Transcript of The One Thing Nobody Can Take From Your Home Service Business | Jason Feifer

in the beginning, 2 decades ago, you were frustrated small-town newspaper reporter. And tell me a little bit about your life. What got you into where you're at today? What are you excited about?

Yeah, man, I graduated college and I became a small-town newspaper reporter, North Central Massachusetts. Shout out to anybody who lives in Gardner, Mass., because I worked at the Gardner News. And I just had these big ambitions for myself like everyone does, and I felt frustrated that I was where I was, that I was working at this tiny little paper, that I wasn't getting noticed. I expected, Tommy, I'm sure so many people do, I expected to just be noticed, that if I did good work, people would see it and they would reward me. And it doesn't work that way. What I have found now over a course of a career is that there are 2 ways to be in the world. You can be interchangeable or you can be singular. And if you're interchangeable, then you have the same skill sets as so many other people, your value is low because you're a commodity. If you're singular, you're seen as the single person who can solve that problem, who can do that thing. Your value is high because there's a scarcity for you. Back then, I thought just being a good writer and editor and/or reporter or whatever would make me stand out.

But what I have since learned is that it doesn't. Your expertise, your skills alone do not make you stand out. And so back then, I was frustrated because I didn't understand what did make me stand out. I think I've spent my career trying to figure that out.

So what is it?

It's a couple things. Number one, it is what problem do you own? What do people turn to you specifically to solve so that they understand that you equals solution for them? And then number two, it's your ideas. It's not just your expertise, it's your ideas. I have spent so long trying to think about and refining how I articulate my ideas, even Let's just say this thing that I just said to you a second ago about being singular versus interchangeable. There's another way of saying that, which is just, uh, hey, hey Tommy, you, you know, look, you gotta stand out. If you don't stand out, then people won't. But nobody remembers that. It sounds pat. It sounds generic. You need ownable language. You need to take your ideas and turn them into things that you can repeat that sound really catchy, that people start to associate with you. So when I say over and over again, you gotta be, you're either singular or you're interchangeable, people start to view their problem through my lens. language. And once they do that, then I am the owner of the solution, and then they turn to me, and that again makes me singular.

So walk me through 20 years ago. When did you find the job at Entrepreneur Magazine, and what rose you to the top?

I found the job at Entrepreneur Magazine 11 years ago. I joined Entrepreneur in 2015. I became editor-in-chief in 2016.

Wow.

And At the time, I was just looking for another job. Honestly, I did not think of myself as an entrepreneur. I did not think that I belonged at Entrepreneur Magazine. It was just an opportunity that was available to me, and I took it because it sounded interesting. And then I became editor-in-chief, and when I became editor-in-chief, people started to treat me differently, and in a couple ways. They would— they, they They do things like we're doing right now, which is that they would have me on their podcasts and they would introduce me as some kind of authority and they would expect me to have lots of things to say. And I didn't, I didn't have lots of things to say. And it made me really nervous. What am I doing here? I'm just a guy who tells stories. And though I realized that if I could figure out how to embody the thing that people thought that I was, there was going to be a massive opportunity there. And to do that, I had to start rethinking exactly who I am. You have to go through this process of, I think, not just looking at what you do or what is accessible to you, right?

Every— think about your job with whatever it is that you're doing right now. You have a lot of things that are accessible to you, the easy options. I know easily how to do that. I know easily how to do that. But then there's another layer outside of that, which I call available. There's accessible, and then there's available. And available is everything that you could do, but nobody's asking you to do. And for me, what was accessible to me was running a magazine. I'd been given the job. I can run the magazine. I can make decisions about this magazine. I could do that over and over and over again, put out a good magazine. What was available to me, what was available to me was reimagining myself as a— and I hate this term— thought leader. And to do that, I had to think about how do I talk? How do I present myself in the world? What are my ideas? Who are my ideas for? How do I present them in a way in which I build authority around myself? And then once I do that, and people start to come to me, because they trust me, what else can I do?

Can I start starting businesses with them? Can I start joining their advisory boards? Can I start to establish myself not just as a thinker, but as a doer. These things were all available to me because I had some kind of authority and I leveraged it. I always advise people to push themselves beyond accessible and to available, because that is where you're going to find massive growth opportunities. That is basically, Tommy, been the project of the last 10 years for me. I'll add one other thing, which is that when I became editor-in-chief and people started treating me differently, I realized very quickly they're treating me that way because of a title that I rent. I don't own this. I don't own Entrepreneur Magazine, and I don't own the title of editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. I rent it. Somebody had it before me, somebody will have it after me. And so I cannot rest on a thing that I rent because that will be pulled away from me and I'll walk away with absolutely nothing. So this is the moment for me, and this is the moment for you, whoever you are listening, in whatever you are renting.

This is the moment to build something that is yours, a foundation that you stand on, that you own. I think a lot about that.

So authority is talking on stages, doing podcasts. It's growing your social media. Uh, it's basically getting yourself out there to give you exposure because opportunities come to you is what you said. So what kind of opportunities, what are you looking at? What fascinates you about entrepreneurship? What kind, what are you doing today in that with that?

Well, I mean, what fascinates me about entrepreneurship is people creating something out of nothing. I mean, it's as simple as that. What I love is how much entrepreneurship is about creation and building, but also it's about human psychology. And that is my original entry point to this. I did not go to business school. I did not really know that much about business, honestly, before I became the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur. I'd worked at Fast Company, and so I was immersed there. But it was the click moment for me was when I realized that all these people that I'm meeting and everything that they're building is not really just about business tactics. That's fine. You can learn business tactics, but the more important people, what do people truly succeed on? Understanding other people. That's it. Understanding other people because business is just about problem solving. And that means that you have to deeply understand the people that you are reaching and the problems that they have. And then next, you have to understand how to articulate those problems back to them. And then you have to understand the multiple layers of problems that they have. Right? Donald Miller from Building a StoryBrand will tell you about the internal problem and the external problem.

You need to understand both in order for people to even trust you to deliver the solution to the external problem. This is a human endeavor. And I love how I look at the world that I come from of writing and ideas is really about understanding people and then just informing people. What I love about this entrepreneurship is that it's about understanding people and building lasting things that solve real problems, that create real wealth. That is awesome. And I found that it is more accessible than I originally thought. I thought to get into entrepreneurship, you need to study business. You need to really understand everything that you're doing. You do not, man. You just need to understand people and you need to understand yourself well enough to take one step at a time and figure it out along the way. I've met so many people who just build because they have this instinct, because they have this curiosity, because they have this ability to constantly learn as they go. That is very exciting to me. And I think that it's available to anyone. And I love being able to share that.

You know, I, uh, I made a post a while back that I said, you know, a lot of people are pushing entrepreneurship and it's the best thing you could ever do, but it's not for everybody. And I just listened. I had Kevin O'Leary was at one of my events and he's like, You're going to get your teeth kicked in. You're not going to— relationships. I mean, if you build a business, uh, and it's not given to you, it's a lot of hard work. It's most likely going to fail based on statistics. I mean, what is your thought when someone says, I'm interested in going into business?

Uh, my thought is, tell me why. You're right that this is not something that's for everyone and anyone who's out there trying to push it on you. Is doing it for their own selfish purposes because they got something to sell you. I don't believe that. I mean, look, for, for all that I just said there a minute ago, what I was speaking to was what I assume is an audience listening to this of people who are doing it or who are enthusiastic about it. And I love cheerleading those people, but I would never walk up to somebody who doesn't feel this in their bones, who doesn't look at their own life and say, you know what, I literally can't do anything else. And then tell them that they should go be an entrepreneur because they'll fail. They'll fail. This is too hard. I think when I came up as a reporter, what people would always say is you only do journalism if you literally can't do anything else. And I think the same is true about entrepreneurship. You only do entrepreneurship if you literally can't do anything else. All my friends who are successful entrepreneurs say to me the same thing, which is they say I would make a terrible employee.

Like, they know they don't want to work for anyone. They, they're not going to follow anyone else's systems or rules. They can only be build. So do you want to go into business? Well, tell me why. Tell me why. Tell me why this is the better path for you versus anything else. And if the answer is because it's a better way to make money, then you got to step back and reconsider that. Because yes, it can be. But, you know, the vast majority of businesses are— they're not making massive amounts of money, and nor do they need to. You could build a lifestyle business, and it's perfectly fantastic for you. But you need to understand that this is often a harder and more unpredictable way to make money. But if it is the thing that you cannot turn away from, if it is the thing that you require of yourself, then it's the only way.

I agree with you 100%. Um, let's just dive in real quick to Built for Tomorrow. You got 4— sure, you got a framework of, uh, panic adaption, the new normal, and wouldn't go back. Can we just walk through that?

Yeah. Yeah, sure. You know, it's funny, I'm going to tell you about it and then I'm going to undercut it. So what you're talking about here is I wrote this book, came out in 2022. It's called Build for Tomorrow: An Action Plan for Embracing Change, Adapting Fast, and Future-Proofing Your Career. I think that's what the— I think that's what the book title says. Like, it's hard to remember, but basically it is what I learned from interviewing and studying world-class leaders and entrepreneurs about adaptability, because we are in a moment of constant change. And you have to be always thinking not about what have I done that worked, but rather, what can I do now that will work next? And you have to be constantly abandoning what came before to the benefit of what the world, your business, your career, your family, whatever needs from you now. And I wanted to put that into a book, and I did it with this structure that I had observed about how everyone, individuals and companies, go through change, which is that change happens in 4 ways: panic, adaptation, new normal, wouldn't go back. First, you panic, freak out because everything's changing.

You don't know what to do, and that's very natural. Our brains— there's decades of psychological research have confirmed this— our brains experience what's called loss aversion theory. Loss aversion theory holds that we, we protect against loss more than we seek gain over and over again. The studies on this are wild. We will constantly try to protect against loss more than seek gain, even if the gain is significantly better. And so it's natural that we panic. We want to know what's going to come next. And so we start to extrapolate loss. Well, I've lost this. That means I'm going to lose that other thing and lose that other thing. That's panic. Everything's falling away around us. Then we get to new normal. And, uh, or adaptation. Then we get to adaptation and we start to look around. We say, well, what, what can I change? What new things do I have access to? How do I start to rethink? You start to realize that if you're going through change, everyone's going through change too, which means that all of your clients have problem— new problems now. All of your customers have new— all your employees, everybody's got new problems, not just you.

And they're looking for somebody to step up and help. And if you can do that, well, then suddenly you are in need. And that can bring you to new normal, where suddenly you have built a new foundation. And eventually, it will work so well that you will reach wouldn't go back, which is when you look back and you say, you know what, I value this change so much that I wouldn't go back to a time before I had it. And the reason that I lay this out is because I want people to understand that wouldn't go back is the natural endpoint for these changes, which means that it is available to you. And the question really is, How fast do you want to get there? Do you want to spend a lot of time in panic, or do you want to try to move along to adaptation, a new normal, faster so you can get to wouldn't go back? It's there. That's the endpoint. I'm telling you, it's there. And so how fast do you want to get there? Now, that's the book. That's how I structured the book. I believe in that. But I will tell you something.

If we're— let's rewind for a second, Tommy, which is about— when I talk about ideas and how you have to be known for your ideas, ideas make you singular. I found that frameworks are an incredibly powerful way to communicate your ideas, but there's a problem, which is that frameworks also need to be really actionable. I wrote this book and I created this structure, and then people would ask me in interviews, so like, okay, so then how do I get from panic to adaptation? Okay, and then what exactly do I do at the adaptation stage? I realized that it was just too mushy. It was a little hard to to, to, to work it that way. And so it wasn't a really wonderful framework. So I've actually moved away from it, even though it was the center of my book. And when I get on a stage in front of Clorox or Pfizer or whatever, I don't use it anymore because I found that it wasn't as actionable a framework as others are. So now I'm constructing new ones so that you can say, first you do this, then you do that, then you do that.

For anybody who is breaking down process so that they can communicate it in a really powerful and effective way and be known for your ideas, Think not just about the catchy ways that you can organize your information, but also the ways in which your information feels deeply actionable, that you can teach it step by step. And that was missing from that framework.

I love it. You know, you've done over, well, a lot longer than a decade, but this last decade, a lot of interviewing successful entrepreneurs. Um, what do you think? most people get wrong? I mean, what did you love? What are like some breakthrough things that you're like, who is the most fascinating people you've interviewed, I guess? And then we could talk about them.

Oh man, you know, look, I, I get to interview everybody and it's fun. I get to interview big celebrities. I get to sit down with The Rock and Jimmy Fallon and, you know, major billionaires and, and also people that you've never heard of, people just building really fascinating businesses or Main Street businesses. I, I love talking to all of them. And generally what happens is that I walk away from the best conversations with a singular insight or a thing that somebody told me that I know I'm just going to be repeating forever because it is a helpful framework, because it is a helpful way of looking at something. And Then the way in which I tend to communicate or work with other people is that someone will be working on something or stuck on something, and it will remind me of a specific thing that somebody else told me, and I'll bring that story in. So I'll just pepper you with a few right now just to start, and we can dig into any of them, or I can do it all day, man. Uh, so number one is one of my— one of the most memorable things anyone ever said to me was I had a conversation with Ryan Reynolds about this moment of transition for him from when he was an actor to when he got into business.

Obviously, now he's very well known for the number of businesses that he's built or is involved in. But at the time, he didn't know anything about business, and he found it really intimidating. And he came to this philosophy that really helped him through it. He told me, you can't be good at something unless you're willing to be bad. And I love that. You can't be good at something unless you're willing to be bad. Because what Ryan is saying is that we tend to hold ourselves to an impossible standard of doing something new and expecting us to be ourselves to be good at it at the very beginning. But that's, that's unfair. And it's also untrue. The thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful people is not whether they're good at something at the very beginning, it's whether they're willing to tolerate being bad long enough to get to good. And I share that with people who are struggling through the early steps of something all the time. Another thing that really stuck with me was when Malcolm Gladwell told me, self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. We were talking talking about how to find projects that feel like they fit inside of your world or the way in which you like to do things.

And he said he really tries not to do that because self-conceptions are powerfully limiting, that if you have too narrow a definition of yourself, then you will turn down all the opportunities that don't match that narrow definition. I love that. And then let me get out of celebrities. I'll just tell you one other thing that really stuck with me, which was Um, I, I, you know, I was speaking to Intuit not long ago. I flew down to Atlanta and was speaking to a sales team there. And, uh, as I started the start of the talk by sharing this thing that Ben Chestnut, the founder of Mailchimp, uh, which, you know, then became an Intuit product or was acquired by Intuit, uh, that he told me about the early days of Mailchimp where it was this small scrappy company and he loved that stage. He loved being a small scrappy startup founder and leader. And then the company grew and grew and grew and grew. And as you know, reached that point, as any founder in this experience will know, where you don't know everybody personally who works at the company anymore. And one day he has this all-hands, uh, advised by his team, you know, it's time to bring everybody together.

And so he has this all-hands where he's giving some updates and, uh, takes questions. And somebody raises their hand and they say, can you tell us the plan? Like, what's the plan for the next 6, 12 months? And Ben says, we don't have a plan. We don't have a stinking plan. We are scrappy. We just do this. And, you know, that was the half of the room that had been with him for the early days. They loved that. And that was him. And he loved that too. But it made the other half of the room very nervous because they had left other jobs for this company.

Yeah.

And now to hear that the leader doesn't have a plan Not good, not good. And so afterwards, somebody on his leadership team pulled him aside and said, you know, you need to think very differently about who you are at this company now. You are not the scrappy startup leader anymore. You are the leader of a growing enterprise, and you need to act and communicate that way. And he said that was very, very hard, and it sent him through a lot of soul searching. But what he ultimately came to realize was that as the company grows and functionally becomes a different company at different stages, the leader must also become a different leader at different stages. And you have to be the right leader for the right moment at your company. And that was a hard lesson for him to learn. But learning it is what enabled Mailchimp to grow the way that it did and ultimately be acquired by Intuit. And I love that story. I think about that quite a lot, even in my own journey, as things around me change and I have to realize Am I still the person for the earlier stage of this, or can I evolve into the person that people need from me now?

And so that is what I shared when I started my talk at Intuit.

I love that. I think it was Maxwell that said the law of the lid. John Maxwell.

Law of the lid?

Yeah. So as a business leader, you got to grow your lid. The business will only grow as fast as the leader's Lid grows. Have you never heard that?

No, no, I haven't. That's a good one.

Yeah. So this is great, right? Ryan Reynolds, by the way, he made a lot of money originally in— wasn't it in, um, like a tequila or something?

Yes. Uh, gin. Aviation gin.

And then he, um, now he's doing phones. He's always on the commercials.

Yeah. Well, so his early stuff was, I think the first business venture he had. I mean, I'm not the Ryan Reynolds biographer, but I think the first thing was Maximum Effort, which was the advertising agency, uh, that he started, which was just— it was kind of spun out of the work that they did, uh, promoting, um, oh, what's that movie? Uh, what's the character? Deadpool. Deadpool.

Yeah.

And, uh, and then, yeah, and then he became an owner in Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile. I think that he's exited both of those. I think he's possibly exited all 3 of those at this point. But he's gotten— he's on— he's in so much. You know, it's funny, I, I often make a like a reference to Ryan and that, uh, that quote that he— that I got from him at the beginning of my keynote. And I was— I'd flown out, I'd flown out to this very, very beautiful destination in the mountains, and there was a, a high-growth startup that had a leadership retreat. And I got up in front of the— you know, it's like a like a real deep technical company. And I, I got up and I started to do my thing, and I got into this bit about Ryan Reynolds, and everyone starts snickering. And, uh, and I, you know, I was like, what's, uh, what's going on? Do you guys not like Ryan Reynolds? And they said— they're like— they said, Ryan is an investor in, in our direct competitor.

Oh boy.

I didn't know that. He's got— he's doing too many things. I can't keep track of it. So, uh, sometimes he's, he's a challenging name to drop, but yeah, I mean, he's been fascinating.

You know, that's interesting is entrepreneurs. I always tell people, Jason, you feel like you could do everything and you can, if you had the time and the energy, it, it's so hard to say no to opportunities. You find out your buddy opened a restaurant and he's doing great. You're like, I need to open a restaurant in the early days of entrepreneurship. Right. You tend to want to say yes. And I always tell people, Racehorses wear blinders. They're focused on the one thing. They, they go after it. And then eventually, uh, you know, they say, I like to put my eggs in a lot of baskets. Well, what if you put all your eggs in one basket? It would overflow. And you learn a lot of the processes, the SOPs, the checklists. And I think entrepreneurship can be scary when you say yes too much and you don't monitor your 168 hours in a week and you get pulled in a lot of directions.

Right.

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You know, this is a great question. It's something that I struggle with a lot. I was just having a long conversation with Gary Vaynerchuk about exactly this. I, I am naturally the kind of person that cannot focus on one thing. I just can't. I get— I get— I feel trapped. I start to get miserable. I start to resent it. I mean, the only reason that I have been able to be an entrepreneur for the amount of time that I have, which is a shocking amount of time to me— I mean, I've been the editor-in-chief for 10 years— only reason I'm able to do that is because I'm doing so many other things outside of it. I'm constantly getting myself involved in new ventures. I'm co-founding things. I'm like, I'm learning new things. But you are right. Let's, let's start with, you are right that if you are not focused in the right way on the thing that you're building, it will suffer. Uh, David Packard, famous line, some version of this, which was businesses don't die of starvation, they die of indigestion. That, that the problem isn't a scarcity of things, the problem is taking on too many things.

Now Gary will argue, uh, and you know, he will point to himself as evidence and, and he'll say, no, look, you, you can juggle many things, and in fact you should if you are that kind of person. But to do that, you got to make sure that everything that you build uh, doesn't rely on you and has stable foundations. And so you have to shift what is your relationship to that thing. You can't be the number one person anymore. You have to find people that you trust to be that number one person. And you have to— you know, like, he has a— what does he call it— 15/85 rule, which is that he wants to be involved in the first 15% of something, uh, to help shape it, get it going, and then his team takes care of the next 80%, and then he shows up at the end for 5% to put the cherry on top. And he says that requires a lot of humility and understanding that, like, you don't have the best way to do a thing, and that you have to be humble and understand that other people need to shine instead of you personally.

Oh, and one other thing is, as we were talking, is something that I, I, I started to think about, and I told Gary I had, Tommy, a couple years ago, I had a— I, I got to know this billionaire. I'm not going to name him. And this billionaire, uh, took a liking to me and wanted to set up monthly calls to kind of mentorship, check in. And that sounded very interesting. I liked the guy. And so we started to do that. But the thing that he kept lasering in on every time that we would talk is, I'm doing too many things. I'm doing too many things. Um, And look, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's true. I mean, you were, you were, there was like too much crap of mine in the bio that you were trying to read at the beginning of this. But it goes on. You know, I've got a company there, I help CPG founders, I work with this community called Uncharted. I, you know, like I'm building a couple different joint ventures, like I got a lot of things going on. And, and this billionaire kept saying to me, which things are you going to stop?

Like, I need a list next time of the things that you're going to stop. And I— this guy is no dummy. He's built incredible brands and had massive exits. And I understand that what he is teaching me here is how he has approached it, which is a version of what you're saying right now. And yet something about it felt wrong to me, just felt wrong. Like I didn't want to stop these things. And I had felt this tension. What ended up happening is that I just kind of stopped reaching out for the calls because I I didn't want to do the thing that he was driving me to do. And I was always unclear about whether or not that was the right decision. Should I have stopped talking to him? But when I was having this conversation with Gary, I realized something, which was, you know, you have to be thinking about what is the outcome that you desire from the things that you're building. For the billionaire, the outcome that he desires is major exits. His, his mindset is, we're gonna get it, I'm gonna fill—

It's so funny you say that.

That basket.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, I talked to Gary about the same thing, and Gary's like, I don't build companies to sell them, I build them to keep them. And I go, but why? He's like, because that's who I am. I don't need anything nice. He goes, I get paid $500,000 to speak. But finish your story, Jason. I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, well, right. So it's like, but what's— what is— I mean, what, what does Gary really want? I mean, you know, at least what, what I took away from the conversation is like, he wants to build. He likes building. Like, he just likes the process of building. And, um, and he knows that if he had just focused on one of his companies, it would be further along than it is now. But he doesn't care. He doesn't care because what he wants is the process of building. And that is Me, what do I want, Tommy? The best I can summarize it is I want an interesting life.

Yeah.

I want to pursue lots of things that I find interesting. I don't want to feel saddled down with anything. I never want something to feel like an obligation. I, I don't want to be at other people's beck and call. I just want to do interesting things. And so frankly, I don't care if these don't reach massive financial outcomes. I, I need— I know what I need to live and to support my family, and I, I'm fortunate to be able to reach that goal right now. And I don't need to be a billionaire. I don't. If I needed to be a billionaire, then I suppose what I would do is I would pour everything that I had into one giant idea, and I would try to turn it into a billion-dollar exit. I don't need that. So I'm going to operate in a different way. And that's the difference between me and the billionaire. And that makes me feel okay doing the thing that I'm doing. You just have to appreciate and understand the trade-offs.

Yeah, no. And your conviction says a lot. I mean, I worked really closely with Dan Martell, And, uh, we figured out— we did some math about figuring out how much my next exit was going to be and how much that meant for me per hour. And he said something that bothered me at the time, but the difference is, is he got me to look out of his lens instead of mine. He said, what do you not love doing? And I said, I love everything that I do. He goes, do you love driving? I go, I don't mind driving. He goes, do you love it? I go, no, I don't love it. He goes, then you're gonna hire a driver. He goes, 'cause you're going to get back 10 hours a week. He goes, do you love cooking? And I go, I order a lot of Uber Eats, super convenient. He goes, you're going to hire a chef. And I thought a lot about humility and he's like, dude, think about your health. Think about the time you could actually spend giving back to your family, your mom and dad and your sister and your fiancée.

And the good news about him is he was able to kind of shift my thinking. And, um, yeah, it's just an interesting—

It's very on brand for those who don't know, Dan wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time. And that's basically what he's telling you to do here. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Uh, you know, you say, ask what, what do I have instead of what do I lack? And how does that shift change everything?

Well, you know, we can spend a lot of time, we can spend a lot of time chasing, uh, to try to fill holes. Um, and what I like to do whenever I'm solving any kind of problem is look around and say, um, what are the assets available here? I don't know, I, I kind of obsessed with this word asset. I just started to like use everything as— everything is an asset, right? Everything that's in the air is an asset. Uh, everything that's in your ecosystem is an asset. I will often— often the thing that people get from me if I'm on your advisory board and we're having a call is just that I, I'm hearing about all the things that you're juggling and I'm like, well, wait, wait a second, that asset actually connects really well to this asset, or like that thing you actually don't need. But you know what, if you kind of gave it to somebody else and made it their problem, then you would get this other thing in return. And, and so I, I think that we spend a lot of time feeling empty, because we're focused a lot on the things that we don't have.

But it turns out what we have is, is pretty tremendous, generally speaking. And if you are— and I don't even mean— I don't mean to speak only to people who feel like they have a lot. I know a lot of people might hear this and say, but I don't have the thing that you have, Jason. I don't have the thing that you have, Tommy. Like, you've got more assets or resources or whatever available. But, but I'm telling you, rewind 10 years and I was just like a guy in a pretty dying industry, media, who had gotten, okay, a cool job, pays all right. I mean, you know, it's not— I, you know, I, I spend my time with people who are making a lot more money than me. And, uh, And, and you could—

you could—

I've known plenty of people who have run magazines, and then that job ran its course. And then they had absolutely no idea what to do with themselves. But I looked at myself, I said, what do I have? What do I know? What skills do I have? And then also, what do I have access to? Who can teach me? Who can— you know, I make a really— I make a really nice amount of money right now speaking on stages. You know, I, you know, I got going on that. The way I got going on that is because I looked around, I said, well, what what are the assets that I have? Well, okay, number one, um, I can go to other events and just watch speakers, see who's really good, see who's not, make some notes. But also number two is I had a lot of people constantly asking me if I would cover their event, right? They want me to show up as a reporter and then write about and give press— you produce some press about their event. Not interested in that. So I just started to say, you know what, I don't cover events, but I do speak at them.

And every once in a while, that started to turn into someone who would say, okay, well, what do you speak about? And then, then I would be able to get on stage. Originally, I did it for free. I wasn't asking for money. I just wanted the experience of it to just try to refine it, refine the process, see how comfortable I am on it. And then eventually, I got to the point where I felt like I had a product that I could sell. And then I started to make more money off of it. But again, no, the person before me in this job She wasn't doing that. She didn't do that. Same assets. It's just that I was looking at what do I have and how do I use it in an interesting way? You, I guarantee it, just step back, whatever you're doing, step back and think about what are your— what do you have? How are they assets? How can you use them in interesting different ways? And you will find new opportunities. I guarantee it.

You know, that gets me to my next point is about getting press. My good buddy Cameron Herold wrote a book called Free PR.

And yeah, Cameron was the, uh, CMO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, right?

Yeah, yeah, he was a COO and he's got COO Alliance. And really good guy, he was just in town 2 weeks ago and he, uh, his whole idea is, look, people need stories. Like, they don't have enough stories. So if you could call up and get a hold of a good reporter, a good magazine, you know, journalist, and give them a really good story, a lot of times they'll just take it. But what are your thoughts about really well put together PR? Because it's something that the LLMs, whether it's ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini or right now Claude, they love, especially for a business like mine, just a local garage door company, but we're in 24 states. But like the more awards we win, the more PR we get. It's like, Mm-hmm. I'm a big, big, big fan of, you know, I was talking to Alex Hormozi the other day about switching towards way more top of the funnel. instead of just direct response, becoming a really great brand. It's funny that you, uh, you brought up Donald Miller because I talked to him about 2 months ago. We were on a Zoom call. We were just having this chat about this stuff.

But what are your thoughts as far as like going— there's a lot of PR out there. You could buy it, you know, you could go on Dave Ramsey and he could talk about you on the radio. Uh, but what—

Right.

Paid versus not paid, or what's, what's worth what's worth its weight?

What's, what's worth its weight? All right, I'm gonna say something that is gonna sound surprising out of the mouth of a national magazine editor-in-chief. I think that generally speaking, don't bother with press. Don't bother. A generation ago, it was a primary way for you to get in front of your consumer, and you needed it. And It was also in many ways easier to get back then because there was more of it. There was more media. There were more people working at the media, in media, and they were hungry for stuff to share with their audiences. And, and at that point, a generation ago, media would accomplish all 3 parts of your funnel, all 3 parts. They would— it would build awareness, it would drive consideration, it would convert. That is not true anymore. It can be, don't get me wrong, it can be. If you get on the Today Show, you'll sell stuff. Congratulations. But by and large, it isn't. And a big reason for that is the struggles of the industry writ large. There are fewer reporters, there are fewer outlets, there are fewer stories being told And get ready for this, the number one source of traffic for publishers— I'm talking just across the entire industry here— was Google.

It used to be Facebook and Google, and then Facebook turned off the spigot, and then Google a couple years ago started to turn off the spigot, and then AI came along, and now people aren't searching Google the way that they used to.

And now AI—

I mean, Google is basically about to abandon the search tool entirely and just become an AI thing. And that is sending traffic off a cliff. Every publisher, every publisher off a cliff. And so publishers are now talking about what do we do when we reach— this is the phrase being used inside of publishing right now— Google zero. What do we do when we reach Google zero, which is to say 0% of our traffic is coming from Google? What the fuck? And, um, that means that if you pay a whole lot of money to a publicist to ultimately get some story about you in fill in the blank, any publication, just think of a publication, it's probably not reaching that many people. It's just true. It's just probably not. It might— there's always exceptions. It might— you might have that story that for whatever reason goes gangbusters and reaches millions of people, and boy, that would be great. But it's also possible that it's going to reach 400 people. And so you need to, I think, invest more in your own owned channels and building an audience and a community that you can directly engage with.

I, I mean, look, I love that you're thinking top of funnel, and I would say that if I were advising you— and not that you asked— but I would say that It, it can't hurt if you've got the budget. Can't hurt to have a PR team, right? Why not? But, um, but I think that you will see more consistent rewards by investing in anything that creates community and direct engagement. A hell of a newsletter, really sharp socials, events— like anything where you're, you're building awareness and you're getting people involved but you're not relying on an unpredictable third party like press. So press is fine, it still has its place. I see it every day. Look, I still— I still, for everything that I just said, I make a national— I oversee a national publication. We produce things and we write about companies, and then we hear later like, oh my God, that story was so valuable for me for whatever reason. And so that's great, but I'm just telling you, you don't need it. And people often often go to press because they think, well, this is the only way for me to get my go-to-market strategy going.

This is the only way for me to get the attention that I need. And it's just not— it's a nice to have. It's not the need to have it used to be.

I agree. I will say, what do you think the most important thing for right now— we have 1,400 people at A1 Garage Door Service. What do you— what would you say, do you think the most important thing right now for my business is?

Just guess the most, uh, uh, is there a right answer to this? The most important thing for your business right now?

It could be. There's a few right answers, but there's one I'm looking for and you might not guess it.

Uh, okay. Wait, you said, this is interesting. You said you got 1,400 people. Are we talking about, uh, just like top of funnel or like, or just what's the most important thing for growth? What's the most important thing?

To continue growing the business and continuing to scale.

Uh, I'd say that the most important thing is, um, is brand trust and awareness. Uh, the more people who are coming in, um, to you, the more business it drives, uh, and therefore the more you can invest in growth.

That's pretty—

how's that?

It's a very good answer. I, I think that the, the trust comes from— so I look a lot at my Indeed Glassdoor And I like to win the best places to work, and I like to market that. And if I advertise and market that correctly, and that's just press, but once I win that, right? And by the way, it's, it's, it's got to come from real employees, and it's got to come unanimously, and they're going to tell the truth, right? But it's who, not how. How do I get the right people? Benjamin Hardy happens to be a good buddy of mine. He just wrote the book Scaling. And I think about how to get the right people on the bus. Jim Collins, right? Uh, so that's the kind of press that if you win that stuff— I'm going after the Torch Award for the BBB, which is the ethics award, which tells our clientele. And I could put that on my Valpak, I'll put that on my website, I could put that— it's just, it's what you said, it's trust.

Yeah, yeah. And that is something, and I'm glad you brought this up, that is something that press is still really good for. Because even if people aren't consuming the media that's coming out of traditional media brands anymore, or at least to the degree that they used to be. What they do do is they trust it. And association with these brands does lead to higher brand affinity, higher brand trust. It's something that you can put on your website. This is the reason why these awards exist in the first place. Like, you're getting these Best Places to Work awards. Why does that exist? I'll tell you why that exists. It exists because publications and whoever else realize that if they create these awards and, uh, and then come up with, you know, come up with like that— you don't need to buy into these awards. They'll just come up with the lists and then they'll reach out to you and tell you that you've won. And then what are you gonna do, Tommy? You're doing it. You're paying them to have the badge that says best place to work that you can then put in your marketing and you put on your website and all that.

That's the reason. Yeah, yeah, that's the reason these things exist. Right? They're, they're, they're, they're basically accolades projects. And, and you people say they, they, publications will publish these lists just as a way to sell badges, saying that you won whatever you won to the people on the list. That, that is the business model behind these things. That's why they exist. And so that does carry some weight. And it is also true that if you get an article in, I'm just gonna, Home and Garden, you get an article in Home and Garden, Uh, that even if 200 people read it, you get to put on your website, as seen in Home and Garden. You get to put on your social media, uh, Home and Garden. And, and that does carry weight. And so there's also a place here where you have to understand what the press is gonna get for you and don't think about it as, oh my God, I'm gonna get access to Home and Garden's audience, just again, just to pick on them at random. But instead it's more like, how do I use the trust and association of Home and Garden to better engage my audience.

And that can be valuable.

I 100% agree. I'm going to ask you a few quick questions that I ask every single guest on this show. What's one piece of game-changing advice you wish you knew in your 20s?

Oh, I would say that Uh, you know, let me go back to the Malcolm Gladwell advice. Uh, self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. The thing that I wish that I had understood in my 20s was that, um, I didn't need to very carefully plot the path. I thought I did. I, I thought I needed to be very, very intentional about every step that I made. But what I've ultimately discovered is that actually growth comes from some version of being able to look around in chaos. You create situations where there's a lot of stuff in the air. And if you have the presence of mind to look around and say, I'm going to try that, I'm going to try that, I'm going to try that, and you think of things as experiments more than anything else, then you will ultimately find the right path for yourself in a way that you could have never possibly plotted at the beginning.

Yep. I agree with that because it's like sometimes you got an opportunity, you just don't even realize it because you're in the bubble and it's hard to see out of the bubble. Uh, what's, uh, what's a millionaire habit? What, what, what sets you apart? What sets your routine apart? Is there something that you do that's just like, it could be a daily routine or a habit that really stands out to, to help you with success?

Yeah. I don't take— this is a very simple thing, but I don't take, unless I can absolutely help it, meetings before 11:00 AM. And the reason I don't do that is because I have learned something important about myself, which is that my thinking is sharpest, I am at my most creative, and my output is most efficient in the morning. So Part of my job, whatever job that is, whether it's an entrepreneur or any of the other things that I do, part of that is production. I'm writing things, I'm creating things, I'm reviewing things. I know that if I tried to do that stuff at 5 PM, the quality would be lower and it would take me 5 times as long. But at 9 AM, super sharp. So I don't want to give away my best time for meetings that I could easily take at 5 PM. So I've started to construct my day around how my brain works. And I realized that there is a— you have to reach a moment in your career in which you have the power to do that, because a lot of people don't have the— they don't have the ability to control their schedule like that.

But I would say in whatever small ways you can, try to construct that, and then as you grow, you can do more of it.

Yeah. Jeff Bezos talks about that too, about how he sets up his day. Uh, if you had to start over with $10 million tomorrow, so all of a sudden you're not involved in everything you're involved in, but you got $10 million, but you still got the same connections. Where are you putting the money?

Huh.

That's an interesting—

I've never heard, I've never heard of that scenario. So I've lost everything, but I've got $10 million. That's not bad. I mean, I could probably just find a good investing investment strategy. Yeah, yeah, I just live off the— it seems fine to me. Um, pay off the house and, uh, we're doing okay. Um, you know what, it's a great question. What the hell would I do? Well, let me tell you, let me tell you what I have come to recognize about myself, which is that I do not, at this stage of my life, I do not want to be the primary operator anymore. Um, I, I don't really enjoy it, and I like being able to help a lot of people and be involved in a lot of things. And I, and I want to recognize the way in which I am most valuable for the least amount of investment. And, and, and this is something that I hear a lot of people go through in one way or another, where the leader realizes that actually they're really good at this one thing and they don't have to be good at everything. And that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing.

And that's start— that's where I'm starting to get to in my own life. Um, and so what would I do with $10 million? I don't know, man. I might, um, I, I, I might use it to, um, to take a lot of bets, uh, and, and get involved in a lot of companies that I believe in, um, and find the place in which I'm most valuable. But I don't know, that's probably not a really good answer. Nobody's handed me $10 million and said, uh, try to do something with this right now. So I haven't I haven't really thought about what would you do. This is a— I like, what, what is your answer to this question?

Oh, no one's really asked me that, but I know home service pretty darn well. I know how they operate. I know how to generate leads. I know how to train people. So, I'd say, what's the highest value of a company that's going to get the highest multiple? And I'd have a 5-year plan and it would all go into that one company. And it would go because, look, you know, people say, I never want to sell my business. And here's the facts. Uh, the owner does really, really well. That's, uh, they're, they're taking cash dividends all day long. They're living, they got their boat, they got the second house, their kids got plenty of money. What about all the people that helped you come up in that business? Because hopefully they got equity incentive programs or phantom equity, or you've given them equity. And so I go through this all the time, and the reason I wanted to sell when I did, at least take a portion off, I I rolled 50% is because my parents were 70 years old and I had a little bit— I had good money. But man, now that, like, I'm like, man, they, they hopefully have a good solid 2 decades left, but how much quality time where they could run upstairs and actually do this stuff?

So I was like, I want to make sure they're taken care of. Uh, not necessarily my responsibility, but it's something that was high on my mind.

So I love that.

I think that I, I got in a debate at a Service Titan event on stage with a guy that was never going to sell. Turns out he's going to sell this But, uh, you know, it's like, especially when the multiples are like unbelievable because we're kind of AI-proof. Uh, don't get me wrong, the whole back office is going to be ran with AI, but still going to go out and fix your garage door for at least the next 5 years. Uh, yep. Do you have a book that changed your life?

Hmm, do I have a book that changed my life? Probably many. Yeah, let me tell you the thing that changed my life. It's not exactly a book, but it's a piece of writing. When I was in high school, you got to be old enough to know what the hell I'm talking about here. But if you're— if you grew up in the '90s, at least you will, which is that there used to be this idea of selling out. Do you remember that? People like, yeah, be like, oh man, that band, that band sold out. They're Their first album, the first two albums that nobody heard on an independent label were awesome, and then they signed to Capitol Records. They sold out, and that was like there was just this thing in the '80s and '90s for some reason about taking money and and and having success that a lot of people resented. And I was a kid growing up in the '90s, and I was like a punk rock kid. I totally bought into that. Ugh, sellouts! And I think I really liked that idea because it also. reinforced the way in which I just viewed the world, which was a little safe, a little timid.

I was afraid to step out of my own bubble. I liked to feel like I was clinging to the things inside of my little world and just say no to everything else. No, no, no, no, no, no to that party. No to those people. No. And then in high school or in college, um, there's this guy, his name is Dave Eggers. He's a novelist and he wrote a— his breakout book was called Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And He was accused of being a sellout by, by many, and, uh, in particular some college reporter or something asked him about it, and he wrote this screed, this just this, this, this, this incredible, uh, uh, uh, this incredible— I'm Googling it right now. I'm gonna see if I can come up with something, um, really fast to read you. Yes, I found it. Um, this incredible response, uh, And this essay, which is absolutely worth finding, everyone should find it, is really about how the idea of selling out is bad is really just about saying no to the world. And that is not the way that he wants to live his life. And he wrote— this is just a little part of it.

This is Dave Eggers. He wrote, the thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no, and I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the nos you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia, or no to that night out, or no to that project, or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say. No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live a small and embittered life cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message. And I read that, and it absolutely changed the way in which I thought. And I realized I was living a life of no, and I needed to start living a life of yes. And it was not easy to make that transition in high— in college when I'm still very much trying to figure myself out.

But it is the thing that set me on the path to what I do now.

Are you in a relationship?

I am married. Yeah, I got 2 kids.

So just bear with me here. We'll get going in a second. This is my best lesson that's opposite of that. When I say yes, I, I always help people out because people invited me into their shop, their office, their home, their business, and they literally took me under them. And a lot of good people, a lot of people that at the time, 2017, had $100 million shops. So I thought it was my duty to pay it forward. And I do. I do the podcast. I do a lot of events. I've got a newsletter, uh, you know, everything that you said. But I realized every time I said yes, I'm saying no to my mom and dad, I'm saying no to my fiancée, I'm saying no to spend time with my sister and my niece and nephews. So every time you say yes, you're also saying no to everybody else. So— And I'm a yes man. I say yes all the time. So at this point, if I said yes to every single person that— and some of it's money, Some of it's just relationships, but then I had to prioritize and say, what's the most important thing?

What do I need to make sure I'm taking care of? Does that make sense?

So I could— I completely agree with you. I think we're talking about different nos and yeses here. So the, I, the, the no of protecting your time is, is critical. And I say, I say no to the vast majority of things that people ask me for or invite me to or whatever, because you're absolutely right. I have to prioritize my time. I have to know what matters. The, the yes in that Dave Eggers essay is a, is a different yes. That is a yes about trying new things. That is a yes about pushing yourself beyond your boundaries. That is the yes that allowed me to, in that moment when I first started at Entrepreneur Magazine and people started to treat me as an authority and I didn't feel like it, I could have retrenched into no, and I could have said, you know what? Yeah, I'm not that person. I don't want to be that person. I know who I am. It's the thing that I've spent my last 10 years building, and I'm going to stay that way. The yes was, hey, what if I rethink myself? What does it look like to put myself out in a completely different way, to push myself beyond my comfort zone and reimagine who I am and what my career can be?

That is a yes that when I was in college, I was unprepared to do. And that is the, that is the kind of yes that I— so now in my life, although I am, I am deeply protective of my time, there are still plenty of things that, that, that come across my personal life or my professional life that challenge me. And at first I think, oh, I don't know, I'm kind of uncomfortable with that. And then I think, you know what, but I think a bigger, richer life is on the other side of testing out whether or not that thing is for me. And that, that is the yes that I want.

I think that's more than fair. I get That now.

Yeah.

And it's just like saying yes to that snowboarding trip, even though you hate it. You don't know if you like snowboarding or it could be anything.

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. And you know what, if you say yes and it turns out you hate snowboarding, fine. Uh, you learned something and you, you tried it. I, I've done plenty of things that I didn't like and I'm happy I did them all.

Jason, if someone wants to reach out, do they, uh, what's the easiest way to do that?

Um, so The easiest way to do that is well look you can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram that's nice and easy you know Jason Pfeiffer just go find me Hey Pfeiffer on Instagram or whatever but let me let me let me tell you this if you go to freepersonalbranding.com freepersonalbranding.com what you're gonna get is this free course that I have put together on how to grow your personal brand on LinkedIn I mean you can use the lessons to apply anywhere but I'm specifically talking about LinkedIn because I believe that. Like I said in the very beginning, there's this difference between being interchangeable and being singular. And a big part of being singular is being known for your ideas. I think LinkedIn is the most powerful place that I've found to do that. So I collected my wisdom, I put it in there. Also, if you sign up for that, you're going to start getting my newsletter. And if you reply to my newsletter, it goes directly to me. So you want to know how to get in touch with me is you just hit reply on the newsletter that shows up. But I want to give you that free course.

I think that it really matters. People have told me that it really helped them. So go to freepersonalbranding.com.

Last question. Maybe there's something I didn't talk about or we didn't chat about on this conversation. I want you to close this out. I just wanted to say this has been a blast. I got lots and lots of notes.

Oh man, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Uh, this is, this is super fun. You know, look, I, uh, one of the things I love about the work that I do is that I get to do these 2 things at the same time, which is number one, uh, get to know someone and connect with someone new, uh, like you. You and I hadn't talked before, uh, but at the same time, time, do it while producing something great for other people or exchanging interesting ideas. And I love that. So, you know, when you guys reached out and invited me on, I said, you know, this is a guy I've, you know, I've seen your name around. We obviously have a lot of overlap and folks that we know. And, and so this is another one where, you know what, look, to go back to the yes.

Yeah, no, I appreciate you saying yes to this.

Let me tell you.

Yeah.

Like, like, this is, this is a thing that I, this is the thing that I do. I, for for as much as I, uh, say no to the vast majority of things, I, I will— I have a policy that I call the arbitrary yes, which is that every once in a while, yeah, whatever, let's just say yes to something. Let's just, let's just, let's just roll the dice, right? Um, time is a resource. The cliché is that it's, it's the only resource that, that, that you can never get more of. But I also think that it's a resource that we should treat the way that we treat our money, which is to say that we spend the vast majority of our money, or we should, on what we would consider to be fairly safe bets. But you should take a little bit of your money and put it on something that's a little unpredictable, where the, the risk is high. And, uh, I like to do that with my time too, is just, uh, let's, let's carve out a little bit, let's throw it at something, and maybe it'll be amazing and maybe it won't.

And either way, uh, you, you'll never live a bigger life if you're not trying that. So anyway, this was time well spent.

I love it, Jason. This was amazing. Once again, I appreciate it. I, I'm fairly certain we'll cross paths again soon.

I would, I would bet so. Looking forward to it.

I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you.