284 - He got fired multiple times: Tom interviews Jeff Mendelson - Screw The Commute

284 – He got fired multiple times: Tom interviews Jeff Mendelson

Jeff Mendelson is the founder of Effectivo.Social, a full service digital marketing agency where he works with developing comprehensive digital marketing strategy campaigns, for anybody from startups to established businesses. With over 15 years of continuous digital marketing experience in all formats, Jeff is a wealth of information of what works and what doesn't in the digital marketing space.

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Screw The Commute Podcast Show Notes Episode 284

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Higher Education Webinar – https://screwthecommute.com/webinars

[03:47] Tom's introduction to Jeff Mendelson

[08:14] Transitioning into digital marketing

[12:23] Working the business into a podcast

[25:03] Sponsor message

[27:02] A typical day for Jeff and how he stays motivated

Entrepreneurial Resources Mentioned in This Podcast

Higher Education Webinarhttps://screwthecommute.com/webinars

Screw The Commutehttps://screwthecommute.com/

entrepreneurship distance learning school, home based business, lifestyle business

Screw The Commute Podcast Apphttps://screwthecommute.com/app/

College Ripoff Quizhttps://imtcva.org/quiz

Know a young person for our Youth Episode Series? Send an email to Tom! – orders@antion.com

Have a Roku box? Find Tom's Public Speaking Channel there!https://channelstore.roku.com/details/267358/the-public-speaking-channel

How To Automate Your Businesshttps://screwthecommute.com/automatefree/

Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Programhttps://greatinternetmarketingtraining.com/

Jeff's websitehttps://jeffmendelson.com/

One Big Tip Podcasthttps://jeffmendelson.com/onebigtip/

Effectivo Socialhttps://effectivo.social/

Internet Marketing Training Centerhttps://imtcva.org/

Related Episodes

Shopping Carts – https://screwthecommute.com/283/

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Episode 284 – Jeff Mendelson
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with episode two hundred and eighty four of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Jeff Mendelson. Now he's the host of the one big tip podcast. And plus he went independent from working a job in 2009. An independent means he got his butt fired. Apparently he'll tell you all about that when he comes on in a minute. But since then, he's been running a worldwide digital marketing company. And we want to hear his story. I hope you didn't miss Episode 283. That was all about shopping cart systems. That's the lifeblood of your business. And you heard all about the things your system should do to sell for you automatically and handle multiple Web sites with one low cost system. So if you missed that check out episode 283, and as always, you can go directly to an episode by putting screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number two eighty-three and this one is two eighty four. Now how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute. Well if the show has helped you out at all in your business or giving your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue bar on the side. It says, send voicemail. Click on it. Talk into your phone or computer and tell how the show has helped you out. Don't forget to put your Web site in there and you'll get a nice big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. Now make sure you grab a copy of our automation e-book. This book has saved me. We've actually figured it out seven and a half million keystrokes just with one of the tips in this book. So grab it at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And we sell this book for 27 bucks, but it's yours free for listening to screw the commute podcast. And while you're at it, grab a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. And we've got video instructions and screen captures to show you how to use it so you can take us with you on the road. All right. Now, our sponsor, you know, I've been telling you, we're sitting here in the middle of this pandemic and the work from home keywords are going crazy. And we just found out that we've got in the top 10 list of several work from home podcasts. So we're real proud of that. But our school can teach you these skills so that you can work from home legitimately. I've been doing it since nineteen. Well, I've been doing it my whole life since 1977. But online since 1994. So these skills are real. It's a lifestyle kind of business. Jeff can teach you this kind of stuff. He's been living it since 2009. I've been living it since 1994. And these are this is real. This is not hocus pocus. And, you know, people are suffering nowadays because they're stuck at home and can't earn a living well. If you're in this kind of business that is negated in the past five minutes, six hundred dollars came in from a little promotion I was doing with a webinar. So that's the kind of life I want for you. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. It's the only license dedicated Internet marketing school in the country. All right. We'll talk to you about that a little bit later.

[00:03:49] All right. Let's get to the main event. Jeff Mendelson is the founder of Effectivo.Social, a full service digital marketing agency where he works with developing comprehensive digital marketing strategy campaigns, for anybody from startups to established businesses. And he's based in Miami, Florida, but he works worldwide. He helps entrepreneurs conceptualize, develop and then execute all encompassing digital marketing strategies, sales funnels, paid campaigns and getting the right people and disciplines in place. With over 15 years of continuous digital marketing experience in all formats, Jeff is a wealth of information of what works and what doesn't in the digital marketing space. Jeff, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:04:42] Yeah. Well, good meeting you, sir. I love big tips. And that's that's your podcast. And it's it's concise. It's got great people on it. And and I was listened to a few episodes. You give a big tip in each episode for sure.

[00:04:56] Exactly. Yeah. That was the whole point. Either way, I was really trying to get away from the half an hour, 45 minute interview fest. Those are just they just don't fit my style. I wanted something concise to the point. Get in, get out and go on with your day.

[00:05:12] Yeah. And yes, it certainly works. So we go a little bit longer sometimes. I've gone as much as an hour, but then I get bored with myself at times.

[00:05:22] So tell us about this transition. We'll talk about your digital marketing in a minute, but this gets your butt fired in 2009. What were you doing up to that point?

[00:05:34] You know, my career was always in sales, engineering, solution, sales, things like that. And it was for various like like a telecom technology companies or credit card payment systems, things like that. And what would happen was I would always get to like manager or director level, but like never above that. Right. And I would always be you know, my friends started calling me the Grim Reaper because what would what I found myself happening is that in the space of, like, three years before that. I was laid off or fired from like three or four different positions, even after becoming employee of the month. Most productive employee of the year, you know, winning these awards. It's like as soon as I got recognized for something guaranteed within six months, I'd be out of it. And I'm like, no, no. That ain't gonna work.

[00:06:22] You hit the circuit board ceiling instead of the glass ceiling.

[00:06:27] And what happened was I you know, in the meantime, I was one of those guys that could work, you know, at the office. Right. Because you have to go in from nine to six. And no one was really watching over me. You know, at that upper level, you're not, you know, the mid management level, I should say, you know, no one's really watching you. Right? Right. So it's not like it's not like I'm clocking in or clocking out. But I would get my work done by eleven thirty in the morning. And I. I don't smoke. You can't go home. So it's what else are you going to do. So I started teaching myself web development. And one thing led to another and I ended up I ended up getting this one client who was you know, she had this other Web guy working for what? He was just raping her on price.

[00:07:11] And I was like, listen, I can help you manage or 50 sites and I'll charge you a retainer. And at the time, it was like five hundred dollars a month. That was. Wow. I wonder dollars extra. I was I was right out of myself. And then I was like, if I can do this for her, like, there's got to be two hundred other businesses I can do this for. And that's sort of how it started.

[00:07:32] That's that's beautiful.

[00:07:33] And it kind of reminds me, I did have a summer job back in college and almost got killed because of it. Because.

[00:07:42] It was a steel mill and we had the quotas were so low. I was a gung ho college student and I want to get the you know, and the other guys were saying, like, stop it. They're going to increase our quota and make us actually work all night. And so they started like running steel beams into me trying to kill me.

[00:08:01] I'll get rid of me for fear of being a gung ho guy. So. So I know what you mean by the thugs. You know, if we worked like that, we'd be out of business in two days. You know, these big corporations are like slugs. So. So how did you transition and start the the actual business?

[00:08:20] Did you see any sign trains besides that? Well, the transition happened. Yeah. The transition happened all of a sudden. You know, I came in one day, you know, like, hey, Jeff, you know, we, you know, we don't need you anymore.

[00:08:30] But you were making five hundred a month already?

[00:08:34] Yeah, I already had, like, one client. And what happened was I was like I was like, OK, I need to do something. So I already had this little cottage thing going on. And the first thing is going through my mind is how the hell am I going to be a little Ford my my five dollars Starbucks coffee. Right. I it's just that's gonna be the one habit. I'm not going to be a great, you know, my, you know, like my kids were just born. I, you know, now I'm saddled with college debt and it's like cheese. Now how am I going to do this? And I put out some Google ads at the time that were relatively cheap. I fix Joomla sites.

[00:09:08] And what year was one of the. What year was this.

[00:09:10] 2008. 2009. 2010. And you know, Google ads were still relatively young for for those kind of keywords. And I started bringing in little by little. I was helping people out with managing their websites or fixing problems, things like that. And I have clients to this day.

[00:09:28] Still, I'm their word that while I am aware of what I moved on, but I moved on to WordPress.

[00:09:37] Right. And it just became a you know, I established myself as a WordPress expert.

[00:09:43] Yeah. Is the gold standard for sure. And, you know, I still get, you know, a lot of we call them geeks and propellerheads.

[00:09:52] This they say, well, you know, Drupal is really better. And so I don't really care if I go for it. Yeah.

[00:10:01] I mean, it kind of reminds me if you remember the beta and VHS controversy, but just back in PC, you know, like PC owners had dogs, and Mac owners had cats only worse.

[00:10:13] Yeah.

[00:10:15] But the beta was considered a better quality video, but it lost the marketing war.

[00:10:21] It just. Who's going to have a beta machine and have one video to watch those, though? So, yeah, we're I can't really say I'm not a technical person, which is technically better, but I know you'd be crazy not to use. Compared to all these other ones. Yeah.

[00:10:36] Right. I mean, I, I, you know, at any one time, you know, there's, there's always a choice. Right. There's always a choice of how you're going to building what you going to do. And I think my differentiator was I was was on service. So what I did was I very quickly got into Web hosting and while I still do Web hosting today, it's not my main business. But I won't develop a WordPress site unless unless my company is hosting it. And that's simply because while I'm the God on that. On that. OK, so I can make things happen very, very quickly. If I have to go into someone else's goddamn account or host game or whatever, you got to gain or add another four hours. I just won't do it. So what I've done is that I bake that into the offering so that, you know, I'm getting at least the residual on the hosting. Right. Plus whatever residual I'm getting on now, you know, on the retainer for any kind of market.

[00:11:28] Yeah. You're not pulling your hair off because you know the machines, you know the boxes and the things that you know and I know the clients.

[00:11:36] Right. So I know their business cycles.

[00:11:37] Right. I know what they're going to do. I know they're not going to throw fifty other sites on there. Right. These are all very, very focused websites that I'm hosting right now.

[00:11:48] Yeah. And see, though, you can have all of that business you want to go. I don't want any part because I go.

[00:11:56] I'm not technical at all. I mean, so I'm I'm more focused just on the marketing.

[00:12:01] I use totally off the shelf everything. Software I don't use. I've never had anything programmed ever.

[00:12:08] And you can make a fortune with the way those people were developing stuff nowadays. The powerful stuff that's out there is it's just amazing the things that'll do and the. I'll let you take care of all. Oh, thank God. I don't want to go into any servers. Not a problem. I know how to do so. So around 2008, 2009. So give us some tips on how the business grew and how it worked into a podcast eventually and all that.

[00:12:35] So the business grew by creating by creating a suite of services that just made sense. Right. So I started out maintaining other people's Web sites. And what I still what I realized that, first of all, people need a good hosting rate and good hosting is not hard to find at all. Right. There are lots of great companies out there and it's really a commodity, you know, like between the five or ten dollars a month. But a lot of people like when confronted with that, with that with that purchase, they just say, I'll not. Do you know your version? What you know, I don't know anything about that. So what happened was when I when I baked everything in, like, listen, I'm gonna give you a Web site that's going to fulfill your business needs one, two and three. And I'm gonna take care of it. And here are the fees and no surprises. And you're not going to get a surprise invoice for me that in and of itself, love doesn't stick. It was wasn't still is a differentiator. There are so many pissy webmasters out there that that just think that, you know, they're they're kings of their little four by six domain.

[00:13:41] Do you know I own the domain killyourwebdesigner.com just for all these horror stories, you know, œuvre. You've heard them all. Yeah. And your clients and the people are just. Well, I'm usually the one that rebuilds them. Exactly.

[00:13:55] You've got to fix up their messes, you know. So that's when somebody comes to me and they have nothing. Go on. I'm like, awesome. I don't have to clean up the mess that somebody else ran. Now.

[00:14:05] So what happened was I started figuring, well, first of all, you know, like developing Web sites is nice because it's a good payday. Meaning, you know, like you take 50 percent down, you take 50 percent upon delivery. You know, it's good. But, you know, you're always fighting. You need that. You need that churn of new business coming in. And then, you know, I got a little sick of that. So that's how I started getting into the marketing aspects of it. And a lot of. Well, we're in fact, and I think still our rather clueless of what it takes to actually market themselves online.

[00:14:34] I think now more than ever. Sure.

[00:14:36] So what happens is I don't take a Web site now, a Web site project, unless I know there's a marketing component built into it, because, you know, it doesn't make sense to build a Web site. You know, one place A and then have someone be actually go and market it. They had no say in it, you know, and then you gotta move things around. You got to move the with the call to action somewhere else. You got to integrate it with active campaign. That's like, well, what's that now. It just doesn't work. At least that doesn't work in my in my in my frame of thinking. Right. So that's how I just like. OK. Listen, I'm going to give you the whole thing. Soup to nuts. Here's like here's the entire plan. And I did it both on price and on service.

[00:15:16] Yeah. And I totally know what you mean with multiple entities involved, because when I first started a shopping cart cost two thousand bucks and would be barely do anything, I was like. Well, there's Texas Instrument calculators from the 70s that would add, subtract, multiply and divide it cause the 80 bucks. So so is two thousand bucks for the shopping cart. It was eleven hundred dollars from a different company to put an affiliate module together.

[00:15:43] It never work that it never worked. And then each company would blame the other ones. Oh well, it's because of you're, you know, and then they never worked. And I'm holding the bag. So when everything's consolidated, then one person or one entity is is responsible for it.

[00:16:00] And that's a much better deal.

[00:16:03] And that's why you have a lot of companies today like Big Commerce, Shopify, you know, like they handle all of that, you know, like even shopping carts. Like I used to develop shopping carts on WordPress, a Magento. It's just. Why bother for fifty dollars a month? You can go on Shopify. Done and done. And it integrates in anything.

[00:16:20] Yeah. We use. I've been for 18 years using Kickstartcart, which is one which is my white label of 1shoppingcart and they bought it, they got bought up by web.com.

[00:16:31] But I mean everything is all.

[00:16:32] It'll do 90 percent of what some of the real big ones will do for the cost four or five hundred a month and a normal person can operate it and it runs on its own server. So you don't have to do any of the compliance with the credit card stuff or any of that stuff. You know, if something goes wrong, they got to handle it. So now I have like probably 70 different Web sites going through one account.

[00:16:57] So that's a lot. Yeah.

[00:16:58] So that's another big one is running on its own server somewhere. So.

[00:17:03] So then how did the how did you make the business grow? Did you have to outsource? Do you have a lot of people working for you or what.

[00:17:11] So yeah. So eventually what happens is that, you know, you can't do everything on your own, you know, even though, you know, I went to school, I was educated in this country. You just prefer not to write, you know, paragraphs and blog posts on, I don't know, women's health issues. Right. You know, it's just it's not my not my things. So that's when I started getting involved with virtual assistance contract writers. I played both sides of elance, which is now upwork with a client and a and a provider. And it's just really finding, you know, like what part of, you know, what niche of is like for me finding work on Upworthy, as you know, I'm competing with I'm competing with a lot of other people on price. Especially those in, you know, like India and the film. Right. And then what I find is, you know, when someone wants to deal with someone, I'm that they can all and, you know, there's a little bit of prejudice going on. But at least at least that I'm able to convey to them, like, look, no, I'm really here in Miami. See the sun. You know, it's like, you know, I can really I can really convey that. And it's, you know, it's helpful. Some people want to want to and need to deal with someone in their own country and on their own time zone. I think that outsourcing to other countries is is great. There are some great cost benefit and advantages to doing that. There are some great, you know, some very, very talented people that whose family you can support through your actions.

[00:18:44] Yeah. All right. Five bucks for them for a project feeds the family for a day.

[00:18:51] I mean, it helps. And I like you like I have a programmer that I've kept on, that I've kept on retainer all these years, even during months, that I didn't have any Web dev projects simply because it made sense to me. Yeah. It just made it made sense to keep him around. And it's great. I know I'm doing something good. I know I'm keeping him employed. And he also keeps me going because while I'm going to go find more web projects.

[00:19:13] Yeah, that way the only place we we use is Philippine's because they speak better English than I do. And I mean, we got some unbelievable people. I mean, this one lady was a bank executive just on maternity leave. Brilliant. And just she wrote for me for eight or nine months and then, you know, went back to the bank after she had her baby, but was fantastic. Some some really brilliant people out there. And I've had e-books written for a couple hundred bucks that I've made 40, 50, 60 thousand dollars on. And and so, yeah, I'm in favor of that. But but again, uncertain things like Mark, I want my school to get the license for my school. They kept saying, well, look, I all these things are getting outsourced. I said the program again is getting outsourced. Marketing. A lot of people want us people that can speak clear English and are fluent to do the marketing stuff. So they said, oh, yeah, that's that's true. Yeah. So. So you grew the big help. How many people did you end up having?

[00:20:18] I think, you know, it's it's expanded and contracted.

[00:20:22] I, I seen the business, you know, come in waves. I think at one point I had like 13 contractors working for me. I also tried to hire locally and it just it just didn't work out. I just you know, I felt that if you hire someone for. Yeah, it just didn't work out. I go and, you know, I try to look for the best person at the at at the price that I can wholesale their work for. Right. Right. And what it comes down to when I'm talking with these people is, listen, you know, like some people say, like, oh, I'm worth eighty dollars an hour.

[00:20:57] Like, no one. I'm sure they are. Yeah. Yeah. Go right to go out and get the business. Retail go. I've got to manage your own clients.

[00:21:06] Manage your own. You got to manage your own books and all that. Yeah. You do that. So you know what I trying to people is listen, if you're especially if you're freelance or starting out. Think of what you are providing in a wholesale retail relationship. Right. So if you're gonna get a writer for you, you know what a lower price. You have to mark that up in order to sell it. Right. But that writer doesn't need to go out and doesn't. All right. Clients just right. I'm for the work week after week after week. So I would think that I would be a more steady client for you. Well, while still giving you the ability and the freedom to go look for your medium clients, and that's great. Some people have a mental block against it. And OK. And others don't. And, you know, that's also fine. You know, I work with I work with both of them.

[00:21:57] I've run into some snooty writers, put it that way. So. So. So tell us about the podcast.

[00:22:05] So the podcast is something that I've been tossing around for a while now.

[00:22:09] I would. I.

[00:22:12] First of all, for like the past five or six years, I've been telling everyone else, like, you know, anyone who came to me for advice, I'm always like, OK, what's your name? Jeff. OK. That's your domain name, right? Right. So I was always talking about personal branding, but I was never the one doing it. It's almost like the shoemaker that goes barefoot. Right? So when I finally started putting it together, it's like, OK. Yeah, I can build a brand out of Jeff Mendelson and, you know, that's great and all. But I needed to get some more reach and. One of the things I was always tossing around was how do I put it like how do I convey this knowledge without, you know, without becoming a teacher, without, you know, having to go to some community college or whatever it is. Right. I usually found myself giving advice to people who call me up. You know, one. I'm one. Never the type of person to just say, oh, yeah, we don't do that type of thing, you know, and then hang up. Right. Right. It calls me up for for some kind of thing. I'll give him 45 minutes to an hour. Right. And, you know, especially if you're trying to hire me, I don't know for FCO search engine optimization these days is very expensive. So when they're calling me up and they had to have like this basic life coach business that they just, you know, they just got certified or whatever. You don't have a business, right. You really don't have that. So what happened is I would you know, I would consult with him. I'd give him an hour for free and, you know, basically just talk myself out of a job. Right, because I can sell as good as then that is good as the rest of them. I can take that money from them for six months. But then when they realize it's not working that well is going to dry up. And then I'm going to make an enemy exactly out of me, though, I thought.

[00:23:46] I don't need that noise.

[00:23:47] I don't wanna go through it. You know, I want people to be with me for years, not months. So what happens is that I, I tell them, like, listen, this is why, you know, it's almost like Shark Tank. Right. But just a little bit nicer. And I'm not trying to invest in our company. Right. Where, you know, I'll tell him, look, these are the holes I see. And I don't think this is gonna work for you. But, you know, here's X, Y and Z on how you should feel. The sales funnel, how you should have a better call to action, how you should build an email list. All of that stuff. And I'm fine with them taking that advice and coming back to me two, three, four years later and saying, hey, Jeff, you know, you were the one who talked to me straight. You were the one who didn't try to snake your, you know, snake money out of me.

[00:24:27] Great. You know. You know, let's begin. You know, when you're ready, you're ready. Not before.

[00:24:33] Yeah, I'd say that and that's the kind of the nuts and bolts stuff that I teach. So I get a lot of those people.

[00:24:39] And yeah, I talk him, talk more of them out of it, because I have in 20, 20 years of my mentor program, no chargebacks, no lawsuits, no refund requests.

[00:24:50] So, you know, because I sleep at night, you know, I actually have a TV show in development Hollywood called Scam Brigade.

[00:24:59] And I go after the bad people that the that rip off. And there's plenty of them out there, that's for sure. No shortage of them. So we got to take a brief break here for our sponsor message.

[00:25:09] When we come back, we'll ask Jeff what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated. So so, folks, about 20 years ago, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head.

[00:25:22] People at my level were charging 50 or 100 thousand bucks to teach you this stuff. And I knew most of these guys. There were rip offs and probably once they got the money, they wouldn't teach you anything anyway. So I thought, you know what, I'm a small business advocate. I'm I'm going to switch this around. And so I charged a relatively small entry fee to my program, and then I charged that percentage of profits that was capped. So for me to get by big money, you had to make way bigger money. And people just kind of loved that. And the seventeen hundred students later over 20 years. It's still going strong and has lots of unique features like the Where I'm sitting right now. The great Internet Marketing Retreat Center is a big estate home with a TV studio and people actually stay here in the house for an immersion weekend and we should take them out and shoot videos. And you have a year long program. Probably the biggest part of the program is that nobody at my level will even talk to you, let alone, you know, work with you. So so I have unlimited one on one consultation by appointment with me and my entire staff. So that you're not stuck with more advanced people where you're lost and you're not stuck with people that are beginners. And then you're bored. So it's one on one. And people tell me I'm crazy, but crazy. When they when they tell you you're crazy, you know, you got something going. So 20 years later is still going strong. So check out the details at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and give me a call. There's no machine gun nest or high pressure here, but I'd be glad to discuss your future online.

[00:27:06] Let's get back to the main event. Jeff is here with us and Jeff has the podcast. The big tip is that. What is it? No. One big, big tip, though.

[00:27:16] One big tip. That's right. And so, Jeff, he has a worldwide digital marketing agency. So, Jeff, tell us, what's a typical day look like for you to get up early to work out? You know, you handle all the stuff you do.

[00:27:30] So it's important to note that we're recording this in mid-May 2020. So we're all we're all homebound. We're home. Boseley traveled was in was in January. So before before all this, I did not work from home. I was I was dead set against it. I have I have actually three subscriptions to coworking spaces. I have you two, we work two spaces and then there's this other place in downtown Miami that I'm sort of grandfathered into. So it's I just don't want to get rid of it. You know, the good people overnight and on, you know, it's also where all my mail goes. So I don't want to I don't want to move any of that around. So between we work and spaces, I literally had a worldwide reach. And what would happen is. It's important for me to get to know the people that I'm working with, not just, you know, over zoom calls or Skype or whatever, I really want to understand, you know, what it's like. So I will travel to visit them. And I have visited just about everyone under my purview. You know, as much as I could. So I've gone to Uruguay and Argentina, Israel and to Europe and, you know, places in the US delegation there.

[00:28:42] Well, because what happens is that, you know, when you're speaking with someone on the other side of the planet, you know, it's well, you know, for me, it's the afternoon for them. They're putting your kids to bed. Right. Right. And, you know, it's the relationship is so different once you break bread with them or have coffee with them. I agree. It makes it makes everything real. And it was really my calling card for a long time where I would go and do that now. These coworking spaces actually enabled me to do that, right? You know, I could go to I could go to Israel and I had, you know, six different offices. I can meet people. And I didn't have to go into these large, large and noisy, you know, coffee houses. Right. Right. To steal a seed or whatever. Now, I could just go put on my headphones, get to work. I could meet with them. I could meet with, you know, schedule meetings. And it's a respectable place that you can go, you know, and meet with somebody. And once you're doing that, you know, to meet the people that you know, then it's like, well, there are other places I can go.

[00:29:44] Right. So. And, you know, so I'm divorced now, I've I have two girls that are are teenagers, so I only have them half the time. So the other half that I have them coming out when you're out.

[00:29:58] You know, so I would go and travel and, you know, my girlfriend is actually, you know, and now almost empty nester the same way. Right. So we would literally go on travel. And, you know, she had, of course, last year in London. So I caught up with her there. And then from there we flew to Vienna and we're from there.

[00:30:16] And lifestyle business, that's really just lifestyle business.

[00:30:19] And then we had to head back to São Paulo because that's where her family was. We had a family event over there and then come back to Miami. And the beautiful thing was that these are all overnight flights. And I literally did not miss a day of work. Right. So first of all, you know, one of the perks of being a boss is, you know, you can do that. Right. You don't have to answer today. Right. But also, you know, the technology that we hold in our hands today enables that. Like, I don't even bother to tell people, oh, I'm going to Europe for two weeks. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. I mean, I you know, I have the latest iPhone that has the eSim chips. So, you know, I keep the eSim part open here in the U.S. And then when I go abroad, I'll buy a prepaid card, whether I'm in Spain or Austria or Israel or wherever it is. And that keeps me connected into both world. And as long as I'm like I'm mentally available that if somebody calls me at eleven o'clock in Europe, you know, an evening. Well, of course, it's still like 4:00 in the afternoon in New York. So it's like, OK, you know. You know, that that's that's what I have to do in order to stay in touch. And it's great. I don't even announce it anymore where I am. They're welcome to check my Facebook or my Instagram, you know. You know what? That's really how that's really how it's run these days.

[00:31:37] That's beautiful. Beautiful. So it doesn't seem like with that kind of fun lifestyle, you need to stay motivated.

[00:31:44] But like a lot of fun, It's something that I didn't have a chance to do before. I there are still many places that I want to you know, I want to check out, you know, funny story.

[00:31:58] Like a year and a half ago, I took my kids to Hong Kong and Japan. And as we're walking around Hong Kong, I get the surge and text message like, hey, Jeff, you got to sign this contract. Right. So, like, great, I'm. And I'm in Asia, bro. You know, we're going to do it. So I go order the we work and they're like, yeah, how can we help, you know, you know, print it out for me. And it was great. I was just able to walk into a place. Right. Internet instantly connected, you know, print out to my services, whatever. And then, you know, go out and get some lunch. Yeah. You know, it always great. And I did it all with my kids and they got the rest a little bit from on that tourist thing we were doing. And it was great. You know, it's like, you know, my kids understand that that one of the one of the while there are perks to traveling. Right. But I also have responsibility. Right. So if that means that I have to stay behind, didn't, you know, do some work in the hotel room? That's part of it. Right. And I think that's fine. I it's you know, I'm still able to do it. I don't I don't really take holidays anymore.

[00:32:58] I mean, I guess I should, but I don't run together to email after and they all run together because you're you're always on the phone anyways.

[00:33:06] It's like really I think the only that I think that next holiday I would have to take is some kind of cruise. But even then, you know, soon we're going to have free Internet on cruises.

[00:33:15] So I don't have any kids or anything. So to me, holidays are.

[00:33:21] Oh, man, this is great. I can get so much work done before I look at it. It's like at odds with her. They'll work 18 hours a day to get out of work in eight hours a day.

[00:33:32] Exactly. Giving the only guy work six days so I don't have to work 40.

[00:33:37] So. So. Well this is. This is great. So the company name is again, what?

[00:33:44] Effectively. That's social. So I just wanted you to stay active. Effective, but in Spanish.

[00:33:50] Yeah. Yeah. Great. And then the the podcast one big tip is it got its own Web site or is it just that I it's on my personal brand.

[00:33:59] So JeffMendelson.com. There's a link on there for podcasts.

[00:34:05] Yeah, we'll have that in the show notes. Well thanks so much for catching up with us on the beautiful story. Beautiful lifestyle business you've built for yourself. Oh.

[00:34:22] You know, kind of of getting fired multiple times, which exactly actually says the best thing that ever happened to him. You probably would, too, I guess. I am certified unemployable at this point. Exactly. So thanks so much for coming on in. You're very welcome.

[00:34:38] We'll have the links to all your stuff in the show notes. So, folks, this has been an episode 284 with Jeff Mendelson. We will catch you on the next round. See ya later.

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