Paul Jarrett 5:23
And thank you so much. I’m excited for this. And if memory serves, I kind of weaseled my way into your other podcast, right?
Jeremy Weisz 5:31
Not at all. We saw you. Yeah, we love it. Um, you know, I want to start with that. You know, I talked about the p90x challenges. There’s interesting times and before we hit record here, you said you grew up on the other side of the tracks. Oh, yeah. So what did what did you mean by that?
Paul Jarrett 5:48
Quite literally. So yeah, you know, it’s a, it’s one of those things where, you know, growing up and, you know, probably even into college and not until I kind of really entered the The work world I didn’t realize you know, where I grew up you know wasn’t really that great of a location or scenario. But I grew up in a trailer park in Lincoln, Nebraska. Literally the the train tracks run I think technically right through it or right on the edge of it. So, you know, there’s a lot of train hopping and graffiti and all of that stuff. But yeah, we grew up in a trailer park. You know, we didn’t have shit you know, if we just it but we didn’t know it, right? Like, my parents were married. That’s probably the thing that matters the most is I always had two parents that love me unconditionally. And they read to me and I always had bucks right and when you got a few of those things, you know, you know you can really latch on to those in the long term but you know, I do I remember, you know, going to bed hungry. You know, some given some of those times where I just, you know, acted up and got in trouble. Without dinner, going to bed without dinner. Yeah. You know, there’s plenty of times when I remember like opening up the fridge and you know, there was not a lot or, you know, it’s like, oh, I guess we’re eating frozen peas tonight and whatever. And I’m really grateful for that because, you know, even in this pandemic, and what we’re going through now, like, you know, it’s really easy, even you know, the company see some success to go back in my head and to remember what it’s like to quite literally be hungry. Right? And it’s, it’s a, um, realistic, unnecessary, but also true fear that I think about my one year old, my three year old and I’m like, I just never want them to feel deprived of anything. You know, even even just, you know, I was the kid that you know, now I have way too many Jordan shoes, right? Because I can never afford them. Right. I got jumped one time for my shoes. Really? Oh, yeah. You know, there’s, it’s funny because a lot of people think Lincoln, Nebraska. Uh, you know, how bad can that be? Well, when you’re in a trailer park, that’s kind of, you know, really secluded from the rest of the world. And we did have a function in our city called Catholic social services where a lot of the churches would get together and they would bring in refugees from other countries. And so, you know, growing up in my school, and in my trailer park, I was a minority to a lot of Asians, specifically like Vietnamese. And those are like my best friends growing up, right? And then there would be another like atrocity and would be like, a bunch of refugees from you know, it’s really quite know Iran or Iraq or wherever, right? And when you get these people from the Middle East, yeah, when you get these people just culturally that are different. I mean, I remember, you know, going to my buddy’s trailer and his dad was clubbing their rabbit to death for dinner. And I’m like, what’s happening? Yeah, it was a really interesting scenario growing up and there was it was rough. I mean, You know, it was very normal to be like, I remember riding my bike one day and this kid pushed me off my bike and said, I’m gonna beat you up and take my, your bike. Because you’re the tallest kid in the trailer park. It’s like, okay, I fought, I kept my bike. But, you know, that was just normal. It’s just like rough. But the funny thing is, at the time, when it came to all that stuff, and all the scenarios, I never thought it was really that bad. But now, you know, really
Jeremy Weisz 9:29
normal to you.
Unknown Speaker 9:30
Totally normal. And I don’t know if you know if you’re familiar with the term like class jumping or class hopping, right? It’s like, if you’re poor, then you go to middle class and you go to upper class or whatever. I think that’s a little bit of the story of my life. Because when I was 15, my parents did have a lot of property come into play, they had been buying trailers and whatnot. My dad got a bunch of promotions and we were able to literally go from the trailer park to when I was shooting Two years old, a house with a 10 foot pool in a sauna, three different levels. And Matt was and I went to a really expensive Catholic school, and you want to talk about a culture shock, right. And then entering the work world. And then starting our company, you know, being really small and local, and then working with these venture capitalists from all over the US and then working with Disney. I always find myself as kind of like the I realized, like, I’m like, the novelty in the room. Almost right. But yeah, I mean, it was a rough go, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. PBS actually did a little documentary on it. And I think that was the first time that I really realized like, oh, because they recorded the trailer park we had
Jeremy Weisz 10:44
one was a documentary was it about you or just about Lincoln?
Unknown Speaker 10:48
So the the documentary was called startup. It’s still running. It’s on PBS, and it was about our business, but really, a significant portion. And it was like, where I grew up and, you know, playing division one college football, moving to New York City and kind of how a lot of those experiences you know, I had the same opportunity as a lot of other kids in the trailer park, right. But a lot of them are, you know, dead in jail, or, you know, who knows where they are. There’s only maybe one other guy that I can think of that as kind of a stable life, right. But the documentary kind of focused on like, you know, how the experience have changed. And it was like, to not sound cliche, but sound cliche is like a rags to riches story, which I never would have. I still don’t think that way of myself. But the, you know, when they kind of laid it out for me, I was like, I guess that is kind of a little bit of the story. Right?
Jeremy Weisz 11:47
Well, I mean, you live your life and it’s just normal to you, you know, and so, I think looking out from it’s all perspective, right, so what point, Paul Do you realize, like you’re just living Oh, great. So I have to go to hungry. That’s normal. You know, at what point do you realize? Like you said, I don’t have shit. Like what point did that really hit home to you?
Unknown Speaker 12:09
I you know, it’s funny because I never stopped to think about why the other kids get the shoes and the clothes and the whatever. Because I think one thing my parents were phenomenal at was they were like, Oh, you can get those shoes. We’re just only going to pay for $10 of it. But we can find you work literally cleaning toilets, cleaning garages, so they always were really good about lining up no worse jobs in the world. So basically, like
Jeremy Weisz 12:39
you have the opportunity to get whatever you want. He’s got to work for it.
Unknown Speaker 12:43
100% I mean, lemonade stands. You know, quite a lot of cleaning. A lot of like, people were kicked out of trailers go clean the trailers. You know, I can do cockroach plays faster than anybody.
Unknown Speaker 12:56
That’s really a tagline in your LinkedIn. Yeah, right.
Unknown Speaker 13:00
And then you know what that turns into them is, you know, you just learn how to hustle. And so, you know, mowing yards all day for weeks and weeks in a row. Yeah, well, how can I make money faster? All my friends want CDs. How can I you know, do that and,
Jeremy Weisz 13:16
you know, everybody nariyal back then. Yeah,
Paul Jarrett 13:20
everybody always has the candy bar stories. Mine was definitely the music story where I’d kind of pull it over on the BMG and Columbia is is of the world and turn around and sell those CDs for full price and video games, all that stuff. There’s, you know, I always laugh at, you know, food because I’m like, there’s so much more margin and video games and music right. Well, back then there was right. And so it was so, you know, natural to me. Right. And what’s interesting is, my brothers and sisters grew up in the same scenario. And how many brothers and sisters have an older brother and older sister and a younger sister Well, I would say that the younger sister didn’t really experience what we experienced because she was way younger. She was probably we call her Oops, that’s her nickname. term. But my older brother and sister, they really dove into academics like 100%
Jeremy Weisz 14:21
you’re making your brother’s a pulmonologist.
Unknown Speaker 14:23
Yeah, he’s a highly sought after home. Just he has his own practice. He has two care clinics. I older sister was a forensic scientist for them be for the FBI, and ended up finding a lot more money in medical sales. But she’s also a nurse, so she’s technically a scientist, a nurse and medical sales rep. And, you know, my dad sat me down and pretty much said, you know, like, Hey, your your ticket is sports, right? Like they’re, they’re kind of really smart, which they were he didn’t say it wasn’t smart, but he’s like, you notice special special dealing with these things, you’re really great. In athletic, that’s how you’re gonna get to go to college. I mean, literally, my dad said, like, you’re gonna only probably be able to get in call it into college, through athletics. If not your mom and I, you know, we’re not paying for it and you’re going to take out loans or you gotta go to college or whatever. And so, I think, you know, that was probably the moment my is probably after a football game my sophomore year, the next day when we were talking, and I didn’t want to watch film or do something or whatever. And he was like, Oh, just so we’re clear. He’s like, this is this is your ticket, like, you know, and I didn’t enjoy sports.
Jeremy Weisz 15:43
I mean, when you’re that young, you don’t even realize that most of the time with the gravity of that what that means completely.
Paul Jarrett 15:50
So right and, and, interestingly enough, if you talk to my parents, they did not expect any of us to go to college. They were shocked. When my older brother was looking at colleges applying for grants and scholarships, and whatever, and he got full academic ride, and they were like, we never did anything we never pushed. You know, one day your older brother was like, just started talking about college is a natural progression. And we literally just shut our lips because, you know, we didn’t want to interfere with it. And so it’s funny because they never thought we would go to college. And we never thought it wasn’t an option to go to college. Right. So that’s interesting.
Jeremy Weisz 16:35
So talk about your parents, obviously big influences on you. Their dad was in law enforcement for decades.
Paul Jarrett 16:43
But they’re, they’re amazing, awesome people. It’s funny on our, we’re talking about my we have a family text thread. And we were talking last night about how my mom should call in to my podcast and share some of my work horrors.
Jeremy Weisz 17:00
Why don’t you do?
Paul Jarrett 17:02
So she started off as a nurse. My father started off as a police officer, they actually then tried to start their own clothing company. It failed miserably. You know, there’s all sorts of reasons why, but I would probably summarize it as there aren’t enough big and tall people to support a custom big and tall clothing store in Lincoln, Nebraska. And so they had to kind of lick their wounds from that. And then they did another one. Which I thought that was a great idea. But also
Jeremy Weisz 17:35
your parents are pretty entrepreneurial to pop. It sounds. Yeah,
Paul Jarrett 17:38
yeah. I mean, my father, his father died when he was 16. And my mother grew up on a farm with like, eight other brothers and sisters. And, you know, it was all birthed out of like, I don’t think people want it to be entrepreneurial. It was literally like we have to make money to live Yeah. But if you do go to Through my family tree like, you know there’s a my uncle has a big dance a big band dance. He’s actually the backup to Lawrence Welk for like 30 years, which I think is hilarious.
Unknown Speaker 18:11
I love like Ben Affleck my favorite music.
Unknown Speaker 18:14
Still check it out. Yeah, Bobby lane orchestra. He’s like 88 still Wow.
Unknown Speaker 18:19
sodomy lane orchestra so can we find on YouTube or where is it? I’m
Unknown Speaker 18:23
sure you can. Yeah, I mean, he’s kind of legend.
Unknown Speaker 18:26
Is that his name? What’s his What’s his full name?
Paul Jarrett 18:29
His real name is Bob bennish. Okay. But is the orchestra that was on the Lawrence Welk show. So it was called the bobby lane orchestra. Okay, cool. I am Yeah, I believe. But so it’s weird that that stuff was just around us growing up. I had another uncle who he started a band and moved to LA they saw a bunch of success. And you know, probably gypsies are a good way to explain some of the family but Yeah, the entrepreneurial stuff that my parents did was definitely not like, oh, let’s get rich, it was a we got to survive. Yeah. And you know, we got into the trailer park because when my dad was 16 his mom asked him to, I think, like, help Tara roof on one of her friends trailers or something like that. And then one by one, my parents, you know, we’re talking like 18 years old, people would get evicted out of their trailers, and they would basically go to the state and buy them for $1. And we would either go live or go take over that trailer or whatever. And, you know, when you go into a evicted trailer, you know, it takes quite a while to get that thing fully operational again, but yeah, yeah, I grew up and if you asked me about my childhood, like when I remember I would say, working out door in the hot sun, sunrise to sunset and the only way out of it. was either sports
Unknown Speaker 20:02
or probably sports actually,
Paul Jarrett 20:07
you know, the thing that my dad would just constantly say to me is, if you don’t like this work, make sure that you set yourself up through school or athletics, like not do it. You know, you He’s like, and you’d be like, I enjoy this stuff. He is a police officer and we, you know, started a property management company, but is like, I enjoy this. But if you don’t like the labor, you know, you got to start thinking about now you’re not going to do that. So
Jeremy Weisz 20:35
I want to get to your football career for a second, because that was your ticket. But what was the worst jobs? It sounds like you may have had some really not so.
Paul Jarrett 20:47
I’d say more times. You know, the worst one off job was. I was tasked by my father to clean out a garage for a hoarder who has stashed three or four years of trash in a full size garage, bag by bag. And I can’t even I don’t even want to get into describing to you the smell and the animals and the there’s animals.
There was everything you could have, I mean, literally three years of trash and you know, in Nebraska freezing winter or a hot summer, you know, a lot of mice and Raccoons are going to find some. There’s a lot of leftover food and whatever. And
Jeremy Weisz 21:29
I would have just turned around, like, forget it.
Paul Jarrett 21:33
You know, that was the first time that I tried that. And he said, Look, I’m gonna pay a double, which was like 10 bucks an hour. And he was like, you can get your buttons if you want, which none of my buddies went and did it except for one of them. And it goes and I’m just going to give you the keys to the truck, you can drive to the dump. And when he said that I was 14. I should not have been driving whatsoever. But I was like, Oh, hell yeah, I mean, and so on. for probably about two or three days straight, it was just loading up a truck with and you know, the garbage bags aren’t going to sustain after three years. Right? So that was, I probably smelled for two weeks after that I go out school and everything else. And that was easily the worst thing I ever had to do. But, you know, I also had, you know, I worked at the finish line, I worked at restaurants, I’ve been a balancer, I’ve been a security guard. I mean, you name it. I’ve done it. Or I would probably say, the finish line was probably mentally the worst. Really?
Jeremy Weisz 22:34
Why? You mean the shoe store?
Paul Jarrett 22:37
The shoe store? Yeah. So I didn’t know it at the time. But I was a team. And I was going to Iowa State on the scholarship and I just needed, I had shoulder surgery and I just needed some sort of income because, you know, my parents didn’t pay for anything, right. So I needed gas money, I needed cell phone money or whatever. Right? And I didn’t know it at the time, but I was really confused. Why when I started, I would get strip searched pretty much like they’d, they’d say, Can you pull your shirt up? Can you pull your pants down, buckle your pants pulled down to like, underneath your waist, pull up your socks, checked all my bags. And I always was given the worst jobs and they would just ensure that I was the last person there. And I was like, I didn’t even think to ask other people like, how come you’re not getting strip searched? And I was just treated really terribly. And I didn’t think anything of it until a couple of years later, I happen to come back. And I was like, by that time I was playing football. I was like 315 pounds decked out and I always stayed there walking through the Lincoln mall and I was like, Oh, I used to work there. Holy shit. That’s like the assistant manager came to find out that somebody was stealing from the store. And I lined up with right when I started the company. Was it me it was the assistant manager and while while he was basically putting shoes in the trash can throwing them away out back. But he just kept saying it was me. And now that I look back, I’m like, that all makes sense. And, you know, totally, you know, price stereotyped and all that other stuff. I honestly can’t say I wouldn’t you know, when I talked to the guy about it when I came back, like, I honestly don’t blame them. Like, I’ve, I would have thought that it was me as well, you know, and you just didn’t realize I wasn’t that smart to pull it off.
Jeremy Weisz 24:28
So talk about the football. So it’s your ticket. Right? Um, you were recruited by several schools. How did you end up going to you start off at Iowa State?
Unknown Speaker 24:38
Yeah, yeah. So I was the, you know, the typical altered grade school I was bullied terribly. I mean, really? Just
Jeremy Weisz 24:49
even though you’re one of the bigger, bigger kids.
Paul Jarrett 24:51
Well, I was, you know, that was I think one of the reasons why I was a target, right? Like I was always really tall, but I was always really, really thin and You know, name calling, you know, beat up rocks thrown at me, you name it. And it was just that thing that happened to me whether, you know it was because I was the poor kid going to the nice school or because I just didn’t fit in with the you know type of students are at that school and going into high school I really realized that I was going to see all these kids that I had, you know, either been bullied by or running from or whatever and I just, I just had a moment was just like, you know what, my parents will let me go to any other school I had to go to this Catholic High School. I I truly made my mind up about the summer going into high school that the first person that tries or makes fun of me or brings up anything from being bullied historically. I’m just going to punch them in the face and be the best out of it. And get expelled from school. And then I’ll probably get thrown into the bad school where all my friends were actually out, right. And lo and behold, I was actually never really that good at football in grade school. It was kind of something I was just doing just to, you know, get out of work or whatever. We had football that started a week before classes started. And all the kids that bullied me, it was like this. It was like a class reunion of all these kids that had tortured me, right? They were all in football. Yes, yes. And I was a little bit bigger. I would say, you know, I’ve always been pretty athletic. But you know, just just always played timid. Right? And the coach and so here I am, you know, we’re all in our pads. We’re all on the field.
Jeremy Weisz 26:47
How big are you at that point? How tall and how much do you
Paul Jarrett 26:50
weigh about six foot to like, 140 pounds? Yeah. So what you know. Yeah. And, you know, it was already starting up and we’re like some of the groups from the kids, they’re like pointing at me and I’m like, shit. You can’t punch somebody with a helmet on, you know? And so, the coach then goes, Okay, everybody line up I need two volunteers and my hand is immediately shot up. I don’t know why. And then another kid who he was known in his family was known for being really really great football players, his brothers and daddle into school and scholarships and he was awesome in grade school, and they line us up probably
Jeremy Weisz 27:29
saying a lot by the way in Nebraska, because that’s
Paul Jarrett 27:33
good. Yeah, yeah. Like you know, my wife’s nephew is the quarterback in Nebraska right now her brother was national championship quarterback in Nebraska like a god in Nebraska. Probably your uncle’s like Tom Osborne. You know, her dad’s the winning his high school football coach. So everybody in Nebraska, it’s almost like probably the equivalent of like, I say, if I was on the East Coast, like it would have been academics, and I probably try what I went to Harvard but in the Midwest, It is football and volleyball. You know, that’s that’s just it right? And so here we
Unknown Speaker 28:05
are as lineup
Unknown Speaker 28:06
line is up like 20 yards apart. And I swear if you’ve ever seen the waterboy it was like that’s
Unknown Speaker 28:12
what I’m envisioning right now. Actually. Yeah,
Paul Jarrett 28:15
it was like every little thing name whatever people had called me. It just built up in that moment. And literally the drill was just running hit each other. There was no ball No, nothing is 20 yards that spread. And needless to say, I’ve fucking destroyed this sport kid. I mean, I was full on whatever. The loudest up, we got up. I popped up. He was kind of dizzy rolling around on the ground and the coach went, Oh, my God, that is I’ve been doing this for 20 years. That was the hardest hit I ever heard in my life. And this kid pops up and he goes, do it again coach. Any goes No, no, no, you’ve had it. Come to want to go again. And I think you Because his family and his history, we lined up and we did it again and I absolutely crushed him again. And the coach was like, Okay, I guess we know who our best defensive player is. And that badge I took with me. And, you know, I played football guys pretty good. But then once I realized that, literally, you know, forces mass times acceleration in my simple sophomore brain, I was like, Okay, I have to get really fast and really big. Don’t make sense while we go to football. Like that’s all I have to do. And I became notorious in my high school career for just like leveling people putting people out of out of games and by my senior year, I was a six five to 30 man like a full six had like a 32 inch vertical and, and I will say that was all attributed to just the anger and frustration of being bullied and, and just saying, like, I’m never gonna let that happen. Again, and which is a really typical story, right? Like, usually, they become bodybuilders or fighters or whatever. And, you know, all of a sudden my junior coaches started coming around, which was totally new. We didn’t expect that at all and as recruited a bunch of different places, and the head coach at Iowa State just kept coming to my door. All the other head coaches were maybe coming by maybe call him. He just kept showing up every week. And, you know, he said the difference at Iowa State in Nebraska, or Colorado or anywhere else is you can get on the field and play earlier. Because those were
Jeremy Weisz 30:39
some of the other schools you were serious about that maybe you sat on the bench.
Unknown Speaker 30:43
Our trailer park was literally like, right behind the Nebraska football stadium, probably about a minute
Jeremy Weisz 30:50
dream of yours.
Unknown Speaker 30:52
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I still I mean, if I’m being honest, like I still think about like I should have when played there, right? I think people I’d say they never think what could I should I’m like a fellowship. And so, yeah, you know, it turned down all those schools. And, you know, really, what happened in Nebraska was about five or six of us. We got together, because Nebraska was kind of rude to us, they had offered us but, you know, mine was we’ll give you a full scholarship after my first semester because I had a shoulder injury, which is kind of a bullshit move. And another friend, they offered him a walk on and clearly he should have been a full ride. And just the way that they treated us it was a new coaching staff and they were just not maybe a more modern era.
Jeremy Weisz 31:44
It was ego like some
Paul Jarrett 31:47
super arrogant right? And so we all just got together and the Nebraska football player of the year he goes off fucking I’m doing I would stay and we’re like, what? And it goes, let’s go let’s all just go and I was like, Yeah, dude. I mean, you know, and it was just literally the five best players in the state of Nebraska. When Ty was saying there was a big deal. I mean, it was a big deal. We ended up beating Nebraska to which was cool.
Unknown Speaker 32:13
Wow. But
Unknown Speaker 32:15
yeah, that was the ticket and I and I got there and
Unknown Speaker 32:19
I was I put on 75 pounds of fat in some muscle and my after I set up my first year and the next year after that, I beat out a senior. And I was the starting nose guard, which was, you know, I came in as a tight end in Russia. And for those that don’t know, those are, I mean, their physical positions, but they’re not crazy physical. And then all of a sudden, I’m the guy looking across from the ball, you know, fighting to 300 pound guys, every snap for 80 plays, and it was brutal. I mean, there’s, I don’t think people really, I don’t think unless you live it. You can really understand what’s going on in the middle. Have that line, you know, it’s like the
Jeremy Weisz 33:02
unsung heroes, you know what I mean? Because people are focused on where the ball is. And that’s not where the ball is. That’s where someone’s just
Unknown Speaker 33:08
just
Unknown Speaker 33:10
has a tenacity to go after
Unknown Speaker 33:12
that and just like the brutality of it, you know, I mean it’s it’s, it’s real, it’s quite feels almost quite literally like a killer be killed, you know, and if you if you let it for a moment, you’re going to injure yourself. So there isn’t even the opportunity to like, go light or whatever, cuz you’ll get hurt, right? So I did that for a couple years I started and I actually out of nowhere, I just gave it out which everybody still there’s all these rumors swirling around why I did it. But truth be told, you know, I just had a neck injury. I had a knee injury. I had a shoulder injury. I mean, I still I mean,
Unknown Speaker 33:51
I’m still in your body.
Unknown Speaker 33:52
Yeah. And I saw a lot of the players that I thought would go on. in play, they just didn’t make it. You know, a physical is a big part of it and, and I was able to kind of sit down you know, after my first two couple years to three years of playing ball, and I went, man my neck isn’t gonna make it past the NFL physical like my shoulder like I’m like I’m already like, you know to beat up to play in the NFL.
Jeremy Weisz 34:20
I have no idea how some of those NFL players last that long. Look at Brett Farve and Peyton Manning and, and all these I don’t even know how they lasted.
Unknown Speaker 34:29
It’s genetics, man. I mean it. I don’t care what anybody says. Like, it’s like I’m I’ll give you an example. Like when I would get just those little like burns on your elbows. Yeah, I would take about 46 six weeks to heal, which was considered absurd long, right? There’s guys that would heal up in like three or four days. Hmm. And and, you know, there’s I would be fascinated at the research behind that. You know, I was eating right I was doing I was sleeping. I was doing all the things correctly. I drank a little too much. But, you know, it always seemed like it was these guys that were not working super hard in the weight room, you know, not eating right. And they’re just freaks of nature, right?
Jeremy Weisz 35:13
And a huge genetic component.
Unknown Speaker 35:16
Yes. And then when you get those guys, like, you know, that have that element, but then they actually have the work ethic. That’s when you start to get to like LeBron James. Right? That’s when you get the breath fires, right? They have the genetic talent, but I was definitely one of those guys that had just enough that if I spent all my waking hours in the weight room, focus on nutrition, I would be just good enough to you know, get on the field and play. But yeah, I ended up giving it up. One day, I just woke up and I was like, man, I have no idea what I’m going to do after this. I don’t want to sell cars. I don’t want to sell insurance. You know, all the respect in the world for people that want to do those things or do those things but it just wasn’t me. So, out of nowhere, I quit one day when the coach’s office quit, said, What are you going to do? And I was like, I have no idea. I think I said something like, computers seemed like a good idea. It’s like, that’s actually thought. I was like, I don’t know, like, it feels like you can do a lot with the computer. And then that day, I went home, got a credit card, bought my first MacBook. I hadn’t really touched a computer. You know, I was like the jock. I was like getting everybody else to do everything for him. And I opened up I didn’t even know how to power it on. And I opened it up and just started doing what I knew how to do. I started ripping in selling CDs, and I started making like, MC CDs for the bars and I’d be a bouncer, I’d make a mix. I’d give it to the DJ. Then I started making flyers doing graphic design. And just, you know, any and everything. I mean, I remember the moment that somebody showed me Google, and I don’t think I’ve stopped using it. hour by hour since that time, right? Just one somebody gave me a tool that I could find my curiosities and, you know, since we’re like, you know, get my my curiosities in business, you know, my Google searches from then even until now, which is embarrassing to say, but it’s like how to create wealth, right? How to become wealthy. What am I doing? Or what do rich people do that I’m not doing? Right?
Jeremy Weisz 37:27
And it was, you know, asking certain questions.
Unknown Speaker 37:30
And once once it clicked for me that the same way that I’d eat X amount of calories, or the X amount of grams of protein, you know, the whole kind of like, you know, boil it to a science oceans. Course. Right? Yeah. And then you start to look at, you know, it’s really a big reason why I gravitated towards ecommerce is like, it’s just KPIs, which is just like I’d like if anybody came to our company and saw how we run it as much as theirs. No athletes really working there? And if they would say that they’re athletes, I would I would laugh at them,
Unknown Speaker 38:06
like last lineup 20 years apart. No.
Paul Jarrett 38:08
Yeah. Which our company all jokes because we are making a reference to a layup and somebody raised their hands. I’m sorry, I have no idea what a layup is, like, leave. Now. I was like that. Yeah. And, you know, the way that we run our company, you know, we have a daily scorecard, which, in football, you have the scorecard. So it wasn’t really that intentional. It’s just kind of the way that I knew how to do things. And it feels like e commerce really lends itself to that kind of way of doing things. So and it you know, to this day, it sort of out of where do I want to be in 20 years, 10 years, five years, three years, one year, this quarter, okay, start mapping out a plan. And just like in football, you might get sick or injured or a game might get canceled. Like that same thing happens, right? You know, this pandemic thing is crazy. But immediately I thought about us playing football on 911 happened and they have no idea if we are ever going to play football again, you know what I mean? Like, all the games and everything got canceled, you know, we’re like, do we still get our scholarships? Like, how does this work out? We’re not playing football, do we get scholarships? So, you know, it’s uncertainty. Yeah, it won’t, you know, it’s just vision goals, strategy, issues, discussing solving. And I think that most things in life, it doesn’t have to be sports, academics or whatever. Once you start to find that innovation of like linking those things together. I think a lot of things open up and a lot of understanding occurs, but it’s really time consuming and frustrating and you’re going to get knocked down and once you realize that, it is inevitable that you’re going to get better down. It’s not about that. It’s about how fast you get up. I think that’s when the game changes for most people
Jeremy Weisz 40:09
apart. go a little deeper on that you said running the company and with the scorecard. Can you talk about some of the ways you run the company with whether it’s dashboards meeting scorecards, and you know how you do that.
Unknown Speaker 40:23
So, we, I’m the person that when we started the company, I was in every single detail, I did everything. You name it, I had oversee it. I mean, you want to talk about a micromanager? Right, and that worked for about three years. I definitely had some sort of a breakdown I should probably see like a therapist or something but which I do talk about in some of this, some presentations and some other stuff that are on but I went through a phase where I realized that my internal voice was incredibly negative. And it was very much like a defensive line coach yelling at you, like, come on you, like get up like, does
Jeremy Weisz 41:12
it because that’s what motivates you or what why do you think
Unknown Speaker 41:15
the interesting thing was, you know, well, I’ll guess I’ll answer the question you had been okay. I’ll give you this quick kind of tidbits story. But I was working one day at our company, and I was typing away and kind of cursing over my breath and are under my breath. And I’m like, Are you fucking kidding me? Like, what a morning. And it was really early on a Sunday morning and my wife walks out. And she says, Are you okay? I was like, Yeah, I’m fine. I was like, Look, sales are up like, like, it’s literally the best our company had ever been performing. And she was like, Well, you know, it’s just that I’ve been listening to you for the last 10 minutes, just person to your breath and whatever. And I honestly have no idea that I was doing it right. She has, do you talk? She has, what do you say when you talk to yourself? I was like, I don’t talk to myself. There’s no voices in my head like, are were like, Wait, what? And I was so confused at what she was asking me. And she said, she said, Hey, like, let’s go for a walk, you need a break. And I was like, all right, which you know, is normal, she’ll say, you need a break, or you need to eat or drink water or whatever. And so we go on this walk, and she has, you know, I just heard you cursing at yourself. And, you know, you were cursing about this other person. And, and I never was like, that outwardly with people is just kind of internalized, right? And she goes, like, would you ever talk to our, like, co workers like that? And I was like, No, no, no, no, no, like, definitely not like they’re doing awesome. They’re working their asses off. And then she’d go, well, would you ever talk to your little sister like that? When she knows I’m really tight with my little sister as like, I don’t know. She’s no, no. Did you ever talk to your mom like that? And I was like, No. She says, Would you talk To me like that, and I was like, No, I don’t know, what are you trying to get as like you’re really frustrated, because, well, why is it that the most important person in the world you’re talking to like absolute shit? And I lost it like I’m talking like I crumbled to the ground. I was like sobbing. She’d never seen me cry couldn’t remember last time I cried. I was like, what’s happening? I go, I go, am I sick right now? Like, do you have the stomach flu? And she’s like, no, you’re just emotional right now. And I was like, Oh, this is terrible. Like, what is this? And it was just this thing where I had never in at that time, 33 years of my life, or 32 stopped and thought about, like, what the internal dialogue was. And it had always just been, that’s a joke. Are you kidding me? You can do better. Keep going. That’s not good enough. And I looked at her and I said, What do you say? And she goes, Oh, like and at the time we were running. And she goes, Well, I guess like, you know, good job. Keep it up. You’re almost finished. I’m proud of you. Like whenever Here I am, like on the ground like sobbing and I look at her and I’m like, Fuck you. As you guys probably think that’s what most people say. And I was like, what’s up just like, my whole world is like, crumbling, right? And she said, You know, like, why don’t you try to start talking, talking to yourself a little bit better, right? And so literally, go to Google, type in what you say when you talk to yourself, because as the closer you get a book pops up called what you say when you talk to yourself. And I don’t know if you remember, but do you remember the old Saturday Night Live Stuart Smalley where he’d say,
Jeremy Weisz 44:38
I’m good enough? I’m strong enough and
Unknown Speaker 44:41
Gosh, darn it, people like me. Exactly. That skit was based off of this book.
Unknown Speaker 44:46
Oh, wow.
Paul Jarrett 44:48
Because this book basically says in order to rewire your brain, you have to say internally and verbally and there’s exercises, look in the mirror recording. yourself play it. And at that point, I was like, you know, the entrepreneur and me of wanting to fix something like Screw it, I’m going to do it. So I went all in on that. And it was life changing. And what I tell people is that it didn’t fix the problem. But what it did do is when I’m kind of in a bit of a negative downward spiral, I’m able to catch it and go like, okay, is this the truth? Or is this just the story that you’re telling yourself, right? And that really changed everything. And then my management style really started to change in that, you know, I really started to understand, you know, everybody’s different people have their skill sets. I’m here to support and foster and nurture talent. I’m not here to crack the whip and make sure things are done perfectly. And if I’m doing that I probably hired the wrong person. Right. And so it’s like this huge level of accountability but also this like this. This is almost like the smoke cleared of like, Oh, this is what really positive, usually wealthy, productive members of society are doing. It’s like the secret that somebody gave me, right? I know, it all kind of sounds like hokey, but it’s the best way that I can describe it right. And then we, as we looked at our business, I really started to examine things that we were doing and they just didn’t make sense. And then frankly, like, a cool thing that happened is I became unafraid to hire people that were smarter and better than me. And I thought that I was doing it before. But then when I really was able to kind of like have that self awareness and self examination, we were able to just get people that were much better, right? And you just, you attract. When you have that mindset, you then attract those people versus the people that you are attracting. Before with kind of the crack the whip mindset, and in that whole process again, you know, I’m constantly going to Google like, ways to run a company efficiencies, etc. I kept stumbling, actually, I was really frustrated because our business was stagnant. And I kept googling. And I kept seeing this thing pop up called EOS entrepreneurial operating system.
Jeremy Weisz 47:22
I’ve had Gino wickman on the podcast.
Unknown Speaker 47:24
That’s awesome. He’s like a god to me. That’s super cool. And I picked up the phone. And you know, I started just calling up entrepreneurs that were happy and productive. And I literally said, What are you doing that I’m not doing? Because you, you know, funny story. When we started the company, it was about the time Shopify was starting. And I remember talking to Toby at Shopify, because if we annoyed them enough on customer service, he would just they would give us the CEO right here see Shopify like this and we’re kind of stagnant I’m like, What are they doing that I’m not doing? So I called a bunch of people and just resoundingly, I would hear EOS out of people. And one of the guys that I really trust who has a really good successful business, he said, Paul, I know where you’re at, I know you’re thinking, you’re just going to, like, solve this on your own or whatever. But I really think you just need to hire an EOS coach and just do it for a year. And based solely on that advice, we went all in. And like when I decided to do something like it’s like, all right, so we got a coach. We did everything. We went hardcore Eos. Everybody kind of thought it a little bit, you know, they weren’t quite sure. But sure enough, just over time, and over years, it just became so clear that it was something that you know, I think any company that’s trying to scale up needs, and so the answer to your question is we run the 30 Ls tools. So we have the vision traction organizer, we have the accountability charts, we run all of our meetings kind of like owl time, which I’m more than happy to share with you or your people or they could probably listen to the Gino wickman episode. And then we really step back from people. And we, you know, we tell them like you’re going to sink or swim. So we basically say, you know, here is Eos. And we have our own version of it that we’ve really just dumbed down, we still have a coach. And then we say, here’s your client, you know, Hasbro, Disney or whoever. You’ve been working here for a year or so in customer service or wherever. This is the opportunity you want to, here’s how we operate as a company, here’s what the partner needs. And it’s like sink or swim time and more times than that. It’s like, really ugly and it doesn’t work out quite correctly in the beginning. But you know, it ends up working out really well and, and frankly, that’s the only way I think that you can run a business like ours. I just can’t be on the phone with Disney. I can’t be on the phone with as big as those companies are. I just, you know, don’t have the time or capacity or frankly, like the in depth knowledge that you need to have on each one of those brands. And so that’s worked incredibly well. But just like anything, it was a real process we had to commit to and I think after four years of running it, we’re now just starting to pick and choose like, okay, let’s use this tool. Let’s not use that tool. But that was only after everybody can learn it inside and out. So well, thanks
Jeremy Weisz 50:34
for sharing that, that. Yeah, that’s really, really helpful, actually. And I want to talk about some of the milestones and some of the pieces of Bulu. And, but I wanted to first you know, what I find companies are successful, they have amazing people. They have kind of a premise and core values that they live by. And there was you work for bbdo. And I feel like what are some of the core values came out of that experience? Maybe you want to touch on for a little bit?
Paul Jarrett 51:14
Yeah. So I worked. I worked in New York City and ad agency called bbdo. It’s considered the world’s largest most awarded ad agency. So here I am, as a 26 year old kid, way out of my league, I had my own office and Secretary my name and gold on the door. I don’t know how I weaseled my way in that opportunity. But I was doing incredibly well. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was actually working a lot with the CEO, which is the dumbest, quite the dumbest thing that I’ve ever done. But I was working and I was just known as the guy that was always there. I could research put together a deck and hand it over to somebody and they could go present it without having to do anything. And that’s really where I started to make my mark at that company. And there was a guy named Ozzy. And he was always around our area working with one of our account directors. And I just overheard him talking about a Brunswick and I kind of went to research it a little bit, and we had all this access to everything. Competition, like it was more of pulling reports and organizing it than it was, you know, hardcore research. And I created this deck and I was like, hey, Ozzie, yo, you know, I took a day over the weekend, and I put this together for you, man, it’s all about Brunswick, and he just looked at me just completely, like, blown away. And our cam directors like told you he’s good. And I was like, I I didn’t think that was good. I just, I’ve always had this idea of like, asking how can I help or if I hear something, I’m just gonna like, try to jump on. jump into it. Especially If I have the time, and capacity, and so I worked on like three projects with this Ozzie guy, and then one day I heard somebody say, john, and I was like, why are they calling you john? And he’s like, it’s my first name runs like john. And I was like, john Ozzy. And he goes, No, john, I was when I was like, oh, Ray, Ray Ray, I was like, I’m messing with you or whatever. And instantly, I was like, holy shit, that’s the CEO. This is the guy that like emails, everybody and you know, whatever. And Dude, I completely like folded. Like, I couldn’t operate the same way with them. You know, I like it completely ruin everything with it. And it also didn’t help that my boss at the time. He was truly a terrible human being, I hope nothing but the best for him now. And I hope he’s doing well. But, you know, he was this dude that, you know, he drank all the time. There was a bar in bbdo he popped pills. I walked in Do his office and he’d be like, Paul, get your ass down here. Let me find this pill, it looks like this, you know, and then, uh, like, whatever, and you’d open up his desk and there’s just pills everywhere. And he would do things like he would call, like, late at night or interns, parents, and like, jokingly on a conference call, say like, how attractive she was or whatever, right? Totally. 100% but, like, you got to remember, I mean, as weird as it sounds like what 2005 you know, like, they’re just, like, in bbdo, like, Mad Men was literally based off of bbdo like, the culture there. I mean, that’s what it was, you know, it was like, guys hanging out with clients. Women doing the actual work, right? And it was almost like this. It was like we work at bbdo this is how we’re supposed to be right. You know, like, it’s kind of like that attitude. And I just I wasn’t into that. And I never quite fit into it. And I didn’t realize it at the time when I was there. I was just like, I’ve always had the mentality, like I said, if I can help out, or frankly, if I can get into new business, that’s always the way to be. And so I’m just off an island. So
I was always off an island working class off or trying to get into new business, and that always helped me on ad agencies. But uh, yeah, we’ll awful boss. One day when I was working, he said, Follow me. So I got up and I started, which was not uncommon. And so I started following him and guess where the hell is your notebook and your pen? And then my guess if I ever tell you to be in a meeting, is actually if you your ass ever leaves your seat. You need to bring a notebook and pen with you. I was like, Okay. And this was I mean, he would yell at me be like you look you look like shit, go shave, right? Where’s your See, I mean, every day, it was just something every time we walked by my door, he just would just degrade and he’s just a terrible human. And so I’m following this guy. And he goes to the bathroom. And I wait at the door and he opens the bathroom door. He goes, What are you doing? I was like, What do you mean? What am I doing? Because get in here and I was like, You want me to follow you into the bath and, and I can kind of find the humor and everything right? Because I’m not even mad. I’m just kind of like, visually watching this happen in my head, and just laughing my ass off at the ridiculous nature of air and I go into the bathroom. He’s not going number one. He’s going number two. And that’s when I actually thought it was a joke. I was totally waiting for the other people do still like you know, hit me with like toilet paper or water or like whatever it was. Nope, he took a shit made me dictate all of his minutes and everything right outside of the stall. Somebody would walk in And I was like, yeah. And finally I was like, Yeah, man, like, I’m good. Are you good? He’s like, yeah, I’ll be out in a second. I was like, I remember walking out of there and I was like, I gotta get out of here. Like I’m working 80 hours a week, I’m following the boss to the shitter writing his notes down. I always think to myself, the movie Devil Wears Prada had nothing on my boss. So Brad gross this year listening Cheers. Last time, I already was a sales rep for some coconut water. So karma, but I do. I will say this. I hope that he’s doing well. I hope all that stuff has been sorted out. And I think he knows he made people’s lives miserable for a while, but also say like, in his defense, I, you know, that was the culture. You know what I’m saying? But yeah, and coming out of that. And my wife worked at an ad agency too, and she saw a lot of just shitty creative directors, and when Ever. And we realized that we had worked with a lot of people outside of New York inside of New York or whatever. And the best people that we have worked with weren’t actually assholes. And you know, being an asshole is one way to work your way to the top. But that’s a lonely, you know, tall, you know, hard, insecure way to do it. You know, the typical ad agency creative director, calling everybody morons is such a lame cliche. That’s true, right? And we just decided, if we ever started a business or when we did start our business, we would just fire the assholes and we just decided, life is too short. You spend way too much time at work. We don’t care if make us a lot of money, whatever the mental pain and anguish and frustration that comes along with that it’s just not worth it and which we have fired on that and we have not hired People on that and as time has gone on, and really, you know, we’ve been pushed to define like what buttons fire the assholes means because it’s one of our four core values literally on the wall, fire the muscles, right? And really what we’ve come to decide that that means is that when people are out for themselves, and they’re not out for the team, that’s an asshole, because we do have some people that, you know, they’re a little rough around the edges or they can be direct or like, whatever, they make people uncomfortable because they can be confrontational or negotiate. And a lot of people want to say like, Oh, that’s an asshole. And you’re like, no, they’re, they’re doing that with the correct intention of, you know, getting people benefits for the team or like, whatever. So, yeah, that was a definitely a awful, awful experience. And one of that agencies that I worked in, in New York and also I’m super grateful for it. Well, what’s the one of the core values the four core values, so fearless, As the first one of foundership is the second one, which is kind of a made up word between the owner and founder.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:08
First Class is the third one and then fire the assholes. And so that’s, you know, those core values are what we want people to if they’re stuck making decisions, we tell them to be fearless to act like you own the company to make first class decisions that, you know, you’re proud to tell your mom or you can defend an inquiry, right. And then, you know, just whether it’s a, whether it’s a client, a vendor, a partner, internally, fairly assholes. I mean, we’ve we’ve fired a really big client because the person we worked with was miserable, that hurt and that stung. But it sets the example for the company. We didn’t work with Walmart because they weren’t fair and they were tough to work with and we turned down The opportunity to do stuff with Walmart. And what that does though long term with employees, I mean, it really creates a culture of really people that are back. Right, right. And that’s to me how we’re able to get really good time. Keep it like we, we do what we say that we’re going to do. And, you know, the core values help guide us, right.
Jeremy Weisz 1:01:26
Yeah. First of all, Paul, I want to thank you. This is like, I feel like I can listen to your stories and so people should definitely check out your podcast feel as closure. I get this in your stories all day and there’s so many good ones, and we probably just scratched the surface. Writing what’s that Ultimate Fighting?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:46
Like? It’s the kids call it MMA now.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:50
That’s that’s the one that I’ve held off on forever. And finally, people discovered I did MMA and I’m like, Alright, let me tell you about that. So you There’s Uh, I don’t know. I mean, I feel like if you’re, you know, I wouldn’t even consider myself really an entrepreneur. I’m just kind of somebody that’s searching to figure out who they are you. You do a lot of things. So yeah, I do spitefulness
Jeremy Weisz 1:02:14
Yeah, I mean, there’s so many things I want to go into. But I want to have one last question. And I also want to point people towards your different sites and your podcasts they could shop, check out full disclosure, and then Paul Jarrett comm is J RR e TT and then they then go to blue box. COMM bu, le blue box calm and where else where else should we point people towards
Unknown Speaker 1:02:42
Bula group
Jeremy Weisz 1:02:43
blue group? Okay, bu Liu group.com. But the last question again, I’m sure you have amazing story that too with it with the companies in the evolution of the company, but I want to talk about the accelerated innovation because right now when people hit crisis, or they need to Pivot or they need to add an income stream or they need to think about innovating their own company. And you’ve done this with, you know, the service that you have with the commerce and the fulfillment, the customer service. So I want to talk about a little bit about that accelerate innovation in these times.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:18
Yeah, yeah. So it’s been an interesting couple of weeks, right. So we’ve we’ve done the subscription box thing, we continue to do it. Here’s, I gotta explain on my bed one of our I don’t even think we work with this company anymore. But it’s called loop lab. It’s a science kit. A Mad Science is the company. So we built that up, and then we kind of handed it over to them, which was all pre determined, right? Actually, I think my kid is in our kitchen right now, doing a fearsome blowout. So you know, we’ve done that we’ve built out the subscription box programs. We’ve actually saw a lot of people don’t know this, but we sold a company we built Basically the LinkedIn comm for consumer packaged goods, and we built and sold that off. And so at the end of 2019, we’re kind of going subscription boxes, great, we have the process down. It’s a really long sale cycle. It’s about 15 months from the first discussion of a big brand to line. And, you know, no matter what we did, we cannot speed that process up anymore. And so we started saying, you know, like, what else can we do? And to get a subscription box up and running, it takes about eight different services, fulfillment, customer service, web development, sourcing, etc. Until we said, well, what about all these smaller brands that are calling us if we let them secure, you know, our services as well. So, you know, we had a dentist that was writing a book and he was kind of creating materials on how to run like your small dental practice. So we started doing I think fulfillment, and
Unknown Speaker 1:05:05
I think some business modeling or customer service forum.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:09
And that went well. And then we brought in another company that was doing some b2b shipping of clothes, like samples of clothes for buyers, right. We started working with that. And then so we kind of were already headed down the path that, you know, probably the evolution of our company is turnkey e commerce solutions, right? Well, we were really easing into that. I was literally calling people on the phone, testing out messages asking doing surveys, and then the pandemic hit. And we were just inundated with people asking for ecommerce help. And it really it was, you know, we had a grocery store cause and say, you know, can you guys help us But this is what it’s called buy online pick up in store. And at first we’re like, yeah, so what we do, but then I was like talking and is a woman that she owns eight grocery stores, and she seemed pretty distraught. Um, I was like, Oh, hold on, and I went to her website. And you know, it’s like a pretty basic Shopify site. And, you know, there’s actually some apps that are you know, that do that, that you can plug into Shopify mess, like, oh, here, I’ll just write this email is what you need to do. She read it, and she’s like, yeah, I can’t do that. And I don’t want to do that. Can you guys just do that? It’s gonna be really expensive, you know? And she’s like, well, it doesn’t matter because we’re, you know, getting crushed with orders or whatever. Another person called me, a buddy of mine, actually, two buddies of mine runs soap companies, and they’ve just been blown up and they need help with fulfillment and customer service. Right. And so, you know, we’ve just been filling in those gaps. I would say more times than none. What we’re trying to do is to point people to either other people or freelancers or software that can do that for them. But if, you know it allows them they want to, you know, one company I know we’re talking to, we might take equity in their company and then perform some financial and customer services for them.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:20
Until I really
Unknown Speaker 1:07:21
big undertaking for you.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:23
Well, interestingly enough, like, it’s what we’ve been doing for the last eight years, right, but we’ve just always called it subscription boxes. But if you remove the layer of subscription boxes,
Jeremy Weisz 1:07:39
it’s fulfilling become masterful. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:41
yeah. Right. And so it’s really nothing different than what we’ve been doing. It’s just saying it and packaging it up in a different way. So for instance, you used to always have to use us for fulfillment to do any other customer service or anything. Now you don’t have to use us for fulfillment. You can literally have us just like build a website for you or whatever it is right. And I think the thing that’s speaking to a lot of people is that we’re like, hey, we’ll just set up the contract to do like almost like a flex labor or freelancer. We know customer service won’t last forever for a lot of these companies is just right now, right? And so I feel like what happened in the world was we were just fast forward 10 years in e commerce, right? Like whether retailers or whoever liked it or not. events have been a huge thing that’s calling us right like graduations high schools, colleges, trade shows. They’re all going like hey, we had this idea to ship people a box. Can you help us out right. A lot of like Coronavirus, you know, people are like, Hey, we want to build masks. Can you ship them out? We have a test kit we have a whatever I mean, just I had two calls today but then there was three unplanned Call. So I’ve had five calls today of people needing something which I would say, historically what we would have in a week was about five inbounds, whether emails or calls or whatever. And maybe one of those was worth, you know, us kind of being a subscription box, big brand or whatever. Well, I would say what we’re getting now is probably
Unknown Speaker 1:09:25
25 inbounds a week.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:29
And a lot of those because we’re opening up the gates, it looks like we can do something for them. And I think my team also because we can see the world and because we can see how many jobs have been lost. There’s a level of panic and fear and although our business has not been directly impacted negatively, there’s this maybe it’s even like deeper than that. There’s like a sense of it’s our responsibility to like, continue to push the economy. continue to push everything right? If we can hire people hire people. And so I think the team is really coming together and understands and, you know, the people that would have never before project manage something, it’s almost like they’re all stuffing up this situation like made them realize like, Oh, I have to and everybody’s really highly capable. Right. And so I think that’s the natural shift in the commerce, kind of those private label or turnkey solutions, but you know, give me a call in a month and we’ll see how it’s going. But for the most part, as we get into the sales cycle with these people contacting us, I am very proud of the fact that like, we’re connecting them with other people, or entities or software’s, that just might make more sense for them and I view that is our job in sales. Our job is to get people is the best solution for what they’re looking for. And many times, that’s not us, but we always make it a point to say, Hey, we’re not trying to sell you, we’re trying to get you to answer quicker. And if your experience was good with us, please go tell other people about us. And I think after eight years, that’s all coming back and dividends because everybody’s going, who should I talk to you? Should I talk to Mr. K? Call Billy because they might not do the work for you, but they’re gonna help get you to where you need to go. Your
Jeremy Weisz 1:11:35
trusted advisor.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:36
Right, right. And and you know, when you deliver on that, or our clients are always shocked when we go, like, hey, you’re paying us too much for this, like you shouldn’t do that. Do this. And they’re like, well, now we’re just going to keep it with you because, you know, we don’t care right. So that seemed to work well for us but yeah, it’s a ecommerce is an interesting place right now podcasting as well. You know, I tell I encourage people to respectfully take advantage of the situation, right? And don’t, don’t just cut 33% and you know, fold up your shop and operating panic. Don’t be the other way and take advantage of whatever you can, like people will Mark Cuban said this amendment struck home. He said, I believe companies will be judged in the future on how they acted and what they did in the midst of the pandemic. And I keep repeating that to myself, right? The company that we’re working with the masks for, we took the masks, we had them analyzed by a lab and all that stuff, and they weren’t quite up to snuff. And so we passed on that which that could have easily been, you know, a lot of money but it’s things like that. You know what I’m saying? Like,
Jeremy Weisz 1:12:58
just extras are Measure just to make sure
Unknown Speaker 1:13:01
like play the long ball man, you know, like just just like a portfolio, your 401k or whatever, like, gotta play the long ball your health, like whatever it is, like, set it up and play the long ball because, you know there’s there’s no secret to any of this. You know what I mean?
Jeremy Weisz 1:13:16
Yeah. Paul, this is amazing. Thank you everyone check out Bulu group comm check out the podcast Also, we’re going to check out the podcast is it on Hulu group or working is on Paul Jarrett.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:30
It’s on that failed disclosure, calm, Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify. I’m told that right now, if people listen to it on Apple podcasts and give a review and our ranking that that’s where we need to focus so but I should also
Jeremy Weisz 1:13:46
an iTunes and subscribe and review. So
Unknown Speaker 1:13:51
and same for your podcast, man.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:53
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:54
Yeah, got inspired inside the plugin on ours doodle. Cool. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Every for listening. Appreciate your time
Paul Jarrett 1:14:08
James
