the right time sex
Travis Chappell (39m 26s):Tape, , that helps it. It helps, it helps. But , there's a lot of people that have had that 60 seconds of fame that did not leverage it into several multi-billion dollar companies and to be the most follows True people in the world.
Jeff Fenster (39m 39s):No, I mean what that's their best skills, their marketing Absolutely. Ability. That's
Travis Chappell (39m 43s):What I'm saying. Yeah. Is a marketing genius.
Jeff Fenster (39m 44s):They're geniuses. Yeah,
Travis Chappell (39m 45s):Absolutely. They're again, another one of those, , those people that don't get any credit for any of the stuff that they've done. It's like you don't luck yourself into that. Are there things along the way that were lucky? Absolutely. Like I am not one of those people that says like, , that luck plays zero part in any of this. I think luck plays like a pretty big role. The the bottom line though is that the more chances you take, the more like swings you take, the more likely you are to get lucky on one of them.
Jeff Fenster (40m 12s):Well I, and I'll double down on that cuz my friends jokingly always say fenced or luck cuz I get lucky with things. Yeah, I do. Yeah. But luck is the, the quote, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Most people have the same amount of luck as the Kardashians as everyone else. They're not prepared and they don't recognize the opportunities when luck hands it to 'em. Totally. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (40m 34s):They can't
Jeff Fenster (40m 34s):Capitalize and that's they don't see it. Yeah. If you don't see it, you can't get lucky. Yep. If I walk by the winning lottery ticket and I don't pick it up and someone else picks it up and I go, oh they're so lucky. Yeah. They're so lucky I didn't pick
Travis Chappell (40m 44s):It up. Must be nice.
Jeff Fenster (40m 45s):Must be nice. Right. We all have the same amount of luck and unlock, I mean of course I'm speaking generally. Yeah. Obviously there's extremes but Sure. Luck is something we all Sure
Travis Chappell (40m 55s):It's a spectrum for sure. Yes.  where it's like if you're born in this part of the world and you look like this and you got these opportunities afforded to you, you're probably gonna be able to see it a little bit better.
Jeff Fenster (41m 4s):Oh of course. When I say that, I do mean in America. Yeah, sure. I think all of Americans, we all won the the luck. Oh totally. To not be born in North Korea.
Travis Chappell (41m 12s):Yeah dude, I was thinking about that recently. Looking at some of the other problems, the world experiences and just thinking like what an actual privilege it is to be born here. Like our problems Yes. Are privileged problems.  what I mean? Like are the things happening right now bad? Yeah. Are there mental health problems that are bad? There's a lot of stuff that we as Americans have that other countries don't have that are big problems. But the only reason we have those problems is cuz we fixed all the other problems. Correct.  what I mean? Like Yeah. The only reason that we can be worried about depression and anxiety at a rate that is frankly pretty alarming and especially compared to the rest of the world and the way that they experience those mental health issues. The reason that that's like one of our biggest problems is cuz we've already taken care of the majority of the other problems that civilization has faced for the last, , 10,000 years.
Travis Chappell (41m 57s):Well
Jeff Fenster (41m 57s):We have, we have, I mean, again, not to minimize these conditions cuz they're serious and they, they need to be focused on, but we don't, we have time to be depressed. We have time Exactly. To feel these emotions and, and dwell in the things that are plaguing us emotionally and mentally when you're running for your life in Africa to get water and running from literal lions. Right, right, right. You don't have time to be worrying about depressed. Right.
Travis Chappell (42m 23s):Your day is full of like, I gotta survival, hike down to the river to get some clean water.
Jeff Fenster (42m 28s):Correct. It's survival. You're
Travis Chappell (42m 29s):Starting at 5:00 AM and then I like, we gotta go farm the, the, , ground to get our meals for. It's like, it's just a completely different life. Correct. Exactly. You have everything in abundance and we're wired as humans to search for problems. Yes. So of course we're going to find them. We're just finding them in different places now. And now the cool thing about it is being like innovators in the world, is that we can now start learning. We can start down the path of learning how to take care of these problems. So when the rest of the world catches up on like some of the other things that we've already taken care of here, , hopefully we'll have some other solutions where, , these other continents and other, , places catch up in terms of technology and, and innovation and infrastructure.
Travis Chappell (43m 9s):Absolutely. And some of those things, , assuming that they want those things. Then hopefully by that point we'll be like, oh, by the way, when you fix these things, you might have a lot of anxious and depressed people. Here's what we did to kind of help solve that few problem. Yeah. I think exactly.
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Jeff Fenster (46m 10s):. Okay, so I wanna, I wanna jump back in. Focus back in onto your story here. So you, you started this other payroll company? Yes. It went well. You exited that company. Yeah. so I mean, and Buddy started it. He was at, I got him a job at ADP and then I sucked him out of a d p and quit my job, sold the house, moved in with my mom and dad. Started my first company with my buddy outta my mom's kitchen. How did
Travis Chappell (46m 31s):Mom feel about that one?
Jeff Fenster (46m 33s):They lent us 20. They invested 20. It was a loan, but turned into an investment. Yeah. 20 grand. Again, they were not stoked about it. They're like, you're literally walking away from, but
Travis Chappell (46m 41s):They had to have
Jeff Fenster (46m 41s):Had like socks. I was making more as much as my dad as a doctor.
Travis Chappell (46m 44s):That's what I'm saying. Like they had to have some vote of confidence though, to be like, I mean he figured out how to make like 250 grand a year at 24 with not really any skill in this area. So if he can figure that out, maybe he can figure this out. Not yet.
Jeff Fenster (46m 56s):No. It was more like, you've been there six months and now you're jumping to another career path. It was more
Travis Chappell (47m 1s):Like, I don't wanna see my grandbaby star just 20 grand
Jeff Fenster (47m 4s):And we're moving in. So the boomerang, yeah, now you're moving back into whose house. so I, , I think, I don't remember exactly what they said, but they weren't excited about it. Yeah. They were definitely trying to talk me out of it. I just kept telling 'em, listen, and this is what I tell to anyone who's on the fence about starting their own thing. It's like, if I got the job at adp, you don't think Paychex would hire me? Sure. I was the number one sales rep in the damn country. Sure. So say I started and it fails, I'll go get a job. Totally. I can always do that. I got a job once, I'll get a job
Travis Chappell (47m 32s):Again. The safe path is always there. It is literally always there. And I don't
Jeff Fenster (47m 36s):Know if that's the safe path. Yeah. I still question if that is the safe
Travis Chappell (47m 39s):Path. That's true. , Jim Carrey said that that always stuck with me in, in this commencement speech that he did. And I've seen the clips all over, so I'm sure it's gone viral several times. But he basically was talking about how he said, he was talking about how talented his dad was, how funny his dad was. And he wanted to be in comedy and he didn't do it. He was like, my dad was, could have been a really great comedian, but he decided to do the safe route and did this, I forget the, the job that it was, but it was just some run of the mill regular job, , type of blue collar type of a thing. And it was just like he took this safe job that he ended up getting fired from and couldn't, , support himself afterwards and all this other stuff. And then he goes, and it really hit me at that point that if you can fail at what you don't want, why not take a chance on doing what you love?
Travis Chappell (48m 25s):Yep. And it was like a, oh, so well put, failure can come in a variety of ways, even in the safe route. And sometimes especially the safe route in that sense, you're just doing something that you hate and you failed at that wouldn't you rather fail at trying to do something that you really want to do, even if it means that you're quote unquote less successful in the eyes of culture in society. Sure. Right. Like
Jeff Fenster (48m 48s):That's brilliant. I mean, it's exactly right.
Travis Chappell (48m 49s):The definition of success to me is, is different than that. It's not, it's not a zero sum game. What would you say your definition is before I tell you
Jeff Fenster (48m 57s):For success? Success options and freedom. Options.
Travis Chappell (48m 59s):And freedom
Jeff Fenster (49m 0s):To options to do what I want and the freedom to do it. Yeah. So it's not a monetary goal for me. That's why when I say I have a success formula, my success is different than others. , my goal isn't to be the Kardashians big. Yeah. I mean, I won't turn it down, but I'm not, I'm not hunting it. Sure. That's not, that's not my north star. That's not what I say. That is my mission. Yeah. Freedom and options.
Travis Chappell (49m 20s):Yeah. What I, what I say is it's the realization of your personal journey to me is like success because it's, it's just so many things or variables. If I laid out a thing like 12 different items and I said, here's all the things that society and culture tells you to make you successful, every one of us would look at that list and put them in a different order of priorities. Sure. And so the problem to me, like I think the, the biggest failure is the opposite of the realization of your personal journey. Meaning that you're chasing a version of success that was thrust upon you by somebody else's opinion. Your parents' culture, society at large teachers, true influences.
Travis Chappell (50m 2s):All these other people that are saying this means success. And then you go down that path and they applaud you and they go, see, you're being successful. Doesn't this feel great? And then on the inside you're like, no, this sucks. And I don't know why. Well it's cause it seems like it should be great.
Jeff Fenster (50m 14s):It's the dog chasing the car. Yeah. Then they catch it. No know what the hell to do with it.
Travis Chappell (50m 18s):Right. You climb the wrong, you climb the wrong fucking mountain. Yeah. , like that's the worst place in life to be, dude, is you put in all this work and you toil and you work and work and work and work. And then you like get up to the top of this mountain, you plant your flag and you look around, you go, I actually kind of wanted to be on the top of that mountain. , it's like what do you do at that point?
Jeff Fenster (50m 35s):Well, and, and, and I think we also forget that everything great from the iPhone to technology, to food, to every invention, every idea all came from an individual sitting there who thought it, who thought about it and thought it up and just said, I'm gonna go for it.
Travis Chappell (50m 50s):Yeah. And didn't take the traditional path.
Jeff Fenster (50m 52s):Well, yeah. Yeah. And didn't worry about it. Yeah. That's the big thing. I mean, look, you, you have bills, but I legitimately left a six figure a year job with a wife, a fee a kid, and six figures in law school loans and a mortgage. Yeah. I did it. Right. So when I hear, well, I have a kids and I have, I have bills. So did I. Yeah. Now I can tell you I've made millions of dollars in my life since then. I don't regret it one day. Yeah. And I'm not saying everyone's gonna achieve that kind of success or they're gonna have that same result. Sure. And not everyone has parents who let them move in. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (51m 26s):Right. I mean, every
Jeff Fenster (51m 26s):Situation is a little bit different. I was blessed with that. Of
Travis Chappell (51m 28s):Course. Of course. But like the, the point is, is the point is is if somebody's done it from a worse position that you are in, then that's no longer the excuse for you.
Jeff Fenster (51m 35s):Correct. Know what? I don't, I'm saying that's not an excuse to me. Yeah. Thats, that's the wrong thing to be looking at. Sure. Find a solution. Exactly.
Travis Chappell (51m 43s):For you, the solution was I can go live with my parents and sell my house. Correct. For somebody else. If they may not, if they don't have that option, then there is a solution. There is, it exists. You just have to do two things. Number one, find the solution. And then number two, ask yourself if the goal is worthy enough to actually implement the solution.
Jeff Fenster (52m 2s):So which would you rather,
Travis Chappell (52m 3s):Because it's probably going to come with some sort of pain like that. We downgrade our lifestyle, we move back in with my parents, with my wife and my daughter. Probably not a fun thing as a 24 year old that's on track to make two 50 to $300,000 of course. To give up that income, give up the house. Probably could have gotten a sweet car, put in a pool. Like lived a really cool life that most 24 year olds would be all about, even if they didn't have a wife and kid. Yep. And you were like, ah, I actually like this path. Even though there's gonna be a lot more pain involved and I don't really have any idea what I'm doing. I've never started a company be before. I'm gonna go ahead and go this path because I don't know how to explain it, but it's what I want. And I think that that sacrifice is just gonna be, is just gonna be worth it.
Jeff Fenster (52m 44s):And I didn't even know that's what I wanted. But I played the Which would you rather game? And I mean this, like I play it out and I play the doomsday scenario on both sides. Yeah. Worst case I fail at my own company, then what? I go get a job and I re go sell a lot of payroll and make a lot of money. Right. I stay at ADP forever and I'm miserable. Totally. Yeah. I can tell you which one I'm going to. Which
Travis Chappell (53m 2s):One's worse?
Jeff Fenster (53m 3s):I can always end at miserable. Right. Exactly. Right. To your point, I can fail both ways. Right. I can end up back to where I would've been, but for trying. And so yeah. so we started the company outta my mom's kitchen. It was obviously, like I said, our shit show experience in this beginning and never forget the very first time we ran payroll. It's a funny story. So my buddy Brian, he, he was gonna be the operations and I was gonna be the sales cuz we were both in sales at adp. But I was a little better at sales. He was a little more organized and okay. And smarter than me. So he should be the operations side. And I naturally went out and sold a lot of payroll. so we had our, , 12, 14 clients our first week and we have a couple hundred paychecks.
Jeff Fenster (53m 44s):So we get the printer, we buy the software, we're all excited. We, we bought some software to do it. We print the button, we print all these checks, we deliver 'em, we're in our office or my mom's house high fiving on a Friday. , basically having a little drink celebrating. The first phone call comes in. Hey guys, one of our employees is saying the check won't cash. That's strange. Must be something with the bank. Next phone call. Next phone call. Next phone call. What we didn't know because in the how to start a company 1 0 1 book. Yeah. And no Google and Youtube back then. Well there might have been Google, but it wasn't like it is today. There's this thing called micro ink, which is magnetic. It's a magnetic ink that banks use. So you don't print checks at your home printer.
Jeff Fenster (54m 24s):We didn't know that. so we sent 250 ish dummy checks to every single client on our very first payroll run. Oh
Travis Chappell (54m 32s):Man.
Jeff Fenster (54m 32s):And then now you're fucking with people's livelihoods. Oh yeah. , because some people need you kindly. Some people need that money to pay the bills this weekend. Yeah. Right. So it was was a shit show. Yeah. so we had to literally hand write a whole bunch of checks, go to everybody's bank, make deposits, stop at their homes, and drive around the entire city of San Diego to solve that problem. But we learned and we learned and  what we learned Micro Inc. Yeah. We got a hundred percent better that day.
Travis Chappell (54m 56s):Exactly. Okay. So So ends up going pretty
Jeff Fenster (54m 58s):Well. It does, right? You
Travis Chappell (54m 59s):Sell the company?
Jeff Fenster (55m 0s):We raised private equity. Oh, did, okay. We did, we raised private equity capital in 2000 and at the end of eight and beginning of nine changed the name to Canopy R from iex. Elevated from just a payroll company to a technology company focusing on an H R S platform and bringing the HR industry into the 21st century with the internet and the single database and apps and all this fun stuff. We ended up selling the company to a company in Florida in 2011.
Travis Chappell (55m 23s):Okay. And then that's when you got into digital
Jeff Fenster (55m 27s):Marketing? Not yet. So during that time was the recession. Yeah. And a lot of our clients, so again, I was thinking of how do I sell more payroll clients and how do I get more clients? And the issue then that was happening was if I got your business and you had 22 employees, I got 22 checks. If you grew to 25, I got 25 checks. I didn't have to sell anybody. so I wanted my current clients to grow. so I started just getting to know my customers and asking 'em what's the biggest challenge you're, you're facing today. And in the great recession between oh eight and 10, it was hiring employees weren't changing jobs. So if you had a job, you weren't leaving. Cuz the economic climate was terrible and the unemployment pool was enormous. So to sort through that to find quality was awful. Yeah. so I started a recruiting agency on the side called J Fen Recruiting.
Jeff Fenster (56m 9s):And I only served my current client. so I kind of vertically integrated that to the IEX Canopy model and said, listen, if you join our our team, we'll have this recruiting arm and if you need recruiting services, we'll spend the time to help find polished quality talent for you and help them grow. So did that, a buddy of mine was a recruiter, so kind of partnered up and then got rid of that in 2000 at the end of 2011 as well.
Travis Chappell (56m 32s):Okay. As a separate entity.
Jeff Fenster (56m 33s):Separate entity. And then 2012 was more of the year I learned. Okay. So the same buddy Brian and I started a company called Equity Circle and the goal was to legalize equity based crowdfunding. Okay. It was illegal back then, so you couldn't crowdfund for equity. And Kickstarter was basically just getting started. It was like an idea. so we got all these signatures, we started to invest in how we were gonna build the technology and the platform and do all this stuff. We got hundreds of thousands of signatures. It was a fun experiment. Experiment. I learned something big on this, which is it legalized, yay. We achieved our mission. We had no technology. We lost to the guys and girls that were building the technology waiting for people like us to fight the good fight. Ah. so I learned to Gotcha. I learned about business that it's better to have a product and a service than to be trying to change policy.
Jeff Fenster (57m 17s):A lobbyist to be a lobbyist. And I had a sports investing company called sports investing systems.com where I was trying to sell membership services to sports betting. Okay. We had some algorithms that worked really well for sports betting. And so we did, we did that for a while. 2012 was more of a year of learning a lot of little, little side businesses that just didn't really go anywhere. Sure.
Travis Chappell (57m 34s):But you were sitting okay from the exit though
Jeff Fenster (57m 37s):Ish. so I got my MBA through the school of hard knocks. What I learned with IEX Canopy was we sold the company for a lot of money. Brian and I didn't make a lot of money. Hmm.
Travis Chappell (57m 45s):Profit equity had options that they exercised during this exit. I
Jeff Fenster (57m 48s):Wish. So what happened was, and to their brilliance, they identified 2 24 and 25 year old guys that were willing to work 200 hour weeks and kill and basically free slaves and had no money. Yeah. And so we raised 1,000,005 on our first round. They, it was a 70 30, we kept 70%, they had 30. If we did 2 million in revenue, we spent 2.2 million in in expenses. Mm. so we ran outta money, but we wanna make these good investments. And they were smart and they were polished private equity firm. And we opened an office in Orange County and in San Diego we hired these very expensive CTOs to build our technology. We made all these amazing capital investments and watched our money deplete. We go to them and go, Hey, we're gonna run outta money. Oh no problem guys. We love the business. Just
Travis Chappell (58m 28s):A little bit more equity.
Jeff Fenster (58m 29s):We'll put the money in. Do you have your share? No. No problem. It'll be dilutive. Yeah. And so it just kept going where they kept putting more money in and diluting us until the point where I learned the golden rule that he or she who has the gold makes the rules. Yeah. Yeah. so we sold the company when we didn't want to.
Travis Chappell (58m 42s):That's Jafar golden rule.
Jeff Fenster (58m 43s):It is. Yep. so we sold the company when we didn't want to and we made a little bit of money. Yeah, yeah. Obviously enough to think about what was next
Travis Chappell (58m 50s):Enough to lose it on the side businesses the next year.
Jeff Fenster (58m 53s):I, I didn't buy a private plane.
Travis Chappell (58m 55s):No
Jeff Fenster (58m 55s):Yachts. No yachts. No
Travis Chappell (58m 56s):Yachts, no Lambos,
Jeff Fenster (58m 58s):No, no Lambos. No yachts. But I made some money and I had an exit and it was a successful exit. And I had the experience.
Travis Chappell (59m 3s):I was gonna say, when you're that age like that by itself, even if you walk away with $0 is positive. Yeah. You were a steward of capital and you turned that capital into more capital. Correct. And that's like, that's a W in the W like in That's a point in the W column no matter how you cut it. Yes. Right.
Jeff Fenster (59m 21s):Because I didn't have that perspective then.
Travis Chappell (59m 23s):Yeah,
Jeff Fenster (59m 24s):Sure. I was very upset.
Travis Chappell (59m 25s):A little bitter. Not better.
Jeff Fenster (59m 26s):Yes, definitely bitter. Not better, but hindsight. Right. But then in 2012, end of 2011, my youngest was born. Okay. And I wanted to work from a computer cuz I figured the computer wasn't going anywhere. And I just made a bunch of money building a company, moving one industry that was archaic to the internet and figured there's this whole world of, of business owners that haven't yet figured out how to transition online. Sure. Digital marketing seems like the play. And one of my buddies from high school, his name's Pat Flynn, had this website called Smart Passive Income. And I like the idea of smart passive income. so I reached out to him and was like, Hey dude, let me pay you to teach me how to do some digital marketing stuff. And we went to lunch and he jokingly said, , it's called Smart Passive Income.
Jeff Fenster (1h 0m 7s):I don't teach people actively, it's
Travis Chappell (1h 0m 10s):Passive. I don't wanna work Jeff.
Jeff Fenster (1h 0m 12s):Right. But let me introduce you to Neil Patel. He, he's a digital marketer and I'm sure he could help you. And I didn't know who Neil was and I should have cuz he was like renowned even then for co-founding some amazing products and services. And so I said, yeah, please set me up. So he set me up with an intro to Neil and we were gonna meet. And so I was like, All, right. I'm gonna make Neil my partner, how am I gonna do that? And I wanna start my own digital marketing company. And that was the foray, a digital marketing,
Travis Chappell (1h 0m 36s):First of all, it's wild that you went to school with Pat at the, I mean 2011, that was like, what, A year? Two years after he, no, three, three years after he had started his blog.
Jeff Fenster (1h 0m 45s):Yeah. Two or
Travis Chappell (1h 0m 46s):Three years. Yeah. Because I know that he started in the middle of the recession. Yeah. After
Jeff Fenster (1h 0m 48s):He lost his job, he lost his job.
Travis Chappell (1h 0m 50s):His podcast, I think though came 20 11, 20 12 or something like that. And now has a couple hundred million down those wildly successful really cool guy too. Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (1h 0m 59s):I mean we went to middle school together. We were, we were more friendly in middle school than high school.
Travis Chappell (1h 1m 3s):That's so funny.
Jeff Fenster (1h 1m 4s):But it goes back to the relationship capital, right?
Travis Chappell (1h 1m 6s):Yeah. Right, right. And then to make an intro to freaking Neil Patel. Yeah. Who now is, I mean, name a better SEO marketer
Jeff Fenster (1h 1m 14s):Can't. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (1h 1m 15s):Like literally no
Jeff Fenster (1h 1m 16s):Can and an incredible human being.
Travis Chappell (1h 1m 18s):Yeah. Right. So you meet him, he already has accolades at that point. Oh yeah. He already had a
Jeff Fenster (1h 1m 26s):Resume. Like I legitimately said to Pat, who's that? And he laughed and said Google him.
Travis Chappell (1h 1m 30s):Okay.
Jeff Fenster (1h 1m 30s):Yeah. Like if you're gonna play in this space, at least know somebody so know I wanna be in the N F L All. right. Talk to Tom Brady. Who's that? Who? Yeah. That was me.
Travis Chappell (1h 1m 39s):So he already has this resume and accolades. How do you come in and talk to him and then be like, Hey, we should start a business together. Well
Jeff Fenster (1h 1m 47s):It was kind of the same model I did at a dp. I always stop, I stop drop and roll. Like if there's a fire stop, assess the problem and roll into what's next. so I did that. I was like, okay, I'm gonna have this meeting with Neil Patel, I'm really good at sales. I had just sold thousands of clients in payroll. so I know tons of business owners who probably could use SEO and digital marketing services. He doesn't know me and he probably gets hit up by a million mes asking to, I can bring your clients, start this together. Yeah. Right. so I did what I do and I went and sold a six figure digital marketing contract before I met him. Hmm. And I went to the client or f my first client, big company. And I said, listen, you guys are making, at the time they were making like 40 million a year in selling merchant a product.
Jeff Fenster (1h 2m 30s):I don't wanna name drop them. Yeah. A product, but only about a million online.
Travis Chappell (1h 2m 34s):Who's a physical product.
Jeff Fenster (1h 2m 35s):Physical product. Yep. It's in the culinary space. Okay. And I said to them, how about you let me and Neil come in and make you a lot of money online and you pay me based on how much growth I do here cost you nothing. So I'm only going to eat what I bring in. Basically let me be your outside sales team for your internet department. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it'll cost you nothing to try. and if you don't know who Neil is, you should Google him. I still haven't met Neil. so I used the same line to these guys cuz they were in their fifties at the time. You
Travis Chappell (1h 2m 60s):Don't know Neil Patel. Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (1h 3m 1s):Oh my God. You need to Google him. And they said, of course, really outta
Travis Chappell (1h 3m 4s):Touch 50 year
Jeff Fenster (1h 3m 5s):Olds. I was actually in an airport and I have a call with Neil. I'm like, Hey, what's up? Nice to meet you. So nice to meet you. I'm like, Hey Neil, I really appreciate the time. , I'm so grateful Pat connected us. I have a check for you for six figures, 180,000, where do I send it? And that's all I said. Yeah. And he's like, what? I'm like, I have a check for you for 180,000. Where do I send it? He's like, for what? I'm like, I just told our first digital marketing client and I have a whole lot more to follow it. And he's like, wait, what? Who? Like, he was kind of dumbfounded. Like we derailed the immediacy of where he thought the call was gonna go. And it got him peaked his interest enough to meet, we met, we became buddies. He let me build a brand pretty much off of his name. Okay. Using my relationship capital and knowhow. So he,
Travis Chappell (1h 3m 45s):He didn't have an agency back then, or he
Jeff Fenster (1h 3m 46s):Didn't, he did not have, he did not have Neil, Patel Digital then. Okay. No,
Travis Chappell (1h 3m 50s):But And he didn't
Jeff Fenster (1h 3m 51s):Have any agency? No, it wasn't like the ne he didn't have like a formal agency. Gotcha, gotcha. He had KISS metrics, he had Hello Bar, he had Crazy Egg and he had his, his blog. Okay, gotcha. But he did not have a formal agency. so I put together an agency and I would basically go and sell using, and he'd fly in for meetings when I needed him. But I was doing more of the heavy lifting and basically built a business on the back of his name, his brand essentially. Which in my book I talk about is the bug light philosophy. Right. Which is a great way to build a company if you have the trust of, of that individual, that expert, that leader. And he knew I was gonna be very respectful of his brand. Sure. And really quickly, we made a lot of money. We worked with some of the biggest websites on the planet. Top 100 websites on the planet Making a fortune.
Jeff Fenster (1h 4m 32s):Yeah. It was great. I still don't know how to use a computer, but it was great.
Travis Chappell (1h 4m 36s):And then you sold
Jeff Fenster (1h 4m 38s):That business 2015. I was getting tired of doing it. Okay. He was making way more money speaking he wanted to start and a Neil Patel digital and I didn't want to be in that business. so we sold off our clients. Basically he spun up Neil Patel Digital about a year and a half later. Yeah. And was doing more speaking and kind of semi-retired himself. And I semi-retired myself to figure out what was next too.
Travis Chappell (1h 5m 2s):So now at this point you have real money in the bank.
Jeff Fenster (1h 5m 5s):I have real money in the bank. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (1h 5m 6s):So now it's kind of like, Hey, I'm not worried about how my kids are gonna get fed next week. At this point, when you reach that level of comfort in life, how do you go about deciding what's next?
Jeff Fenster (1h 5m 19s):Well first you think nothing's next. You think you're gonna retire, you think you're just gonna hang out at home. And then you realize how boring that may be for someone who has that engine to Sure. To go out there and do that to Vliet. Yeah. It's just, I, I got bored and I started to drive my wife and kids crazy. And they legitimately said, not old were you at the time? This was 2016. So six years ago. so I was 33. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (1h 5m 42s):So way too early. Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (1h 5m 44s):Way too early. 32 30, yeah. 83 9. Yeah. 2016. So 33. Yeah. so I literally my wife said, go do something. You're driving us crazy. Like you, you, you have too much of an engine and focus to, to not be doing stuff. Yeah. Please, just go do anything. Please
Travis Chappell (1h 5m 58s):Leave.
Jeff Fenster (1h 5m 58s):I love you. Get out of the house.
Travis Chappell (1h 5m 60s):But please get outta here.
Jeff Fenster (1h 6m 1s):But it was good. I took, I took about a year to figure out what was next. Yeah. And I realized what I wanted to do next was more of a passion project outside of startups, which I've learned to my entrepreneurial a d d or my ability to not do something for more than five years and get bored. Startups is great. Yeah. That's why I like the serial entrepreneurship term. My wife will say degenerate. But yeah, it's what I like to do. I wanted to do something I was really passionate about and health and wellness was like a passion of mine. It's something I believe in. It's something I spent a lot of effort doing. I import superfoods. I work out a lot. I focus on prevention of illness. And I spent a lot of time trying to convince friends of mine to eat better, move their body more and be healthy.
Jeff Fenster (1h 6m 41s):Yeah. And so I figured, let me disrupt this industry. Let me, let me go play in it. , I think I have a, a voice that should be heard in the space. I think I can add value here. And so I started it without really a goal of where I am today was not my intention. Yeah. , like all things, you tell me what your plans are in five years and see if you actually end up there. But
Travis Chappell (1h 6m 59s):So that's, that's how Everbowl was born. That's
Jeff Fenster (1h 7m 1s):How Everbowl
Travis Chappell (1h 7m 1s):Was born. Now has 60 locations plus signed on from 310. Yeah. Yeah. So Coast, not a total flop.
Jeff Fenster (1h 7m 9s):Not on a flop.
Travis Chappell (1h 7m 10s):Yeah. You could be doing better but , not a, not a complete flop. And then out out of that has, there's a couple other brands that have, that have spun out of that. And it seems like something you really master about is just you let life happen and then you search for gaps or problems that need solving like a true, like this is entrepreneurship at its core. Like true entrepreneurship is just solving problems for people. Funny cause to your point is that what we were talking about earlier with value-based selling is like if you're selling a product that people need and it actually like fulfills that need, it's not really selling. You're, you don't have to convince them,  that they need this product. They already are experiencing the problem. You just have to convince them that you're a trustworthy person and that, and that the product or service that you have will actually solve the problem that they're experiencing.
Travis Chappell (1h 7m 56s):Correct. But the problem exists and you build a viable solution to that problem. The obvious next step is the sale. Correct. Is the acceptance of that solution and the exchange of money for that solution. Exactly. So the, the thing that I love about everything you got going on, I mean you have Unevolved products and brands, which is kind of like merchant clothing right now. You have an evolved studios that we're sitting in right now. And then you have Everbowl and you have this really cool concept called We build
Jeff Fenster (1h 8m 24s):And we build stuff.
Travis Chappell (1h 8m 26s):We build stuff. Okay. so
Jeff Fenster (1h 8m 28s):We build, but it just, the real official name is we build stuff. Okay.
Travis Chappell (1h 8m 30s):We build stuff. So you have, so you have this over here living in its own little world. But what I thought was really interesting about that is, and, and I asked this question earlier kind of on like a mock basis, but I want to ask you this live because I think it's really valuable. You get to work building your first Everbowl location, it costs you over 300 grand, 280.
Jeff Fenster (1h 8m 49s):Oh
Travis Chappell (1h 8m 50s):So almost 300,000 to build out. And you were like, this cannot be the answer to this problem. Like this is, this is a real problem. If it takes me $280,000 to build out each location, how is this going to be profitable? It's gonna take me x amount of years to get my money back to, , our margins are are gone. This is not a sustainable model.
Jeff Fenster (1h 9m 11s):And I also wanted to build a hundred of them. And so I would need a lot of money. Sure, sure. Which was really the biggest impetus for why I did what I did.
Travis Chappell (1h 9m 19s):So what's interesting to me is that you're not the first franchise in the world. There's a lot of franchises out there, right? Yep. And they all use that exact model. They get a franchisee, they sign them on, they sell the location, they do the build out, they open, there's a ton of space between the time that they signed and collect whatever, , upfront fee for the franchise is. And the time where that business is actually open, bringing in customers and they're able to collect royalties Yep. On that customer. There's a big gap that happens and there's a lot of room for error in that gap. And it's really expensive. So instead of just being like, ah, forget it, , restaurant business isn't my thing, or the restaurant business doesn't work well, you decide to come up with a new concept.
Travis Chappell (1h 10m 1s):And so now what you do is you have this entire manufacturing facility where you prefab the entire build out in your warehouse, ship it out to the location in a box, send a crew, set it up, and you're done in five days to seven days and you have a brand new location. Why do you think that nobody was doing that before you started doing it? And why? Why was it something that was just so apparently obvious to you just to be like, oh, it doesn't mean that I quit, it just means that I invent this new way of doing it.
Jeff Fenster (1h 10m 28s):Well there's a lot. Thank you for that by the way. That was a really good rendering of what we build is for those who didn't listen, we're gonna dub that over and over again. But it's a handful of things. And this goes back to that luck comment, which is most people who start restaurants, let's use restaurants, are chefs. So when I started Everbowl, and I wanna go back to answer your question cause I think it's important to get there. , my dad and mom both told me not to, my wife jokingly told me not to. Like nine outta 10 restaurants fail. Yeah. Why do nine outta 10 restaurants fail? Because they're started by chefs. What does that mean? It means they're not entrepreneurs and business. They're a chef. Yeah. They're that business owner we talked about at the beginning. Sure. So their problem, they're
Travis Chappell (1h 11m 6s):The plumber. Yeah.
Jeff Fenster (1h 11m 7s):Branch style. They're, they're phenomenal cooking. They're better chefs. They make more better food than we do. Yeah, that's great. But that's not an entrepreneur that's not gonna create or solve that problem. They need to open restaurant and be their chef. So they have to find a company to do it. Of the entrepreneurs who start concepts, whether it's a retail footprint or a restaurant, a lot of 'em don't have the means. Right. Because while yes, anyone can go start a construction company, I spent a lot of money r and ding and learning and overpaying to build to get to where we are today. so I could have opened four more restaurants or build the, we rebuild, I invested in the, we rebuild side ahead of, it's kinda like what Elon Musk did by building charging stations before the cars were there, knowing that I'm gonna build the cars, but without charging stations, no one's gonna buy the cars.
Jeff Fenster (1h 11m 50s):Sure. so I had, but
Travis Chappell (1h 11m 51s):He knew he had enough capital to be able to correct outpace
Jeff Fenster (1h 11m 54s):That. And I had enough capital personally Yeah. To make those investments before I brought in investors. And before I was able to fund an opening 5 67 restaurants. And if my first restaurant ended up failing, that construction company wasn't doing any anything. So you
Travis Chappell (1h 12m 6s):Only had one Everbowl location before you built,
Jeff Fenster (1h 12m 9s):So my very first one was built by one of my good friend's sons who was working at the time. He was one of the main construction guys on the job. He helped design it and then he helped do a lot of the work. We brought in other people. Yeah. I went to him and said, do you want to come work for me and build out my construction company? So the same guy who built one, Jake built all of them up until recently. Gotcha. As part of the head of WebU. so I went to the individual who built it and elevated him to the head of a company. Yeah. And brought him into the, and then we started r and ding it and we had no idea what we were doing. So it, and I don't know anything about construction. Yeah. Like I don't build anything. Full disclosure, I don't even know how to do Legos.
Jeff Fenster (1h 12m 51s):Like there's a rule like holidays and birthdays. Nothing comes pre, if it's not preassembled, we don't buy it. Or my wife, you don't shop at
Travis Chappell (1h 12m 58s):Ikea.
Jeff Fenster (1h 12m 58s):I don't shop at Ikea and my wife is literally putting together my kids' stuff. I don't do it. But to the whole point of sales and marketing and stuff, I don't need to know how to do it. I just had the resources. So why was I lucky? I was lucky because I was in a position to recognize a problem. I'm not a chef, I'm a entrepreneur. So I'm good at startups, I'm comfortable in the unknown, I'm good at sales. so I knew that I could sell this to investors later and to my et cetera. I could recruit the people and I was gonna build enough restaurants where I was never thinking about using it as a, as an outward facing company. I was doing it for myself. Sure. So my plan was to invest in building this. So restaurants 20 through 50, were gonna be cheap enough. We're buy restaurant 30.
Jeff Fenster (1h 13m 38s):I could recoup my investment. I'm gonna lose money on the first 20 and pay more than I would've had to. Yeah. And a lot of people just aren't in that position. Yeah. So, yes, that's the fencer luck. I was lucky enough to be in the position, but I also was in the position to notice the opportunity and I was lucky enough to, to recognize it. so I made those capital investments early. Yeah. And as a team, we put the right mind share together and the team of smarter people than me figured out how to do it. Got it. I just set the goal of saying, this is what we need to accomplish. Yeah.
Travis Chappell (1h 14m 6s):So you were just like, we need to be, we need to figure out how to take this from eight weeks to seven days or did you even have a timeframe?
Jeff Fenster (1h 14m 14s):I mean, I never had seven days. Yeah. That was just a dream. It just less time. But it was three months. It took three months. I mean, we started building in July. I signed the lease in July. I opened in October. Yeah. Now. so we just
Travis Chappell (1h 14m 22s):Need to shrink this,
Jeff Fenster (1h 14m 23s):Shrink it, get it faster. I mean, we're building the same thing over and over and over and over again. And one thing that I do with all my companies, and I recon I recommend every entrepreneur and business leader do, is learn from public companies. See there's a, there's a secret and the secret is public companies are public, which means they have to disclose everything. So during C O D, when Rerate tours don't know what to do, go listen to Domino's quarterly report. Hmm. The quarterly conference call where the C E O, the c o, the CFO speak for an hour and a half to the shareholders and tell them what we're dealing with, what we're working on, here's our plan and where we're going. They have to, it's the law. Right. Thank you. S e c. So you can learn from me as a restaurateur.
Jeff Fenster (1h 15m 4s):I can learn from McDonald's and Carl's Jr. And Domino's and Pizza Hut and all these public brands. I can learn from them and see what are they doing right now. Now I can't necessarily apply at Apples for apples, but McDonald's is the largest toy manufacturer in the world. Let that sink in. The largest they don't, they've never sold a single toy.
Travis Chappell (1h 15m 23s):Wow.
Jeff Fenster (1h 15m 23s):They make more toys than any toy company in the world for the Happy Meal. That's it. They have the largest chicken farms in the world for the chicken nuggets and they're a hamburger place. So they vertically integrated things to reduce costs for them to be able to offer something. Mm. so I started to say, well, how they own the, they're the second largest or the largest landowner in the world behind, either behind the church or they're ahead of the church. Wow. But they're one or two in the most real estate owned cuz they own the land under every McDonald's. I can't do all that. I don't have those kind of resources. But what can I do? Well I'm gonna build them. I can give my ti allowance back to myself. And then I started to learn that I can negotiate a ti allowance from my landlord and use that money to fund myself to build them.
Jeff Fenster (1h 16m 4s):Hmm. Right. It's my company. so I'm gonna take the money Sure. And build it. Pay, pay you pay me and amortize it. You the the tenant still pays for it. Yeah. You just amortize it over five years. So it's a loan built into my my lease. Your lease. Yeah. so I started to do that and then eventually we will became something and as a result of us becoming great at it and building phenomenal processes and SOPs and learnings and 60 restaurants later and , regulations and all this stuff, we now have an awesome product to sell third parties. Yeah. So I'm able to talk to Shaquille O'Neal and say, Hey let us build Big Chicken. I'm able to talk to Drew Brees and say, Hey, let us build Stretch zone I'm able to talk to to you and say, hey let's build a podcast studio somewhere.
Jeff Fenster (1h 16m 45s):Right, right. Whatever you need built, we build can do it. And what's my track record? I built and scaled 60 Everbowl. So our model, our true customer is anyone who's scaling a concept. The same concept more than once.
Travis Chappell (1h 16m 60s):So I want you to tell the story of how you closed down Shaq and Shaq's Big Chick cuz it's a really cool story and it speaks to everything that we've been talking about on this entire interview, which is relationship relationships are at the top and everything else is secondary to them even. And especially when it comes to selling. So, so yeah tell the story cuz I know he, it started as like, Hey Shaq is gonna potentially buy some ever bowls that didn't work out. You pivot different direction then . Yep. The We Built thing came across
Jeff Fenster (1h 17m 30s):Tell Story. So yeah, our goal was to have Shaq be part of Everbowl Shaq's part of a ton of brands. I was speaking at an event and Everbowl was there and he was speaking at the event and someone on stage asked him about Everbowl and he's like, oh I really like Everbowl. so I connected with him after we fed him some Everbowl. He liked it. He connected me to his manager. He connected me to his team. He connected me Toth Authentic Brands, which is a partner with him, one of his part major partners. And I started to go through the, , the litany of people you have to go through with someone as known, , as big as Shaq. Sure. During the process it wasn't a good fit and it really wasn't a good fit because he has his own brand called Big Chicken, which he was just launching as his own franchise concept. And they really wanted to put the full force of Shaq behind. That made total sense and I understood it and so I said Okay.
Jeff Fenster (1h 18m 13s):But I had built a relationship with a lot of people on the team. And so again going to Pivoting, going to, , one of my core values, I don't use the word pivot, but it's change ready is being ready to change when the opportunity is there or is required. I'm not gonna not capitalize on that. So as I was selling him on Everbowl, I'm selling the We Build Arm Sure. Of why it's gonna be so much more efficient for him to buy in Everbowl. But I'm still seeding the whole we build concept and he said, why have big chicken? Can you help Now at this point we had never done any other concept but Everbowl ever. But my answer as always is yes. Yeah, sure. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Right. Because, and you said it best, but if you asked me what is the definition of an entrepreneur, it's a problem solver.
Jeff Fenster (1h 18m 56s):It's what? It's what it is. And it's why a lot of entrepreneurs fail is they failed to realize the litany of problems that they're gonna have to solve and embrace that and recognize it is a nonstop barrage of problems one way or another. So the problem was he had his own concept and I couldn't get him as an Everbowl customer. I can get him as a, we build customer. So let's start. so we started down the process, finally made it to the point where they gave us a blueprint and said, okay, , can you do this? And I said, look, I can tell you about WebU, I can tell you about Everbowl. You can go into all the ever bowls and see 'em. You have come to San Diego, come see my facility. Cause I believe once you come in and you see what we're doing and you realize how different it is, you'll be a customer.
Jeff Fenster (1h 19m 36s):They said, okay, this was a Wednesday. They were coming the following Tuesday. so we had less than a week. Again, one of them, my other success principles is be remarkable. If you're gonna do something like don't do it average, don't just cash in the bare minimum. Like strive for remarkability. Right. Shoot for the stars. You miss, you land on the moon, you shoot for the moon and miss you're back where you started. so we decided, and one of the, one of our team members is phenomenal just at like technology. He's our coo. His name's Eric Eric with a K and he, he, yeah, he's actually sitting here. So shout out to Eric. He used virtual reality and built their whole store in VR and we basically said, Hey guys, by working with us we'll build your store in virtual reality so you can actually see it before we even build it and make sure it's exactly what you want.
Jeff Fenster (1h 20m 17s):They're like, oh this is awesome. So we're like, we'll come to San Diego and we'll put you in the virtual reality when you come. Fantastic. Well he also had the idea of let's build a big chicken store in our office, the actual store. And we only had six days and we had never done this before. so we built a big chicken in our office. We put a big curtain over it so you couldn't see it. We put seven or eight, I can't remember if there was eight of us or seven of us VR headsets in front of the curtains. Just a curtain. So you, it's kind of, this
Travis Chappell (1h 20m 42s):Is Shaq.
Jeff Fenster (1h 20m 43s):Shaq didn't come to this meeting. Okay.
Travis Chappell (1h 20m 44s):This is his management meeting. This
Jeff Fenster (1h 20m 45s):Is his team. This is the whole big chicken executive team. The, the, the decision makers. Sure. And then one of our, one of our big investors and partners is Drew Bre. so I had him come too, just because I thought that if you're gonna work with someone of Shaq's Elk Yeah. It's important to also demonstrate like, we're not here just to, to steal Shaq's. Correct. Yeah. Sphere of, of notoriety.
Travis Chappell (1h 21m 5s):Yeah. We're we're moving somewhere regardless of if Shaq joins
Jeff Fenster (1h 21m 7s):Or not. Correct. Correct. Yes. And they knew Drew and so I thought it was great cause I also fun fact wanted to sell Drew on his other franchise concepts that were not just inevitable opportunity. Sure. So it was a great time to bring them together. So they were all there. We all get in the headset and we're all walking through the big chicken and the VR and everyone's like, this is really cool cuz I mean, vrs cool. Right? Sure. It was built to spec. I mean the counters were exactly the right height. Nice. You were walking through the restaurant. Well, while that was happening, Eric removed the curtain. So when everyone took the headset off and they come back to the real world, they're now staring at a big chicken. Yeah. And they, a few of them put the headset on and off. Like they didn't know where the hell they were. Like this was confusing. It was awesome.
Jeff Fenster (1h 21m 48s):Like it was truly one for the ages. Yeah. And they got to now see that we can build it. Right. They could see the quality of our build. Yeah. They could see that we did it as fast as we did in less than a week. Right. And so we did enough to earn the opportunity to build one. so we got to build the first one Oh. That we built with them was in Vegas and we built it in and they gave
Travis Chappell (1h 22m 7s):You two weeks, gave you six weeks to do it or something. Like they still didn't like my, my plenty of, they still didn't believe the concept. Right? Oh yeah. You were like, oh, we could do it in a week and a half or two weeks or whatever. And they're like, okay, we'll give you eight or six or something. so
Jeff Fenster (1h 22m 17s):We showed up on a Monday. The site wasn't ready for us. Okay. So it was supposed to be, we left and went to the hotel and basically got them to, we, we basically told their general contractor team, if you guys don't finish it today, we'll do we'll get it ready. Yeah. They got it ready Tuesday. We started, most of our team left on Friday. We had it finished by the following week Wednesday. And they were really impressed. I mean they genuinely said like they believe they, they thought they were gonna get more of like a Honda Civic and, and they got a Ferrari. They thought the quality was better. The price obviously will get better. The first one's never gonna be our best price. Sure. But they recognize now like we built in our opinion and theirs one of the highest quality stores that they have
Travis Chappell (1h 22m 55s):In, in a percentage
Jeff Fenster (1h 22m 57s):Of the time. In a percentage of the time. Yeah. And so as a result of that, which is
Travis Chappell (1h 22m 60s):Not business man.
Jeff Fenster (1h 23m 0s):Right. Time's money. That's
Travis Chappell (1h 23m 1s):A big, that's a big deal.
Jeff Fenster (1h 23m 3s):And franchisees, a lot of them only look at the price to build. And I'll tell you, as a guy who owned 28 stores of my own Yeah. Every day you're not open, you're missing out on revenue. Right. Right. Get open, get open yesterday. Right. , even if it costs the same get open yesterday. Sure. We're still more cost effective, , so that was a really fun experience. And then we got to partner with Shaq and his team and be part of the big chicken experience, which obviously Big Chicken is a far cry from the Everbowl Yeah. As far as concept. But for we build and we build self, now we're turning WebU into its own powerhouse. And that's a fun, exciting thing for us to really focus on outside of the Everbowl side. Yeah. So we're talking a whole bunch of new concepts and looking forward to really turning it into a massive company. I'm looking
Travis Chappell (1h 23m 42s):Forward to that too. Dude, I'm, I'm really excited to see what you guys do with that cuz I, I I, I've said it to so many people cuz I'm an investor in Everbowl. Full disclosure. Thank you. And that was one of the things I was like, man, this We Build concept is the thing that sells it more than anything because it's so massively scalable beyond just this one brand's ability to scale. Yes, it does. It's not reliant on Everbowl. This can partner with existing franchises, new franchises, big people, small people, everybody needs fast and quality construction. And it was like, oh my gosh, this thing is gonna, this thing is gonna be massive. And it's wild how often how solving your own problems can actually become the, like the biggest opportunity that there is.
Travis Chappell (1h 24m 23s):Correct. Correct. There's this, there's a small company that started as a gaming company and the, the ceo, the founder wanted, wanted to do this like online gaming community software thing. And he started doing, it wasn't working, they ended up Pivoting and whatever the concept was, they, they sold it and he did okay on that exit and he wanted to get back into the gaming world again. He was like, this is where I, this is where I thrive, this is what I love and I, I wanna do something in gaming. so I started another gaming site and with some money this time he had like, , five, 10 million to play with from his previous exit. And he plows almost all of it back into this other gaming thing. It's not working the way they want it to work, but on the backend to improve communication between him and his whole team while they were building out this whole community, they ended up building this like pretty sweet little communication tool, which is now otherwise known as Slack, which is a $40 billion company or something crazy like that.
Travis Chappell (1h 25m 13s):If it's not 40 billion, it's it's a deck. A billion dollar company. Definitely. But it started as just like, hey, we can't communicate the way that we wanna communicate internally to build this video game site, which is my second shot at doing this. Let's make sure that we build something that gives us seamless communications interdepartmentally and that allows us to be able to, , do the things the way that we wanna do them. And that, that pivot became, , slack, one of the biggest technology companies in the world,
Jeff Fenster (1h 25m 38s):And one we all use, I mean we use it here.
Travis Chappell (1h 25m 39s):Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Household name, , like unless you, unless you are blue collar worker in Iowa, you may not know Slack, but like pretty much everybody knows Slack. And so, , I I think, I think WebU has, even though Everbowl is successful and it does very well and will continue to expand and , and will continue to grow and grow even more now, I, I just like, we build this to me is just like, wow. The, the, the sky's the limit on what you guys can do with that. So congrats on that man. Congrats on all the other success you got going on besides all the business stuff. Yep. You're now jumping into the podcasting space. I am a little bit, a little bit of content putting that out there. Why was that important to you and why now?
Jeff Fenster (1h 26m 16s):It took a while for me to get there. , I think a lot of my mentors, a lot of my advisors, a lot of people who are investors were pushing me more and more and more to do it. There's a human element to brands. , we can talk about Everbowl, we can talk about, we build, I'm really strong in the relationship side, so the bigger my sphere of influence grows, the more opportunity I can bring to my main business. I think I add a lot of value that I can share to the masses and help everyone else achieve it. ? Cause I think that there's a formula that I've used, I, I talked to you about it, , my, it's a success formula. It's not as archaic as it sounds when I say that, but it's a, it's a model that works well for me. And it's something I say on stages all the time when I speak, which is I'm an ordinary guy and I figured out what extra stuff I need to do to have extraordinary results.
Jeff Fenster (1h 27m 1s):And that means that everybody else can do those same things. Hmm. I'm not Shaq, I'm not seven one, I'm not Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, where I'm like, min a smart, , I'm a five foot nine guy who got, , the NFL missed on. But what I do understand is I understand scale and business and entrepreneurship, and there's a huge group of people who are trying to do that, and there's too much information available for them to always know what is the right information. So because I have a track record of being able to start companies in many different sectors, I think I can help them. And if I help them and make a deposit in their lives by helping them achieve success, I'm gonna expand my sphere of influence. I'm gonna make a, a, , it's, it's called relationship capital and a relationship bank account. And I'm gonna make a deposit.
Jeff Fenster (1h 27m 41s):I'm gonna bring them into my sphere. I'm gonna get to know them, make friends with them, and who knows how we can do business together in the future. So it is self-serving. It is a selfish motive to grow my own companies and grow my sphere of influence, but it's also to help a lot of people. And I'm at the point in life where I do have my financial needs taken care of in that sense. So what am I doing and what is my legacy and how am I gonna fill my cup? Yeah. And my, I have the most fun today when I speak at live and school of entrepreneurship and mentoring college kids Yeah. That are trying to become entrepreneurs and watching them go from where they are now to an idea and watching that idea thrive. I have so much more fun making key introductions and getting that phone call or text saying, thank you.
Jeff Fenster (1h 28m 21s):That was so valuable for me. It changed my business. Yeah. Or my life that's rewarding at a level that I get on a one-to-one basis. So for all those reasons, I'm trying to build my personal brand a little bit more. I've obviously watched a lot of friends be extremely successful at building their personal brand and how that creates abundance of opportunity. And yeah. To your point, luck is when you put more rods and, , you put more fishing lines into the water, you're more likely to catch a fish. Yeah. In business, it's the same. So the more friends I can make through helping others and building that sphere and sharing my knowledge and expertise that I've learned from mentors and advisors who have helped me along the way, the better. And if it can help Everbowl and we build at the same time, , I owe it to my shareholders, I owe it to you as an investor, , to be out there and building that, that knowledge, speaking on Podcasts like this, sharing the Everbowl story, sharing the We build story.
Jeff Fenster (1h 29m 8s):Yeah. Yeah. , no one gets to know about it if I don't put it out there. Yeah. And I'm the face of the company, and so I kind of have to get a little bit more brazen, a little bit more on the forefront and do it. And fun fact, you're helping me, so Yes.
Travis Chappell (1h 29m 21s):Yes. Which I'm pumped for as well. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I was gonna say, I'm, I'm excited. I'm excited for you in multitude of capacities, man, you've earned it. You deserve it. Met your, met your lovely wife the other day. You guys seem, , you always tell a lot by somebody, by meeting the people in their life that are close, closest to them. And it says a lot about you, is that I've, I've met a lot of people that are close to you, and everybody that I've met has a lot of good things to say. So I'm excited for the growth of Everbowl. We build all the other stuff that you have ha have your hands in the studio, stuff that we're gonna do together, hopefully. And then also your show. So if you are watching this episode, if you're tuning in right now, then whatever you are listening to this episode on, whether you're watching on Youtube or listening on Apple or Spotify, whatever it is, go look for the Jeff Fester show.
Travis Chappell (1h 30m 2s):It should be live by the time this episode comes out, the Jeff Fester Show. Type that in. Give him a quick subscribe and rating, review, check out a few episodes. The first dozen people he is bringing on the show are better than like most people's most recent dozen, even if they've done 300 episodes. so, I, I'm excited to that, that Jeff chose our team to work with to get this out into the world. And I'm really excited for the content he's gonna be releasing out there. So please go check that out, the Jeff Fester show, and then follow Jeff on all socials at Fester, Jeff. And, and yeah, check, check out some of the stuff that he's releasing over there. Tell 'em you heard about 'em here on the show. Jeff, thanks so much for coming on, dude. This is a lot of fun. Thanks for having me, man. We finally, we'll make it happen.
Jeff Fenster (1h 30m 41s):Absolutely.
Travis Chappell (1h 30m 41s):That's it for today's episode. Thanks for spending some time with me and my friends. If you want to be better friends with me, then head over to Travis Chappell dot com slash team to subscribe to my free newsletter, your friend Travis, where I share what's on my mind about life, building a business, raising kids, being married, and anything else I would normally share with my close circle of friends. That's Travis Chappell dot com slash team. And my biggest ask of you, since I'm sharing my friends with you, is to share this episode with a friend of yours that hasn't listened to the show yet. And leave us a quick five star rating in Apple Podcasts and in Spotify, it would mean the world to us as it helps us make sure that this show continues to be more valuable to you. Thanks in advance, and I'll catch you on the next episode.
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